frequently happens near to the Moons quarters whose middle is marked by the Moons Full and New Aspect being when it flows with the greatest force causing the highest high waters and the lowest low waters and tends towards its ending when it remits from its height and intends in lowness This augmentation and diminution may be resembled to the fermentation of Wine or Beer swelling gradually untill its height and thence decreasing again Touching the beginning and ending of the Seas single diurnal circuit if we consider it simpliciter it hath none because it is ever in motion as never being eased by a total rest but if agreeing to state the beginning where the Ocean is slowest in its course and thence tending to a swifter motion then the Proposition is resolveable And according to this Supposition the beginning and ending must be moveable differing every single course near 11 degrees This by the way Returning to explain the cause of the gradual augmentation of water and intention of force I am to remember you of the great proportion of the Oceans peregrin Elements consisting of most Earth then Air and lastly fire of whose close coherence with the waters their saltness is an undoubted argument These salin particles violently detaining the waters from recovering the center must necessarily add force to the gravity of the waters and consequently in intending their force they must also augment them in quantity because the more force the waters use the more in quantity they bear along with them The detention of the said salin particles being at their beginning of no great strength or in no great quantity do therefore cause no great intention of the Oceans force but every single period piercing gradually by rarefaction upon the waters must necessarily also augment their tumefaction gradually higher and higher every day untill at last being arrived to their height of penetration which ordinarily happens in 15 circuits the Ocean is likewise elevated unto its height Some of these salin particles being penetrated through the body of the waters are gradually depressed to the ground through their own disposition and the weight of the Ocean others being attrited and confused through their passive motion against the water and the decess of their heaviest particles do more and more gradually desist from their violent detention every circuit returning to the bottom and so the Ocean doth also gradually every day incline nearer and nearer to its natural force and detumescence of its water untill it is returned to its own proper course at which season its force and intumescence are equally at their lowest During this space those subsiding particles begin again to be expanded rarefied and attenuated because of the grinding of the water against them and through the expansion of the aerial and igneous parts adunited to them do bear up again The others elevated atop beginning to concentrate through the conquiescence of the Sea are ready to be compressed downwards both which gradually striving a reciprocal meeting do in the foregoing manner gradually reunite the force and augmentation of the Water V. Here we cannot but admit the Suns intense hear every day beating down the torrid Zone to be a great instrumental and adjuvant cause to the stirring of the aforesaid salin particles But this continuing in one measure equality and station in respect to the torrid Zone all the year long cannot in any wise be thought the principal cause of a motion varying twice every day Likewise the Moon being beset with a great quantity of dampish and heavy particles doth every day spread down some of those particles whereby the Ocean is also gradually filled more more every day And like as these said particles are most apt to rain down the nearer the Moon doth appropinquate to the Ecliptick because the air enjoyeth a greater subtility there from the rarefaction of the Sun hence it is that the Moon frees her self most of these heavy concomitants near her Conjunction and at her apposition So they are most apt to ascend the further the Moon is declined from the Ecliptick as happens in her quarters when for that reason the waters are also at their lowest That these two Lights are accidental causes of the intention of the Oceans force and daily augmentation of its waters is plain enough and their mutual concurrence to the effecting of the same effect we have confirmed beyond all doubting whereby the absurdity of the Moons compression proposed by Des-Cartes and so disagreeing with his own position of the nature of the air is likewise set before you The Moon near her Conjunction makes very high waters because conversing with the hot rayes of the Sun sends down a great number of the foresaid bodies and not because she is impregnated with the light of the Sun whereby she should be grown more potent to excite vapours and exhalations This is ridiculous for we find other bodies to be swelled near that time not only through exhalations raised out of themselves but particularly through particles demitted by the conveyance of the air into their pores The like happens although in a weaker manner when the Moon is in her full Aspect because of her nearer approximation to the Ecliptick But much more in a Lunar Eclipse because she is then found directly in the Ecliptick And most of all yea twice higher than ordinary at the Full Moon of March and September because the Sun being then in the AEquinoxial and most directly over the torrid Zone under which the greatest body of the Ocean floats and the Moon in the same way near the Ecliptick must needs joyntly cause a vast decidence of the forenamed bodies intending and augmenting the waters Or to declare the matter plainer to you The continuation of the Seas Motion forward is not only depending upon the pulsion of succeeding parts bending by refraction naturally forward but also by a kind of attraction or suction of preceding parts thus Suppose the Earth to be excavated into certain great cavities like to great pipes whereof of those that are formed from the East towards the West by the South the furthermost are alwaies deeper and longer than those which are nearest to the East Likewise conceive such Cavities framed in the same proportion to one another from West back again to the East by the North Now I say that the deepest and furthermost cavity must alwaies attract the water out of the shallower and lesser in the same manner as the longer pipe of a sucker a Siphon as some do call it must attract all the moisture of the shorter because the parts of water being continuous and consequently cleaving to one another the lesser part must follow and yield to the greater the which through its crastitude being pressed forwards must also draw the lesser part after Since then the water is no sooner arrived into one cavity but is thence drawn into another hence it is that this tumefaction of waters is not sensible to us in the Ocean
that which bendeth to it it argueth that it is good You may reject my definition of Good because according to it it follows that God is conserved by his creatures since he is known to bend to them In no wise for God doth not properly bend to his creatures because he is every where with them But Gods creatures may be properly said to bend to him because bending doth follow a need and want of conservation which need being in all his creatures but not in God they do bend to their Creator IV. To avoid falsities and errors in this nice point it will not be amisse for you to observe a distinction between these two predicates to be good and to do good These are oftentimes confounded by many Divines and so thereby they fall into gross errors To be good denotes a formality of good as it doth concur to the further constitution of a Being by its modality To do good is an action whereby effects are produced from a good Being Now these actions are called good because they proceed from a good Being and not because they are essentially good and constitute an essential difference from its Being So that good actions are signs of goodnesse in a Being and not the goodnesse it self To do good therefore is onely to act from a good principle and to give signs of the goodnesse of a Being This distinction proveth very usefull and expedient to the discussing of the doubts touching Free-will Annex to this observation that in a large sense Moral good is taken for good as it is defined above and extendeth to other creatures than unto man onely for this reason because Moral good as it is synonimous to a mean and inferiour good is become so to all in being changed from the highest good through the deffecting of man from his highest good to a mean or moral good In a strict sense it is taken for the goodnesse of man in his actions or manners onely V. How doth Moral Good turn to Moral Evil This Question may be variously understood First as good importeth a natural good in the second acception and as it denotes a goodnesse in the Being and not in its action in this sense moral good cannot change into moral evil because nothing doth corrupt it self I mean its own Being and Essence If moral good is taken for a moral good action then it is coincident with a true action which is such as God doth require from us and is conformable to that action in which God did create us I say in which for all beings are created to be in action and not through which because that specifieth Creation According to this acception then are morally good actions said to be such as are true or conformable to their Pattern If these actions are false and difformable from their Pattern then they become evil These actions do proceed from a free cause and not necessary for then man could never have committed any evil The freedome of this causality consisteth in an indifferency to Good and Evil. The state of man wheren he is at present is neutral that is natural which is a state neither supernatural or preternatural I prove it A supernatural state is wherein man is most good or consisteth of good in the highest degree A Preternatural state is wherein a man is at the worst or consisteth of evil in the lowest degree But a man in a natural state is neither most good nor worst in evil Therefore he must needs be in a neutral state VI. Man as he is in a natural state is in a middle state between super-natural and preter-natural I prove it is a property of a Middle or Medium to participate of both extreams But man in a natural state participates of both the others Ergo He is in a middle state I confirm the Minor The good which man doth act is not the best good neither is the evil which man acteth the worst evil for the Devils act worse Ergo It participateth somewhat of good in the highest degree and of evil in the worst Or the actions which a natural man performeth are neither the worst or the best Therefore it participates of each Another property of a natural or middle state is to have a disposition or capacity of becoming to be either of its extreams This I prove also to be in man as he is in this present state Many natural men are glorified and many are damned Ergo A natural man hath a disposition to either Moral Evil doth corrupt a man in that it partially destroyeth his perfection Moral Evil is either an Evil of the soul or body or of both CHAP. V. Of Theologick Good and Theologick Evil. 1. An Explanation of the Definition of Theologick Good 2. An Explication of the Definition of Theologick Evil. 3. What honest usefull and pleasant Good is 4. What Natural Sensible and Moral Good is 1. THeologick Good doth perfectionate a man in a supernatural state only For a natural man as long as he doth continue in a natural state cannot be theologically good or do a good act that is theologically good A supernatural state is wherein a man is above his natural state and is at his greatest perfection II. Theologick Evil is directly contrary to Theologick Good Neither is it possible that both these should be in one subject there being no greater contraries than Theologick Good and Theologick Evil. They are most remote from one another so that there is an infinite proportion of distance between them Theologick Evil doth make a man worst he cannot be worse than when he is theologically evil neither is there then any capacity or disposition remaining in him whereby he may be changed into Good So likewise a man who is Theologically Good hath no disposition to Theologick Evil. Theologick Good implieth a triple Good 1. It imports a Theological good cause or which doth make a man perfect in a supernatural state and so God is the only Theologick Good 2. It is taken for a Being which is theologically Good or for a Being which is at its greatest perfection and so may man in his entire state be termed Theologically Good 3. It may be understood for an action which is Theologically Good that is true and conformable to its pattern and of this Good is man also capable in a supernatural state The Theologick Good which is in God is called Good through it self or Bonum per se. This Bonum is otherwise called Summum Bonum objectivum or Beatitudo objectiva But the joy which we receive from that objective happinesse is called Beatitudo formalis The Theologick Good which was in all his creatures is a Derivative Good or Bonum per participationem The Peripateticks divide Good in that which is honest usefull and pleasant Honest Good Bonum bonestum is which is agreeable to Right Reason and therefore they say it is Desirable through it self 2. Useful Good is that which is desired for its
dense body wherefore it is ridiculous to opinionate that lumen of the Stars otherwise termed their Influences should be the causes of so great effects upon great bodies as are adscribed to them VI. Colours are generally divided by the Peripateticks into two sorts viz. into true and apparent True Colours are such as do really inhere in their subjects in the same manner as they are represented to the eye Apparent ones are those which are not really inherent in their subjects in the same manner as they seem to be to our sight such are the colours of a Rainbow or of a Peacocks feathers or of the Sea-water because these according to the several distances and position of the eye seem divers The cause they impute to the light Lumen which according to its various aspects renders the said colours various the errour of this Doctrine will appear from these Conclusions 1. All Apparent colours are real and true colours as for their being real colours but few do doubt of it because they do really move the sight That they are true colours I prove hence That which is a real colour must be a true colour because a being and true are convertible ens vernm convertuntur wherefore if it be a colour it must be a true colour or else none for it doth as really and truly move the sight as that which is strictly called a true colour or how should we see it else To this you reply that you do not deny it to be true a colour in one sense namely metaphysically but in another and in respect to a true colour strictly so called it is not true I answer That all the difference I find between them is that the one is more durable or less changeable than the other which doth not make the one more or less true than the other for did an apparent colour move the sight otherwaies than it doth it would be no true colour but it moves the senses as it is and to most mens sight it is the same continuing its duration For when we see a Rainbow its colours do appear the same to all standing in the same place but were they not true they would appear in one shape to one and in another to another As for their different appearances and shapes at several distances and positions is as well incident to those which they call true colours as to apparent ones For a Picture where the colours are all real and true will vary at several distances and positions You will say That a Picture will not vary in colour if you look upon it from the right opposite place where the light is cast in a due proportion I answer Neither will that which you call the apparent colour of a Picture vary keeping the same place and distance And what difference can you then make between them The only difference between them is their more or less durability and changeableness which proceeds from its greater or less compactness of mixture The colour of a Rainbow is as true a colour at that position and distance as of any other object it differing alone in durability for suppose a colour to be altered by a reduplication or over-casting of another colour in substance but the same in appearance as for instance a painted face having its natural colour hid under a painted colour certainly you will say that the latter is only an apparent colour if so wherein is the latter different from the former being a true colour as you call it but in durability To wit the paint wears off and the other abides The same is observable in the clouds whose lasting colour is blewish their fading or painted colours are the rayes of the Sun incorporated with their bodies really and truly altering their lasting colours nevertheless this latter is as true a colour as the paint was upon a painted visage VII The differences and number of colours are various and many for every temperament hath a several colour attending it But as it was not every insensible alteration of temperament that constituted a new temperature saving that alone which is sensible so neither doth every insensible alteration of colour constitute a new colour but only such a one as is sensible Colours are either durable and less mixt mixti è paucioribus non vero minus mixti or changeable and more mixt that is with extrinsick heterogeneous bodies So that a durable colour arises from a compact temperament of the Elements included by extrinsick bodies the other depends upon a less compact union of the Elements Changeable colours are various also according to the lights reflection or refraction and its various incidencies upon objects which causeth them to appear either whiter or blacker or otherwise lighter or darker A changeable colour is sometimes accidental to a persistent colour as appears by the fore-mentioned instance of a painted face Colours are extreme or intermediate Extreme ones are such as cannot be intended or heightned in their action as black I mean that which is blackest cannot be heightned that is it cannot be supposed to pinch and drown the light more than it doth These extreme colours depend upon the extreme or greatest proportion of the superating Element in reference to the whole So that in case fire is the greatest predominant its body is white if the earth its subject is black According to this supposition there are four extreme colours because there are four extreme proportions of the Elements Which are these White Black Crystalline and Pellucid This is made known to us 1. In that Sea-coal consisting of most earth is black 2. A Flame consisting of most fire is white to wit the Sun 3. The Ayr consisting most of ayry parts is Pellucid 4. Ice consisting most of waterish parts is crystalline I will further prove this by reason If blackness be proper to earth and earthy bodies whiteness must be proper to fire and fiery bodies they being opposite correspondents to one another in all qualities The colour which is in water and waterish bodies is neither white or black ergo it must be an extreme colour of it self for since that each Element obtains distinct extreme qualities the same must also be in colours Who would say that water is white or black or partakes of any white or black from fire or earth wherefore Theophrastus was to be blamed for adscribing yellow to fire and white to the three others That which moved him to appropriate yellow to focal fire was because for the most part in flaming or burning it seems yellow and reddish To this I answer That the colour of focal fire is not an extreme colour because fire is not inherent in focal fire in its greatest proportion and predominance it having much earth to obscure its extream whiteness and so it is turned to a yellow or red but where fire is in his greatest predominance and least counterpoised by earth there it seems alwaies white as appears in the colour
