suffice together for transchanging But mark well every work of imagination which of necessity produceth in us a new generation or transmutation of one thing into another requireth the concurrence of a certain faith co-bound in the same point of the Subject the phantasie it self For truly an affrightment from a hurtful Animal doth not produce in us that hurtful Animal nor even the poyson thereof Even so also as my attentive imagination meditating of the wonderful poyson of the Plague doth not therefore generate the Plague in me The reason therefore why a terrour from the Plague doth rather cause the Plague than a terrour from living Creatures causeth the poyson of the same consisteth in this that the poyson of the Pest is made not only from an apprehension and conceipt of terrible effects but because there concurreth together with those a certain unseperable belief whereby any one being affrighted and fore affraid in fearing doth imagine and slenderly believe that he hath now contracted something of the pestilential poyson From whence but not before the Image of the Plague being conceived by this kind of terrour becomes operative and fruitful For that terrour with a credulous suspition applyeth the Soul thus affrighted unto the Archeus that it may cloath this Archeus with the Image of the conceived Terrour Through want also of which Belief although Animals should conceive great terrour yet they never snatch to them the humane Pestilence although they sometimes draw in their own consumption as also natural poyson from whence also they dye For it is a fermental poyson the which how speedily soever it may dispatch them yet it is not the true Psague But whosoever shall see a mad Dog leaping on him and how much soever affrighted he shall be from thence yea though he conceive a Fever and dye yet no man doth ever even slenderly believe that he drew the poyson of the mad Dog without biting Wherefore also all his sore fear is onely least he should be bitten which rather includes a prevention of a poyson to come than a belief of a poyson bred The terrour therefore the occasion of the plague carries a certain belief and fear in the Imagination that he hath actually drawn something of contagion vnder-such an uncertainty and Agony Because the poyson of the Plague is onely visible but not the biting of a mad Dog which particle of faith together with the disturbance of Terrour perfecteth an actual Image in the Archeus the seed of the Plague that is to be generated Because that which is imagined apprehended with perturbation and believed doth stand actually in the same point of the phantasie which brings forth an Image on the Archeus as it were a seminal Being Otherwise also neither is any faith sufficient for this thing because there is none who doth not firmly believe the Plague can-kill infect happen unto one c. But such a belief as that is feeble and as it were dead neither therefore is it operative that is not hurtful unlesse that in the same point of Identity it be essentially connexed unto terrour apprehended with disturbance from a drawing in of the actual poyson Eor Camps and Castles do very often snatch to them a panick fear and deadly terrour assoon as with the fear of perturbations they believe that the Enemy hath treacherously or privily crept in or obtained an unexpected aid c. All which things do rather prevail under a dark night wherein all things are made invisible and more horrid and fearful Pollutions in Dreams although they have a strong Imagination without the motion or enticements of fornications which is sufficient for expulsion yet for want of that belief they cast forth onely barren seed For although the Imagination operates in sleeping yet a Faith or Belief doth not operate in Dreaming because it is that which is not the Daughter of the Imagination but of the will alone For indeed sleep peculiarly conduceth to this that the liquor of nourishment being transchanged by the application and information of the mind may be altogether assimilated wherefore in youthfull yeares people sleep more and more soundly than in those succeeding And since vital matters have their own natural Imaginations even those which are not intellectual Imaginations Surely the Imagination of the blood it self shall most powerfully operate under sleep But Faith or Belief seeing it is a seperated power fast tyed to the Soul and Will it is of necessity also stupifyed in time of sleep There is therefore well nigh an unshaken and uncessant act of the Imagination of the Spleen But the Soul once believing some one thing afterwards ceaseth and is at rest from the consideration of believing oâ— confiding untill that an Object be again rub'd on it anew Neither do I speak in this place concerning Christian faith and a supernatural Gift of God but I behold a confidence to wit as well aa delusion in believing as the supposing of a true thing For a certain young Bitch and not yet lascivious having gotten a whelp of fifteen dayes old licks it loves it and puts it to her dugs and then being befooled believed that it was her own Young who was a yet uncorrupted her dugs presently swell and I saw them to have poâ—red forth plenty of milk Also if thou desirest Chicken in the midst of Winter make the Eggs lukewarm with a hot Towel and in the mean time unfeather the breast of a Capon put him upon the Eggs that he may cherish them and there shut him up who in rising up feeling the lukewarmth of the Eggs and the unwonted coldnesse of his breast begins to cherish the Eggs But in sitting on them he conceiveth a false belief and believes that he is the mother of the Eggs he brings forth all the Chickens even unto the last and cals them together by Clucking like a cherishing Hen and fighting for the Chickens chaseth the Cock and at length being forsaken by the Chicken is very sorrowful If therefore a false belief operates so much what shall not any the more grounded one do that is conjoyned with the terrour of the Plague There is therefore a certain native Imagination in the blood in the parts of an Animal yea and in the diseasie excrements so that magnetical or attractive Remedies have already begun with benefit to be applyed unto the blood let out of the veines Let us consider also the excrementitious muscilage of the sixth digestion to stick fast within the Reeds or Pipes I thus by one onely Etymology call the Veines Atteries Bowels and any kind of Channels to be at first in its owne quality guiltlesse but violating the right of its â—nne as it is undirectly a stranger And therefore by it self laying in wait for the part Presently after a desire of expelling that excrementitious muscilage is conceived by the Archeus implanted in the part the Idea of which conception is imprinted on the hated muscilage The which seeing it is seminal it obtains
aboue its bounds unless he be enlightned by the light which the Atheist excludes he defineth all things by the Contemplation of his own conceit alone because he reflecteth every where on all things as to himself Being indeed wholly carnal and vain as long as he believes his understanding to arise from a sensual Subject For whatsoever is perceived by Consequence Numbers Figures Proportions and Suitings is deceitful as oft as he preferreth or equalizeth the same things understood unto things intellectually understood by Faith and Revelation What if Science Mathematical doth abstract from real Objects and all perceived things and yet they are believed why shall it be more difficult to believe things not seen so they are revealed by a Being which by transcending Acts sheweth that he deserves a more full Credit If an Atheist can assent unto profane Histories why not also to the sacred ones For Moses was famous by many Miracles known to all Israel he writeth the History of the Creation of the World the successive Progeny of men in the next place he by Abraham enlarged the bringing forth of Israel out of Bondage Lastly he delivered the Law prescribed by God being confirmed by many Miracles before an unbelieving people They being indeed seen in the sight of an hundred thousand co-living people Their Sons and Nephewes subscribed to the Writings of Moses and then indeed to the Traditions confirmed by their Ancestours And that was undoubtfully believed by all the following Ages And the Gentiles took a diligent care to have them Translated and indeed the Seventy two miraculously Translated them without any disagreement of words But thus far as well Jewes and Christians as Enemies have believed the sacred Histories touching these things At length by the Prophets there are read predictions for many Ages before that by profâ—â—e Histories they are afterwards proued to have happened For to Abraham it was promised by God that the Messias should arise out of his own Stock The same thing Melchizedech foretold unto him and therefore offered a new Sacrifice of Bread and Wine unto him which should sometime by prâ—pagating proceed out of his Loyâ—es But a Sacrifice is no where offered but to God alone Afterwards in the dividing of the Land of promise there was Bethlehem or the house of Bread for the Prophets had foretold that the Messias should from thence be born of a Virgin The Gentiles also saw the Bread descend from Heaven which should destroy the camps of Midian and he was called the God of Gideon whom notwithstanding Gidâ—on had not yet acknowledged for his God This Messias also David afterwards divinely foreknew should be born of his stock and therefore he named him his Lord or God and that he was to be a Priest after the order of Melchizedech to wit he foretold it in the Bread and Wine by the inspiration of the divine blast Balaam foretold of this God as the Star or Jacob which the Magi or wisemen coming from the East afterwards learned that he ought to be born in Bethlehem or the House of Bread and they saw his Star going before them by admonishment whereof they had come from the utmost parts of the East to worship the Child who only is to be worshipped For he who fore-taught them concerning the signification of the Star could have evidently shewed them the place wherein the Child was born whom they sought by so remote a journey but that he he had determined that that thing should be drawn out of the writings of the Prophets for the honour of God and the learning of People Therefore if there be any credit to be given to sacred History that convinceth that God is one that the Gods of the Nations are Devils That this God Messias his Son was at length to be raised up out of Abraham without the will of Man of a Virgin only that he is the Angels food which came down from Heaven who saves those that are to be saved freely And seeing the understanding of Man cannot comprehend these Mysteries and much less fore-see them by the help of the Senses therefore it is needful to draw the understanding into the obedience of Faith which it can in no wise conceive of it self Because seeing that is of a limited power and Faith every where of a profound obscurity the understanding cannot comprehend an infinite term of continuance or The Immortality of the Soul Therefore the Holy Scriptures being at length granted and believed at least after the manner of Chronicles One Eternal Unchangeable Immortal Infinite Omnipotent Good True Wise God the Creator Author Sustainer Governour and Life of things doth for that very cause manifestly appear Lastly this divine Power being granted the arguments of St. Augustine do conclude for The Immortality of the Soul and Life eternal Fire eternal Joy Peace also everlasting Misety or Sorrow are to be granted And there are Angels evil Spirits Prophesying dark Spirits or the Devils Bond-slaves But the conceivings of these things are wanting to an understanding which savours only of the Senses according to Aristotle and words are wanting to the tongue and positive words want Properties of Expressions to declare those things which the Ear hath not yet heard nor the understanding could comprehend that which hath not yet descended into the Heart of Man and that which is in it self undemonstrable by the Discipline of the Senses and intellectual faculty For Faith the reward of Faith and expectation of the Righteous do exceed all Sense and whatsoever can be conceived by the understanding Furthermore if the mind be Immortal and to enjoy eternal joy if it being seperated by Death from its own Mortal body doth in very deed exist and live therefore it is not generated by a Body which in it self with every disposition of it is frail mortal and a dead carcass subject to dayly and any kind of importunities of successive changes Therefore the mind is an immortal substance a Life of the nature of the eternal Light not to be extinguished And therefore neither is it generated or proceedeth it from a Man Parent or Frail-seed much less doth it arise or is produced of it self but by some Eternal Beginning which in it self is Life Light eternal Infinite not to be altered or extinguished But these words are of Faith and the revelations of this eternal Light and therefore are they eternally true But the Carnal Man doth not perceive those things which are of God and therefore his Wisdome is Foolishness with God who is Order Integrity Essence the Father of Lights and total Independent absolute abstracted cause of all things unto whom therefore is all honour due from every created thing But he created not only the substance of the mind that it may be a substantial Light after the likeness or Image of himself but he also made all the living Lights of Soulified Creatures The which indeed could not subsist in the abstract without their concrete or composed Body and
known and witnessed by all the children of light in all Generations This being granted to be true it must needs be accounted the Christians Epoche or stop of Time from whence he is to reckon upon his progress in all or any other true Knowledge or Science whatsoever For as the Father knoweth all things and no man knoweth the Father but the Son and him to whom the Son will reveal him So as the Son revealeth the Father unto any one according to the measure and manner of his revelation other things are known also as in the bulk of Unity wherein the Almighty compasseth all things in the hollow of his hand and swallows them up as out of sight which is the knowledge of the blessed so also as from this blessedness a reflex act goes forth with a pure clear ray or Beam towards particular things or objects apprehending or looking thorow them according to their particular natures and properties placed in them by the Word the Creator This kind of knowledge is not the fruit of the forbidden tree but of the Tree of Life for Life is its Root and Love is its Branches first extended towards God the Creator in the measure of whose Image the Understanding doth apply it self by an intellectual act unto the particular thing understood and so in that Image adoring his Wisdom and Power therein Secondly towards the Neighbour in directing such a particular knowledge or knowledges unto the use service benefit necessity and health of the same in this mortal Life Now to bring this home unto our present purpose such a Root and Branches do I judge yea and feel to be of this present Authors knowledge For although he was as to his visible profession of Religion a member of the Romish Church after the Tradition of his Fathers and so in that respect was in the captivity in some things which may well be accounted hay stubble c. Yet as Daniel was a true Israelite yea and a man of an excellent Spirit though in Babylon who saw over the Babylonians and was hated of them even to the death for his Wisdom and Uprightness So may it be said of this Author who by a Divine gift from God in the light of sound Judgement and true Understanding out of love to his Neighbour hath as a Modern come after the Schools the Sons of Antiquity as they would be accounted and so searched them out in their principles that being weighed in the Ballance of true Science they are found lighter than Vanity Neither hath the Errors of the Chymical Schoole in divers particulars escaped his Pen yet well observe thou whatever carping self-ended partialists may say that the Author doth as well build up his own as pull down others Doctrine I do not speak this from a desire to boast in another mans Lines or to glory in man or as thinking him infallible even in the Mysteries of Nature for that were not only to derogate from Gods Honour to wrong my own Soul but also to wrong the deceased Author himself while I should seem to own the gift of God in him for I find him in his Writings wholly renouncing all vain glory self exaltation and ambition or to receive honour from man as knowing that every good gift descended from the Father of Lights and so that he had nothing but what he had received Therefore whosoever thou art who desirest to be bettered in the reading and considering of this work see that thy mind be somewhat stayed and composed out of the giddiness lightness and wantonness for Wisdom is too high for a Fool Desire above all things and in the first place the Fear of the Lord for that is the beginning of Wisdom and a good Understanding have all they that do thereafter So may Wisdom pour forth her Words unto thee and give thee knowledge of wise Counsels Secrets and of witty Inventions but the wicked shall dwell in a dry land For Friend believe me the hour is coming and the day hastens wherein all things shall be seen and enjoyed in the root which beareth them that all the Pots of Jerusalem may be holy to the Lord and holiness seen even upon the Horse Bridles and this was the Word of the Lord to Daniel concerning the last times that he should stand up in his Lot at the end of the days and that before the end came many should be purified and made white and tryed but the wicked should do wickedly and none of the wicked should understand but the wise should understand such are those who depart from evil and abide in Gods fear as I have said And as for the manner of rendring the sense of the Author I have been careful and faithful according to my ability to make himas plain to be understood by my Country-men as the Work would even possibly bear therefore have I not studied for abstruse words or high flown language For Veritatis simplex oratio the speech of Truth is simple or plain also that might have proved not a true genuine translation but a subversion to the Readers apprehension It is not Words but Things not Names but Natures not Resemblances but Realities not Sublimities but Simplicities that the Sons of Truth do seek after Yet the Jews seek a Sign and the Greeks seek after Wisdom but all in the wrong part and so wherein they think to be Wise they become Fools So that I may truly apply that antient observation unto the seeming Wise and Learned of this Age Satis eloquentiae sapientiae parum abunde fabularum audivimus Enough of Eloquence Fables abound But of true Wisdom little is to be found Wherefore be sober be watchful be humble be gentle be courteous be impartial wait in silence and desire of the Lord God in Faith and Love unfeigned unto the Truth as Truth that thou mayest receive it as it is in Jesus for there is no Truth out of him For thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the Foundations of the Earth and the Heavens are the work of thy hands they shall perish but thou shal remaine and as a Vesture shalt thou fold them up and they shall be changed but thou art the same Truth and thy years shall not fail So the God of Peace and Truth be with all the upright in heart who seek the Lord with their whole hearts in this backsliding generation and with every truly honest-hearted Reader of this Book that it may answer the laborious ends of the Author and the poor endeavour of thy real Friend John Chandler TO THE FRIENDLY READER S. D. FRANCIS MERCURIUS Van HELMONT A Philosopher by that ONE in whom are all things A Wandring HERMITE I Had at sometime concluded by reason of many wandring thoughts that it would be hardly obtained of me to Write any thing to be published for the use of my Neighbour in this present Age seeing that I have hated feigned varie-form vain and deceitful words which the Men of the World do
