In a
work generally ascribed to the first of these, the student is
told that in mixing his chemicals he must repeat the psalm
_Exsurge Domine_, and that on certain chemical vessels must be
placed the last words of Jesus on the cross. Vincent of Beauvais
insisted that, as the Bible declares that Noah, when five
hundred years old, had children born to him, he must have
possessed alchemical means of preserving life; and much later
Dickinson insisted that the patriarchs generally must have owed
their long lives to such means. It was loudly declared that the
reality of the philosopher's stone was proved by the words of
St. John in the Revelation. "To him that overcometh I will give
a white stone." The reasonableness of seeking to develop gold
out of the baser metals was for many generations based upon the
doctrine of the resurrection of the physical body, which, though
explicitly denied by St. Paul, had become a part of the creed of
the Church. Martin Luther was especially drawn to believe in the
alchemistic doctrine of transmutation by this analogy.
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