the cause of Discords and Concords between Sounds The reason of Concords in Colours is because such a distance or opposition of colour doth set off another according to that Maxime Contraria juxta se invicem posita magis elucescunt Whereas were this distance but of one degree it would rather detract from one another as being defective in setting one another off So a little sour added to much sweet makes an unpleasant tast Likewise in Sounds an Unison and a Second make Discords because there is too little Treble or altitude in a Second to respond to the deep Base of an Unison and hence you may easily conceive the Grounds and Causes of all Concords and Discords The cause of the different sounds of Trebles and Bases is the thickness of the String or percutient vibrating the air in such a degree of obtuseness or such a degree of thinness of the String percussing the air acutely or thus the Bubble which a course String plufs up must needs be thicker then that of a fine one VIII Sounds vary according to the qualification of the percutient in consistency bigness and action A percutient being thick makes a thick Sound so the Base String of an Instrument makes a thick or course Sound A thin percutient beats a thin or sharp sound hence a smal string sounds sharply So that according to the greater or lesser courseness or thickness thinness or sharpness of a percutient the Sound is made more or less course and sharp The rarity of a percutient or its density cause little or no noyse if any a very dumb one because the air is obtruded by neither of them but is only percolated through them A great percutient makes a great noyse a small one little The percussion of a percutient being continuous or interrupted slow or quick smart or feeble raises a continuous or interrupted slow or quick smart or feeble Noyse The Heavens that is the fiery bodies moving with a rapid motion through or with their own Region of fire make some noyse but so little that it would scarce be audible supposing a man were near to them They make some little noyse because they being bodies somewhat continuous and obtruding that little ayr which is admitted to the fire in some measure they must consequently make a noise but such as is soon deaded through the contiguity of the fire Among these Bodies the Moon makes the greatest noyse because its body is more continuous its situation is neerest to the region of the air Supposing two celestial bodies should extraordinarily meet dash against one another they would make an indifferent audible noyse because the peregrine air being thereby more pent its obtrusion must necessarily be the greater A Stella cadens or a falling Star yields no noyse because the air gives way in it self as fast as the other can make way down but did it fall down swifter then the air could give way then of necessity it must obtrude it and raise a sound or did it fall upon air being pent by it and another Body it would do the same with more efficacy Clouds Rain and Hail make a small noyse in the air although not very sensible because the air is loose and free whereby it giveth way but where ever it is pent by them and other Bodies they raise a sound hence Hail and Rain make a noyse when they shrowd the air between themselves and the earth hence it is also why Streams or a Channel of water is not heard unless where it beats smartly against it self or against shallows of Gravel or Pebble Focal fire glowing or any thing within it makes no noyse in it self unless its body being rendered more continuous in a flame is beated against the air or the air is obtruded against it by another continuous Body as by a fan or wind out of Bellows A hissing noyse is made in the air when it is smartly percussed without being pent by any other Body but by its own parts and the percutient Hence it is that a Bullet shot or the switching of the air with a Switch make a hissing noise but their noyse is much altered where the air is pent by it and another solid body A quaking noise as of an Earthquake or the quavering upon an Instrument proceeds from the interruption repetition of the percussion By how much the more the air is pent from all parts the greater and violenter sound it makes Hence it is that the noise of a Gun or of any thing bursting is of that lowdness This also proves a cause why a soft whispering or blast of wind makes a great sound improportionable to so soft a percussion in a Trunk or any other close round long passage Hence a Trumpet or a Hunters Horn do make so great a noyse and is so far propagated IX A sound is either reflexe or refracted A reflexe sound is when it is propelled against a continuous body by which it is repulsed or whence it doth rebound so that the reflection of a Sound is nothing else but a rebounding of it from a continuous body Sounds acquire an increase or a lowder noyse from their rebounding in a like manner as Light is intended by its reflection The greater this reflection is the greater noyse it makes The greatest Reflection is when a Sound is reflected by a circular reflecting continuous body because the sound being circularly propagated for a noyse made in the open air is heard round about is equally reflected from all parts and its parts do as it were reflect back again against one another whereby the sound is majorated to its greatest intention Hence it is that Chappels being circularly rooft reflect a great Sound and were their Bottom also circular the sound would be by far more intended By the way take notice that an Eccho is not a reflection alone of a sound neither is it caused by it alone for all grant that there is a great reflection of a Sound in Chappels and yet there is no Eccho All sorts of Metals formed into a Concave as Pels Bowls made of metal all sorts of drinking Glasses give a great sound for their tinging noise is nothing else but a great intended reflext quaking noise because the percussed sound is reflext circularly within upon the connuated parts of the said Metals Glasses From the same reason it is that all hollow continuated bodies as most sorts of Instruments viz. Virginals Viols Lutes c. make so great and improportionable a sound to so small a percussion A man would imagine that the sound caused by striking of a String of an Instrument should come all from within the Instrument and that there were no sound at all above but it is otherwise 'T is true the greater sound is protruded from within nevertheless there is a sound also without but it being the lesser is overcome and drowned by the protrusion of the greater sound from within This is evident in
not prove a regret to me the answering of such desires in Latine will obliege me to remain Courteous Reader Your humble Servant To Momus THou cross-grain'd Mome 't is time forbear to squint If not I 'll coin and cast thee in the Mint Bodel be stamp a dog gnorring at a bone More stupid more dull than any dunghitl stone If now thou shouldst grow civil beyond what I can Hope then thou art no more a beast but a true man The Contents of the Principles of PHILOSOPHY The FIRST PART The First Book CHAP. I. Of matters preceding and following the nature of Philosophy 1. THe derivation of Philosophy pa. 1. 2. What it was first called and why its name was changed ibid. 3. The original of Philosophy The first Inventers of it p. 2. 4. What dispositions are required in a Philosopher The difficulty in attaining to Philosophy The pleasure arising from the possession of it ib. 5. The esteem and worth of Philosophy and Philosophers p. 3. 6. The use and fruits reaped from Philosophy and redounding in general to every one in particular to a Divine Civilian and Physitian p. 4. CHAP. II. Of the nature of Philosophy 1. Whether Philosophy can be defined p. 5. 2. Various definitions of Philosophy How Plato did define it The definition of Damascen ib. 3. The Authors definition of it That the Essence of God is as sensibly apprehended as the essence of his Creatures p. 6. 4. What is implyed by Knowledge 7. 5. The Subjectum circa quod or Object of Philosophy p. 8. 6. The Subjectum inhesionis or Subject wherein Philosophy is inherent ib. CAAP. III. Of Philosophers 1. What a Philosopher is Four properties necessary in a Philosopher That nothing is more hatefull and noysom than a man but half Learned p. 8 9. 2. The first Universities The rise and number of Sects sprung from these Universities The Fame of Socrates p. 10. 3. What means Philosophers made use of to procure themselves a Repute and Fame p. 11. CHAP. IV. Of the distribution of Philosophy in parts 1. In what manner Philosophy contains its subjected parts p. 12. 2. How Objects move the Understanding by their first and immediate Representation ib. 3. That the Supreme and immediate Division of Philosophy is into Practick and Theorick Knowledge 13. 4. An Objection against the Subdidivision of Practick and Theorick Knowledge ib. 5. How Knowledge is subdivided ib. 6. That the Subdivision is adequate to all its Inferiour Parts p. 14. 7. Why Practick and theoretick Philosophy are not treated of separately their Inferiour Parts are ib. 8. That the Common Quadripartition of Philosophy is too strict p. 15. CHAP. V. 1. What Method is requisite in the Ordering of the particular Treatises of the several parts of Philosophy p. 15. 2. What Order is observed in the placing of the General parts of Philosophy ib. p. 16. The FIRST PART The Second Book CHAP. I. Of the Nature of Metaphysicks 1. OF the Etymology and Synonima's of Metaphysicks p. 17. 2. The Authors Definition of Metaphysicks That a Being is univocal to an objective and a real Being p. 18. 3. The true formal and adequate Object of Metaphysicks p. 19. 4. Wherein Metaphysicks differ from Philosophy ib. CHAP. II. Of Precision 1. What Precision is p. 19. 2. That a real Precision is not properly a Precision p. 20. 3. That Precision constitutes a Positive and Negative ib. 4. The Difference of Precision That all Precisions are formal ib. CHAP. III. The Manner of Precision 1. How a more universal Being is precinded from its less universal Beings p. 21. 2. How an universal Being is equally abstracted from an Ens Rationis Objective Being and Ens Reale a real Being ib. 3. How a common Concept is precinded from a Substance and Accident ib. CHAP. IV. Of the Definition of a Being 1. What the proper name of the Nature of a Being is The improbation of several Definitions of a Being p. 22. 2. Objections against the common Definition of a Being received by most late Philosophers p. 23. 3. That there is no common Concept to a possible real Being and an actual real Being ib. 4. That there is an univocal Concept to all immaterial and material Objective and Real Substantial and Accidental Beings p. 24. 5. The Authors Definition of a Being That our Knowledge is comparatively as perfect as Adams was ib. CHAP. V. Of the Formality of an Objective being 1. The Authors Definition of a Ens Rationis Being of the Mind or an Objective Being Wherein a Real Being differs and agrees with an Objective Being p. 27. 2. The Proof of the fore-given Definition That whatever we think when we do not think upon a Real Being is an Objective Being That whatever we think or can think when we do not think upon a Real Being is like to a Real Being p. 28. 3. Another Argument to prove the Formality of a mental Being to consist in likenessto a eral Being 30. 4. The Division of an Objective Being p. 31 32. CHAP. VI. Queries concerning a Real and an Objective Being 1. Whether an Objective Being and a Real Being differ essentially one from the other p. 33. 2. Whether a Rose in the winter is a real Being ib. 3. If Impossibility be the Formality of an Objective Being ib. 4. Whether the Ratio formalis of an Objective Being consists in a conjunction of many Beings which in that conjunction are impossible to exist really p. 34. 5. That an Objective Being is not existent before it is understood A Confutation of Smigl ib. p. 35. 6. That an Objective Being is only proper to the understanding p. 36. CHAP. VII The Manner of Forming an Objective Being 1. That all Formations of an Ens Rationis are single That the Second Operation of the Understanding is the same in Specie with the first A Division of an Objective Being into Single and Complexe p. 37 38. 2. That a Non Ens cannot be known Two acceptions of a Non Ens p. 39. CHAP. VIII Of the Formality of a Real Being 1. What a Real Being is according to the Author The Derivation of res and aliquid That it is very improper to call it a real Being The Cause of that Denomination p. 40. 2. That the Phansie is the immediate Subject of an Ens Reale p 41. 3. That the Understanding is only the Mediate Subject of Real Beings ib. CHAP. IX Of the Division of a Being into Universal and Singular 1. A Being is divisible into Univerversal and Singular p. 42. 2. What an universal being is according to the Author ib. 3. What an universal Real being is 43. 4. What an universal Objective being is ib. CHAP. X. Of universal and singular Beings 1. That there are no Platonick Idea 's That universal beings are not really different from their singulars Wherein an universal is distinguisht from a singular That singulars being abolisht universals thence abstracted are also abolisht with them p. 44. 2. That universal Beings are
of the first knock or division of the Chaos By what means the Earth got the Center and how the waters Ayr and Fire got above it Why a Squib turnes into so many whirles in the Ayr. ib. 6. The qualifications of the first Light of the Creation A plain demonstration proving the circular motion of the Heavens or of the Element of fire to be natural and of an Eval Duration ib. 59 CHAP. XI Of the second Division of the Chaos 1. An Enarration of Effects befalling the Elements through the second knock The proportion of each of the Elements in their purity to the Peregrine Elements p. 60. 2. The ground of the forementioned proportion of the Elements 61 62. 3. That fire and ayr constitute the Firmament p. 63. 4. A grand Objection answered ib. 64. CHAP. XII Of the Third Division of the Chaos 1. The effects of the third knock Why earth is heavier than water Why water is more weighty near the top than towards the bottom Why a man when he is drowned doth not go down to the bottom of the Ocean Why a potch'd Egge doth commonly rest it self about the middle of the water in a Skillet Why the middle parts of Salt-water are more saltish than the upper parts p. 66 67. 2. Whence the earth hapned to be thrust out into great protuberancies How the earth arrived to be disposed to germination of Plants A vast Grove pressed into the earth p. 68. 3. The cause of the waters continual circular motion ib. 69. 4. The cause of the rise of such a variety of Plants p. 71. CHAP. XIII Of the Fourth Fifth Sixth and Seventh Division of the Chaos 1. An Enarration of the Effects of the fourth Division That Nature created the first bodies of every Species the greatest is instanced in Bees Fishes and Fowl That all Species are derived from one individuum That Adam was the greatest man that ever was since the Creation What those Glants were which the Poets faigned p. 72 73 74. 2. How the Sun and Moon were created That a Lioness is not more vigorous than a Lion p. 75. 3. How the Stars of the Firmament were created p. 76. 4. How the durable Clouds of the Ayr were created ib. 5. The Effects of the fifth Division ib. 6. The Effects of the sixth Division ib. 7. The Effects of the last Division ib. CHAP. XIV Of the Second and Third Absolute Qualities of the Elements 1. What is understood by Second Qualities p 78. 2. What the Second Quality of Earth is p. 79. 3. Aristotle's Definition of Density rejected ib. 4. The Opinions of Philosophers touching the Nature of Density p. 80. 5. The forementioned Opinions confuted p. 81. 6. The Description of Indivisibles according to Democritus disproved That all Figures are divisible excepting a Circular Minimum That Strength united proveth strongest in around Figure and why ib. 82 83. 7. What the Second Quality of Fire is Cardan Averrhoes Zimara Aristotle Tolet and Zabarel their Opinions touching the Nature of Rarity confuted p. 84 85 86 87. 8. The Second Quality of Water Aristotle Joh. Grammat Tolet Zabarel and Barthol their sence of Thickness and Thinness disproved p. 88. 9. What the Second Quality of Ayr is p. 89. 10. What is intended by third fourth or fifth Qualities An Enumeration of the said Qualities What Obtuseness Acuteness Asperity Levor Hardness Rigidity Softness Solidity Liquidity and Lentor are and their kinds ib. 90 91 92. CHAP. XV. Of the Respective Qualities of the Eements particularly of Fire Earth and Water 1. What is meant by the Respective Qualities of the Elements Why they are termed Second Qualities p. 93. 2. That heat is the second respective or accidental quality of fire That fire is not burning hot within its own Region That fire doth not burn unless it flames is proved by an Experiment through Aq. fort ib. 3. That heat in fire is violently produced The manner of the production of a Flame What it is which we call hot warm or burning How fire dissolves and consumes a body into ashes p. 94. 4. That Heat is nothing else but a Multiplication Condensation and Retention of the parts of fire The degrees of Heat in fire and how it cometh to be warm hot scorching hot blistering hot burning hot and consuming hot p. 95. 5. A way how to try the force of fire by Scales Why fire doth not alwayes feel hot in the Ayr. ib. 96. 6. Plato and Scaliger their Opinion touching heat p. 97. 7. The Parepatetick Description of Heat rejected How fire separateth Silver from Gold and Lead from Silver p. 98. 8. What the second respective quality of Earth is What Cold is The manner of operation of Cold upon our Tâ—â—ct p. 100. 9. The second respective quality of Water That Water cooles differently from Earth ib. 10. Aristotle and Zabarel their wavering Opinions touching Cold. That Earth is the primum frigidum ib. 101. CHAP. XVI Of the remaining Respective Qualilities of the Elements 1. The second Respective Quality of the Ayr. That water cannot be really and essentially attenuated The state of the Controversie 102 103. 2. That Ayr cannot be really and essentially incrassated Why a man whilest he is alive sinkes down into the water and is drowned and afterwards is cast up again That a woman is longer in sinking or drowning than a man The great errour committed in trying of witches by casting them into the water p. 104 105 106. 3. That a greater Condensation or Rarefaction is impossible in the Earth p. 107. 4. In what sense the Author understands and intends Rarefaction and Condensation throughout his Philosophy p. 108. 5. The third Respective Quality of Fire What Driness is The definition of Moysture The third Respective Qualities of water and Ayr. Aristotles description of Moysture That Water is the primum humidum In what sense Ayr is termed dry in what moyst p. 109. CHAP. XVII Of Mixtion 1. What Mixtion is Three conditions required in a Mixtion p 110. 2. Whether Mixtion and the generation of a mixt body differ really p. 111. 3. Aristotles definition of Mixtion examined Whether the Elements remain entire in mixt bodies 112. 4. That there is no such Intension or Remission of Qualities as the Peripateticks do apprehend The Authors sense of Remission and Intention p. 113. 5. That a Mixtion is erroneously divided into a perfect and imperfect Mixtion p. 114. CHAP. XVIII Of Temperament 1. That Temperament is the form of Mixtion That Temperament is a real and positive quality p. 115. 2. The definition of a Temperament Whether a Temperament is a single or manifold quality Whether a complexion of qualities may be called one compounded quality p. 116. 3. VVhether a Temperament be a fift quality A Contradiction among Physitians touching Temperament Whether the congress of the four qualities effects be one Temperament or more ib. 117. 4. That there is no such thing as a Distemper What a substantial Change is p. 118. 5.