help doth concur now it shall be with the labour of a desire stirred up without the understanding Furthermore that passing over and transfiguration of the understanding otherwise natural to it they do signifie to be sometimes subordinate Poets the name of Protheus even as a Fable But I have now known more clearly than that that that transchanging of the understanding ought to be made because the intellect is in it self wholly pure simple one onely and undivided Wherefore for that cause also some onely simple uniform and single act should belong to it plainly undivided from the understanding it self Otherwise the understanding should loose the homogeneal simplicity of its unity by a duplicity of interchangeable course Notwithstanding I have sufficiently found that it is not of the full and free power of our will now thus to enjoy its own understanding And that there is more required unto that thing than to think endeavour wish will c. And that not onely by reason of an accustomedness whereby we have been wont from a Childe by animal or sensitive acts to obey the Imagination but much more because the will it self together with the memory ought for that space of motion to be wholly supt up and as it were annihilated in the understanding The which surely is the weight of a great Mystery For else as soon as any one doth think of his Soul or of any thing as of a third with a seperated interchangeable course without the understanding for that very cause there is not yet the thought or operation of a pure and onely intellect But when the Soul thinks of it self or any other thing as it self without an interchangeable course of the thinker and of the thing thought of without an appendency out-turning or respect to duration place and circumstances Then indeed such a thought is intellectual or of the understanding But it is not as yet therefore illustrated or made lightsomely famous although that understanding is already a far more noble thought than that which rusheth in by things that happen whether those do come in to it by likenesses without a sequel as being infused or next being drawn from experiences and observations do by influence flow to it of their own accord Because the Soul in that state of light doth thus apprehend the more inward and formerly essence of the thing understood because the intellect it self doth transform it self by passing over or thorow into the thing understood Hence indeed it followes If intellectual knowledge be with a similitude of the thing understood in the understanding it self that also the Kingdom of God doth as it were come to us and is renewed or doth spring again as oft as we in faith do intellectually and presentially adore the goodness power infiniteness Glory truth of God c. in the Spirit And thus it is unto God a delight to be with the Sons of men Surely it is thus Our understanding is as it were all to be sprinkled with a new dew of perfection as oft as any thing that is super-celestial or heavenly above is intellectually contemplated of because for that moment it passeth over into that and tasteth down that Then indeed the Image of God shines all over within and becomes glorious Good God whitherto dost thou bring mortalls But surely such an intellectual thought is not made with a distinction of words or properties of speech neither with the girding of the sences or reason neither with a certain more swift conception of a whole Discourse abundantly drawn in nor with a dependance and sequel of things before thought of nor being environed with circumstances of here now white great bitter like pleasing c. But one is not in the understanding without the other neither with-the other under an interchangeable course neither also even as it may be conceived by Reason or Imagination or be thought by Imaginations or likenesses But in that state now here sense reason imagination memory and will are at once melted into a meer understanding and do stand obscured under darkness by the light of understanding Then then I say a certain light falls upon the Soul And that in my judgement is all of whatsoever could ever be declared by word thought speech and writing But whether that light be altogether supernatural or that the understanding be of its own nature thus kindled or enflamed I had rather experience than determine That one thing at leastwise I know that it doth not happen without grace Wherefore whether the understanding be transformed or whether it doth transform it self into the Image of the thing understood surely it had need of help from God and that indeed a singular one because then at leastwise the Soul beholds its own understanding under a form taken on it in the said light and in that its glasse it beholds it self intellectually without a reflexion of interchangeable course and so it conceiveth a knowable thing together with all its properties For that this light of knowledge is not that which issues out of the understanding but remaineth within reflexed upon the understanding which may be perfected in all truth and perfect certainty Indeed some Rabbins do fear this state of the Soul as dangerous The mystical School also feareth the danger of arrogancy and spiritual adultery But both as they do avoid or shun that which is hurtful And the Adeptists think if it should often invade one or long continue undoubted death would be brought together with a sickness which the Rabbins call Binsica which properly is an unnourishment or pining away of the Organ of the phantasie Notwithstanding I pray let them pardon me if I shall think otherwise First of all because the Instruments of the Imagination do not labour in this act but they sleep unmoved as if they were not Therefore likewise they suffer nothing Then because that act is not in our power for I believe that that principal act is of Clemency Which Clemency doth never give make cause or admit of that which is inordinate Therefore although Clemency should the more often and longer abound yet neither therefore could it contain or argue an inordinacy I beseech therefore that the Father of Lights would vouch safe to prevent and follow me with his clearness that he may bring me unto the calling which is pleasing to him in his grace The light therefore which falls from above upon the Soul when it is lesse tied and bound to the Organs of the Body and the which is in it self not capable of suffering and immortal cannot also hurt the life For truly after the receiving of a small quantity of the light I finde a man scarce to suffer any thing by three dayes fasting Wherefore it comes into my minde that the friends might stand by Job as Companions for the full nine dayes without meat or drink Moreover according to my opinion that light doth so dispose of the understanding without the help endeavour and labour of the understanding
signes times or seasons dayes and years Moreover I know that in the Sea and deep Lakes there is their motive force whereby they suffer a raging heat without windes whereby I say our Ocean is rowled six houres and else-where six constant months with one onely flowing Lastly I know that the Earth is at rest nor that it hath a motive force actively proper to it self Therefore I believe that the Earth doth quake and fear as oft as the Angel of the Lord doth smite it Behold a great Earth-quake was made for the Angel of the Lord descended from Heaven Mat. 28. The word For among the Hebrewes doth contain a cause as if he should say Because For this is the onely cause of an Earth-quake whereby all things do without resistance equally tremble together as it were a light Reed In the Revelations the third part of Mortalls Trees and Fishes perished at the very time wherein the Angel powred forth his Viall For abstracted spirits do work by the divine Power and nothing can resist them Evill spirits also as oft as it is granted them to act by a free power they act without the resistance of bodies or a re-acting of resistance For matter is the Client of or dependant on another Monarchy and it cannot re-re-act into a spirit which it by no meanes toucheth and with no object affecteth Even as the Angel useth the powred out liquor of the Viall unto the aforesaid slaughter so for the Earth-quake he for the most part makes use of a note or voice For a wandering note was heard in the Air no otherwise than as the creaking of Wheeles driven thereupon as it were a tempestuous murmuring sound succeeded yet without Winde and at that very time the whole tract of so great Provinces trembled at once with a huge horrour Which same note accompanied the trembling of the Earth at every of the three repeated turns The same thing almost happens in Lightning Truly the Lightning burns and causeth melting but surely it smiteth not According to that saying The voice of Thunder shall strike the Earth because it smiteth For Silk-worms die Milk is curdled Ale or Beer waxeth sowre a slain Oxe hanging up retains flaggie flesh unfit to take Salt and that onely by the Thunder-stroak the Lightning doing no hurt there Therefore let the voice of Thunder and the voice of the Earth-quake be the note or tone of ministring spirits But the Stars do not stir up a motive and alterative force of the Air or Water through a note but do act onely by an Aspect which they call an Influence And it hath its action and direction in a moment even as light sight c. For otherwise there should be need of many years before the audible Species or resemblances that are to be heard should come down from Saturn to the places of a Meteor And then a note or sound although it be great yet it faileth by degrees in the way But that the Earth doth tremble with a Tempest of Windes or that the Tempest doth sometimes run successively thorow Villages Cities and as it were thorow street by street in its wheeling about That is wholly by accident and according to the will of him who shaketh the Earth for a monstrous sign Likewise that else-where it doth oft-times tremble in quick Belgium very seldom that changeth not the moving cause For it stands in the free will of him who encloseth the Universe in his Fist who can shake the Earth at his pleasure and alone do marvellous things At the beholding of whom the Earth shall at sometime smoak and the Mountains being melted shall go to ruine But that in another place gapings chaps after an Earth-quake have sometimes appeared and a filthy poyson and fumes of arsenicall bodies have breathed forth that is joyned onely to its naturall causes Nor are they the effects of an Earth-quake but by accident but not the causes But this blindness of causes of the Earth-quake hath been invented the Devill being the Authour whereby mortall men might set apart all fear of the power and so might prevent if not wholly neglect the ends which God hath appointed to himself for the serious reverencing of the power of his Majesty that they being mind-full of the faults of their fore-led life might repent Deh qual possente man conforzze ignote Il terreno a crollar si spesso riede Non e chiuso vapor como altro crede Ne sognato stridente il suol percuote Certo la terra si rissente scuote Perche del peâ—cator sa aggrava il piede Et i nostri corpi impatiente chiede Per riemper se sue spelonche â—uote E linquaggio del ciel che l'huom riprende Il turbo il tuono il fulmine il baleno Hor parla anco la terra in note horrende Perche l'huom ch' esser vuol tutto terreno Ne del cielo il parlar straniero intende I l parlar della terra intenda al meno Behold with what a mighty yet unknown A force the Earthy Body makes a noyse And with so thick a rushing gives a groan 'T is not a vapour hot shut up they 'r toyes Even as some believe which beats the ground Or thumps its entrails with a whistling sound Truly the Earth it selfe doth feele and quake Because the sinners foot doth load its back And our impatient mortall bodies fall In to fill up its own deep Vaults withall The Language of the Heaven which reproves Man is the Whirle-winde Thunder Lightning flash And sp'ritous howling in the Air Ecchoes Now speaks the earth more-o're with horride lash Of signall tokens ' cause since man which would Be wholly earthly doth not understand The Linguo strange of Heaven yet may or should At least the Earth it 's Language apprehend These things nothing hindering there hath not been one wanting who said that from a most deep well of the Castle of Lovaine he by a sure presage foretold an Earth-quake was shortly to be because the water of the same Well three dayes before sent forth the stinking savour of Brimstone and that its contagion yellowness together with the turbulency of the water did bewray it But let that good man know that that Well is one hundred and fifteen foot in depth because they go up to the Castle from the Street that is next unto it by ninety three steps And so that Well in one part is not deeper than its Neighbouring Wells although in the other part where it is co-touching with the Hill of the Castle it is deep as I have said But seeing that a vein of Sulphur is not hidden in the Hill the water could not breath Sulphur which was not there But if it cast the smell of Sulphur a sign might precede God admonishing but it had not Sulphur which neither is in that place nor was enflamed therefore neither could it cause an Earthquake unto all Belgium or the Low Countries Therefore there is no naturall reason why the water
meer Fire with every thing requisite thereunto And then that the same Light of the Sun falling upon the Icy Glasse of the Moon doth loose the property of his own heat and is made a cold light Which comes not to passe if it shall fall upon Ice Glasse Water a white Wall c. Therefore the Moon hath powers or faculties whereby she altereth the Sun-beames And that cold Blas ought to be of the nature of her own light if between the Agent and Patient a co-resemblance ought to interpose For truly another cold object re-percussing or smiting back the Sun-beames cannot therefore change these into cold beames Truly neither heat cold rough brickle sweet or bitter do act on the Light but onely visible and dark objects therefore the Moon hath a lightsome force or power of her self which as it is such doth act upon the hot light and changeth it into a contrary property What if the Astrologer doth foretell the future Colours of Eclipses do not those Colours promise some certain light proper to the Moon For truly they are not conjectured of from a Mean or vapours because colour cannot be foretold from the quantity of vapours in the calculation of a future Eclipse Therefore let the Colours of the Moon failing of light be the tokens of a light proper unto her And in this the beames of both Lights do differ That the Sun strikes his light by beames in a right line but the Moon doth never respect the Center of the World or the Earth in a right line but her center is alwayes excentrical For she respects the Center of the World onely by accident that is when she is con-centricall with the World And therefore as oft as she is con-centricall in full Moon and new Moon there is an Eclipse Therefore the Dragons Head and Tail are night-points wherein onely the Sun is directly opposed to the Moon in an excentrical Diameter Therefore the Moon-beames do not strike the Earth in a right line but they are dispersed into an excentricall space and so she by way of influence or by the action of government of which in its place displayes her forces on the night or on Nadir the point underneath the Horizon right opposite to our feet whether she accompany the Sun or indeed be estranged from this Sun by a full Diameter For such is the appointment of the Moon which the exundations or Spring-Tides of the Sea do confirm which are wont to be no lesse under the Moon laying hidden than at the full of the same Therefore one end of the Lights is to rule the day and night next another end is to seperate the light from the darkness and another end to seperate the day from the night Neither is that repetition to be imputed to a Solecisme or incongruity For truly the Sun shining or the Moon restoring her Light received from the Sun the Light indeed is sufficiently seperated from the darkness but the Light of the Sun never rules the night as neither doth he shine in the night therefore that the Moon likewise may satisfie her appointment she can never rule the night by a borrowed Light of the Sun Which thing sufficiently appeareth at leastwise while she runs with the Sun by day according as by night Therefore if then also the Moon ought to satisfie the divine intention she must needes have also by all meanes another light whereby she may shine all nights and may rule the night and a far other manner of powring forth her light than that wherein she reflecteth the Light of the Sun Indeed the Moon sends forth her proper displayed Light beyond no lesse than beneath the Hemisphere of the