VI. It behoves you therefore to give thanks to God, who has

largefy given (of his bounty) to all the wise ; who delivers us out
of the snares and el niches of misery and poverty. I am proved
and tried with the fulness of his riches and goodness ; with his
probable miracles ; and I humbly pray to God, that whilst Hive,
I may pass the whole course of my life, so as I may attain him.
Take then from thence the fats or sulphurous matter, which we
take from suets, grease, hair, verdigrease, tragacanth, and
bones, which things are written in the books of the ancients.
But the fats which contain the tinctures, which coagulate the
fugitive, and set forth, or adorn the sulphurs, it behoves us to
explicate their disposition (more fully hereafter). And to unveH
tne figure or form, from all other fats or sulphur, (which is the
hidden and buried fat or sulphur) which is seen in no disposition,
but dwells in its own body, as fire or heat in trees and stones,
which by the most subtle art and ingenuity it behoves us to ex-
tract without burning. And know that the heaven is to be joined
in a mean with the earth: but the figure is to be in a middle
nature, between the heaven awd the earth, which thing is our
water. Now in the first place of all, is the -water, which goes
forth from this our stone: the second is gold : but the third is
gold in a mean, which is more noble than the water and the
iocces. And in these three are the vapors, the blackness, and
the death. It behoves us therefore to chase or drive away, and
expel the snper-vcxistent fume or vapor, from the water ; the
blackness from the fat ; and the death from the foeces and this
by dissolution ; by which means we attain to the knowledge of
the greatest philosophy, and the sublime secrets of all secrets.