Any common Wine may be rendred so strong by the help of a certain sweet Salt and artificial fermentation, as that it cannot be drunk because of its strength. Some Pots full onely thereof, being poured into a Barrel full of small Wine, will make the same so strong, as to equalize it with generous Wine. He that is so minded may add some sweet Spices in the fermentation, and so make it the more sweet, more efficacious, and more wholsome, and so a little quantity thereof being poured into another Barrel will make all the Wine therein contained become sweet and good.
Out of common Salt may easily be made good Allum and Vitriol, no less usefull for the Dyers than the natural are.
It is likewise a thing easily feasible, and that too in few hours space, to turn the same into a fiery nature, and make it have the same property as the Salt made of Wood Ashes, and of the burnt Lees of Wine and such like, and as Pot Ashes have, and may serve for the Soap Boilers and be applied to the same uses that those Salts are used for.
Moreover, store of sweet Spirit of Salt may be gotten with small charges out of common Salt, serving not onely for the preparation of many excellent Medicaments, but also for the maturation of the meaner and unripe Metals, as we said afore.
These and the like wonderfull things, yea and very many such effects incredible to the unskilfull doth that contemptible and common Salt produce, to the exceeding benefit and profit of mankind: which excellent things I neither would nor could (for the honour of God, the giver of all good things, and for the sake and profit of mankind) any longer conceal. But some or other may object and say, if by the help of common Salt, such great things may be effected, why do not you prefer the same before Salt-peter, which you have so exceedingly praised in the [third Part of the Prosperity of Germany], and have constituted it the Monarch as it were of the whole World: whereas notwithstanding it is so venemous a Dragon as is wont to devour all things. Can’t these two Salts I pray, namely the common and Salt-peter, divide the Government of the World between them, and bear sway and command both together.
To such I answer, that although that common Salt be the producer of many wonderfull effects, yet must it needs give place unto Salt-peter, which being inflamed and on Fire is wont to overturn huge Mountains, and blow them up into the Air, which thing seeing common Salt cannot do, ’tis but fitting and right that it should be dignified with so great a Title. However, being by the Operation of the Fire and Air made equal unto Salt-peter, and performing the same effects, it may then worthily be graced as Salt-peter is with the Title of Monarcy.
The effects which I have attributed to common Salt and Salt-peter, I can every hour shew, in very deed, to be most true. Ill therefore do they do, that bark against me for saying that Salt-peter is a universal Dissolvent, and that endeavour by their tatling reproaches to obstruct the truth.
Why do they not produce some better thing, seeing they will not admit of this universal Dissolvent? such Men as these do nothing else but bewray their own foolishness, and kick against the Pricks.
Had they ever done ought, or set their hands to work, for the sake of searching throughly into nature, they would never so boldly contemn, and reject that, which they never as yet understood. They behave themselves very basely, and clearly discover unto all Men’s view, that they have suckt in their uncertain and foolish Opinions, by the bare reading and hearing of uncertain and dubious Writers, whose meaning notwithstanding they understand not; for my part I remain constant in my Opinion, and say, that Salt-peter is an universal Dissolvent, and is able to dissolve all the things in the whole World, if it be made use of in three forms or shapes. Whatsoever the acid Spirit thereof, or the Eagle with its sharp Claws cannot effect, its fixed Salt, or the fiery Lyon will accomplish: and whatsoever is impossible to be done by these two, the Griffon which hath its rise from the Eagle and Lyon, will artificially perform.
N. B. The acid Spirit of Niter doth not dissolve sulphureous subjects, but mercurials onely: Contrarywise, the fix Niter doth not seize upon mercurial subjects, but sulphureous ones; but the flame of Salt-peter performs both: which verily is wonderfull, that things so unlike should in some few hours time be extracted out of one and the same subject. For the corrosive Spirit prepared out of Salt-peter by Distillation, and likewise the fix Salt, are most bitter enemies to each other, which ruinating and slaying one another, and being dead, return agen unto that which they were afore, and partakes of both natures; which the Ancient Philosophers do clearly point out unto us by the Griffon, which is headed and winged like an Eagle, and the hinder part of its Body like a Lyon, as we have mentioned more at large in the foregoing [third part of the Prosperity of Germany].