Air Water and Earth which way the supposition of the Center of the Universe maketh or tendeth according to the Opinion of Tycho Yet so that the action of government of light and influence operates more powerfully in the night from whence the Sun is absent the which that he may seperate the day from the night ought to seperate the properties of the Moon from his own although the Moon be conjoyned with him Diseases belonging to the Moon do prove that thing which are exasperated a little before night also at the new of the Moon And so she worketh thorow the bones and Marrowes of those who are shut up in their Bed-chamber which thing is not so proper or natural to the Sun Therefore the Moon doth sometimes make a stronger influence on that part of the Sphere that is opposite unto her than on the part where she is placed This light being unknown to the Antients hath been called an influence But I had rather reserve the sense of the Scripture because it is said The Moon was created to give light by night that is all nights indifferently even so as the Sun gives light by day Therefore that which they have called an influence is the property of the Moones light and that is not to have named a thing from the effect but from the causes The Bat Dormouse Mouse Owl and whatsoever Creatures do distinguish their objects afar off in the night under the thickest darkness and do note the swiftest motions of objects which our eyes can scarce observe at noon-day some of whom although they may bear before them a Grayish or Skie-coloured brightness yet they never enlighten the mean by that brightness that they may see perfectly through it at a far distance Therefore there must needes be some continual light in the thickest night and shut up Den for which lights sake such living Creatures do perfectly see But if it be unperceived by us and yet doth in truth exist it is no wonder if the light proper to the Moon hath deceived our eyes But that it may be plainly made known that night-wandring Animalls do send no light out of their eyes which may be for the enlightning of a medium or mean to know distinctly an object placed afar off and so that those Creatures do see onely for the light of the Moones sake Let a Looking-glasse be placed between the Eye of a living Creature and its object and that under the thickest darkness and surely thou shalt not finde the least reflexion of light in the Glasse yet if thou shalt put a small Candle at the utmost end of a large Hall but if in the other furthest end of the Hall there be a hole thorow which that feeble light may passe into another dark Hall or room in whose end let a Looking-glasse be truly that weak light being shaken by the direct beame of the flame of the Candle is received and will appear in the Glasse yet it is not sufficient for a man to discern any object Therefore much lesse shall the brightness or shining of the Eyes a beam whereof doth not fall and appear in a nigh Glasse be fit to enlighten the mean that they may perfectly discern all things For there is under the Earth a light even at midnight whereby many eyes
of Rosins flowres and herbs have arisen and likewise those which are prepared of Minium or Red Lead Cerusse or Colcotar Hitherto also doth the Salt of â—artar tend being rectified by the Spirit of Wine until it obtains an astringent taste For it is the Balsam Samech or of Tartar of Paracelsus even as out of Arsenick for Ulcers whereof moreover there is its Balsam of smoak because that Arsenick is by skilful men accounted the fume of Metals Not indeed that it is not simple born and subsisting by it self but from a Similitude for that metallick smoaks do imitate an Arsenical malignity And so I close up the Doctrine of external Diseases CHAP. XLII An unknown action of Government 1. The Maxim is opposed That of Contraries the Remedies are contrary 2. The foundation of that Maxim 3. The Maxim concerning the re-acting of the Patient or of its defence in time of fight is examined 4. Arguments on the opposite part 5. The same by moving strengths by things generative and irregular 6. There is no re-acting of weight 7. Arebounding action neglected by the Antients 8. Bright burning Iron acteth and doth not re-act 9. The swiftness of a mover is not the action but the measuring of the action 10. Altering Agents do not properly re-suffer 11. Another Maxim is noted of falshood 12. From whence the falseness thereof hath issued 13. What Agents of a different inclination and irregular are 14. He proceeds to prove what he hath undertaken to prove 15. Wherein the opinion of Aristotle may be preserved 16. An explaining of action in the slowness of the fire 17. Actions on an object separated from the thing supposed 18. A Fermental and radial or beaming action 19. That these kinde of actions are not to be referred unto the fault of vapours 20. The Blas of Government hath been hitherto unknown 21. The falshood of a Maxim 22. The fire suffers nothing by a burnable object 23. To determine or limit an action and to re-act do differ 24. New actions 25. The dimness or giddiness of the Schools 26. Their staggering 27. Likewise some neglects of the same 28. The unknown action of Government is not that which they call an action by consent 29. The Errour whence it is 30. Why Anatomy hath arisen into so great curiosity 31. How much may be required from Anatomy 32. A neglect of the chiefest part of natural Philosophy 33. The Schools deluded by thinking 34. Many things happen in us by the action of Government without conveighing Pipes or Channels 35. Blindness hath brought blinde persons unto blinde vapours the action of Government being unknown 36. Things admitted by the Author 37. The action of Government is abstracted from a co-binding mean 38. A natural action in incorporeal Spirits 39. Which is a jugling action 40. Luxury takes away the Remedy of the Horse-hoof 41. An Example of Government 42. The government of the Womb is wholly over the whole Body 43. Government acteth into its own marks the middle spaces being untouched 44. The faculties of the actions of the Womb. 45. The furies of the Womb. 46. The manner of making in the birth of a Disease from the action of Government 47. Why the fore-head is not bearded 48. That Capital Diseases do not arise through Fumes out of the Stomach FRom the first time wherein the Schools placed contraries in Nature they presently universally established that nothing acted without strifes war and discords Even so that also chidings hatreds emulations have been reckoned the Foundations or Principles of Nature no lesse than self-love And moreover also they being credulous of hatred by the perswasion of Astronomers have introduced the same things into the courses or dances of the Stars Likewise they have determined that in the whole sublunary frame or stage nothing is done or generated but by a Relation of the Superiority of an Agent unto a Patient So indeed that the Patient is with violence compelled tamed altered destroyed and is wholly translated into the Nature of the Agent onely by the relation of a stronger on a weaker But when the Schools saw that Agents did by degrees languish away either through space of time or wearinesse of acting they likewise decreed from thence that that indeed did not so much happen through a tiring out of the seeds and powers but by a re-acting of the patient Therefore they confirmed it that every patient or sufferer doth likewise of necessity re-act and for that cause likewise every agent or acter doth re-suffer neither also that it is any other way weakened Whence by consequence I guessed with my self that sometimes the seeds of things shall at sometime be naturally wholly undoubtedly extinguished unless they are miraculously preserved Notwithstanding I do even contemplate that there is on both sides a perpetual rudenesse and continued sloath of a diligent search in the doctrines of the Schools And that one onely thing hath repelled from me the former fear For truly after that I with-drew contraries out of Nature I could not afterwards in sound judgment find out any re-acting in the patient as neither could I admit of hostilities in nature elswhere than among soulified or living creatures For contrariety is in those things alone wherein there is an actual defence in the will of the patient against the injuries brought on it and felt from the Agent Wherefore there is never a re-acting of the patient on the agent unlesse where there is a contrariety conceived in the soul But that this is thus ordinary and ordained in nature I will forthwith demonstrate For first of all the Universe should remain still even as it now subsisteth by the infinite power of the Word if it should be so commanded I say things should be infinite in their own successions and duration but they should not be infinite by an actual virtue of the unity of a creature And that thing because it is of faith it wants no proof Therefore there is no infinite of sublunary things by their own power Hence it follows that at length every particular Agent doth by degrees also of its own free accord at some time decay and having finished its offices dies by a dissolution of its strength circumscribed in space of place and in the power of continuance strength unlesse perhaps the appointed day of its proper and limited period or conclusion be shifted off by a preventing of the term or the impediments of the object But of natural Agents some are those which have a motive force which I have called a motive Blas but the Agents themselves I call moving strengths But other moving Agents I call an alterative Blas to wit those which do operate by the seminal force of a ferment And such Agents do for the most part generate their like Lastly in the third place some Agents are irregular or of a different inclination I will speak of those three in order Indeed acting strengths do act on their objects First by a prevailing weight
the more hard meats is felt as it were to re-suffer and to undergo a re-acting of digestible things because also that speech of Physitians is too rustical because unlesse that which is to be digested be perfectly cocted and at a set term of time the digestion of the same is in vain expected for it tarrying longer in the stomach is corrupted and so then a new Agent ariseth neither is the former any longer digestible when it is corrupted neither also doth that new Agent re-re-act in manner of bright burning Iron because there are in that digestible matter parts uncapable of digestion in respect of that stomach Neither also doth the leaven or ferment of bread leaven the powder of glasse or the sand of a flint because it is a strange and uncapable object and not to be subdued by it For so the digesting ferment of the stomach doth ferment the flour of meal but not the brans In the mean time the ferment of the meal suffers nothing by the powder of glass as neither doth that powder re-re-act resist or truly repel For truly altering ferments do never act but on things that have a co-resemblance but they are quiet do cease and sleep if they have not an object proper for themselves Therefore the hinderances of Agents by an alterative Blas are uncapacities hardnesses impurities unequalities and the requisite movers of space Therefore the action of these is terminated on a proper object and disposeth that object unto periods or ends and manners decreed for it But interposing hinderances are not the re-actions of the patient but the incapacities of the same For neither doth silver re-act while it is solved by Aqua fortis with so great a heat although this in the mean time decayeth in acting and loseth its own force and virtue but there is an in-bred property of Spirits and a natural endowment which do operate in acting that by reaching unto their appointed mark they may perfect themselves and bring down their own objects unto bounds naturally enjoyned them which thing distilled Vinegar doth sufficiently teach while it dissolves the stone of Crabs Snails Corals c for the sharp spirit of the Vinegar doth coagulate it self in acting and that which else was volatile and liquid is not onely strained together but also changeth its savour for it collects and constrains it self in a tangible form as if it did more rejoyce to remain in the shape of a more solid body than of a liquor But that such a coagulation and change of savour doth happen by the proper motion of the spirit of Vinegar but not through a re-acting of Bodies standing in the act of dissolution is manifest because there is not made a diminishing of those Bodies even in one grain at least in weight while as in the mean time some measures of stilled Vinegar do undergo the aforesaid change and so it doth not seem consonant to reason for that thing to be done by reason of the bruising or breaking of the stones onely but by reason of a proper natural gift-like unfolding of the Spirits The same thing almost comes to pass while the Spirit of Vitriol waxeth very hot with Mercury For the Mercury remaineth being unchanged in the essence and matter of Mercury onely that it assumes the countenance of snow losing in the mean time nothing of its own substance yet the Spirit of Vitriol passeth over into a true Alume but if the Spirit of Aqua fortis which for the other half of it is also the Spirit of Vitriol be combined with the Mercury that snow of Mercury is not made as neither doth the liquor it self pass over into an Alume And so from hence it appeareth that the action is not proper to the Mercury but to the Spirit of Vitriol diversly disposing it self of its own free accord and according to an in-bred inclination unto divers objects differently changing it self Wherefore the Spirit of Vitriol which is in the Aqua fortis through a strong heat of bubbles stirred up and a tempestuous boiling up dissolveth the Mercury and far otherwise than while it is the naked and simple Spirit of Vitriol which variety indeed in acting doth manifest the various virtues of the acting Spirit rather than those of the Mercury it self because in the one action the Mercury is made invisible which in the other becomes white like snow For the Spirit of Sea-salt although it be most sharp yet it is never changed by the fellowship of Mercury as neither also doth it act into the Mercury And so the effects of actions are seen and not of re-actings So Aqua fortis acts into all metals except gold but with Sal armoniack it acts only into gold but no longer into silver And so there are particular properties of Spirits but not re-actions of a suffering body because it is that which in its own substance and weight sustaineth nothing but a meer and one onely division of it self Therefore Spirits being tossed with divers passions in acting undergo divers transformations but if they remain drowsie and sleeping and do not act on their object they also remain in their antient qualities For that thing appeared at first to happen by reason of the touching of the Mercury because it is that which is also a certain Spirit but afterwards in the silver and gold that was wholly silent But moreover I remember that the Calx or lime of Silver hath drunk into it the liquor of Sulphur which they call a distillation which presently in the Silver laid aside all harshnesse and tartnesse and it changed this liquor into a gauly bitternesse by distilling for the silver remained the same which it was before in substance weight and powder therefore that bitternesse could not be afforded from the silver and for that cause in no wise from a re-acting of the silver but of its own free accord it was made by the property of the Spirit of the Sulphur for neither is there a lesse reason why the same Spirit of Vitriol in diversly acting doth also change it self after a diverse manner than that the same silver should under the boyling up of diverse Spirits wax cruel by a various manner of re-acting on these Especially while that in a Spirit there is made a various transmutation in acting but there is no successive alteration made of the substance of the silver in suffering or diminishing of its weight which things may be far more clearly demonstrated by Adeptists unto whom to wit the one onely and same Liquour Alkahest doth perfectly reduce all tangible Bodies of the whole Universe into the first life of the same without any changing of it self and diminishing of its virtues But it is drawn under the yoak and thorowly changed by its own compeere or co-equal onely For from hence there appeareth a certain sense to be in all particular things the which mediating they do sometimes one way and sometimes another move and unfold themselves about divers objects but not