VVhat an alteration or accidental change is That the differences of Temperament are as many as there are Minima's of the Elements excepting four p. 119. CHAP. XIX Of the Division of Temperaments 1. VVhat an equal and unequal Temperament is That there never was but one temperament ad pondus That Adams Body was not tempered ad pondus That neither Gold nor any Celestial bodies are tempered ad pondus p. 120. 2. That all temperaments ad Justiriam are constantly in changing That there are no two bodies in the world exactly agreeing to one another in temperature p. 121. 3. The Latitude of temperaments How the corruption of one body ever proves the generation of another p. 122. 4. That there is no such unequal temperament as is vulgarly imagined That there is an equal temperament is proved against the vulgar opinion That where Forms are equal their matters must also be equal p. 123 124. 5. VVhat a Distemper is That Galen intended by an unequal temperature p. 125. 6. VVhen a man may be termed temperate That bodies are said to be intemperate ib. 126 127. 7. The combination of the second Qualities of the Elements in a temperature Their Effects p. 128. CHAP. XX. Of Alteration Coction Decoction Generation Putrefaction and Corruption 1. VVhat Coction and Putrefaction is The Difference between Putrefaction and Corruption p. 130. 2. The Authors Definition of Alteration The effects of Alteration ib. 3. The Division of Alteration p. 131. 4. That the first Qualities of the Peripateticks are not intended by the acquisition of new Qualities without Matter Wherein Alteration differs from Mixtion or Temperament ib. 5. The Definition of Coction Why a man was changed much more in his youth than when come to maturity p. 132 133. 6. The Constitution of women Which are the best and worst Constitutions in men That heat is not the sole cause of Coction p. 134 135. 7. The kinds of Coction What Maturation Elixation and Assation are p. 136. 8. VVhat Decoction is and the manner of it p. 137. 9. The definition of Putrefaction 139 10. VVhat Generation imports in a large and strict acception Whether the Seed of a Plant or Animal is essentially distinguisht from a young Plant or new born Animal That heat is not the sole efficient in Generation p. 139. 11. VVhether the innate heat is not indued with a power of converting adventitious heat into its own nature Whether the innate heat be Celestial or Elementary p. 140 141 142. 12. The Definition of Corruption Why the innate heat becomes oft more vigorous after violent Feavers Whether Life may be prolonged to an eval duration What the Catochization of a Flame is By what means many pretend to prolong life That the production of life to an eval duration is impossible Whether our Dayes be determined The ambiguity of Corruption Whether Corruption be possible in the Elements p. 143 to 149. CHAP. XXI Of Light 1. VVhat Light is The manner of the production of a Flame p. 150. 2. The properties and effects of Light p. 151. 3. That Light is an effect or consequent of a Flame Whence it happens that our Eyes strike fire when we hit our Foreheads against any hard Body That Light is not a quality of fire alone That Light is not fire rarefied That where there is Light there is not alwayes heat near to it How Virginals and Organs are made to play by themselves p. 152 153. 4. That Light is a continuous obduction of the Ayr. That Light is diffused to a far extent in an instant and how Why the whole tract of Air is not enlightned at once p. 154 155. 5. The manner of the Lights working upon the Eye-sight That sight is actuated by reception and not by emission p. 156. 6. The reason of the difference between the extent of illumination and calefaction That Light cannot be precipitated ib. 7. That Light is not the mediate cause of all the Effects produced by the Stars That Light hath only a power of acting immediately and per se upon the optick spirits How the Air happens to burst through a sudden great light That a sudden great Light may blind kill or cast a man into an Apoplexy p. 157. 8. How Light renders all Objects visible Why a peice of Money cast into a Basin filled with water appears bigger than it is The causes of apparent Colours Why a great Object appears but small to one afar off The difference between lux and lumen What a Beam is What a Splendour is That the Lights begot by the Stars and other flames are not distinguished specie How the Coelum Empyreum is said to be Lucid p. 158 159. CHAP. XXII Of Colours 1. The Authors Definition of a Colour That Light is a Colour Aristotles Definition of colour examined p. 160 161 162. 2. Scaligers Absurdities touching Colours and Light p. 163. 3. What colour Light is of and why termed a single Colour That Light doth not efficienter render an Object visible How a mixt Colour worketh upon the sight and how it is conveyed to it ib. 164. 4. The Causes of the variations of Mercury in its colour through each several preparation p. 165. 5. That Colours are formally relations only to our sight That a mixt colour is not an intentional quality That besides the relation of colours there is an absolute foundation in their original Subjects How the same fundamental colours act p. 166. 6. That there are no apparent colours but all are true p. 167. 7. The Differences of colours What colour focal fire is of The fundamental colours of mixt bodies p. 168 169 170 171. 8. What reflection of light is What refraction of colours is Aristotles Definition of colour rejected The Effects of a double reflection The Reasons of the variations of Colour in Apples held over the water and Looking-glasses The variation of Illumination by various Glasses p. 172. 9. The Division of Glasses The cause of the variation of colour in a Prism ib. 173 174. 10. The Nature of Refraction Why colours are not refracted in the Eye p. 175 176. CHAP. XXIII Of Sounds 1. The Definition of a Sound That the Collision of two solid Bodies is not alwayes necessary for to raise a Sound p. 177. 2. Whether a Sound be inherent in the Air or in the body sounding The manner of Production of a Sound p. 178. 3. Whether a Sound is propagated through the water intentionally only That a Sound may be made and heard under water p. 179. 4. That a Sound is a real pluffing up of the Air. How a Sound is propagated through the Air and how far Why a small Sound raised at one end of a Mast or Beam may be easily heard at the other end Why the Noise of the treading of a Troop of Horse may be heard at a far distance p. 180 181 182. 5. The difference between a Sound and a Light or Colour That it is possible for a man to hear with his eyes
The division of water p. 289. 3. VVhat a Lake is The strange vertues of some Lakes 290 291 292. 4. VVhat a Fountain is The wonderfull properties of some Fountains p. 293 to 295. 5. Of Physical Wells p. 296. Of Baths p. 297. 7. Of Rivers and their rare properties ib. 298. 8. Of the chief Straits of the Sea p. 299 230. CHAP. VII Of the Circulation of the Ocean 1. That the disburdening of the Eastern Rivers into the Ocean is not the cause of its Circulation neither are the Sunne or Moon the principal causes of this motion p. 301 302. 2. The periodical course of the Ocean The causes of the high and low waters of the Ocean p. 303 304 305. 3. How it is possible that the Ocean should move so swiftly as in 12 hours and somewhat more to slow about the terrestrial Globe p 306 307 308. 4. A further explanation of the causes of the intumescence and detumescence of the Ocean The causes of the anticipation of the floud of the Ocean 309 to 312. 5. That the Suns intense heat in the torrid Zone is a potent adjuvant cause of the Oceans circulation and likewise the minima's descening from the Moon and the Polar Regions p. 313 to 316. CHAP. VIII Of the course of the Sea towards the Polar Coasts 1. What the Libration of the Ocean is That the Tides are not occasioned by Libration The Navil of the World Whence the Seas move towards the North Polar Why the Ebb is stronger in the Narrow Seas than the Floud and why the Floud is stronger than the Ebb in the Ocean Why the Irish Seas are so rough p. 316 317 318. 2. VVhy the Baltick Sea is not subjected to Tides The rise of the East Sea or Sinus Codanus p. 319. 3. The cause of the bore in the River of Seyne p. 320. 4. The causes of the courses of the Mediterranean The rise of this Sea ib. 321. CHAP. IX Of Inundations 1. Of the rise of the great Gulphs of the Ocean The causes of Inundations That the Deluge mentioned in Genesis was not universal The explanation of the Text. p 422 323. 2. The manner of the Deluge That it was not occasioned through the overfilling of the Ocean p. 324. 3. That there hapned very great Deluges since when and where p. 325. 4. The effects of the first deluge ib. 5. Inland Inundations p. 327. CHAP. X. Of the causes of the before-formentioned properties of Lakes 1. Whence the Lake Asphaltites is so strong for sustaining of weighty bodies and why it breeds no Fish The cause of qualities contrary to these in other Lakes The cause of the effects of the Lake Lerna p. 328. 2. Whence the vertues of the Lake Eaug of Thrace Gerasa the Lake among the Troglodites Clitorius Laumond Vadimon and Benaco are derived ib. 3. Whence the properties of the Lake Larius Pilats Pool and the Lake of Laubach emanate p. 329. CHAP. XI Of the rise of Fountains Rivers and Hills 1. That Fountains are not supplied by rain p. 330. 2. Aristotles opinion touching the rise of Fountains examined p. 331. 3. The Authors assertion concerning the rise of Fountains The rise of many principal Fountains of the world ib 332. 4. Why Holland is not mountanous p. 333. 5. That the first deluge was not the cause of Hills ib. 334 6. Whence that great quantity of water contained within the bowels of the Earth is derived p. 335. 7. Whence it is that most shores are mountanous Why the Island Ferro is not irrigated with any Rivers Why the Earth is depressed under the torrid Zone and elevated towards the Polars The cause of the multitude of Hills in some Countries and scarcity in others ib. 336. 8. How it is possible for the Sea to penetrate into the bowels of the Earth p. 337. CHAP XII Of the causes of the effects produced by Fountains 1. Whence some Fountains are deleterious The cause of the effect of the Fountain Lethe of Cea Lincystis Arania The causes of foecundation and of rendring barren of other Fountains The causes of the properties of the Fountains of the Sun of the Eleusinian waters of the Fountains of Illyrium Epirus Cyreniaca Arcadia the Holy Cross Sibaris Lycos of the unctious Fountain of Rome and Jacobs Fountain p. 338 339. 2. The causes of the effects of Ipsum and Barnet Wells p. 340. 3. Whence the vertues of the Spaw waters are derived ib. 4. Of the formal causes of Baths 341. CHAP. XIII Of the various Tastes Smells Congelation and Choice of Water 1. Various tastes of several Lakes Fountain and River waters p. 342. 2. The divers sents of waters p. 343. 3. The causes of the said Tastes That the saltness of the Sea is not generated by the broyling heat of the Sun The Authors opinion ib. 4. The causes of the sents of wates p. 345. 5. What Ice is the cause of it and manner of its generation Why some Countries are less exposed to frosts than others that are nearer to the Line ib. 346. 6. The differences of frosts Why a frost doth usually begin and end with the change of the Moon p. 347. 7. The original or rise of frosty minims Why fresh waters are aptest to be frozen How it is possible for the Sea to be frozen p. 348. 8. What waters are the best and the worst the reasons of their excellency and badaess p 349 350. CHAP. XIV Of the commerce of the Ayr with the other Elements 1. How the Air moves downwards VVhat motions the Elements would exercise supposing they enjoyed their Center VVhy the Air doth not easily toss the terraqueous Globe out of its place How the Air is capable of two contrary motions 351 352. 2. That the Air moves continually from East through the South to West and thence back again to the East through the North. p. 353. 3. An Objection against the airs circular motion answered p. 354. 4. The Poles of the Air. ib. 5. The proportion of Air to Fire its distinction into three profundities p. 355 CHAP. XV. Of the production of Clouds 1. VVhat a Cloud is how generated its difference How a Rainbow is produced Whether there appeared any Rainbows before the Floud 356 2. The generation of Rain p. 357. 3. How Snow and Hail are engendred p. 358. 4. The manner of generation of winds ib. to 362. 5 The difference of winds Of Monzones Provincial winds general winds c. Of the kinds of storms and their causes What a mist and a dew are p. 362 to 370. CHAP. XVI Of Earthquakes together with their effects and some strange instances of them 1. VVhat an Earthquake is The manner of its generation The concomitants thereof p. 370. 2. The kinds and differences of Earthquakes ib. 371 372. 3. The proof of the generation of Earthquakes p. 373. 4. Their Effects upon the air p. 374. CHAP. XVII Of fiery Meteors in the Air. 1. Of the generation of a Fools fire a Licking fire Helens fire Pollux
in the understanding to a real being Ergo its Essence is derived from thence for had there never been a real being there could not have been an Objective being A real being is the foundation of an objective being because it is referred to a real being Neither is this properly a foundation because an objective being can exist without a real being so that a real being is rather to be supposed as a conditio sine qua non or a Pattern of an objective Being if a Pattern then it is no foundation for a thing abstracted from that Pattern doth exist when the Pattern is abolisht We may see the Picture or Representation of Alexander although he hath long since quitted his real Being According to this we may Metaphorically define an objective Being to be a Picture of a Real Being painted in the Mind The said Smigl in the next Page recals his Notion and doth again affirm the contrary with as little Proof as the other was Ens Rationis formaliter non potest esse nisi cognoscatur Primo probatur in iis entibus Rationis quae sine ullo fundamento finguntur ab Intellectu ut Hirco-cervus Mark he allowes some Beings not to be inherent in a Basis whereas before he granted that all beings were fundamentally but he could not tell whether their foundation was the understanding or Realities from which they were abstracted If he took the Understanding to be the Foundation of an Ens Rationis then he confounds the foundation of a being and the Subject of it into one Notion for the understanding is properly the Subject of an Objective Being and not its Foundation which rather may be attributed to the real Impression upon which an Objective Likeness is founded Nevertheless supposing his mistakes to be true and allowing either of these Acceptions he contradicts himself For here he asserts That an Objective Being cannot be formally unless it is actually understood before he saith that it can be fundamentally that is inherent in the understanding or else in the first Impression of a Real Being take him either way in the understanding before it is known Can there be any thing in the understanding but what is understood If there may then the understanding is no understanding neither will this Excuse in saying that a Being is fundamentally one and formally one for to be fundamental includes a Formality in a Foundation 2. He affirms That the Fiction of a Hirco-cervus hath no foundation which is erroneous also for it is grounded or doth properly resemble a real Buck or a Stagge upon a real Buck and a real Stagge The like Contradictions are frequent throughout the whole Dispute Whether an Objective Being is only proper to the understanding If an Objective Being is a Being because it is intelligible it is necessarily only appropriated to the understanding As for a being in the will or rational Appetite it is as all desires or beings desired are appropriated to the understanding because the understanding and will are formally one as to the Rational Faculty neither can the Will will any thing unless it be first represented in the understanding Sensitive Powers cannot frame an ens rationis because their proper Object is a Real Being CHAP. VII The Manner of Forming an Objective Being 1. That all Formations of an Ens Rationis are single That the Second Operation of the Understanding is the same in Specie with the first A Division of an Objective Being into Single and Complexe 2. That a non Ens cannot be known Two Acceptions of a Non Ens. ALL Formations of an Ens Rationis are from a single and first Operation of the understanding Wherefore hereby I would infer that the Speculation of the understanding upon these two Impressions upon the Phansie is one formally and numerically but the acts of impressing of the understanding are many differing only materially 2. That the first Operation of the mind which here I take for an Act or Impression of an Idea by the understanding upon the Phansie is no wise formally different from another as the Second or Third may be succedent upon it Hence I infer the Division of an objective Being into a single objective and complexe Objective Being What they are may be collected from the Precedents A Non Ens cannot be known because it cannot be impressed for it hath no Figure We say It or That Quiddam is a Non Ens not because we know that Quiddam which we speak of to be a Non ens for a quiddam and a non ens are Contradictories but because we conceive that quiddam not to be like to another quiddam which we had expected it should have been like to and therefore we say it or that quiddam is a non ens so that a non ens in that signification is only a difference of one being from another and in this sense we say one thing is not another as a man is no Beast or no bestial thing that is is a nothing bestial non ens bestiale or not that which doth represent a Beast 2. A Non Ens is taken for that which hath no Resemblance to any thing real nor consequently to any thing we can know for we can know nothing but what hath a resemblance to a real being wherefore we call a non ens that which cannot or doth not move our sense or understanding A non ens reale is that which cannot or doth not move our cognoscible faculty from without A non ens objectivum is whatsoever cannot or doth not move our understanding from within So that a non esse implies little more then quies rest of the understanding from Action hapning through a not moving non-cognoscibility CHAP. VIII Of the Formality of a Real Being 1. What a Real Being is according to the Author The Derivation of res and aliquid That it is very improper to call it a real Being The Cause of that Denomination 2. That the Phansie is the immediate Subject of an Ens Reale 3. That the Understanding is only the Mediate Subject of Real Beings A Real Being is that which move the understanding from without Res and Synonima's of a real being For it is called Real from Res and aliquid from aliud quid Let us enquire why Res and Aliquid should more be Synonima's to a being from without then to an Objective being Certainly Res and Aliquid rather imply a being in general then any of its Species in particular And it is probable that Ens was framed out of Res by leaving out the R and placing N. between E and S. How absurd is it then to say Ens Reale which is the same as if you said Ens Ens. For Reale is nothing else but an Adjective changed out of the Substantive res Aliquid might rather be called unumquid and it is likely that it was first so called which others probably did change out of a wantonness of Speech coveting new words and rejecting old
