The seventh Chapter.
That vaine and deceitfull hope is a great cause why men are seduced by this alluring art, and that there labours therein are bootelesse, &c.
ITHERTO somewhat at large I have detected the knaverie of the art Alcumysticall, partlie by reasons, and partlie by examples: so that the thing it selfe maie no lesse appeare to the judiciall eie of the considerers;/262. than the bones and sinewes of a bodie anatomized, to the corporall eie of the beholders. Now it shall not be amisse nor impertinent, to treate somewhat of the nature of that vaine andOf vaine hope. frutelesse hope, which induceth and draweth men forward as it were with chordes, not onelie to the admiration, but also to the approbation of the same: in such sort that some are compelled rufullie to sing (as one in old time did, whether in token of good or ill lucke, I doo not now well remember) Spes & fortuna valete; Hope and good hap adieu.
No mervell then though Alcumystrie allure men so sweetlie, and intangle them in snares of follie; sith the baits which it useth is the hope of gold, the hunger wherof is by the poet termed Sacra, which some doo English, Holie; not understanding that it is rather to be interpreted, *Curssed* J. Cal. in Comment. upon Deut. serm. 127. pa. 781. col. 1. number. 40. or detestable, by the figure Acyron, when a word of an unproper signification is cast in a clause as it were a cloud: or by the figure Antiphrasis, when a word importeth a contrarie meaning to that which it commonlie hath. For what reason can there be, that the hunger of gold should be counted holie, the same having (as depending upon it) so manie milians of mischeefes and miseries: as treasons, theftes, adulteries, manslaughters, trucebreakings, perjuries, cousenages, and a great troope of other enormities, which were here too long/372. to rehearse. And if the nature of everie action be determinable by the end thereof,A maxime. then cannot this hunger be holie, but rather accurssed, which pulleth after it as it were with iron chaines such a band of outrages and enormities, as of all their labor, charge, care and cost, &c: they have nothing else left them in lieu of lucre, but onlie some few burned brickes of a ruinous fornace, a pecke or two of ashes, and such light stuffe, which they are forced peradventure in fine to sell, when beggerie hath arrested and laid his mace on their shoulders. As for all their gold, it is resolved In primam materiam, or rather In levem quendam fumulum, into a light smoke or fumigation of vapors, than the which nothing is more light, nothing lesse substantiall, spirits onelie excepted, out of whose nature and number these are not to be exempted.