that the period of motions and of those unfoldings and the variety of Agents is therefore to be attributed to a re-acting of the Patients To wit even as while an external luke-warmth bringing up Eggs unto a Chick for neither of them doth re-suffer reciprocally For neither doth the vital Spirit in an Egg any way re-suffer any thing by the luke-warmth as neither that luke-warmth by the vital Spirit of the Egg. Hitherto tendeth that which I have proved before To wit that altering things do not act by contrariety Therefore their Patients do not fight in defending themselves nor re-act by contrariety That maxim also is false That every Agent doth of necessity act in an instant and that its action is retarded or fore-slowed onely by a resistance and re-acting of the Patient Because in all particular seeds their own and certain period of continuances and dispositions is essentially included For the falshood of that maxim hath flowed from hence that the Schools being deluded by Aristotle have thought that the fire is to be compared unto other Agents the which when they saw to be any where almost in a moment they believed that the same thing was likewise to be wrested unto other Agents Through occasion whereof I must now speak of irregular and differently inclined Agents In the first place it is manifest that the fire doth suffer or undergoe nothing at all by the re-acting of a combustible object For otherwise a small quantity of fire should be sufficient for the burning of the whole Universe if it were capable of burning which could not be done if the combustible matter should re-act even but never so little Truly a River suffers nothing if a staffe shall swim on the same and as yet lesse doth the fire suffer if it burn Saguntum or if Gun-powder be fired In Nature also no seminal Beginning suffereth by the matter into which it works Because it disposeth of the same without re-acting even as it hath begun plainly to appear in denied contraries Moreover that the falshood of the aforesaid maxim may be the more beheld take notice that all particular seeds have their own periods and moments appointed by the Creator wherein they do promote their course unto a ripeness For Conies Dogs Birds Men Horses Elephants do nourish within perfect and bring forth their own Young at their appointed termes of time Not indeed that the seminal matter in a man is rawer colder and more rebellious than the seed of a Cat But God hath set the bounds of every one of them according to his own good pleasure the reason whereof to enquire into belongs not unto mans judgement For if the disposition of a seminal matter be of a longer labour that proceeds not by reason of its resistance or strugling strength as neither from the weakness wearisomness idleness or disturbance of passions of the Agent For truly every Being in Nature operates without labour and passion and therefore without cessation rest intermittency and trouble Seeing indeed all particular things are made by reason of the communicating of a Ferment and limitation of appointment For all particular things do purely operate by a reflexion of their own appointment according to the ordaining will of their Creator For so Christians were to philosophize But in local motion motive virtues and so also in the exercise of Science Mathematical the maxims of Aristotle are indeed serviceable the which by a violent Command and unfitly the Schools have introduced into nature For if moyst or wet Wood be not so obediently burnt up as dry that doth not therefore come to passe through a re-acting of the wood or with a suffering of the fire For although the wood should cease from all combustion the fire should not therefore suffer more by the wood than by Gold which is not to be burnt yea if in wet wood as such there should be a certain operative resistance to wit a re-acting surely water should also longer and more strongly resist fire than the Rosin of Wood or of a coal But the consequence is false For the water doth most swiftly and first of all fly away out of wet Wood before the fire enflames the Rosin of the Wood Therefore the slowness in wet Wood doth not argue a re-action of the matter or strength of the suffering Wood But the fire follows its own laws of appointments whereby it separates first the more volatile things and next in order things lesse swift of flight For so although the fire be subdued by wet Rosin which by it self otherwise had presently been in a flame with the same fire yet by reason of the aforesaid lawes it patiently expects the torture of the fire and a departure of that water Iron also being placed between stubble and fire hinders indeed the enflaming or burning up of the stubble but there is not therefore any re-action of the Iron on the fire or suffering of the fire by the Iron which thing surely hath not been narrowly enough searched into by the Schools For although these their maxims have place in corporeal actions wherein the Agent of necessity cherisheth and toucheth its own object and thus far inspireth its own virtue into the same yet that is altogether impertinent in Agents which do act on things placed under them which are far separated in place For truly besides the actions of the Heavens which are carried by influence in-beaming and motion without the touching of an Agent but by a Blas onely do disperse the Seminaries of their own virtues Sublunary things are not properly deprived of a Blas Because fermental Odours do produce most active and seminal effects and do transchange in nature their object by their own perfume and do draw it after them into their protection Likewise also a radial or beaming action doth concur into nature For the Elks hoof is thus said by its touching to preserve the heart and head from danger yet the Seat of the evil is not in the finger as neither is there a passing from bound to bound Neither is the Hoof therefore diminished of its strength by acting but rather is confirmed as also the Load-stone is comforted by the communication of Iron For a clear sign that an Agent suffers not a whit by reaction in seminal or beaming actions and by consequence that neither doth the Patient therefore re-re-act Therefore Medicines against the pain of the Head or Amulets or preserving Pomanders have a Blas whereby they do constrain objects to obey them like the Heavens and they act onely by their own and not on a strange and nearer object And they draw out their deserts or worthy virtues without all corporal eflux motion passion or weakening I know indeed that the Schools do not bear these things but that they refer these effects into vapours lifted up from the womb or the least toe because they are such who have sunk themselves in the Clay of a dreggy Minerva or wit But if a Maid which hath the
dream I saw my self in a certain Kingly Pallace excelling humane artifices But there was a high Throne encompassed with an unaccessable light of Spirits But he who sate in the Seat of the Throne is called He is And the foot-stool of his feet Nature The Porter of the Court was called Understanding who without speech reached unto me a little Book a choice out of darkness the name whereof was The bud of a Rose not yet opened And although the Porter uttered no voice yet I knew that little Book was to be devoured by me I stretched forth my hand and ate it up And it was of an harsh and earthy taste as if it would stop up my winde-pipe so as I swallowed it with a great slowness of labour From whence afterwards my whole head seemed to be transparent Then afterwards another spirit of a superiour order gave me a bottle wherein was Fire-water as being in one word A name altogether simple singular undeclinable unseparable unchangeable and immortal But I knew not what my business was with it Neither heard I any thing more of it and by reason of the fear of its greatness my jawes were shut up and my voice clave to my jawes At length having performed due worship before the Throne I endeavoured diversly to experience what the bottle might contain Behold before the doors of the Court there was the Art of the Fire a cheerful old Woman being the Turn-key who did not open the locks without unless the Porter had first withdrawn the bolt within the which he did not attempt unless from a sign given him by the light of the Throne But unto those that knocked at the doors the Porter answered the Key-keeper holding her peace I know you not But they who tryed to look in thorow the lattices of the windows being smitten with darkness forthwith fell down mad many wandred up and down promising great things without a foundation I stood a good while silent and then afterwards a hand the rest of whose Body I saw not led me aside unto a pleasant Garden where on a sudden all Simples worshipped me as though every one had been singular by themselves In which assault I felt or perceived all the Simples of the world not indeed as if their qualities did act in me for I being but one had not been sufficient for the bearing of them all as it were their object but they all were seen as on a Theatre to represent in me their Tragedies And I wish I may well declare them with my pen I perceived in the first place that all heats colds moistures and dryths were as it were momentary qualities happening on things constituted like colours But those things which do heat cool moisten or dry us up I perceived that that did not happen indeed by reason of an excess of those qualities whose names they did obtain but in respect of an appropriation of the object For in this respect the dead carcass of a man who dyed of a languishing death although being nigh the fire it violently waxed luke-warm yet unto our touching it seemeth to be most cold so that the hand can scarce recover its heat a long while after it And surely that comes not to pass through a quality generated in us which is named cold the which indeed in contemplating of it doth so many points exceed our heat that it imprints an excess of so great cold but rather because the vital spirit being greatly afraid of the dead carcass doth depart or retire from the hand For in like manner Camphor resembling the savour of Pepper and bitter Opium are said to cool as they subdue or chase the Archeus After which manner also a Feverish Blas being the same in number doth stir up first cold and afterwards heat in the Archeus I perceived therefore that hot things from the moment of their first degree even unto the degree of an Eschar do not brand our temperature with an excess of heat To wit by producing in us an excelling of their heat but by the ministry of sharp salts they do so inflame our Archeus that they do more and more exasperate the same and at length do by burning assume a fiery violence through the motion of their own Blas Such as is the Prune and Persian fire And therefore none of those hot things do heat dead carcasses In the next place I perceived that nothing doth properly moisten us but by appropriation and therefore that neither doth water properly moisten us through a defect of appropriation which is the cause of approximating or the nearest approaching and assimilating But those things which do besmear stuffe up resolve and make the substance of our body as it were by small points salt without the sense of burning heat and sharpness those things I say do moisten And that only occasionally and as it were by accident Therefore I have perceived that whatsoever things do dissolve resolve and co-melt glutinous things do moisten To wit as they do withdraw the impediments of coagulation and drying And therefore the Mallow Marsh-mallow and those things which are believed to be moistening and so do stop transpiration have produced an error in the Schools For truly such a moistening was nothing but a diseasie detaining of excrements but not a dewie moistening of the parts I perceived also that no other things do dry up in us but those which by extenuating do dispose to exhalation For so sweat although it moisten the skin and make the habit of the Body swollen yet it meerly dryes us Furthermore whatsoever things do coagulate I perceived rather to harden and make clotty than to dry up and therefore resolving is opposite unto coagulating but not moistening But those things which do induce an Atrophia or Consumption for lack of nourishment and do make lean I perceived that was not done by a drying quality but because the Liquor otherwise nourishable is theevishly withdrawn elsewhere by occasion whereof the Ferments connexed to heat do perfect a true drying I perceived therefore that there was no other drying in us than that which was made by the resolving of the Ferments and the diflation or pussing away of heat I perceived I say that Coagulation it self or hardening did proceed from its own curd or property of a seed promoting the Liquors into a more solid Fruit. I perceived also that dry things which drink up liquors into them although they are actually dry yet that they are quickly satiated or filled with moistures do cease from combibing neither that they do at length enter into the root of the mixture of dry things And therefore I perceived that thirst is not an introduced quality of driness but that natural thirst is a sense of the Latex being diminished but not so plainly failing that it may even accuse of a principiating driness So I perceive that a thirst besides nature was not a token of drying for such do drink and extend the bottome of their belly their
steeped in a great quantity of common Water for this Water although it doth not sup up any the least quantity of the Quick-silver into it self or is not able to convert it unto its own Nature Yet it borrows a property not likewise a substance from the Quick-silver so as that such Water being drunk doth kill all Wormes and Ascarides also those which exist where that Drink never comes Because it is that which is soon wholly snatched into urin and that Water becomes stronger against Worms if it shall once boyle with the Quick-silver or Argent-vive So one only ounce of Quick-silver shall be able a thousand times to infect a measure of Water and yet remain in its antient weight and property For so the Schools also do do against their wills perfectly learn that some Agents do freely alwayes and with unwearied forces act without a passion or re-action of their Patients and the same weight of themselves alwayes remaining For Argent-vive doth act on the Water and imprints its own Character in it yet it doth not likewise re-suffer any thing from the Water It is manifest therefore that a certain Medicinal virtue is transferred and doth change its natural subject and departeth into a forreign object as it were only by its Beam or Aspect Yet so that although the forreign object doth attain a forreign faculty or virtue for it self yet the acting and in-spiring principle doth not loose or slacken any thing of its former strength or weight Indeed that is done without any Suffering Diminishing Changing Weakening or Interchangable course of the Argent-vive Surely the example produced in this place serves for the celebration of an argument concerning almost an infinite virtue of Remedies for the future which thing after that it had been often and diversly drawn under experience in Minerals it at length perfectly taught me that perhaps no Mortals heretofore had as yet clearly and inwardly beheld in what manner the more abstruse or secret Remedies might operate and that indeed without their dissolution or destruction without their penetration inward admission co-mixture and changing they do also freely act aloof of on the stupified or enraged Archeus as if it were only by their aspect in beaming or darting forth of their virtues produced in a mean their former weight and properties being as yet retained and unchanged And so those Arcanums do testifie that they are akin to the infinite Goodness while as they do by degrees disperse their almost and as it were infinite virtues Wherefore Physitians shall not remain unpunished while as the poor shall at some time mournfully complain at the last Judgement that they were neglected who might easily and by the way have been cured without any charges Therefore Arcanums can never depart into nourishment because they keep their own ends as those things which were not ordained for Meats but for Medicines and which do remain Medicines although taken within the Body For they begin in the Stomack the which I have profesly elsewhere demonstrated to be the seat of the Soul to unfold or expose the direct Beam of their own Faculties and their endowed Virtue and to which end they were ordained of God Whence at length the bedewed beaming virtue being drawn in by the Archeus is dispersed into the whole Body and health thereupon succeeding is greedily received So indeed these more universal Remedies being administred cures do happen such as I have delivered to happen in the Fountain of Nature and to be due to the same and such as Paracelsus hath promised and afterwards Butler put in execution I being a beholder to wit with the least application of a co-fermenting Surely after that this speculation attracted me under it self by a more piercing or inward contemplation I as it were knew most clearly and visually that in occasional Causes and in excrementitious Products filths indeed did stick they being the awakeners of peculiar Diseases Yet I consider the whole Disease it self and its Remedies to be in the Archeus to wit altered or appeased And so that with the least touching at shaking darting yea only by radiation or beaming or illumination so that they shall in the seat of the Soul touch at the sensitive Life Cures are perfected and compleated no regard being had unto occasional Causes And that thing I do more powerfully behold in the Sulphurous Remedies of Minerals to wit in the Sulphur of Venus or Copper of Stibium and especially in the Sulphur of Glaura Augurellus which Nymph doth hitherto want any other proper name For these sort of Sulphurs because they are at a farther distance from mans Nature than the whole band of Vegetables and do in the mean time obtain famous natural Endowments from the Giver So also they do most fully and stubbornly resist that they may not decline by the digestive Faculty into the Common-wealth of nourishments and therefore they keep their natural Powers free and unbroken to wit the Crasis or constitutive temperature of Minerals remaineth entire and is the more fit to disperse its own Beam into the Duumvirate the seat of the Soul For so Mercurius Diaphoreticus doth attain the ultimate scope of its perfect act by the redness of an ascending Sulphur whereunto the Sulphur of the Mercury is joined by an undissolvable Union For in this respect the Sulphurs of Minerals do under the Vulcan obtain the utmost compleating of the intent of Physitians I therefore exhort Young Beginners that they perfectly learn to spoile Sulphurs of their forreign and poysonous Faculty To wit under the custody whereof a vital fire is hidden most pleasingly bringing the Archeus into the desired aims Indeed there are some Sulphurs unto whom they being corrected and perfected the whole band of Diseases doth hearken because they are those whose Plurality is contracted into the unity of the Archeus as it were into a fighting or clutched Fist By this means we have seen Madnesses Apoplexies Falling-sicknesses Palseys giddinesses of the Head Asthma's Dropsies Atrophia's and cruel Defects to be annihilated in the very seat of the Soul and combined Duumvirate indeed to the amazement of Nature her self In Stones therefore a great virtue is declared to be by the holy Scriptures which is hitherto hidden as well in the University as in the Chymical Schools until that Kings and Common-wealths shall look into the reformation of Schools it repenteth them of their labour who hope craftily to get gain by an abuse They know not nor desire not nor will not labour who deride those that are studious of Virtues for if ever heretofore now at least-wise the whole World being placed in malignity hath deterred my Pen least I should scatter Pearls before Swine I will shew to our Sons as the Lyon by his Paw Extract thou the Sulphur of Antimony which scarce differs from the common sight but that it inclines a little unto greenness Make this Cinnabar as yet six times thou shalt sublime it by it self that the sublimation may serve for