Situation is 8. What Duration is I. QUantity is an Attribute of a Being whereby it hath Extension of Parts II. Quantity is either Formal and Immaterial which is the extension of the Form beyond which it is not and within which it acteth or Material which is the Extension of a material Being III. Quality is whereby a being doth act as from a Cause IV. Relation is whereby one being is referred to another V. Action is whereby one being acteth upon another as through a meanes VI. Passion is whereby one being receiveth an Act from another VII Situation is whereby a being is seated in a place A Place is which doth contain a Being VIII Duration is whereby a being continueth in its Essence CHAP. XXII Of Causes 1. What a Cause is That the Dectrine of Causes belongeth to Metaphysicks 2. Wherein a Cause and Principle differ 3. What an internal Cause is What Matter is 4. What a Form is and how it is divided 5. What an external cause is I. A Cause is whereby a Being is produced It doth appertain to Metaphysicks to treat of Causes for else it would be no Science which requires the unfolding of a being by its Causes Ramus did much mistake himself in denying a place to the Doctrine of Causes in this Science and referring it altogether to Logick 'T is true that the Doctrine of Causes may conveniently be handled in Logick as Arguments by which Proofes are inferred yet as they are real and move the understanding from without they may not for Logick is conversant in Notions only and not in Realities II. A Cause differeth from a Principle or is Synonimous to it according to its various acception In Physicks it is taken for that whose presence doth constitute a Being and in that sense it is the same with an internal cause to which a Cause in its late extent is a Genus and consequently is of a larger signification A Principle sometimes denotes that whence a being hath its Essence or Production or whence it is known In this sense did Aristotle take it in the 5th Book of his Met. Chapt. 1. Whereby he did intimate a threefold Principle to wit a Principle of Constitution Generation and of Knowledge or of being known A Principle as it is received in the forementioned sense is of a larger signification then a Cause It is usually taken for a word Synonimous to a Cause In this Acception is God said to be the Principle that is the Cause of all Beings III. A Cause is either Internal or External An Internal Cause is that which doth constitute a Being by its own Presence An Internal Cause is twofold 1. Matter 2. Form Matter is an internal cause out of which a being is constituted So earth is the Matter of man because a man is constituted out of Earth Matter is remote and mediate which is out of which the nearest and immediate matter was produced or constituted or nearest and immediate out of which a being is immediately constituted For example The nearest matter of Glass is Ashes the remote is Wood which was the Matter of Ashes But this Distinction doth more properly belong to Logick IV. A Form is a Cause from which a being hath its Essence A Form is remote or nearest A remote form is from which a being consisting of remote Matter had its Form The nearest Form is from which the nearest Matter hath its Essence The remote matter is either first or second The first is out of which the first being had its Essence The Second is out of which all other beings had their essence A Form is divisible into the same kinds The first Form was from which the first being had its essence The second from which all other beings have their essence These Divisions are rather Logical then Metaphysical V. An external Cause is by whose force or vertue a being is produced The force whereby a being is produced is from without for a being hath no force of it self before it is produced therefore that force whereby a being is produced is necessarily from without This Cause is only an efficient Cause Other Divisions of Causes I do wittingly omit because some are disagreeing with the Subject of this Treatise and belong to another Part of Philosophy as to treat of the first cause belongeth to Pneumatology of final Causes to Morals Others are very suspicious CHAP. XXIII Of the Kinds of Causes 1. The Number of real Causes That a final cause is no real Cause The Causality of Matter and Form 2. The Division of an Efficient 3. That an Efficient is erroneously divided in a procreating and conservating Cause 4. That the Division of a Cause into Social and Solitary is illegal 5. That the Division of an efficient Cause into Internal and External is absurd 6. That all Forms are Material 7. That there are no assistent Forms I. THere are only three real Causes of a Being a Material Formal and Efficient Cause Wherefore a Final cause is no real Cause I prove it A real Cause is which doth really effect or produce a Being But these are only three Ergo. 2. A Final Cause doth not cause any effect concurring to the constitution of a being as each of them three forementioned do for matter causeth an effect by giving her self out of which a being may be constituted A Form doth produce an effect by giving through her presence unity distinction from all others to Matter An efficient Cause effecteth by educing a Form out of the matter and uniting it to the Matter Which three causalities are only requisite to the production of a compleat being and they constituted in actu constitute a being at the same instant If so what effect doth a final Cause then produce Certainly not any contributing to the essential constitution of a being These three being only necessary any other would be frustaneous Possibly you will object that the final Cause moveth the efficient Suppose I grant that it doth not infer that it concurs to the real and essential production of a being The causality which it exerciseth is in contributing per accidens to the constitution of a being which if only so it doth not appertain to this place neither can it be equally treated of with Causes which do act per se. II. An End moveth the efficient An efficient is either Natural or Moral Natural efficients are moved necessarily or act e necessitate Naturae Hence we say a Cause being in actu to wit a Natural Cause its effect is likewise necessarily constituted in actu It is not so with a final Cause for that may exist without producing an effect All Natural Causes move for an end per accidens in that they answer the Ordination of the Creator who hath created all things for an end which accordingly act for the same out of Necessity of Nature Moral Efficients are moved by an end Yet it is not the end which produceth the effect but the efficient it self You
1 B. of the Parts of Liv. Creat C. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that we ought to divide a being by them parts which are contained in its essence and not by its Accidents The division of Matter in Metaphysical and Physical may be rejected upon the same ground These divisions as they are objective appertain to Logick where only second notions are treated of and are very useful to the directing of Reason VI. Forms are divisible in material and immaterial If material is understood to be that which doth inhere in matter which is its most frequent and ordinary acception for most Philosophers take it in that sense then all worldly beings are material what being is there but which doth inhere in Matter You may say mans soul. The soul of man according to this acception is material But if you take immaterial for that which can or doth exist out of matter then there are immaterial forms Neither can this be naturally for a Natural Form is which giveth an actual specification and numerication to matter If so how can a form give an actual Specification and numerication to matter when it is not united to it I prove that the Form giveth an actual specification and numerication to matter Forma dat esse i. e. Specif Numer non posse esse materiae A Form giveth a being not a power of being to Matter For matter hath the power of being from it self and not from the Form This is true for most Peripateticks hold that Potentia is essential to matter The Soul of man when once freed from its tye to the body ceases to be a Form but therefore doth not cease to continue a being So that I conclude there are immaterial beings but no immaterial Forms It is ridiculous to doubt whether the Soul of man when separated hath an Appetite or Inclination to its Body or to that matter which it did once informate because the soul in its separated estate is a compleat and perfect being and doth not need a Body neither is the Soul a Form in that state Wherefore should it then have an Appetite to its Body Such an Appetite would be in vain You may answer that it wanteth a Subject to inhere or subsist in I grant it and therefore it subsisteth in God VII A Form is improperly divided in an assistent and informating Form because one being is satisfied with one Form for had it two forms it would be a double being 2. That which they intend by an assistent form is coincident with an Efficient Cause CHAP. XXIV Of the Theorems of Causes 1. That a Cause and its Effects are co-existent 2. That there are but three Causes of every Natural Being 3. That there is but one Cause of every Being 4. That all Beings are constituted by one or more Causes 5. That all Causes are really univocal 6. That all Natural Causes act necessarily 7. That the Soul of a Beast acteth necessarily 8. That all Matter hath a Form That Matter is capable of many Forms I. A Cause and its Effect are existent at one and the same time This Theorem is received among most Philosophers who render it thus Posita Causa ponitur Effectus The Cause being stated that is reduced into action its Effect is also stated or produced The Reason depends upon their relation one to the other to whose Relata it is proper to exist at one and the same time according to that trite Maxim Relata mutuo sese ponunt tollunt Relations do constitute and abolish one another II. There are three Causes of every Natural Being whereof one reduced to Action supposeth the others also to be reduced to action The Proof of this is demonstrated by the same Axiom by which the next forementioned was inferred III. There is but one Cause of all Beings A Cause here is taken in a strict sense for that which produceth an effect essentially and really distinct from it self In this Acception is an efficient the only cause of all Beings Matter and Form are no Causes according to this Interpretation but Principles because they do not constitute an effect essentially different from themselves A Cause sometime is taken in a strict sense for that which produceth an Effect different from it self modally and so there are two to wit Matter and Form Lastly A cause as it signifieth in a middle signification participating of each acception comprehends a triplicity of causes viz. An Efficient Matter and Form IV. All beings are constituted by one or more Causes God is of himself and not from any other as from an efficient cause and consisteth of one pure formal cause By formal Cause understand an immaterial being Angels are constituted by two Causes namely by an Efficient and a Form All other Beings are constituted by more V. All Causes are univocal This is to be understood of Efficients only Whatever Effect a Cause produceth it is like to its Form and is formal only For it cannot generate matter that being created Wherefore it cannot produce any thing else but what like to it self and consequently produceth alwaies the same effect whereas an equivocal cause should produce different effects You may demand why it hapneth that many effects are different as we observe in the Sun which by its heat doth produce Vegetables and Animals which are different I answer that the Difference doth result from the diversity of the Matter upon which it acteth and not from the causality that being ever one and the same The diversity of Effects is accidental to the Efficient and therefore not to be allowed of in Sciences VI. All Natural Causes act Necessarily Hence derives this Maxim Natura nunquam errat Nature doth never erre because she acts necessarily Against this Maxim may be objected that Nature erreth in generating a Monster This is no Errour of Nature It might rather be imputed an Errour if when it should produce a Monster it doth not That which acts after the same manner at all times doth not erre But Nature doth act in the same manner at all times Ergo she doth never erre I prove the Minor If she acts differently at any time it is in a Monster But she doth not act differently in a Monster as in the example forenamed of a Dog without Legs she doth through the Efficient cause educe a form out of the matter which she extendeth according to the extent of the subjected matter the matter therefore being deficient in quantity it is accidental to Nature if thereby a being is not brought to the likeness of its Species The Soul of man may be considered either 1. As a Natural Cause and so it acteth also necessarily in giving a Being and Life to the Body For as long as it abideth in the body it cannot but give Life to its Parts 2. As it is above a Natural Cause in that it hath a power of acting voluntarily without the Necessity or Impulse of Nature VII The Soul of a Beast doth act
