248 OF THE PROLONGATION OF 



the bull : Spondent, quas non exhibent divitias, paii- 

 peres alchimiltae, denounced all the curfes of Ernulfus 

 againft the matters of this bafe art, — of fuch people, it 

 may well be expe&ed that they would not have failed 

 to profit by the name and the reputation of a Flame!.- 



The refult of my confiderations on the account of 

 the pretended adept .Nicholas Flamel, therefore is: 

 that, perhaps, like a number of other empty heads of 

 his time, he was a great friend to alchymy, and acci- 

 dentally got poiTeilion of a manufcript filled with al- 

 chymiftical hieroglyphics, and a no lefs myfterious 

 explication of them, that might have had fome jewifh 

 cabbalift for its author — that lie made ufe of this un- 

 intelligible book, for the purpofe of railing an opinion, 

 that he had acquired his conliderable wealth by the 

 difcovery of the philosopher's flone, — and by this ftra- 



French in the fixteenth century. Hence it came to pafs, that in 

 thefe times gold and iilver were as common as the Hones in the 

 ftreet ; that the exchequers of kings and princes were fo full of 

 it, that in all chritfendom there was no longer any need of railing 

 money of the fubjecl by taxes and tributes; in fhort, that the 

 Saturnian age, fo much celebrated by Lucian, was every where 

 reilored: as the hiftorians of the xivrh, xvth and xvith centuries 

 affirm. — To fpeak ferioufiy, John xxii. actually underftood the 

 art of gold making as well, and better than any of his predecef- 

 fors; his tax upon fins particularly brought him in great Aims, 

 no lefs perhaps than what the pauperes alchimifrae procured from 

 the crucible: and, if it be true, that he left behind him eighteen 

 millions of gold guldens in hard money, as Villani, in quality of 

 an eye-wituefs aliens, his holinefs was in a capacity to write a 

 beautiful treat ife de arte trahfmutandi peccata et flultitiam mundi 

 in folidos aureos . 



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tagem* 