free Faculty that it concludeth with the excellency of a Christian especially of a righteous Man that the Devil hath no right or authority of entring or introducing of his Means Seeing it is all one to him to have hurt by a medium or by himself There is therefore a far other Power of enchantment besides the Devil and therefore a natural and free one over a righteous Man he hath no command But if the Devil should have a free Power of enchanting it should also be alike free to him of killing by a Knife or a Hammer and so none should be free Yea if the Devil could he would not enter within the Skin of a just Man by reason of the divine presence of the Kingdom of Heaven Indeed the Devil doth behold God to be present in a just Man after another manner than any where else which is an everlasting Cause of his hatred toward us neither therefore doth he enter although he could but he goes about as a roaring Lyon Therefore a Witch doth by a natural Being imaginatively form a free natural and hurtful Idea the which Satan cannot form because the forming of Idea's requires the Image of God and a free Power and therefore Witches do operate by a natural virtue no less on the righteous and innocent than on wicked men Yea seeing enchantments do more easily infect Children than those that are of ripe years Women than stout Men A certain natural Power limited in the enchantment is signified against which an opposition is easily made by a warlicke and strong or stout mind The Devil therefore offers Filths or Poysons to his Clients that he may fermentally co-knit their Idea's formed in the imaginative faculty of these Yea he preserves that Ideal Poyson that it be not blown away by the Wind or that being over-covered in the Earth it be not destroyed by a putrifying by continuance But he locally derives that Poyson according to the object which is to be enchanted yet he is no way able to apply them or to bring them into a Man Therefore a Man also doth afterwards dismisse another exsecutive issuing and commanding Mean to enchant a Man which Mean is the Idea of a strong desire For it is a thing unseperable from a desire to be carried about desired Objects In all which the Devil being only a spectator is an assistant in its passage Because in very deed I have already demonstrated that the operative means themselves do belong to man alone For God alone is the Creatour most glorious and to be praised for ever who hath created the Universe of nothing But man as he is the Image of God doth create some Beings of Reason or non-beings in their beginning of nothing and that in the proper Endowment of an imaginative virtue the which notwithstanding are something more than meerly a privative or negative Being For first of all while those kind of conceived Idea's do at length cloath themselves with a Body in the shew of an Image framed by the imagination they are now made Beings subsisting in the middle of that garment wherein they do equally reside throughout its whole and in this respect do become seminal and operative Beings to wit by whom their very own assumed Subjects are straightway wholly directed But this Power is given only to Man Otherwise a seminal virtue for propagation is given to the Earth bruit Beasts Plants c. And likewise a Dog is able by madness to transfer his Spittle into a Poyson because it is proper or natural to his Species The which also is easie to be seen in diverse Poysons of living Creatures But to form Idea's abstracted from their Species and adjacent properties that is granted to none but Man Also by a more full looking into the matter it is seen that if in an Idea formed by the imaginative Faculty there was not the authority of a certain entity or beingness president which was not able to cloath it self or assume a Body yea neither could it be associated by the imaginative Faculty to the Body of the Archeus For truly that which is in it self meerly nothing doth effect nothing hath also negatively a right unto nothing And therefore the conception should perish presently after the conceit neither should it cause an Idea yea if it should be a meer nothing it should presently also wander into nothing But seeing the plantasie doth proceed from a conception unto a formed Idea or Image and from hence unto a seminal Being it follows that the conceit is made this some thing in the imaginative faculty That is that the imaginative faculty doth create a certain seminal Being which is a Beginning dispositive unto the formality of a Being in Power Even as out of a Steel and Flint a spark doth arise from whence there is a flame very greatly operative So the imaginative Faculty doth co-rub it self on an Object by a conception from whence there is an Idea And therefore the act of imagination is not so of nothing that it hath not some foundation in it approaching unto a principiating realty For the imaginative Power hath for this end either Images proper unto it self conformed with the Soul as many do believe or at least-wise Images sometimes present being stirred up by the Memory and re-called again by remembring But I consider of these things not that Essaies or flourishes of Idea's do fore-exist in us before that which is Imaginatively conceived that they may be the conceived Images of a proper name but that they are made by a co-touching of the imagining Power in act that is by the Image of that which formeth and of the Object imagined And therefore the Soul doth nakedly form an Image out of its own Bosom the which unless it do presently bind up in the Archeus it also perisheth and for that very cause becomes barren Neither doth that hinder that in Fevers or Diseasie watchings we do against our will experience the shadows of Images To wit the which foolish shadows of Images do walk up and down without a connexion and discourse before the imaginative Faculty But whatsoever imagined thing doth voluntarily walk up and down yea and bring labours or troubles we being averse thereunto and unwilling thereof that very thing must needs fore-exist as it were shadows laid up before an imaginative force be reflexed upon them But those kind of Idea's are sometimes confusedly imprinted they running back out of the storehouse of the Memory but not that they had fore-existed before every act of imagining And likewise neither doth it prove that because the aforesaid shadows of Idea's are confused oftentimes ridiculous and false therefore neither ever before conceived by a sound imaginative Power For truly Images or Likenesses being once naturally determined and seriously constituted a second third and further Image is brought in upon it and they do fold up and pierce each other whence there is a confusion Otherwise the following Image doth by course destroy the
also conceived it within and doth not that Knowledge presuppose a Phantasie proper to its kinde for so some Simples induce an Alienation of the Mind but some others a Madness or maddish Fury not indeed through a Destruction of the Brain or a dispersing of its Spirits for then at least the Strength and most strong Faculties of the mad or furious Person would not remain but by a strange kind of and furious Phantasie of those Simples being introduced which being victress subdues ours and keeps the same a Servant it self for a time as in Doatage the Phrensie c. Sometimes also perpetually as in lunatick and mad or Bedlam-persons Doth not the Madness of Dogs thus pass over into Man For the maddish Phantasie of Fury is transplanted into the Spittle of their Tongue which as victress soon triumphs over the Blood of that Animal which the Skin being opened it shall never so slenderly touch Then indeed the antient Phantasie of the whole Blood gives place and will it nill it assumes an hydrophobial Phantasie or an estranged Imagination of the fear of Water From whence at length comes a Binsical Death that is from the sole Sickness of the Mind to wit the magical Virtue of the Dog being exalted and excited or stirred up above the non-excited but drowsie Imagination of the Animals Plainly after the same manner is the Phantasie of the Tarantula imprinted by a slender stroak of his Sâ—ing and the Wounded or Stung Persons being presently alienated in their Mind fall a dancing and leap hugely yet the Venom of the Tarantula differs from that of a mad Dog in this that this acts by a Magical Power being stirred up and so by the Magick of a true name But the other by a drowsie Magical Faculty even as the same difference is manifest in Wolâ—s-bane and other destructive Plants which kill with a very small quantity because no living Creature Secures or defends himself against a mad Dog because there is in him a binding magical Power against which Teeth or Horns do not prevaile which cannot be said of the Poyson of the Tarantula In the External Man therefore even as in his fellow Animals the magical Power is as it were laid asleep neither can it be stir'd up only in Man although indeed much more easily in him but in some living Creatures his Consorts Yea neither is it sufficient that Spirits do observe this Law of Concord and single Duel with Spirits but moreover there lurks a certain Spirit in the whole Universe which we call the great Magnal or Sheath which being the Pander of Sympathy or Fellow Feeling and Dyspathy or difficulty of suffering doth exist as a Communicater and Promoter of Actions and by reason whereof Magnetism or Attraction is by a Vehicle or Instrument of conveyance extended to an Object at a distance That thing is proved to our sight For if thou shalt place a slender Straw upon the Cord or String of a Lute hanging with a doubtful extremity or with an equal weight in the Air like a Ballance and shalt strike the like string of another Lute that is aloof off when the Tunes do co-agree in the eighth Note thou shalt see the Chaff to tremble but when the Tunes or Notes agree in a Unisone then otherwise the string of the quiet Lute being impatient of delay quavets or hops a little skips for joy and shakes off the hated Straw by its jumping Shall here also Satan be the Fidler in their esteem Which Straw doth not happen to leap although all the Strings of the other Lutâ— be unanimously strongly and near at hand struck upon Nor also doth the naked Tune constrain the other and quiet string to leap a little for then every Note would effect that but it is only the Spirit which is the common Pander inhabiting in the middle of the Universe which being the faithful executer and assistant of natural Actions derives promotes and also causeth the Sympathy Why are we so sore afraid of the name of Magick Seeing that the whole action is Magical neither hath a thing any Power of Acting which is not produced from the Phantasie of its Form and that indeed Magically But because this Phantasie is of a limited Identity or Sameliness in Bodies devoid of choice therefore the Effect hath ignorantly and indeed rustically stood ascribed not to the Phantasie of that thing but to a natural Property they indeed through an Ignorance of Causes substituting the Effect in the room of the Cause When as after another manner every Agent acts on its proper Object to wit by a fore-feeling of that Object whereby it disperseth its Activity not rashly but on that Object only to wit the Phantasie being stirred after a sense of the Object by dispersing of an ideal Entity and coupling it with the Ray of the passive Entity This indeed hath been the magical Action of natural things yet the Magick and Phantasie that is properly so named is in Creatures enlarged or ennobled with a Power of choice I will go thorow them according to their ranks The formal Properties therefore which issue from the Forms of the three Principles Salt Sulphur and Mercury or Salt Fat and Liquor from whence every Body is composed and again resolved into the same and the Mercury or Liquor is so often diverse as there are Species or particular kinds of things let the same Judgment be of the Salt and Sulphur Those Properties I say flow from the Phantasies of these Forms the which because they are exceeding corporeal and do as yet stick in the Bosom of the Elements therefore they are called formal and occult Properties by reason of the Ignorance of the Forms which otherwise are magical Effects propagated from the Phantasie of the said Forms but they are ignoble and very corporeal ones yet abundantly satisfying the ends which they have respect unto Of this kind are the subductive or loosening Property of the Belly the sleepifying Property c. in things There are also besides these other more noble Properties arising from the Phantasie of the Forms of the mixt Body and those of this sort are in the whole composed Body by reason of its Form as the Magnetism of the Load-stone the Virtue of Tinctures Likewise all specifical and appropriated Things or Medicines which happen by reason of the whole homogeneal Mixture or of the Form of any one entire part but not of some one principle alone such as those are which are seated in the Flesh or Trunck Root Leaves and Fruit and not in any one of the three Principles being separated there-from Likewise Antimony as long as it remaines in its Form obtaineth most excellent Properties the which it never attaineth in its Principles and these are also from a corporeal Bosom and therefore the spiritual Magick is also hidden in these and is thought to be due only to Nature by unfitly distinguishing this in opposition to Magick So the Leaf of the Rose hath another kinde of
such a Balsam which not but by its own Phantasie becomes also Medicinal Magnetical and is also an attractive of all the strange quality out of the Body whose fresh Blood I say abounding with Spirit is carried unto it whether it shall be that of a Man or of any other living Creature The Phantasie therefore is a returner or reducible and Ecstatical from part of the Blood that is freshly and most newly brought unto the Unguent but the magnetical Attraction begun in the Blood is perfected by the medicinal Virtue of the Unguent But the Unguent doth not draw the infirmity of the Wound unto it self that it may be made a Pandora's Box but alters the Blood newly brought unto it in its Spirit makes it Medicinal and stirs up the Power thereof From thence it hath a certain medicinal and magnetical Virtue which returns unto its whole Body to cure its Cousin German the Spirit of the Blood throughout the whole Man To wit it sucks out the sorrowful Impression from the Wounded party and expels it being ready to perish by its medicinal Power and commands it forth which medicinal Virtue being the conqueress of the Malady is stir'd up partly in the Blood and is partly also generated in the same by the Unguent to wit by the Spirit hereof thus commanding over the Spirit of the Blood by its own Phantasie that is by its created Endowment Otherwise the Blood putrifying with its entire Faculties or Vigours under the enclosure of an Egg-shell and the Spirit thereof being now as it were freed from its Fetters through the foregoing Putrefaction drawes by the mediation of the Mummy of a Dog and really translates the Grief which sits in the Phantasie and astral Virtue of the Filths of the Sick into the Dog himself that eats it Indeed for no other Cause than because the Magnetism is not perfected without the interposing of the Balsam of the Oyntment We have also observed that if a wounded Man happen to have received many Wounds at once it is sufficient that Blood be had only out of one of his Wounds and indeed that by that one endeavour the rest of the Wounds are cured also because that Blood keeps a concordant Harmony with the Spirit of the whole and draws forth from the same the offensive quality communicated not only to the Lips of the Wound but also to the whole Man For from one Wound the whole Man is wont also to grow Feverish I have hitherto deferred to make manifest a great Mistery namely to shew to our hand that in Man there is placed an essicacy whereby he may be able only by his beck and Phantasie to act out of himself and to imprint a virtue a certain influence which afterwards perseveres or constantly subsists by it self and acts on an Object at a very far distance by which onely mystery those things which have been spoken hitherto concerning the Ideal entity conveighed in a Spiritual fewel and departing far from home for to execute its offices concerning the Magnetism of all things begotten in the Imagination of man as in that which is proper to every thing and also concerning the Magical superiority of Men over other Bodies will come to light It is a clear truth and manifest without controversie that of Steel is to be made a Needle which by the touch of a Load-stone shews the Pole or North-Star to Sailers but in vain is the Steel hammered into a Needle and placed on the Marriners Compass to point out the Pole if a due rubbing of the Loadstone upon it hath not gone before Which things seeing they are undoubtedly true it is now convenient to frame a Marriners Needle onely by a Magnetical beck On the Anvil therefore whereon the Needle is hammered out of Steel let the North Point be marked out and that in a straight Line then stand thou the Vulcan with thy back towards the North that when the Steel is drawn under the Hammer for making of the Needle thou mayest draw it towards thy self and the North. I say therefore that such a Needle so made shall without any other help observe or point out the Pole and that indeed without any wonted variation which is a great Mystery Moreover the Needle which is made upon the said Line by chance and without the knowledge or intent of the Workman is void of that quality and doth not observe the Pole From hence it consequently follows that the Imagination of the man that frames it doth as it were in that moment of the Needls Nativity when as now indeed the greatest heat or glowing of the fire hath ceased and as yet under an obscure redness of the Steel imprint this kind of Magnetical faculty and that indeed on the Steel or an appropriated subject But not that the Heaven doth then make that impression because then it also should influx it self into the Steel without the intention of the Smith which is false for if the Heaven should give forth its influence at a certain Hour and Position now might the Characteristical or Notary and Sigillary or sealing Science of the Stars triumph which we pass by But the Constellation which flowes into the Steel and perhaps every Seal or Impression flowes from the Microcosmical Heaven that is from our Olympus or the Heaven in us Therefore in vain have been those Seales which were not stamped by the Magitian exalted in his Phantasie or Imagination for inferiour Entities and Phantasies are constrained to give place to ours Whereby a wise Man shall bear rule over the Stars to the command of whom the Parent of things hath subjected whatsoever is concluded in the Circle of Heaven What things have been alledged concerning the Phantasie making this Impression on the Marriners Needle I have learned from the Testimony of many also from my own experience and shall be confirmed ten thousand times to be true by the experience of every one that is willing to make trial thereof So indeed Asarabacca and the tops of Elder hearken to the commanding Imagination of the Cropper who imprinteh on the plant but this Magnetically on the absent leaf seeing otherwise the leaf being boyled as the Needle that was re-heated in the fire and administred as a Potion the virtue of the Phantasie imprinted on it would perish if the Magnetism were not cherished from the entire plant That blood which is boyled and ready to be eaten doth as yet contain the Soul is true But that virtue consisteth not from the impression of the humane and external Phantasie but from the proper endowment of its own Phantasie After this manner also a Nail Dart or Arrow that is thrust into the heart of the Horse withholds the Spirit of the Witch and conjoynes it with the Mumial Spirit of the Horse whereby they may be roasted together that by that torment as by a sting the Witch her self may be bewrayed and that at length she that is offensive to God destructive to mortal men may by the