adorned with that variety of Accidents it is probable that Nature hath bestowed them for Action say they and not for nought They do not only allow one power to a Substance which might suffice but a multitude yea as many as there are varieties of acts specifically differing from one another effected through a Substance This leaneth upon an Argument of theirs thus framed The Soul being indifferent to divers Acts there must be somthing superadded by which it is determined to produce certain Acts. Neither is this Opinion deficient in Authorities of Learned Philosophers Averrhoes Thomas Aq. Albertus magn Hervaeus Apollinaris and others consenting thereunto Dionysius also in his Book concerning divine Names teacheth that Celestial Spirits are divisible into their Essence Vertue or Power and Operation III. The said powers are not only affixt to the Souls Essence but are also formally and really distinct from it They are perswaded to a formal distinction because else we might justly be supposed to will when we understand and to understand when we will or to tall when we smell and so in all others They are moved to a real distinction by reason that all powers in a Substance are really distinct from its Matter and Form Weight and Lightness which are Powers inherent in the Elements whereby they encline to the Center or decline from it are not the Matter of Earth and Fire nor their forms and therefore they are really distinct from their Essence IV. These Powers are concreated with the soul and do immediately flow from her Essence An Argument whereby to prove this is set down by Thom. Aq. among his Quaest. Powers are accidentary forms or Accidents properly belonging to their Subject and concreated with it giving it also a kind of a being It is therefore necessary that they do arise as Concomitants of its Essence from that which giveth a substantial and first being to a Subject Zabarel de Facult an Lib. 1. Cap. 4. sheweth the dependance of the powers from the Soul to be as from their efficient cause from which they do immediately flow not by means of a transmutation or Physical Action which is alwaies produced by motion Others add that the Soul in respect to its faculties may be also counted a Material Cause because it containeth her faculties in her self and a final Cause the faculties being allotted to her as to their End V. Immaterial Powers are inherent in the Soul as in their agent or fountain Material Faculties as the Senses Nourishing Faculty and the like are inserted in the Matter yet so far only as it is animated Hence doth Aristotle call the latter Organical Powers from their inherence in the Organs VI. Powers are distinguisht through their Acts and Objects to which they tend and by which they are moved to act For example Any thing that is visible moveth the fight and is its proper Object which doth distinguish it from the other Senses and Powers which are moved by other Objects Thus far extends the Doctrine of Aristotle touching Powers which although consisting more in Subtilities and Appearances then Evidences and Realities notwithstanding I thought meet to expose to your view since most Modern Authors do persist in the same and thence to take occasion to examine the Contents thereof in these brief subsequent Positions By the way I must desire the Reader to remember that the distinction of Powers from their Subject is commonly treated of in the Doctrine of the Soul and solely applied to it there being not the least doubt made of it elsewhere Wherefore I have also proposed the same as appliable to the Soul but nevertheless shall make further enquiry into it so far as it doth concern all Matters in general CHAP. II. Of all the usual Acceptions of Power 1. The Etymology of Power The Synonima's of Power 2. The various Acceptions of Power 3. What a Passive Natural Power and a Supernatural Passive or Obediential Power is 4. Various Divisions of Power I. THe unfolding the name is an Introduction to the knowledge of the thing it self and therefore it will not be amiss to give you the Etymology of Power 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Power is derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I can or have in my power So Potentia from Possum signifying the same Power in English hath its original from Pouvoir in French noting the like viz. to can or be able Power Vertue Might Strength and Faculty are Synonima's or words of one Interpretation Thus of â—ntimes we make enquiry what Vertue Strength Power or Faculty hath such or such an Herb that is what can it effect II. The Acception of the word Power is very ambiguous 1. Sometime it is understood passively for a disposition whereby a Substance is apt to receive the strength of an Agent 2. Actively for that through which a being can act 3. It s signification doth vary much according to the Subject which it doth respect as when we say a being in power that is a being which is not actually but yet may or can be So likewise a Cause in power is which doth not actually produce an effect but which can produce one Zabarel remarketh a double Acception of Power 1. Improperly it is taken for a Power which is joyned to its Act Thus we say of a man who actually walketh that he can walk 2. Properly it is attributed only to a Power which doth precede its Act Thus we say a man is a Logician when he can be one III. A Passive Power as it is capable to receive a Natural Act is called a disposition As it may receive a Supernatural Act that is an Act from a Supernatural Cause it is then named an Obediential Power The Power which was inherent in Lots Wife of receiving the Form of a Pillar of Salt was an Obediential Power IV. Again those Powers are either Natural Violent or Neutral A Natural Power is such which is agreeable to its Nature as the power in Fire of ascending is Natural to it A violent power is which is disagreeing to the Nature of its Subject as in fire there is a violent Power of moving downward A Neutral power is which is neither the one or the other but participates of both Such is the power in fire of moving circularly A Power may be understood either for a Logical power which is nothing else but a non-repugnance or for a Physical power which is the same with a Natural disposition or for a Moral Power which is nothing else but the Will Lastly in Metaphysicks it is that which is presupposed to be in an actus entitativus There is also mention made in Philosophy of an Objective Power which is not much different from a Non-repugnance or a Logical Power but expresly it is a Possibility of existing in a being which the understanding doth give it before its Existence Many more Additions of Power might be proffered as that a Power is either Created or Increated Accidental or Substantial
else but where we are at present The falshood of this Theorem is evident because that greatest happinesse which we enjoy in this world is like but in an inferious degree to that which we expect in the other Neither is any happinesse to be parallel'd to the greatest but which is a true Theologick happinesse If so then a Theologick happinesse must be our Summum Bonum No wonder therefore if Philosophers being destitute of this Theologick habit were false Philosophers This is the reason why Aristotle and other supposed Philosophers never arrived to the possession of the greatest happinesse because they were ignorant of God And is it not therefore unworthy of a Philosopher to be a slave to their Dictates which affected slavery hath proved an obvious cause of the greatest errours in Church and State How full of Anguish fear jealousle and uncertainties were their souls through their not knowing the true God They could never enjoy any durable happinesse as long as their minds were perplexed with them doubts In what perplexity did Aristotle die even when his languishing soul pressed out these words In doubts have I lived and in more anguish do I die whither I shall go I know not wherefore thou Being of Beings have mercy upon me What did the joys and pleasures of Epicure amount unto when he was tormented with such miserable pains of the strangury as chased his soul out of his body II. The greatest happinesse is which of all things makes a man most happy Happinesse is a concomitant of a joyfull thing or an effect wrought by a joyfull object upon man the reception of which makes him truly happy Here we will first enquire Whether the greatest happinesse is the neerest End of Natural Theology 2. How it is otherwise called 3. What it is 4. Which is the subject of this habit 5. How it is to be procured In answer to the first I say that the greatest happinesse is not the neerest and principal end of Theology I prove it That which doth not chiefly and immediately move a man in Theology is not the neerest and principal end but the greatest happinesse doth not chiefly and immediately move a man in Theology Therefore it is not the neerest and principal end of Theology 2. It is the next end to the neerest and an inseparable concomitant of the neerest end I prove it That which we do enjoy next after the possession of the habit of Natural Theology and of the Summum Bonum is the next end to the neerest But we do chiefly enjoy the greatest happinesse next after the possession of the habit of Theology and of the Summum Bonum Therefore it is the next end to the neerest There is none which ever did possesse the habit of Theology but confirms the truth and assurance of the Minor 4. The greatest happinesse is sometime called Summum Bonum or the greatest good from its causality because it doth through its presence confer the greatest happinesse upon that Subject which it doth irradiate Hence Austin de Civ Dei lib. 8. cap. 3. Finis autem boni appellatur quo quisque cum pervenerit beatus est That is called the end of good which maketh every man happy that doth attain to it Note that the greatest happinesse is only tropically named Summum Bonum from a Metonomia causae pro effectu CHAP. III. Of GOOD 1. What Good is 2. That Aristotle 's Definition of Good is erroneous 3. Diogenes his Definition of Good 4. The Explanation of the Definition of Good How the several kinds of Good differ from one another 5. What Moral Good is what moral evil is 6. What Theologick Good and evil is BOnum Good is that which doth make the subject which doth possesse it perfect Or Good is that which all Beings do incline unto for to perfect themselves The highest and greatest Good must then be that which makes a man most perfect and happy or that which all men need to perfect themselves with the same perfection which man had when he was first created I said need and not desire or incline into because all men do not desire the Summum Bonum for all men do not come to the knowledge of it yet all men need it for to perfect themselves II. There are many definitions of Good spread among Philophers whereof some are false either in not adequating the whole definitum or else in attributing falsities by it to the definitum or subject defined Among these that of Aristotle is counted most authentick* Good is that which all things do incline unto or covet This definition must either agree with Good as it is proper to all Beings and Transcendent or as it is restricted to rationals and animals in which only there is an appetite and coveting or as it is most limited to rationals only If we take it according to the first acception the definition is not formal but only accidental for it is accidental to beings as they are Good to be coveted or be desired from another being Neither doth it hold true in the last acception because we desire many things which are evil and hurtfull to us To this may be answered that a being so far as it is desired is good although it prove accidentally hurtfull This answer is not satisfactory for we do oftentimes desire things knowing them to be evil and therefore we do desire them as evil for the will doth covet things as they are understood if then the understanding doth understand them to be evil the will must consequently will them as evil Possibly some do reply that the understanding doth conceive them very things which a man afterwards doth covet To be good otherwise he could not desire them For Did he desire them as evil then he would desire his own destruction and be inferiour to all other creatures which are onely bent to that which doth perfect their nature or you may return your answer thus that good is either apparent or real and truly good and that the understanding doth understand all beings to be good apparently or really or otherwise you may distinguish good in good which is honest or profitable and usefull or pleasant and state that the understanding doth conceive all things either as they are honest useful or pleasant This doth not remove all objections as to the first The will of man is not restrained to a certain object as Naturals are but is also extended to contrary objects to wit to good and evil Neither is it singly limited to contradictories as to will evil and to leave it because to desist from an action is no action and for that reason we cannot properly say that the actions of the will are free quoad contradicentia tantum only in willing evil and ceasing from it Secondly Should God punish us for doing evil when we cannot act any thing but evil it would appear somewhat severe for punishment is to punish a delict and sinne in doing that which
usefulnesse and convenience Pleasant Good is which is coveted for its pleasure and delight which it affordeth These two are not to be desired for their own sake but for their covenience and pleasure which do accompany them This Division is erroneous upon a double account 1. Because Good doth not formally include in its formal concept any delight usefulnesse or honesty but onely a perfectionation 2. The dividing members cannot be equally attributed to all the kinds of good and therefore the distribution is illegitimate IV. Good according to the subject wherein it is inherent or according the appetite through which it is coveted is either Natural Sensible or Moral Natural Good is which is coveted from a natural Being The appetite through which natural Beings do covet Good is commonly called a natural Propensity or Inclination Sensible Good is which is coveted by living creatures Their appetite is called a sensitive appetite Moral Good is which is coveted by man His appetite is otherwise known by the word Will. Before I conclude this Chapter I must intreat you to remember and take notice of the several acceptions and distinct significations of Natural Supernatural Counter-natural Preter-natural of Good Moral Good and Theologick Good For you are to interpret their significations variously otherwise you will much mistake my meaning CHAP. VI. Of the greatest and highest Good 1. A further illustration of the greatest Good 2. That the highest Good is the neerest end of Natural Theology 3. What the Summum Bonum is otherwise called That the greatest Good is our last end 4. The inexpressible Joy which the soul obtains in possessing the greatest Good 5. Two great benefits which the soul receiveth from the Summum Bonum I. IT was necessary for you first to know what Good was in General before you could conceive what the highest Good is So then having laid down the Doctrine of Good in short it now remains to open to you what the greatest Good is The greatest Good is that which doth make us most perfect and that is God alone I prove it There is nothing can perfectionate usmost but God alone Wherefore he is the onely Summum Bonum II. The highest Good is the neerest end of Natural Theology I prove it That which we do immediately and neerest incline unto and covet is the neerest end But we do immediately and neerest covet and incline unto the Summum Bonum Wherefore the Summum Bonum is the neerest end I confirm the Minor We do immediately covet that which doth perfectionate us because it is out of necessity The necessity appears in this in that we must live to God for without him we cannot live or exist and consequently we cannot be perfectionated without him Now that which is most necessary must precede that which is lesse necessary for it is possible for us to live without happinesse and only to enjoy our being if God had so pleased And therefore happinesse is not absolutely necessary but is superadded to this our appetite meerly from Gods bounty We ought first to bend and incline to God because he is our Summum Bonum and doth perfectionate us and not only because he doth make us happy In this bending to God we answer to our end and are true beings The same is also witnessed by Scripture Prov. 16. God hath made all things for himself III. Summum Bonum is otherwise called our last End because it is that in which all our good Actions seem to terminate I prove that the greatest Good and happiness is our last End All Trades and Professions tend to make provision for mans life This provision as meat and drink c. serveth to keep the Body in repair that so it may continue a convenient mansion for the Soul and serve her through its organs The prime organs are the inward and outward Senses which are subservient to the Soul in advertising her of all things which may be prejudicial to man and in pleasing her by conveying the objects of all external beings to her and commending them to her Contemplation which doth chiefly consist in the discovery of the causes of all things The Soul being now brought and seated in the midst of her speculations doth not come to any rest or satisfaction there but still maketh way and passeth through them untill she arrives to the last object and its last end which is the farthest she can dyve This last object is God because he is the last end of our contemplations for beyond him we cannot conceive or think any thing It is also certain that all beings have their end and are terminated by it This doth infer that the actions of man must also have their end The principal actions of man are them of the Soul to wit his understanding The understanding is not terminated by any material substance for it can think and understand beyond it neither are created immaterial substances objects beyond which the Soul of man cannot imagine for it doth imagine know and understand God but beyond God it can imagine nothing All Beings have their causes them causes have other causes these other causes at last must owe their being to one first Cause otherwise causes would be infinite which is repugnant Wherefore we cannot think beyond the first Cause IV. The Soul having sublimed her self into a most sublime thought of God there she resteth and admireth his great power in giving a Being to all sublunary and superlunary things She admireth his wisdome and providence in preserving them all She is astonisht at his infinite love towards mankind in Breathing his Essence out of his own brest The joy and acquiessence which the Soul findeth in the contemplation of this last End and first Cause is so great and unexpressible that there is nothing in this vast World to resemble it unto but to it self Thus I have demonstrated how all the Actions of man tend to one last End and Summum Bonum V. From the Greatest Good we receive two benefits First it makes us most perfect and most happy Secondly it terminates our faculties for in all other Things we can find no rest but in the Summum Bonum only All other things can give us no rest because they are ordained for a further end and subject to changes and alterations every moment but the Summum Bonum is the same for ever and ever As for the happiness which doth redound from the possession of the Summum Bonum it is a Joy and contentment beyond expression None is capable of conceiving what it is except they who are the possessors of it The joy is such that if a man hapneth to it and is confirmed in it he can never desert it a moments want of it would seem to be the greatest misery CHAP. VII Of the false Summum Bonum 1. The Summum Bonum of the Epicureans unfolded and rejected 2. That Wealth is a greater torment than a Summum Bonum The Riches of Seneca That we ought to
