The Three Mysterious Fires:

Commentary on

Monte-Snyders's Alchemy

SIR ISAAC NEWTON

The text below is the English-language part of the three-page hand¬
written commentary presented to the Cohnnbia Libraries by the
Friends at the latter's 2uth Anniversary meeting (the rest of the text
was in Latin.)

The spelling of the words has been modernized to aid readability.
Also the chemical symbols for antimony, mercury, and sulphur have
been replaced by the names of the metals, in brackets.      editor's note
 

T
 

V If ^HE first thing which must be understood are the three
mysterious fires. The first ought to render metal fusible
and this without any enigma is the regulus' of antimony.
The other ought to sympathise with the metallic fire, and although
Snyders's- does declare that it is double yet he will consider it as
one, though they have a contrary nature in their qualities. But it is
enough for him that they perform the same effect in his design.
He calls it a sympathetic burning Hermaphroditic fire. He says
that sulphur and niter are two violent fires but yet, if one knows
how to reconcile them nothing but God can hindet us from ob¬
taining health and riches and that it is the only thing which he had
reserved to himself and to those whom God has elected to it. He
does not dissemble, for the truth is that [sulphur] and niter are the
two contrary fires which being united are able to penetrate any
metal whatsoever, to incend its soul and to extract it, being joined

1 The regulus is the metallic mass which sinks when slag is being treated.

- Johann de Montc-Snydcrs. Tractatus de Mediciiia Universali. das ist... led is
Metall in Materiam priTiiaii bringen kan, aiich wie dadurch das fixe unzerstorliche
Gold ein -ivarbafftes Aiirtnn Fotahile zii hrivi^eii. . . . Frankfurt. 1678.

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