For indeed I am not wont to subscribe to the naked pleasures of Predecessors as neither to their Judgements because I am the more assured that the very power of healing languisheth under their unaptness Therefore I ought to search out the womb of Duelech First of all I have espied that those that had the Stone in the Reins were wont for the most part before their future pains to presage their malady to be at hand from their watery untinged urine But that afterwards when their pain was present the same urine was abundantly much and troubled like yellow Ale not yet refined And that when afterwards a more subtile or thin urine well mixt with sand flowed forth they testified their pain to be manifestly slackned or almost none at all Yea although for some days there remaineth a continual urine sometimes bigger than both kidneys Then also I beheld a continual and plenteous Bole or lump to be dayly cast forth with their urines in shew of a powder unperceiveable by the touch A certain one also I beheld which would dissolve only with heat so far is it that heat should be the author of curdling yet oft-times that lump being seperated from the urine was not again afterwards founded in hot water but that by rest it at length setled to the bottom which before was solved in the salt of urine For I alwayes believed that seminal Generations were made from a disposition of the matter and that the perfection hereof was by little and little introduced through the labour of the Archeus I knew therefore that the generation of Duelech doth follow the laws of other natural generations and so also that it is made at an instant and by consequence that the preparative disposition or the dispositive preparation thereof is indeed introduced by degrees Therefore I concluded with my self that this whole Nativity of the monster and the preparation thereof is not finished in so hastned a passage through the kidneyes especially wheresoever that lump doth sometimes occupie a third part of the urinal Yea the sand that is cast out at one only making water doth now and then equalize the half part of the kidney That in the mean time I call not to mind the slenderness of the bosomes of the kidney Therefore I have deservedly suspected that the reins only are not the womb of the sands of the Bolus or lump and of the Stones but that these do prepare their own products by foregoing vessels wherein the urine is disposed and that the full essence of Duelech is there obtained To wit that the fundamentals of those things are stamped which anon appear to be But that I might expel all scruple from me or that I might not believe that the urine doth by a momentary passage through the kidneys being as it were more swift than the glance of an eye act it self into a lump sand or greater Stones and then afterwards be cast head-long through the urine pipes I collected the urine of him who was grieved in one only kidney and which had voyded both sand and lump and then I strained the urine from the sand through a Towel yet I discerned that of the same urine no less sand and scales had afterwards adhered to the urinal than if it had come forth without a lump or sand On the contrary I also found that the urine which had once applied its sand to the urinal had laid aside no more sand in a new urinal for thirty hours after but only a sediment that was to be washed away Therefore I was assured that all that sand was cast out with the urine of him that had the Stone neither that it had belonged to that sand and to the same urine the ground whereof it had now required to be Consequently also that the sand that was afterwards pissed at successive and continual turns was not the product of that urine alone nor made or begotten through the delay of collection of that urine yea seeing otherwise the kidney being four times bigger than it self should now and then not be sufficient for entertaining of the sand flowing down by that sit Therefore I have learned that the watery and untinged urine was the fore-shewer of the future sands and fit and the presager of the future pain or that from that very time it laid aside the foundations of dispositions in a certain hollowness perhaps bigger than the bosomes of one kidney Werefore I conjectured that the womb was more capable of the sands lump and stone than both the bosomes of the kidneys were For one is a central borderer on the urine-pipe and the other is a winding one circumflexed or bending about throughout the body of the kidney For I greatly wondred that the urine waxed not yellow on the first days yet that abundance flowed forth nor that the dross being the tincture of the urine should then according to its wonted custome be attracted as if all the tincture thereof being for the framing of the urine were wasted or as though the sands were made of the meer tincture of the dross and so that the mixture of the liquid dung with the urine was a diseasie one besides nature although ordinary which meditation indeed at my first entrance therein afflicted me At leastwise from thence I more cleerly knew that the material cause of Duelech assigned by the Schools was altogether vain and stupid seeing that if there were any whitish and phlegmie muckiness cocted from the heat of the kidneys into a stone Now the sand of the reines should not be of a more citron colour than the stone of the bladdet but both stones should be alike pale because the cocting and drying of that mucky snivel cannot citrinize the pale colour of the same or in the bladder under a longer delay it should be wholly yellow unless pethaps the Schools shall demonstrate that the Muscilage of the kidneys is yellow and that of the bladder white Else surely they teach old wives fictions concerning the muscilaginous matter of the stone Furthermore it hath seemed to me that the urine is cleer plenteous nor tinged before the fit and troublous and sandy after the pains because that while the sand is in making that happens in the vena cava and in the sucking veins themselves it not being indeed as yet in the form of sand or of a stone but like a lump like a more thin clay and like a sediment And so the urine is not then duly concocted in that kitchin wherefore it is watery and the Archeus of those parts is primarily ill affected But I understand the coction or digestion of the urine to be the promotion thereof unto a urinous perfection for there is not yet in that very place a sand but the most small atome of a Bolus or lump Because a corruptive ferment is there established besides nature and the requirance of the place but by how much the farther it departs from thence toward the kidney or unto
is present that is while that formal Animal and Sensitive Light is kindled even as elsewhere concerning the Birth of Formes believe also that the immortal mind is present and that it doth wholly sit immediately in the Sensitive Soul as being associated or joyned thereunto Not indeed that it sits in a certain corner bowel prison of the Body or shop of the spirits But I conceive that the mind is throughout the whole Sensitive Soul and that it pierceth this Soul nor that it doth exceed the Sphear thereof as long as it lives and in this respect that it is subject unto many importunities of circumstances But in death the mind is separated because the Sensitive Soul it self departs into nothing as it were the light of a Candle which things surely were here to be fore-tasted of before the explication of Sensation Pain therefore as that which is chiefly to be felt shall open unto us the way For it is a hurtful and sorrowful Sensation or act of feeling conceived in the vital Spirit being by life implanted in the sensitive soul And in speaking most nearly Sense or Feeling is a Possion of the sensitive soul conceived in the spirit of Life For nothing can be glad sorrowful or in pain besides the soul it self And so that Sense seeing it is the first conception of Pain or well-pleasing it is by all means made primarily in the Soul And therefore Sense represents unto me nothing besides that power of the Soul of conceiving and judging passively of external Objects rushing on it Therefore seeing that these Acts do depend on the Soul the whole History whereof is blind unto us it is no wonder that it hath been hitherto nought but carelesly treated by the Schools concerning the Soul and Sensation Because they are those who have skipt over the Enquiries of far more manifest things as untouched yea through sloath they have neglected them by subscribing to the dreams of Heathens In Pain therefore the irrational Sensitive Soul is first or chiefly sorrowful is mad is angry is perplexed doth itch or fear and as it is in the fountainous root of all vital actions it naturally moves and contracts not only the Muscles but also any of the parts unto the tone of its own passions Sense therefore is the action of external Objects that are to be perceived the which while they are conceived in the Soul it self also suffers no less than life its companion than the animal spirit and the rest of the guard But the immortal mind suffers not any of these things in its own substance but only in its Subject Seat Inn to wit the Sensitive Soul Otherwise all voluntary things at once are too invalid so as to be able to affect an immortal Being which is Eternal in its future duration But it is as yet a very small matter that the Sensitive Soul doth suffer by sensible Objects unless it self be made as it were hostile to it self while aâ— impatient it is exorbitant or disorderly For it begins to act while it is provoked and doth suffer by sensible Objects For truly it shakes the vital Spirit and the whole body and at length as prodigal it disperseth the vital furniture and breeds diseases on it self and hastens its own death That even from hence also the Proverb may be verified That none is more hurt than by himself as the Sensitive soul is a meer act And so that it being once spurred up by sensible conceptions for it is wholly irrational brutal wrongful and greedy of desire it leaps over into furies and symptomatically or furiously shakes all things Therefore sensible Objects are the occasions of hurts and diseases But the sensitive Soul well perceiving the same occasions nor being willing to suffer them diversly stirs up its own Ministers and by Idea's imprinted on them estrangeth them from their Scope or Purpose From whence afterwards proceed various seeds and Off-springs of Diseases The Soul therefore undergoes and suffers the aforesaid affects from the Object that is to be felt from whence it being disturbed or tossed by the pricks of Sensations doth act and suffer lastly as being prodigal it in a rage disperseth its own family-order of Administration And while it perceiveth sweet plausible helpful Objects and those things which are grateful unto it self it is not in this its acts of feeling differing from the Judgement whereby it feeleth hurtful corrosive pricking rending brusing Objects not but by accident which is plainly external to the life it self From whence it is easily discerned that Sense is made by the Judgement of the sensitive Soul being brought upon a conceived sensible object it altering at first by it self according to the Sensation conceived and then it conveigheth it further unto another imaginative Judgement which is separated from the sensitive Judgement no otherwise than as Sense and Phantasie or Imagination do disagree in their Faculties but not in their Subject Spare me ye Readers if I attribute all material perturbations and affections immediately to the sensitive soul and to the spirits its guardians but not unto the organs of those For there are some tickling things which by their itching and itch-gumme do stir up laughter and a small leaping in some which in others do not move the least of these For oft-times the Soul is inwardly overclouded with a natural Sensation and is also sadned the Subject thereof being scarce known yea it elsewhere doates And elsewhere the sensitive soul becomes unsensitive as in those that have the Falling Sicknesse for a time but in the Palsey oft-times for Life at leastwise in Organs that are hurt although as yet alive But in many without Sense Judgement and Reason although the animal spirits do issue forth and being diffused into the habit of the body do move and in the mean time do otherwise draw hurtful impressions So the life and that sensitive soul have their own drowsinesse madnesse and trouble within although nothing shake and burden them from without because seeing that in sleep also there is its own foolish Lust or Desire Hunger Thirst Fear Agony and a wondrous dissolute liberty of irrational vain dreams And moreover friendly things are presently changed into mixt neutral or hostile ones as the Archeus which never keeps Holiday or is idle doth of sweet things make bitter and corroding ones For the Soul as I have said conceiveth of sensible things by the means of a Guard and Clients unto whom she her self as present is an an Assistant and by applying those objects unto her self stirs up Sorrow Love Fear c. To wit of which Idea's she sealingly forms the Characters or Impressions in her own Archeus whereby she changeth all things acording to the Image seminally proposed unto her self Which Character being through a bedewing of the Sensitive Soul made partakers of Life and Sense do first cloath the seminal body of the Archeus from whence at length most prompt faculties or abilities for action do spring And there is
sometimes made in these so ready and stubborn a perseverance of affection that it presents a Spectacle of Admiration to the Beholder especially if any one doth examine the attributes of the Life and spiritual Seed For how most suddenly are Children Women and improvident people angry do weep and laugh For the sensitive Souls of those do freshly as it were immediately even adhere unto sensible things It is therefore a natural thing that the sensitive Spirit is voluntarily and easily carried into these kinds of overflowings because that Soul being easily received by its own sensual judgement slides into the voluntary passions of material Spirits and as even from a Child these same exorbitances have encreased so afterwards that Soul growes to ripeness as wrothful furious and wholly symptomatical the which otherwise would far more safely perform all things under meeknesse or mildnesse than as by reason of furies to aspire into Diseases and now and then unto its own death which is frequent and most manifest in Exorbitances of the Womb and in the Symptomes of some Wounds and of other Diseases Anger therefore and Fury in this place are not of the man but of that Sensitive Soul brought into the Life which begetteth the animosities of a natural Sensation and the which therefore doth oftentimes ascend unto a great height that it burns to an Eschar and blasts the part with a Sphacelus or mortifying Inflammation like fire Pain therefore is an undoubted Passion of the Sense of Touching wherein the sensitive Soul expresseth a displeasure with the Object according to the differences of the conceived Injury brought on the parts Furthermore Whether that Passion be the Office or Performance of a judicial power from whence the Soul is by a proper Etymology named Sensitive no otherwise than as the motive faculty moveth only by the beck of the Soul without an external or forreign Exciter Or indeed whether pain be a Passion immediately produced from a sensible paining cause the Schools might have sifted out if as great a care of diligent searching into the truth as of receiving a Salary from the sick had ever touched them But with me that thing hath long since wanted a doubt For truly Seeing the Sense of Pain is the Judgement of the Soul expressed by the act of feeling in the Sensible Faculty whereby the Soul bewails it self of the sensible hurtful and paining Object Therefore both of them being connexed together do almost every way concur and both also stand related after each its own manner unto pain For indeed the cause being a sensible injury is the motive of pain But the sensitive Soul it self gives judgement of the painful Object with a certain wrothfulnesse and impatiencie of Passion The which indeed in a wound Contusion or Bruise Extension or Straining Burning and Cold as being external Causes is altogether easie to be seen But while the motive Causes of Pain are neither applied from the aforesaid impression of external Objects or from a proper Exorbitancy within and the Sensitive Spirit is from thence made wholly sharp gnawing biting degenerate and forms the blood like it self Then indeed the Sensitive Soul in paining doth not only give a simple judgement concerning Pain But moreover she in her self being wholly disturbed brings forth from her self a newly painful product no otherwise than if that Product proceeded from an external occasional Cause And although both these do in a greater Passion and more grievous Sensation for the most part