Prophet is haec didicisset Whence saith he had Plato learned that Jupiter rid in a flying Chariot but out of the Histories of the Prophets which he had over-lookt for out of the Books of the Prophets he understood all those things that were thus written concerning the Cherubims and the glory of the Lord went out of the house and came to the Cherubims The Cherubims took their feathers and they hung together in circles and the Glory of the Lord of Israel did abide upon them in Heaven Hence Plato descending cries out these words Iupiter great in the Heavens driving his flying Chariot Otherwise from whom should he else have learned these things but from the Prophets And so Clem. Alexand. lib. 1. Strom. orat ad Gent. speaking as it were to Plato Leges quaecunque verae sunt tibi ab Hebrais suppeditatae sunt What ever true Laws thou hast set down are supplied thee by the Hebrews To this I answer That it is very improbable that Plato should have collected his Divinity out of Moses or the Prophets their writings being in his time not yet translated out of the Hebrew I should rather believe with others that he had sifted his divine Notions out of Hermes Trismegistus an AEgyptian who according to Suidas flourished before Pharho and was called Trismegistus because he had through a divine inspiration written of the Trinity And Sugul saith that he was called Ter optimus maximus the thrice best and greatest because of his greatest wit or according to others because he was a Priest King and a Prophet 'T is not only thought of Plato that he had gathered some riddles of God from the AEgyptans but also of Theodorus Anaxagoras and Pythagoras But I continue Plato's sentences The body being compounded is dissolved by death the soul being simple passeth into another life and is uncapable of corruption The souls of men are divine to whom when they goe out of the body the way of their return to Heaven is open for whom to be best and most just is most expedient The souls of the good after death are in a happy state united to God in a blessed inaccessible place the wicked in convenient places suffer condign punishment But to define what those places are is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whence being demanded what things were in the other world he answered Neither was I ever there or ever did speak with any that came from thence VIII We must not forget Aristotle who lib. 3. de anim c. 3. closes with Homer in these Verses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And Homer agreed in the same That the minds of mortal men were such as the Father of Gods and men did daily infuse into them Moreover lib. 1. de anim cap. 3. t. 65 66. he calleth our understanding Divine and asserts it to be without danger of perishing And lib. 2. de gener cap. 3. delivers his sense thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Wherefore it remains that the mind alone doth advene from without and that she alone is Divine for the action of the body hath not at all any communication with her action IX Virgil 4. Georg. wittily sets down God's ubiquity Deum namque ire per omnes Et terras tractusque Maris Coelumque profundum Hinc pecudes armenta viros genus omne ferarum Quemque sibitenues nascentem arcessere vitas Et 6. AEneid Principio Coelum ac terras composque liquentes Lucentemque Globum Lunae Titaniaque astra Spirit us intus alit totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem magno se corpore miscet That is For God doth go through all the earth the tracts of the Sea and the deep of the Heavens Hence do beasts and men and what ever is born draw their thin breath And in the sixth Book of his AEneids In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth and the melting fields and the shining Globe of the Moon together with the Titanian Star A spirit doth nourish it within speaking of the world and a mind being infused through its members doth move its mole and mingles its self with that great body X. The admirable Poesie of that Divine Orpheus lib. de Mundo is worth our observation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jupiter is the first Jupiter is the last Jupiter is the head Jupiter is the middle God made all things Jupiter is the foundation of the earth and of the starry heavens Jupiter is a male Jupiter is an immortall Nymph Jupiter is the spirit of all things Jupiter is the mover of the unruly fite Jupiter is the root of the Sea Jupiter is the Sun and the Moon Jupiter is a King Jupiter is the sulminating Prince of all for he covereth all he is a lighr to all the earth out of his breast he doth wonderfull things XI Trismegistus lib. 1. Pimandr renders himself very divinely The mind of the divine power did in the beginning change its shape and suddenly revealed all things and I saw that all things were changed into a very sweet and pleasant light And below in another place A certain shadow fell underneath through a thwart revolution And Serm. 3. Pimandr The shadow was infinite in the deep but the water and the thin spirit were in the chaos and there slourished a holy splendour which impelled the Elements under the sand and the moist nature and the weighty bodies being submerst under the darkness did abide under the moist sand Empedocles defined God a sphere whose center is every where and circumference no where Vincent in spec hist. l. 4. c. 44. Pythagoras described God to be a mind diffused throughout the universal parts of the world and the whole nature out of which all living creatures that are born do draw their life In another place he cals him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The soul of the universe Heraclitus being at a certain time of the winter crept into a Cottage for to warm himself and being enquired for by some who were ashamed to come into so mean a place called to them to come near for said he the gods are also to be found here Athenagoras an Athenian Philosopher expresseth himself very profoundly God saith he hath given man a judgement of reason and understanding for to know intelligible things the Goodnesse of God his Wisdom and Justice ERRATA PAg. 4. lin 6. read of their l. 31 wisdom it self p. 6. l. 8. r. with those p. 8. l. 17. r. those l. 25. r. into good p 13. l. 19. r. wherein p. 15. l. 12. r. into that l. 28. r. according to p. 17. l. 29. r. those of the. l. 35. r. these causes p. 22. l 33. r. a man doth p. 25. l. 32.
necessarily be so for water strictly so named had it been heaved up it would have been against its first nature and been moved violently which is improbable since that nullum violentum est perpetuum no violent motion is lasting The nature of air certifieth us that it must be it which moved above the waters under it Lastly The waters above the waters strictly so termed are called the Firmament from its firmness because they are as a deep frame or a strong wall about the waters underneath for to keep them together in a counterpoise from falling to an insinitum but it is ai◠that is above the waters and is a Firmament to them ergo the ayr must be comprehended under the Notion of waters Or thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Hebrew is by the Rabbi's and Hebrews expounded an Expansion or thing expanded for its Root is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to attenuate if so then by the waters above must be implied ayr whose nature it is to be expanded as I shewed before So whether you take the word according to the interpretation of the Septuagints 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Firmament or of the Rabbi's Expansion there can be nothing else intended by it but ayr I say then as by waters a duplicity of Elements is implied so by the Heavens ayr and fire are implied I prove it Light is fire flaming but the light was drawn from the Chaos if from the Chaos ergo not from the earth for by earth there is only meant earth single but from the Heaven which imports a conjunction of Elements viz. of Ayr and Fire Secondly Is light being a flaming fire drawn from the Heaven ergo there was fire latent in it So let this serve to answer Van Helmont his Objection who denieth fire to be an Element because its name is not set down in the first Chap. of Gen. neither is ayr mentioned among the Elements in so many Letters yet it is comprehended among them 'T is true Fowl are called Fowl of the ayr but what of that this doth not infer that ayr is an Element because Fowl are named Fowl of the Ayr. Secondly Earth and Water are there expressed in so many letters ergo the Chaos was made up of all the four Elements III. The Elements in the Chaos underwent an exact mixture because each being a stem and perfection to the other they required it for had they been unequally mixt then that part which had not been sufficiently counterpoysed by its opposite Element would have fallen from the whole Hence it followeth that they must have been of an equal extent and degree in their first vertue or quality and not only so but also in their quantity that is they consisted all of an equal number of minima's that so each minimum of every Element might be fitted sustained and perfectionated by three single minimum's of each of the other Elements Now was there but one minimum of any of the Elements in excess above the other it would overbalance the whole Chaos and so make a discord which is not to be conceived But here may be objected That the earth in comparison with the heavens beares little more proportion to their circumference then a point I confess that the air and fire exceed the earth and water in many degrees but again as will be apparent below there is never a Star which you see yea and many more then you see but containes a great proportion of earth and water in its body the immense to our thinking Region of the air and fire are furnished with no small proportion of water and earth so that numeratis numerandis the earth and water are not wanting of a minimum less then are contained either in the fire or ayr IV. The efficient of this greatest and universal body is the greatest and universal cause the Almighty God I prove it The action through which this vast mole was produced is infinite for that action which takes its procession ab infinito ad terminum finitum sive a non ente ad ens from an infinite to a finite term or from nothing to somthing is to be counted infinite but an infinite action requireth an infinite agent therefore none but God who is in all respects infinite is to be acknowledged the sole cause and agent of this great and miracuious effect It was a Golden saying upon this matter of Chrysippus the Stoick If there is any thing that doth effect that which man although he is indued with a reason cannot that certainly is greater mightier and wiser then man but he cannot make the Heavens Wherefore that which doth make them excels man in Art Counsel and Prudence And what saith Hermes in his Pimand The Maker made the universal world through his Word and not with his Hands Anaxagoras concluded the divine mind to be the distinguisher of the universe It was the Saying of Orpheus That there was but one born through himself and that all other things were created by him And Sophocles There is but one true God who made Heaven and the large earth Aristotle Lib. 2. De Gen. Cor. c. 10. f. 59. asserts God to be the Creator of this Universe And Lib. 12. Metaph. c. 8. He attests God to be the First Cause of all other Causes This action is in the holy texts called Creation Gen. 1. 1. Mark 10. 6. Psal. 89. 12. Mal. 2. 10. Creation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not alwaies intended for one and the same signification sometimes it implying the Creation of the world as in the Scriptures next forementioned other whiles it is restricted to Mankind Mark 16. 15. Mat. 28. 19. Luke 24. 47. In other places it is applied to all created beings Mark 13. 19. Gen. 14. 22. Job 38. 8. Prov. 20. 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To create is imported by divers other Expressions 1. By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To Form Gen. 2. 7. Esay 43. 7. 2. By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To make Gen. 1. 31. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He hath establisht Psal. 89. 12. Psal. 104. 5. Mat. 13. 35. Heb. 6. 1. 1 Pet. 1. 20. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To stretch or expand Psal. 10. 2. Es. 42. 5. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To prepare or dispose Prov. 8. 27. Psal. 74. 16. V. Creation is a production of a being out of and from nothing Tho. gives us this Definition in Sent. 2. Dist. 1. Quest. 1. Art 2. Creation is an emanation of an universal Being out of nothing By an universal being he intends a being as it comprehends all material and immaterial beings So that this is rather a definition of the creation of the material and immaterial world then a definition of the Formality of Creation 2. His Definition is defective and erroneous for he adds only out of nothing This is not enough it being possible for a thing to emanate out of nothing and yet not be created the immaterial operations of Angels and
as it were modi consistentiae Heat is not the cause of tenuity in ayr because heat is accidental to Ayr and tenuity is essential or at least co-essential but that which is accidental and extrinsick cannot be the cause of that which is essential and intrinsick The next effect we can imagine to emanate from lightness with continuity or the greatest diduction and yet remaining continuated must needs be Tenuity Besides these there are some more qualities restant as Obtuseness and Acuteness Asperity and Levor Solidity and Liquidity Softness and Hardness Lentor and Friability It is a mistake in Authors to derive the Original of these Qualities from the Elements as they constitute a mixt body and thence to term them Qualities of a mixt body To the contrary they do emanate from the Elements as they are conceived in their absolute form as hath been proved These Qualities you may nominate third fourth and fifth according as the understanding doth apprehend the one to be before the other in Nature although not in Time The third qualities of the Elements are Obtuseness Acuteness c. I prove it because we apprehend them next to the second qualities for the understanding in discerning these sensible qualities is lead by the Senses as its Pilots now our tact or feeling being the first in esse operari is also imployed in distinguishing those first second and third Qualities and for that reason they are all called tactible or tangible qualities The first action made by any of the Elements upon the tact is local motion as Gravity and Levity for feeling any Element its weight or lightness would be the First thing we should perceive the next would be its rarity or density The third acuteness or hebetude the fourth asperity or levor the fifth hardness or softness the sixth solidity or liquidity the seventh lentor or friability There is a twofold Acuteness formally differing from one another 1. An Acuteness deriving from Density 2. An Acuteness emanating from Rarity Acuteness is a quality whereby our tact is most divided Obtuseness is a quality whereby our tact is least divided Acuteness is in Fire and Earth but in a different manner Acuteness in fire is a rare acuteness whereby it most divideth our tact through its parts being contiguously diducted or spread from the Center The acuteness inherent in earth is a dense acuteness whereby it divides our tact through a dense acuteness or minima's moving through their pressing weight to the Center Obtuseness is a quality following crassitude and tenuity whereby its subject compresseth our tact or divideth it less or least and in longer time Obtuseness in ayr is a quality immediately produced by its tenuity and continuous Expansion for were it contiguous it would be acute but being continuous one part hindreth the other from penetrating or dividing any objected body And so its parts acting together and equally they effect a compression This compression or obtuseness in the ayr is thin and subtil and more potent then that in water because it resisteth less and therefore is also less opposed and through its subtility is capable of making stronger opposition Obtuseness in water issueth out of a thick quality or from its continuous depressing vertue This Obtuseness and that in ayr as also acuteness in fire and earth are altogether different as I said before but through the narrowness of the Language I am compelled to attribute each to two several beings adding some notes of Distinction The same understand of all the other derived Qualities Asperity