The Bible
was everywhere used, both among Protestants and Catholics, in
support of these mystic adulterations of science, and one
writer, as late as 1751, based his alchemistic arguments on more
than a hundred passages of Scripture. As an example of this sort
of reasoning, we have a proof that the elect will preserve the
philosopher's stone until the last judgment, drawn from a
passage in St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, "We have this
treasure in earthen vessels."
The greatest thinkers devoted themselves to adding new
ingredients to this strange mixture of scientific and theologic
thought. The Catholic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the
Protestant mysticism of Jacob Boehme, and the alchemistic
reveries of Basil Valentine were all cast into this seething mass.
And when alchemy in its old form had been discredited, we find
scriptural arguments no less perverse, and even comical, used on
the other side. As an example of this, just before the great
discoveries by Stahl, we find the valuable scientific efforts of
Becher opposed with the following syllogism: "King Solomon,
according to the Scriptures, possessed the united wisdom of
heaven and earth; but King Solomon knew nothing about alchemy
[or chemistry in the form it then took], and sent his vessels to
Ophir to seek gold, and levied taxes upon his subjects; _ergo_
alchemy [or chemistry] has no reality or truth.
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