concur yet in speaking properly Pain doth more intimately respect the Censure brought from the Sensitive Soul the Patient Or Pain doth more nearly reflect it self on the property of the Soul than on the paining cause Because many are grievously wounded without manifest pain even as also a furious man shewes that he scarce feeleth Paines from hurtfull Causes Some things also do oftentimes delude the paines of Torture and Unctions do also deceive paines although the parts are beaten with injury Wherefore Sense doth more intimately and properly respect the Censure of the power of the sensitive Soul than the injury of the painfull Cause But truly I am diverted elsewhere as for the cause of the aforesaid unpainfulnesse in the Leprosie and unmoveablenesse in the Apoplexy c. The Schooles indeed contending for the Brain as the chief Organ of Sensation and pain do therefore take notice that the Brain being by its own property of passion immediately and as it were by one stroak touched doth lose even both sense and motion at once yea that it doth contract either of the sides But the manner of making they thus expresse The fourth bosom of the Brain it being a very small little bosom beginning from the Cerebellum the beginning of the Thorny marrow is stopped up by phlegme from whence ariseth an Apoplexy in an instant For Nature being unwilling or not able to draw back or reduce that phlegme once slidden down thither being diligent is at leastwise busie in laying aside that phlegme into either side of that pipe from whence consequently a Palsie of that side begins These things indeed we read concerning the Apoplexyand Palsie yet nothing of the contracture arising through the stroak of the Head Paracelsus also not being content with this drowsie Doctrine of three Diseases is also tumbled in unconstancy For sometimes he saith That the Apoplexy and Palsie following thereupon is bred for that the sensitive Spirit in the Nerves or Sinews hath from the Law of the Microcosme after the manner of sulphurous Mines contracted like Aqua vitae a flame from the fire of Aetna Through which inflammation the Sinewes and Tendons being afterwards at it were adust burnt and as it were half dead are dryed up together with the muscles and therefore they do thenceforth remain deprived of sense and motion To wit he Constitutes these two Diseases considering nothing the while of the Contracture or Convulsion from the stroak not indeed in the Case of the Brain but in the utmost Branches of the Nerves as though they were affects hastening from without to within But in another place he judgeth not a certain sulphurous or inflamed matter to be the cause of the Apoplexy but he accuseth Mercury onely to wit one of the three things which he calls His own Beginnings of Nature as being too exactly Circulated and affirmes that through its abounding subtility or finenesse it is the conteining Cause of every sudden Death Elsewhere he recals the Apoplexy unto the Stars of Heaven And in another place again being unconstant he teacheth That every Apoplexy is made of gross vapors stopping up the Arteries and restlesse beating Pipes of the Throat and that there is also an Eclipse of the Lunaries or Moon-lights of the Brain in us from a Microcosmicall necessity Therefore hath he in like manner whirl'd about the causes of the Vertigo or giddinesse of the Head unto uncertainties To wit himself being wholly Vertiginous But I have otherwise proceeded Whatsoever doth primarily feel
stir up a pain or averseness from thence conceived in its injured Center The Spirits therefore inserted in the Joynts ought readily to serve the necessities of the Members without consultation and recourse had unto the Brain seeing not the Brain but the Soul it self being every where present doth immediately feel For there was need of excessive swiftness for the averting and preventing of hurtfull things therefore to send a Messenger unto the Brâ—in had been inconvenient I grant indeed that the pain of the Intestine drawes other parts into a consent and resolves them either with a stubborn Palsie or contracts the parts serving for voluntary motion that the Kidney being pained the stomach is nauseous and begins to vomit the Bowels are writhed and the Thigh placed under it is astonied That the Nail of ones Hand paining stirs up a remote kernel For truly the presence of the Soul confirmeth but doth not take away a consent of parts Therefore that consent in paines is forreign unto pain and by accident neither therefore doth it touch at or estrange the essence or cause of pain Because that Consent is latter unto pain and therefore also separable from it Therefore all the particular Spirits of the parts do feel without the commerce of the inflowing Spirit As in the Teeth and in new flesh being restored in a hollow Ulcer For because the parts do on both sides live in their own quarter Sense is according to the diversities of the Organ and therefore there are many paines con-centred in Seasons and they answer unto the unequalities of the Moon because they are centrally received in the Spirit which is Astral unto us Again Neither the venal bloud nor the very bloud of the Arteries are strong in Sense and an animal Touching although they being even hunted out of the Vessels do Sympathetically feel because they flourish onely with influous Spirit Therefore it hath been hitherto questioned by Divines whether the venal bloud be informed by the Soul I suppose therefore under the Correction of a better Judgement That nothing is informed by the Soulof a living Creature which doth not partake of the sensitive Soul that is that nothing is informed by the Soul which doth not feel by the Spirit implanted and quickned in the parts Because informing argues of necessity life in the living Creature as also Life argues a sense or feeling at least a dull one such as is in the Bones and Brain But if indeed meates in the stomach an abounding of Seed in the seedy Kernels Hunger yea and the Urine do produce their own dreams in the Soul and stir up the Soul under sleep according to their pleasure Yet it followes not from thence on the other hand That therefore the Soul informeth the food or the urine For although the Soul shall feel urine abounding and pressing it yet this urine doth not feel its own Objects For the Soul also feels a pricking Knife the which notwithstanding it doth not inform That therefore any thing may be informed by the Soul it is necessary that it lives and feels as it were the subject of the life it self Sense therefore and pain are in the parts or things conteining subjectively but in those conteined objectively onely Yea although things conteined are intimate with us and after a most near manner vital yet in respect of their being things conteined and of the sensitive Soul they are as it were external Notwithstanding it is not sufficient to have said with the vulgar That a hurtful cause is painful yea nor is it sufficient to know that the Sensitive Liâ—e doth primarily feel and from thence the spirit implanted in the parts and at length the stable Organs and so indeed that the Sense testifies of the presence of that which is hurtful seeing these things the Schools and the common people have after some sort known But it ought more manifestly to appear what may immediately cause pain and after what sort Pain may be made in feeling As to the first a Needle pricks and from thence is pain A litte Bee stings and wounds like a Needle But both of them do pain after a far different manner Therefore the solution or dividing of that which held together it self otherwise common in both prickings doth not primarily cause pain For truly the dividing or that which held together effects no other thing in respect of it self than a Non-solution The which in leprous affects and in the Palsey is without Sense and Pain But if indeed the solution of the Con-tinual causeth pain or doth not that is to the knife by accident neither doth this touch at the Solution primarily except in the condition of an occasion without which it is not therefore because the stinging of a Bee causeth another manner of pain than an equal solution that is made by a Needle surely it dependeth on a more piercing judgement of Sense or Feeling And so it is even from thence presently manifest that the Sensitive Soul it self doth immediately feel censure and judge of the Object of Pain But Sense in the Schools is said to be made passively even as motion actively But I have already shewn that Sense is made by a power or by a primary sensitive Being through action Although the Members do suffer subjectively through the application of sensible Objects Therefore Sense or Feeling is made actively because the Act of feeling it self is an active censure of the Soul But in as much in the mean time as the members do suffer seeing that is unto the act of feeling by accident it cannot hinder but that feeling is made sensitively There is indeed the same proper agent in that sensitive action of Sense and Pain because the Agent it self is the Soul And Sense or Feeling differs from pain by the judgement of the Soul concerning sensible Objects And so Sense is of the Soul it self to wit its action but not its passion The Schools indeed have known with the common people that violent causes do bring on Pain even as also that the water is liquid But to have shewn the internal animosity or courage of the sensitive faculty and to have manifested pain in the root that they have not yet hitherto been intent upon To which end the following consideration doth conduce Live flesh is most easily scorched and is excoriated or flead by boyling water But dead flesh is the more slowly burnt And there is a different scorching if a live hand and that of a dead Carcase be burnt For truly the former burning stirrs up bladders with the least fervency of heat so as that the same happens even under the Sun But the latter burning parcheth the flesh no otherwise than if it were roasted namely without little bladders and excoriation The Schools also have not yet registred that difference because neither have they heeded it And perhaps they will say that it is more easie to make hot things already heated and that therefore live flesh is the more
ice but is only carried forth unto objects that are to be eaten from whence nature hopes for nourishment to her self But it is not carried promiscuously towards any objects So neither doth nature desire that which she had once cast out as reprobate As knowing that any thing cannot be made out of every thing neither therefore doth she hope for or look for nourishment from an excrement The which she therefore neither desires nor allures to her self And I wish the Schools had considered that thing before their rash doctrine of Choler I grant indeed that through inordinacies inordinate and confused obediences do now and then follow But I shall not therefore admit that a sixfold quantity is drawn out of the little bag of the Gaul for vomit as neither that any thing is rashly drawn to the stomach Seeing the very Gaul it self is a Nobie and vital Bowel even as elsewhere Wherefore I now and then in the more curiously searching have lookt into the chest of the Gaul and yet I have found no passage to lay open a-top out of the Liver unto the Gaul and that I suppose in right for the deed done Wherefore I have also judged the Gaul not to be made by the Liver but to be prepared materially of the pure blood of the Liver and efficiently by the proper Archeus of the Gaul in its own case or Chest At leastwise if there were any unpercievable pore which there is not that might inspire Choler from the Liver unto the chest of the Gaul why therefore doth the mouth at the utterance of the Gaul lay open fifty times more at least for the ejecting than for the entring of Gaul For truly no entrance could as yet be discerningly viewed by the eye for so many ages Is there not also from hence an easy confirmation that the orifice of the Gaul tends into the empty gut only for an in-breathing of its own vital and necessary ferment For the Gaul in a Tertian should never be sufficient for tinging of the urine the drosses of the paunch also for tinging of the daily nourishment and the which they require for the substance of the blood Moreover as neither for the abundance which even sober persons vomit up every other day about the beginnings of their fits For had it not behoved them from hence to have learned that whatsoever they call Choler is a meer excrement procreated from a diseasie constitution and that what is so engendred cannot repaire the essence of the blood Choler or Gaul Because it is that which hath no right of judging of the necessities of a quaternary for the integrity of the blood and an apposition instead of a composition For as soon as sour belchings are made in the stomach the presence of that unhappy and bitter excrement made in the stomach of the Chyle being defiled ceaseth And therefore from that time burntish stinking belches depart It is therefore feigned Choler in the stomach whereby the Schools contend originaly to stablish the Choler of the Liver alike feigned it ariseth from the inordinacy of the stomach but not from the intention of nature for the constitution of the blood It is therefore wholly an excrement and badly squares with another Choler feigned to be in the composition of the blood Because it is that which will never be proved to be within the bounds of nature since no necessity of its presence presseth the same For the Gaul is a vital bowel and exceeding necessary Wherefore neither is it rashly to be reckoned sunonymal or of the same name with an Humour or an excrement as neither to be accounted for a part of the blood For they say that the Elements do repeatingly destroy and devour each other But they have hitherto failed in the proof But they alleadge onely artificial fire which they think doth convert water and air into each other as oft as those are no longer beheld But they fail in their own position For they teach that fire converteth water into it self and not into air And it should be a foolish action of the fire which should labour not for it self but for the air Yea although water quencheth fire yet it was never seen that on the other hand fire was made water For they have thought it sufficient to have stated and not to have proved their own positions But among Humours that which they will have to be made like unto fire they shew a water not sharp biting as neither salt-bitter but modestly salt and the which they elsewhere call the Whey of the blood its Etymologie being drawn from the watery part of Milk They call I say Choler an Humour answering to fire For they command that that the Elements ought to obey their dreams For the Schools being seriously asked say that Choler is an Humour meerly fiery and Gauly because it is actually composed of fire predominating But I being silent as to these trifles am amazed while as I behold a waterish whey swimming on the blood They add also that true fire is suppressed in Choler as being masked and bridled by the form of the mixt body But let them believe that will that the form of Choler being received from the meer dominion of fire that it might produce the effects of that Element in us should so restrain its own product wherein it should actually lay hid that it should be altogether Cold in act and be a wheyie and meerly a watery Being I therefore suppose and know that if but a very smal quantity of actual fire were in a mixt body that it would presently perish as being suppressed by adjuncts a Yea if fire should neverthelesse persist safe by an irregular power at leastwise it should not any thing worship the form or body of that mixture but should according to its own disposition wholly burn and consume it without reflection or connivance Therefore either the fire should cease or the mixt body of necessity perish neither could the form of Choler hinder either of the two For it hath not hitherto been seen that an artificer who prepares glass earthen pots tiles or bricks Aurichalcum or Latten c. by the fire can in any place or at any time couple fire unto earth water and air that he may from thence constitute any mixt body and much lesse that he can allure fire to flow down from Heaven and shall connex it with air water and earth It s a wonder therefore that the whole faculty of medicine doth hitherto establish its Basis in an impossibility And so much the more wonderful that the whole world hath as it were snorted in a deep sleep at these deaf dreams and hath befooled all with a credulity And so much the more to be admired that they have believed the fire to be suppressed under other Elements in mixtures and neverthelesse as yet to remain safe when as notwithstanding they have sufficiently known and taken notice that all fire presently as soon as it ceaseth from burning