is a quality immediately consecuting Acuteness and Levor is a quality emanating from Hebetude or Obtuseness Asperity more plainly is an inequality or roughness in the surface of a body this experience tels us proceedeth from a sharpness or Acuteness Levor is an equality of the Surface descending from Hebetude or a continuous pressure or diduction Asperity in fire is a rare diffusing and vibrating asperity that in earth is a dense heavy contracting asperity I prove it our feeling certifieth us that fire is a rare diffusing and vibrating roughness and so feeling earth we feel a dense heavy and contracting roughness From a contiguous and dense Asperity spreades hardness which is a quality where by its subject is difficulty pressed down into it self So thin Levor begetteth softness which is a quality whereby its subject easily giveth way into it self to pressure Hardness in earth may properly be termed Rigidity or a rugged hardness because the earth doth only of all the Elements possess its center and therefore cannot introcede into it self That Rigidity is caused by Asperity its ordinary Definition among Physitians doth testifie Rigidity say they is a hardness with Asperity or a roughness that is from asperity From a continuous and thick Obtuseness derives a smooth hardness such as is conceived in Chrystal or Ice and is alone proper to water Softness in fire being unequal or rough is whereby it giveth way towards its Circumference if pressed from without Softness in ayr being equal and smooth is whereby it giveth way towards its Circumference if pressed from without Solidity is an effect of hardness through which a body is consistent that is uncapable of flowing So water is a smooth solid body because of its peculiar hardness and earth is a rugged solid body likewise because of its proper hardness Liquidity is an effect of Softness whereby a body is apt to flow or to be diducted In Fire it is rare and acute in Ayr thin and obtuse Solidity produceth Friability which is a quality whereby its parts are separable From one another in minute particles wherefore since Solidity cannot give way by flowing it giveth way through Friability Lentor is a quality produced by Liquidity and is whereby a body is rendered deductible by reason of its continuity of Parts We may otherwise apprehend these qualities to differ from one another secundum magis minus thus Asperity is a greater Acuteness of parts Hardness is a greater Asperity or thick Levor Solidity is a greater Hardness Levor is a greater Obtuseness Softness is a greater thin Levor Liquidity is a greater Softness CHAP. XV. Of the Respective Qualities of the Elements particularly of Fire Earth and Water 1. What is meant by the Respective Qualities of the Elements Why they are termed Second Qualities 2. That heat is the second respective or accidental quality of fire That fire is not burning hot within its own Region That fire doth not burn unless it flames is proved by an Experiment through Aq. fort 3. That heat in fire is violently produced The manner of the production of a Flame What it is which we call hot warm or burning How fire dissolves and consumes a body into Ashes 4. That Heat is nothing else but a Multiplication Condensation and Retention of the parts of fire The degrees of Heat in fire and how it cometh to be warm hot scorching hot blistering hot burning hot and consuming hot 5. A way
have explained the Elements to move each according to their proportion as in Coction Earth doth as much conduce to it through its contiguous and punctual motion to the Center as the fire doth in moving to the Circumference wherefore the Elements are to be adjudged equal causes of Coction VII Thus far we have spoken concernig Coction in general and as it may be supposed applicable singly to the Elements What remaines is to treat of the Species of Coction depending upon the combination of the Elements to wit upon heat incrassated heat condensed water rarefied and attenuated earth rarefied c. The Objectum circa quod of Coction is Crudity The Species of Coction are accounted to be three Maturation Elixation and Assation Maturation is a Coction performed by a thin and moderately condensed heat together with the co-action of the other Elements whereby immaturity is overcome and its subject perduced to maturity or a temperament ad justitiam This kind of Coction takes place in man who in his younger years is said to be immature and by process of time to be perduced or come to maturity All animals are perduced to their consistent Coction by Maturation Maturation takes its beginning from the Center whence it is that the innermost flesh of Beasts is the sweetest because it is the first soonest and best concocted Maturation renders a mixt body more compact and solid then it was because it consumes and expels the ayry waterish parts which being diminisht the remainder is left more solid and compact Through Maturation a body becomes sweeter as we may observe in all fruits growing sweeter through Maturation whereas they before were acerbous and austere A body through Maturation is exalted to a greater purity Elixation is a coction performed by a rarefied and attenuated moysture that is an ayry and fiery water and the co-action of the other Elements Thus the equality of temperament in Fishes and other waterish bodies proceeds from Elixation Through this thin and rare moysture all the parts of a mixt body are equally laid and through its fluor thick parts are attenuated dense ones diducted and rare ones condensed Assation is a Coction effected from a dense heat acting socially with a just proportion of the other Elements Thus hung Beef and dryed Neats Tongues are concocted All Metals are likewise concocted or purified by Assation I shall not spend more words to shew the manner of the variety of Coction since it is apparent by what hath been said before VIII A Decoction is an equal wasting of a concocted body hapning through the continuation of a concocting alteration Or otherwise it is an overdoing or an overcoction of a mixt body through which it must necessarily be wasted which notwithstanding remaines the same thing or according to Aristotle remanet idem Subjectum sensibile But in putrefaction a body doth not only wast but makes way also for a Dissolution and the subject is sensibly changed 2. Putrefaction derives from an unequal alteration caused by an immoderate and unequal adjunction of an extrinsick influent or adventitious quality to the least parts of one or more of the Elements But Decoction is equal and performed by the same causes that Coction was Or in a word the one is a violent and sudden motion to dissolution of the parts of a mixt body into their first Elements the other is a gradual successive flow durable prolonged and natural dissolution of a mixt body into its Elements As for the manner of Decoction it is thus You must conceive that in Coction the innate heat or whole temperament suffereth but little loss or dislocation because at the formation of any body the heat is so arctly joyned to the central parts that although it is attenuated through the Ayr yet firmly adhering to minima's of earth and surrounded with minima's of water it cannot be entirely loosned from its adherents before it is minutely divided and spread equally through all the body 2. The Minutes of weighty Elements arctly compassing the fire do detain the same fire from exhaling 3. When the Coction is perducted to its height and the Elements are equally laid their forcible alteration ceaseth but nevertheless a smal alteration doth still continue every minim yet pressing against the other whereby the superficial heat doth by little and little exhale whose vacuity the nearer light parts do succeed to fill up and afterwards those of the central parts next following When now the heat is so much dispersed expelled that it is grown invalid to balance the other Elements it is suddenly suppressed in an instant after which instantaneous suppression another form succeeds at the same nick of time and verifieth that Maxime quod Substantia generetur in instanti that a Substance is generated in a moment The reason why a form is so suddenly and in the least time expelled and another received is because when the heavy superficial parts and those next to them are freed from their light elements they move all together with one force which force faâ—â—ing suddenly and violently upon that small part of the remainder of the light Elements doth then violently and suddenly chase and expell them By this it appears that Decoction is natural because it is from an intrinsick Principle IX Putrefaction is a violent alteration of the Elements in a mixt body from too great an irruption of an extrinsick elementary quality which joyning with its like overpowers the mixtum and frees that Element from its nearest alligation to the minimal parts of the other Elements and so do both easily overcome the mixture Wherefore the cause of Putrefaction is an unequal temperature or distemper effected by the superaddition of an extrinsick elementary quality The Causes in particular are four 1. When the intrinsick earth is impowered by the adjunction of external pressing terrene minims which overpressing the innate heat and dividing it from the Ayr first extinguisheth its flame and then presseth it out from its body This Species of Putrefaction may be called a tendence to petrification and terrification I will give you an Example A man who is frozen to death is properly said to have been putrified by a tendency to Terrefaction for the external frosty Minims pressing hard upon him together with the intrinsick earth of his body do at last extinguish his vital flame 2ly and 3ly when external Moysture is adunited to the internal Moysture it doth also cause a putrefaction of that Mixtum through over-relaxing and opening the body whereby the light parts easily procure a vent This may be otherwise signified by a tendency to moulding Those small filaments that do usually adhere to the surface of a moulded body are nothing else but a diduction of the circumjacent Moysture into length and tenuity by the egress of Fire and Ayr. The Greenness or Grayishness of the said filaments is nothing but the fire splending and glistering against the circumjacent Moysture the refraction and reflection of which arising
and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 innate some taking them for one others limiting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to heat that is only proper to living creatures and applying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to heat that is common to all mixt bodies and is subjected to Putrefaction as if connate heat were not subjected to Putrefaction as well as the innate Doth not the connate heat of man suffer putrefaction in a Hectick Feaver You may further read of a fourfold difference of innate heat in Argenter his Treatise of the innate heat 1. I conclude that the connate heat is elementary and not astral I prove it There was connate heat before the Stars were created ergo its Original was not thence The Antecedence is plain from Scripture Gen. 1. for there it appeares that Herbs which questionless were actuated by connate heat were created the third day whereas the Stars were not created before the fourth day 2. Where the effects and operations are alike there the causes cannot be unlike but the effects and operations of Astral heat are no others then of Elementary ergo although I granted it to be Astral it must also be elementary 2. Innate heat is said to be a spirit because its rarest substance is adunited to the least bodies of the other Elements whereby it is fortified and becomes more potent and is constituted a most subtil moveable body The purest and most potent spirits are about the Center they next to them are not so subtil others yet more remote are grosser 3. The connate heat hath a power of converting influent heat into the same nature it self is of I prove it Hippocrates teacheth that the maternal bloud and the sperm are perfused with innate heat if then advenient bloud can be united to primogeneal bloud ergo influent heat may be united to the innate heat and converted into the same nature 2. Flesh contains a part of connate heat in it but cut off a piece of flesh and Nature will restore it again if restore it again then innate heat must be restored with it if so then this innate heat must be generated out of the bloud by the innate heat of the next adjacent parts 4. Childrens teeth are regenerable but teeth contain innate heat in them ergo innate heat is regenerable 5. That which the fore-quoted Opinion stated a putrefactible innate heat is a volatick and moveable heat which not being subtil enough to be united to the fixt or connate heat is protruded to the external parts and is subjected to putrefaction so that in the body of man the food that is daily ingested its subtilest part serveth to be converted into innate heat and to be substituted into the room of the last consumed innate heat The courser parts are converted into moving and external heats By Heats Calida understand hot Particles 6. How is it possible that so little innate heat as is contained within a Dram or two of Sperm should be sufficient to heat the body of a big man XII Corruption is the dissolution of a mixt body into the Elements or into other bodies more resembling the elements then it The Cause of Corruption as I said before is the greatest putrid alteration whereby the innate heat is violently dissolved In Putrefaction the moving heat alone is altered which is reducible but if it continues to a great putrefaction then the innate heat suffers danger and is yet likewise reducible but if the greatest putrefaction seizeth upon a body then the innate heat is strongly putrified and is rendered irreducible because through it the greatest part of the innate heat is corrupted which to expel the remaining innate heat finds it self too impotent But if only a less part be corrupted and the greater abide in power it may overcome the other and reduce it self Hence a reason may be given why many men having been oft seized upon by Feavers yet have been cured and their innate heat is become more vigorous then ever it was yea some live the longer for it The reason is because in most curable Feavers the moving spirits alone are affected neither doth the Alteration reach so deep as greatly to disturb the innate heat but oft times the body being foul and the bloud altered by peregrine humours the body is cleansed and by its fermenting and expelling heat the bloud is freed from these noxious humours after which the primogenious heat is less oppressed and acts more naturally then before through which life is prolonged Here we may answer fundamentally to that so frequently ventilated doubt whether life may be prolonged to an eval duration Paracelsus and many of his Sectators do maintain it affirmatively to whom three hundred years seemed but a slight and short age and in stead of it promising a Life of Nestor to those as would make use of his Arcana Mysterious Medicines yea a life to endure to the Resurrection But these are but Fables and Flashes for since that a man is unequally mixt and that one Element doth overtop the other questionless the predominant element will prove a necessary cause of the dissolution of that Mixtum but was a man tempered ad pondus equally and as Galen hath it tota per tota his Nature would become eval all the Elements being in him composed to an equal strength in an equal proportion If then otherwise the radical heat and moysture do sensibly diminish certainly old age or gray haires cannot be prevented Possibly you may imagine a Medicine the which having a vertue of retarding the motion of the vital heat must of necessity prolong its life in the same manner as I have read in some Author I cannot call to mind which a Candle hath been preserved burning for many years without the adding of Moysture to it by being placed in a close and cold Cave deep under ground Here if true a flame was retarded in its motion by the constringent cold of the earth and thereby the Tallow was saved by being but a very little dissipated through the motion of the fire I say then could the natural heat be retarded by such a constrictive medecine as to catochizate it and hinder its motion life might be protracted to some hundreds of yeares But again then a man could not be suffered to eat or drink in that case because that must necessarily stirre up the heat which excited if it were not then ventilated by the substracting the forementioned constrictive Medecine whereby it might dissipate the acceding moisture must incur into danger of extinction But this prolongation of life pretended by Theophrast Par. is attempted by hot Medecines such as they say do comfort and restore the natural Balsom of man which is so far from retarding old Age that it rather doth accelerate it for if the heat is augmented then certainly it must acquire a stronger force whereby it procures a swifter declination as hath been shewed Besides Experience confirms this to us Many having accustomed themselves to take a Dram