they are opened thou Paracelsus callest Ulcers and distinguishest against wound and thy own self Too fabulously therefore is the heaven defiled with out corruption and is a revenger of these injuries even as also a Notary and wounder of our crimes That was an invention of Heathenism in times past that it might blasphemously extol the heavens and starry Gods into a worship Four Elements also are blasphemously and foolishly brought in by Paracelsus who was wont to laugh at the Relolleous quality of them especially because in the original of our medicine a Quaternary or four-fold number of Elements is taken away as well in the nature of the Universe as in the constitution of mixt bodies For how ignorantly is a Quaternary of Elements suited with the aforesaid Ternary of emunctory places For Paracelsus having obtained Arcanums plainly heroical for the supplanting of diseases and being destitute of medicinal Science descending from the Father of Lights and of his own accord assuming to himself the Title of the Monarch of secrets and from this boldness invading the principality of healing treated of the Plague as it were of an enemy unknown unto him Therefore he ascribeth the Plague sometimes to the heaven at another time to the Sun and sometimes to the elements alone and oft times to Pythonisses or women of a prophecying spirit witches and to spirits as well those infernal as elementary Deasters being for the most part forgetful of the doctrine of his own Paramire where he proposeth plagues of the being of nature of the being of poyson as if any Plague could exist void of poyson or as if some poyson were not natural of the being of the Stars as though the Stars were above nature or without it of the being of witches these he attributes unto Incubi or devils in mens shapes hobgoblins sylphs c. he distinguisheth them also against the being of the Stars least peradventure witches may be the wise men which are said to bear rule over the Stars and of a God-like being and he there forgat his own and an imaginative being the remembrance whereof notwithstanding he ought to have had before the rest unlesse he had rather that an imaginative being cannot cause disease or that it is no where vigorous but in the possession of Witches And moreover as I judge a plague sent from the hand of God to despise the remedies of nature so also if there were any proper unto devils or witches which is not a thing to be believed yet at least it should in no wise owe its original unto the heaven For otherwise if there were a witch Plague it would be far more cruel than accustomed ones are by reason of an external poyson being adjoyned and a readinesse of its acting speedied and enlarged through the wrath of the evil spirit P. Boucher a Minorite Frier in his oriental or Eastern pilgrimages tels as an eye-witnesse That although Egypt be otherwise exceeding subject to the Plague yet that every year before the inundation of Nile a singular dew falls down which they call Elthalim at the coming whereof as many as lay sick of the Plague are readily and universally cured and are preserved as healthy there from by the same dew For if this be true neither hath it been sufficiently searched into by Prince Radzvil yet not any thing can be drawn from thence whereby we may know that the Plague is naturally caused by the heaven since from thence at least it follows that some meteors are healthy but others hurtful to some which none hath hitherto denied For although the Sun the day before the inundation of Nile returns every year almost unto the same place yet the same stars do not return as companions together with him And then that dew is not the off-spring of the heavens or stars nor of a meteorical Blas of the heaven but the day before the inundation of Nile the more high land of Aethiopia being more hot and southern was long since overflown which sends forth a great vapour from it filled with Nitre for the whole water of Nilus is nitrous which vapour is not only resolved into a dew the dew elsewhere weepes Honies Tereniabin or the fatnesse oftwood hony found in good quantity in the summer months with a manna-ie Being and Laudanum being as it were gummy things and among us the May dew daily abounds with a sugary salt and accompanies Nile running but it well washeth the whole aire of Aegypt even by moistening it and refresheth the bodies of the sick not much otherwise than as a shower doth the earth after long driths At leastwise I being admonished by the holy scriptures despise the sooth-sayers of heaven Therefore if the heaven be the cause of a destroying or devouring Plague it ought likewise to be the cause of every other Plague Because the same Being in the Species obtaines the same constitutive causes from which the Species it self recieveth its identity or samelinesse Therefore I constantly deny that a pestilent poyson is bred by the heaven or dismissed from the stars but all Plagues which are not singularly sent from God for a scourge are either endemical ones or proper to a Country or framed by a certain terrour But those which are borrowed as being drawn in from contagion do follow their own seed and ferment But an endemical Plague although it be drawn in from without occasionally yet it is not to be reckoned for the plague unlesse the terrour of our Archeus do first frame a poysonous Idea of sore fear conceived from the endemical Being even as shall by and by be manifested I deny moreover that any Plague is endemical For although the aire may myire the bodies of many unto diverse confusions of putrefaction yet it is in no wise the original cause of a Postilential poyson For as all putrefaction differs from the Plague so in like manner also the poyson of the Plague differs from any corruption that is the daughter of a thereor The which unlesse it be rightly and perfectly known the nature of the Plague also shall not be able to be any way understood and much lesse a radical healing of the same promoted For a conclusion of this Chapter I will adde an argument which is drawn from the bank of rivers For I have seen those who that they might avoyd houses infected with the Plague departed from Antwerp others who fled from the Smalpocks through which two years before they as yet carried about with them a face he potted with the scats thereof which were smitten in the river Scalds it self with the diseases which they presumed they had avoyded and had withdrawn themselves as healthy I remember also that a certain girle was cured by me of the Leprousy at Vilvord who when shew is now accounted to have been whole for the space of seven weeks and returned to Antwerp she presently felt in the River it self the Leprousie to bud again upon her throughout her whole body Who at
grieved Wherefore sympathy and antipathy are observed to be even in stones but in the Load-stone most manifestly the which notwithstanding cannot consist without a sense or feeling But wheresoever that sense is although it be dull it happens also that some shew of imagination agreeable to its subject doth accompany it For otherwise it is altogether impossible for any thing to love desire attract and apply that which is consonant to it self or to shun any thing adverse to it self unless a certain sense knowledge desire of and averâ—eness from the object are reciprocally present All which things do enclose in them an obscure act of feeling imagination and certain image of choice For else by what means shall a thing be moved or altered at the presence of its object unlesse it feel or percieve that very object to be present with it self If it perceive how shall it be altered except under a conception of the passion felt by it self And unlesse that felt conception doth include some certain imagination in it self Take notice Reader that in this corner all the abstruse knowledge of occult or hidden properties layeth which the Schools have banished from their diligent search they desisting from whence they were to begin according to that Maxim A Phylosopher must begin where nature ends I have therefore deliberated more exactly to demonstrate that in inanimate things â—here inhabiteth a kind of sense phantasie yea and of choice yet in a proportionable respect according to the capacity and degree of every one I do not in the mean time make mention of Zoophytes or Plant-Animals which remote absence of proving might unto many seem to be ridiculous But our paradox will offend none who moderatly understands it First of all it is not to be doubted but that some flowers do accompany the Sun as well in cleer days in those wherein the Sun doth not shine as in nights themselves they attesting that they have a motion sense and love of the Sun because without which it is impossible for them to accompany the hidden Sun For even as late in the evening they loose the Sun in the West the which while he hastens towards the East doth not operate amongst us who abide in the shadow of the earth yet in the mean time whether the night be hot be cold be cleer or rainy the flowers notwithstanding do not cease equally to bend themselves towards the east Which thing first of all poynts out that there is in them a knowledge of the rising and circuite of the Sun in what part he is to set and in what to rise cal thou it the instinct of nature or as it listeth thee For names will not change the matter the matter it self is of a deed done but the deed hath its cause in the flower But that these things do thus happen in plants vegetatively enlivened it is the lesse wonder But that they have place also in Minerals I thus prove There is almost nothing made in nature without a proper motion and nothing is moved voluntarily or by it self but by reason of the property put into it by the Creator which property the Antients name a proper love and for this cause they will have self-love to be the first born daughter of nature given unto it and bred in it for its own preservation And when this is present there is of necessity also a Sympathy and Antipathy in respect of the diversity of objects For so the feathers of other birds are said to undergo rottennesse by the feathers or wings of an Eagle and cloath made of the wools of sheep that died of their own accord is soon of its own accord in the holes which are beaten thorow it resolved as it were with rottennesse in what places the threds of the dead wool run down So a drum made of a sheep and asses skin is dumb if a neighbouring drum made of the hide of a wolf be beaten The skin of a Gulo it is a most devouring creature in Swethland stirs up in a man however sober he be and not a hunter the ordinary sleeps from hunting and eating if the party sleeping be covered with the same But what are these things to minerals Truly I proceed from the vegetable kingdom through dead things by degrees unto stones whereunto the holy Scriptures attribute great virtue For indeed stones could neither move nor alter if they had not an act of feeling of their own object For neither could red Coral wax pale if being born about it shall touch the flesh of a menstruous woman unlesse it self felt the defects thereof For the Load-stone bewrays it self as the most manifest of stones which by a proper local motion inclines it self to the North as if it were vital But not that it is drawn by the north Because if a Load-stone be placed toward the north in a woodden box in the averse part of it upon the face of a standing pool of water the box with the other and opposite corner of the stone speedily as may be rowls it self to the North Therefore if that should be done by a drawing of the north and not by a voluntary impulsive motion of the Load-stone it self the box should in like manner presently also by the same attraction yield it self unto the north bank The which notwithstanding comes not to passe but the box together with its stone remains unmoved after that the stone together with the box hath retorted it self on the requisite side and by a requisite motion It is clear therefore that the Load-stone doth of its own free accord rowl it self to the North From whence afterwards it followes that there is in it a sense knowledge and desire unto the north and also the beginning of a conformable motion Furthermore if any one doth hold a polished piece of steel nighâ— the aforesaid box toward the South-side the Load-stone then forthwith neglects the north and turns it self to the steel so that the box not only turns it self to the steel but that it wholly also swims toward the north whence also it is plain to be seen that the Load-stone is carried with a stronger appetite to the iron than to the North and that the steel hath lesse of a successive alteration in it than the North Consequently also it is manifest that it is strong in a manifest choice of objects Some have moved a frivolous doubt about this matter To wit whether the Load stone draws the iron or indeed the iron drawes the Load-stone it self As not knowing that there is a mutual attraction on both sides which comes not by little and little by reason of much familiarity neither doth it keep respects not observe the ends of its own gain fruition circumstances or consequence Neither is that drawing subject to a flatterer oâ— defamer out it is a gift originally inbred by nature in the Archeusses on either part and marked with a proprietary character by him who made all things so that indeed if
all other Falcons which are brought that way for three dayes after Whence thou shalt conjecture what the dead Carcasses of men as well of those that are hanged as of those that are carelessely buryed may do by their odour For a Dog eats not a Dog unless he be dried in the smoak to wit while the mummy hath lost the horror of death through the estrangement of its tast in preserving from corruption but a Wolf eats a Wolf newly killed but not a putrified Wolf Whence there is a suspition that there is something in a Wolf which is superiour to a mumial appropriation Perhaps Paracelsus supposed that that was it wherein the first act of feeling of an applyed object sitteth Peradventure also for that cause they have thought the Tongue of a Wolf hung up to be adverse to the plague And moreover the dead carkasses of souldiers are at this day to be buried deeper than in times past because the Bullet of a great Gun or Musquet makes a contusion and then it takes away some part with it wherefore it produceth an open hole and at length also it begets a poysonous impression of smoak from whence the flesh round about presently looks black with a certain Gangren and it readily receives a poyson into it if not in life as leastwise soon after death to wit while as through a speedy putrefaction of the flesh being combibed into the earth a cadaverous hoary or fermental putrefaction doth arise unto all which is joyned in the Archeus of the dying-souldier an Idea of revenge which is prone to putrefaction From thence into the air a monstrous Gas I say is pouted out into the air which smires the Archeusses of the living with terrour For it is with a dead carkass just even as with horse-dung which doth not putrifie so long as it is hot But when it grows dry and the Salt-Peter thereof hath departed from thence the dung also inclines to be transchanged into the liquor of the earth For otherwise if the dung be restrained from putrefaction through the be-sprinkling and stirring of horse-piss on it and into it it produceth much Salt-Peter For behold thou how powerful a nourishment the mushrome of one night is for indeed a Mushrome is the fruit of the juice Leffas or of plants being coagulated and near to its first Being the which I have elsewhere shewn but after it hath assumed the putrefaction of the earth through continuance how cruel a poyson for choaking doth it bring forth We must therefore have a diligent care that a fermental putrefaction doth not arise in the reliques of the last digestion For indeed the plague privily entred my own house through a Chamber-Maid she forthwith recovered Both my Eldest Sons being sore troubled in their mind shew an undaunted courage and concealed that they were vexed with a continual combat of sighing at the mouth of their stomach and when as through the wiles and framed deceits of my prevalent Enemies I was detained at my own house under prevention of an Arrest both my Sons also would not by forsaking me go into the Country and since they had observed at other times that they were refreshed by swimming in the midst of Summer they swam thrice without my knowledge whence transpiration through the poâ—es being stopped up both of them being forthwith devolved into a Fever together with a dejected appetite pain of the head and a Catochus or unsensible detainment of the Soul with a pricking of the whole body they died among the Nuns swearing that they would admit of my remedies but after that they had received my Sons they refused forraign remedies The Eldest indeed perished without any mark or signal token even after death because his skin being cooled by swimming nothing outwardly appeared But the other shewed only a small black and blew Pustule in his loyns and the loss of these my Sons I frequently behold as if it were present and thou mayest suppose that it gave a beginning unto this Treatise I leave vengeance unto my Lord whom I humbly beseech that he would spare my Enemies and bestow upon them the light of Repentance CHAP. XV. The Signs I Have hitherto written unwonted Paradoxes my understanding being without the Moon was drowned in tribulations there was a matter most full of terrour horrour and of difficulties present a great Reader uncapable of the best things a darksom brevity of beginning and a hateful novelty although a very necessary one But that which chiefly blinds us in the Pest is the want of an exquisite and unseparable sign to wit through the admonition whereof we may be able timely enough to prevent or withstand it by remedies Nevertheless whatsoever created thing is in any place it hath its own discernable signs by which it may be fitly distinguished from other things and these those which do precede the plague do accompany it or soon follow after it But those signs which go before it do make for its prevention but whatsoever signs do afterwards follow serve more for others than for the miserable sick But the accompanying signs alone do discern of the cure And moreover the signs of a plague to come are decyphered in the heavens if the Firmament sheweth the handy-works of the Lord in the earth That the signs thereof are badly referred by Astrologers unto twelve divisions of causes I have already before sufficiently manifested But Gaffarel hath lately described an Hebrew Alphabet from the scituation of the stars and authority of the Rabbins by an argument ridiculous enough whereby the Hebrews devise such wan signs as if God had now the Rabbins only as his servants unto whom he may communicate his secret counsels For Christians do not consider the shamefulness of those positions who suffer such kind of books to be printed For neither do the fixed stars change their places that they may sometime describe these and sometime other things to come the which in the first place is contrary to all Astrology Comets also the Meteors Trabes Dragons Darts and other monstrous signs of that sort being oft-times popular have foreshewn popular plagues but not by a rational discourse or Theories of the Planets and much less by the Alphabet of the Hebrews for irregular lights do not obey set rules For the Astrologers of Jerusalem although most skilful in their art yet they were altogether ignorant of the signification as also of the apparition of the star of Bethlehem For the Lord will not do a word which he will not reveal to his Servants and Prophets Amos 3. But of these things Artificers have no knowledge because new lights have been oftentimes mortal and oft-times have directly signified prosperous things For monstrous signs do in the hand of the Lord make manifest his secret judgements neither doth he manifest those but to whom he will For truly the Conjunctions Oppositions and Quadrants of the Stars likewise their Eclipses Retrogradations Banishments Combustions Receptions and other impediments are