spirits How the Air happens to burst through a sudden great light That a sudden great Light may blind kill or cast a man into an Apoplexy 8. How Light renders all Objects visible Why a piece of Money cast into a Basin filled with water appears bigger than it is The causes of apparent Colours Why a great Object appears but small to one afar off The difference between lux and lumen What a Beam is What a Splendour is That the Lights begot by the Stars and other flames are not distinguished specie How the Coelum Empyreum is said to be Lucid. I. VVE are now to ennumerate and unfold the remaining qualities risen from the mixture of the Elements such are Light Colours Sounds Odors and Sapors We will first begin with Light as being the excellentest among them Light is a quality emanating from flaming fire A flame is nothing else but incrassated Air expanded and deducted in rotundity by condensed fire which is detained and imprisoned within the foresaid qualified Air. The difficulties requiring illustration are 1. How the fire comes to be condensed 2. How imprisoned 3. Why the Air doth immediately surround it 4. How light is propagated and the manner of its action As to the first Fire I have told you will not burn unless it be condensed for being naturally rare it penetrates through the incrassated Air with ease but being condensed it doth not because it is adjoyned to a heavy gross body namely the minima's of the Earth and Water which doth put a stop to its pass but nevertheless the force of fire is stronger by reason of those adjoyned heavy minima's For fire being violently detained by them is grown stronger 2. Fire being to divide another thick body makes use of the compressing accuteness of Earth to divide it which it effects by protruding those dense parts before it for through its single rarity it could not 2. Fire flying out and being expulsed out of a mixt body if it doth not meet with incrassated Air to retain it will pass and vanish but hitting against incrassated Air it strives to pass the Air again being continuous doth maintain her continuity with all her force and thirdly the fire moving circularly makes a circular dent into the mass of the said thickned Ayr which it beats against the advenient Ayr also striving from all parts to recover its situation and therefore necessarily surrounding the fire The Ayr again is also become stronger because of its violent detention notwithstanding the fire being the more potent doth diduct it into an oval or round Figure in the same manner as Wind striving to pass the water doth blow it up into a bubble Fire being thus condensed imprisoned and surrounded with thick ayr and diducting the same ayr into an oval or round Figure is called a flame II. The properties of a flame are 1. to be burning hot 2. to be an lux illuminans illuminating light The burning proceeds from the particles of condensed fire violently striking through the moisture of a mixt body whereby it divides it into ashes or a black crust tending to ashes Before I shew the manner of emanation of Light let us first examine what it is we call Light Light is that which is visible and renders all things about it visible Wherefore you do mark that Light is nothing but that which affects and moves the eye-sight If then I make it appear to you whereby it is that fire doth affect the Eye-sight therein I shew you the manner of emanation or operation of Light You must apprehend the optick spirits to be a thin continuous body equally interwoven through all its parts with a proportion of thin yet a little condensed fire for were it not a little dense it could not heat so that it is very like to the ambient ayr in substance and its other qualities 2. Supposing it to be an ayr we must conceive it to be continuous with the ambient ayr when the eyes are open This premitted I infer light to be nothing else but a continuous obduction of the Ayr caused by a flaming fire But let me here intreat your serious intention upon what I shall discover concerning the nature of Light it being one of the difficultest mysteries of all Philosophy and although its effects are luminous to the Eye yet its nature is obscure to the Understanding The search of this moved Plato to leave Athens and set saile for Sicily to speculate those flames of the mount AEtna Empedocles the Philosopher hazarded himself so far for to make a discovery of the nature of a flame and its light that he left his body in the Mongibell fire for an experiment although much beyond his purpose It is almost known to all how that the Learned Pliny took shipping from the promontory Misenas to be traversed to the Mount Pomponianus whither curiosity had driven him to fathom the depths of the Vesuvian flames but before he could feel the heat the smoak smothered him III. First then I prove that Light is an effect of a flame There is no flame but it causeth light and by the light we know it is a flame Ergo Light is an inseparable accident and a propriety quartimodi of a flame the Antecedence is undoubted Doth not a Candle a Torch a focall flame cause lights Or did you ever see light and doubted of the flame of it What is the reason when we hit our fore-heads against any hard thing we say there strikes a light out of our eyes It is because the violence of the stroke did discontinuate the optick ayr through which the condensed fire did unite and diduct the intrinsick ayr which was incrassated through the same stroke and so made a flame or rather a flash which is a sudden flame that is quickly lighted and quickly laid Secondly Light is not a single quality inhering in fire alone for were it so then where ever fire is there should be light but to the contrary we find that there is fire inherent in the ayr and many other bodies yet the ayr remains dark after the descent of the Planets 2. Were fire naturally light we could never be in darkness because the vast Region of fire is so large that it could not but illuminate thrice the extent of the ayr Thirdly Light is not fire rarefied and exporrected throughout all the dimensions of the ayr for who could ever imagine that a Candle being so small a flame should serve to be drawn out through the ayr and fill it with light to the extent of six or eight Leagues for a Candle may be seen at Sea in a clear dark night six or eight Leagues off or further so that it is absurd to imagine this and unworthy of a Philosophers maintaining it 2. It is impossible that fire could be so exactly mixt with ayr in an instant for so large an extent 3. There is never a particle of illuminated ayr but it is light to the full extent
only obducted in its extent according to the force of the flame and when it is so stretcht as it were through the fires obduction it receives the force of the flame partly only because it is contracted by expelling the extrinsick bodies contained within it so yields to the fires obduction The clearer the ayr is the greater light it makes because it containing no extraneous bodies cannot contract it self from the obtension of the fire by expelling such bodies but being totally continuous it is obtended so far as the said ayr is continuous and according to the force of the fire The reason then why a light is terminated is through the contraction of the ayr and oft times through the density of an intermediate body as of thick vapours and exhalations According to the diminution of the flame the ayr relaxes and so the light diminisheth V. The cause why a dense body is uncapable of generating a light is by reason it is contiguous and cannot be obducted or stretcht as it were I have said That that is light which moves our eye-sight even hence I wil sensibly prove to you that light is nothing but a continuous obduction of ayr Suppose that the optick spirits are for the greatest part an ayr to which the external ayr when the Eye-lids are open is joyned in continuity and becomes one continuous body with the optick ayr in a manner as when one float of water toucheth another they become continuately one Wherefore then when the ayr is continuously obducted as far as where it is continuated to our optick ayr it must necessarily also obduct and stretch the same optick ayr because it is continuous to it That light moves the sight by stretching the optick ayr is evident in that when we look against the light although its origin is far off we feel a stretching in our eyes 2. VVhen we have wearied our selves by seeing we complain that we feel a stretching in our eyes In case the ayr is not obducted so far as to reach our eyes then we do not see it as when a thing is out of sight the reason why we cannot see it although nothing is interposed to hinder is because its stretching doth not reach as far as our Eyes Hence you may observe that visus non fit emittendo sed recipiendo motum flammae sight is not actuated through the emission of beams from our sight but through the receiving of the motion of a flame and more through suffering patiendo non agendo than acting VI. The fire of a Flame is to some extent dispersed through the Ayr and so far it heats the Ayr nevertheless its enlightning is much further extended The Sun which is the greatest Flame its heat in the Summer reaches to us in a very intense quality its light would reach a hundred or more times further then it were the tract of the Ayr extended to a larger quantity but because it is not therefore its heat in the torrid Zone and in the temperate ones in the Summer reaches as far as its light which although it doth is not therefore to be accounted the essence of Light as some have simply imagined So that it was no less Mistake to believe that the Sun's light could be precipitated in a Glass and some to have collected of it no less then two Ounces and half a day The vertue of this Precipitate is described to penetrate into the substance of the hardest Metal I do believe that it is very possible to precipitate such small bodies constituted out of the fiery emissions of the Sun whose vertue cannot but be very penetrative through the predominance of fire in them but nevertheless it is not the light which is precipitated but fiery substances neither is fire the light it self but the cause of it Light is a property following the union of a flame with the Ayr wherefore the Ayr is rather to be taken for the principal Subject VII Light is not the primar cause of all the effects produced by the Stars but their temperament and exsuperating heat Accidentally or privatively their remoteness and remission of heat may be a cause of coldness and incrassation of the Ayr and consequently of its obscurity The light of the Sun doth not comfort the vital Spirits neither doth it act immediately upon them at all although through its heat it may help and excite the vital heat of some frigid temperatures The light hath only a power of acting immediately and per se upon the Optick spirits and through altering them may prove a mediate cause of Vital and Animal Alterations I prove it If you go forth out of the dark into the light you feel a distention or rather an obtension of your visive spirits return again out of the light into the dark and you will first perceive a relaxation and afterwards a contraction of your sight The mediated effect of light is a quickning of the Vital and Animal Spirits which are moved by continuation from the obtension of the Optick Ayr. A sudden great light causes a bursting of the Air which happens when the Air is so much obtended that it can stretch no more and then of a necessity it must burst A bursting is a sudden breaking of a body throughout all its dimensions and parts as it were The air is bursted through a great lightning or a flash before a thunder which if the same bursting do reach diametrically to the optick air of an open eye it will certainly blind yea sometime kill a man because the same bursting is continued unto and upon the optick spirits and sometimes is also further continuated that it bursteth the whole Treasure of the Animal spirits which necessarily must effect an Apoplexy A man coming forth suddenly out of the dark into a great light is often struck blind because his optick Spirits are bursted through the sudden and strong obtention or if it obtends the optick Air to the next lower degree so as it may not cause a bursting it then produceth a dazling of the sight that is an over-stretching of the optick spirits VIII How light renders all things visible is a matter worthy of Enquiry The air being thus obtended and made visible through light is terminated every where about by the surfaces of terminated bodies These terminated surfaces resist the obtended air and according to their several degrees of mixture or of fundamental light and darkness do attenuate refract diminish contract or condensate the obtension If the surface of the resisting object is continuous and weighty it attenuates and refracts or reflects the light of the air and of that nature is water for water being adunited to air in continuity doth not only sustain the obtension of the air but also through its reflexion obtends the obtended air yet more and so the obtension upon the water must be greater by reason it stops the obducted air more then any thing else wherefore its light is thinner but withal greater
of which it is made one in the subject and distinct from the subject out of which essence that property of visible is produced A manifest contradiction First he saith that an Accident hath alwaies a substance for its subject and yet in it self it hath a power and act Assuredly none will affirm a power to be in an accident but in the subject for to receive such an Accident this he alloweth himself for an accident saith he is alwaies in a substance as its subject ergo it hath its essence from a subject if then a subject giveth its essence it giveth praecedentia and consequentia esse it is then the power that is from the subject as also the act ergo an Accident is nothing but the subject modified 4. Constituting Principles as Matter and Form are required to exist at one time but the power and act cannot exist at one time for assoon as the act is advened the power is fled If then you assert it to be a principium generationis then the subject thus constituted doth consist of a Principle perse and another per accidens Besides it followes that an accident is an actus purus if so then an accident is more perfect then a man or an Angel Wherefore it appears that a colour is nothing else but a modification of a subject and of the same rank that other accidents are of besides that colour is exempted from a power and act and that the substance is rather to be conceived to be instructed with a power of being coloured The subsequent distinction confirms my Interpretation of his words For saith he light is an act of visibility that is it is an action upon a visible substance for visibility in the abstract being invisible he ought rather to have declared how a lucid substance acted through its modality or action upon our sense The same Scaliger in the said Dist. asserts that Light is neither white or whiteness No doubt it is no whiteness for that he never saw existent without a body unless it was a Spirit in his Fancy But the question is whether it is not white His Argument alledged against it is because it cannot be seen in the Air and doth not terminate the sight The former condition of his Reason is simpliciter necessary the latter is only necessary necessitate consequentiae by consequence I reply to his Argument 1. That light is visible in the air as I have shewed before 2. Light were it imaginable to inhere in an infinite subject it would be interminate and yet move the sight terminately for a man who is blinded by a thin Cataract knowes when it is day and when night because the light of the Sun moveth his Optick Air although very obtusely and yet he neither sees the termination of the Sun or of the Air. 3. Light is not invisible because of the thinness of the Air but visible because of its obductibility 4. The airs intermination is falsly supposed to be the cause of its invisibility for it is really terminate because a being and termination in the concrete are convertible Further it is evident that light must be necessarily terminated both in the body whence it is derived and in the body wherein it is received notwithstanding it is not alwaies necessary for us to perceive or see the lights termination in it self for that we seldom do although it is terminated in and by our sight According to our forestated definition light is accounted a colour but most single that is without any composition or reflection II. I call light a single colour not absolutely as if it were so in its own nature and constitution but because it moves our sight singly without representing any mixt colour with it to the sight This single motion of light is only its obtension continuated in the optick air is otherwise known by the name of an interminate Pellucid In case light be reflected and gathered in great quantity by air thickned and somewhat condensed by thin and by a little condensed clouds it produces a thick pellucid or whiteness in the air which continuated to the optick air produces the same whiteness there This we perceive when the Sun is said to shine which it doth ever when no thick dense clouds are interposed that its Raies are condensed by thin clouded air being a little condensed That the thin shining light is whitish is further apparent by the Peripatetick description of white White is a colour which doth most disperse the sight but so doth the Sun shining light ergo it is whitish Or according to others White is that which containeth much light ergo light is most white because propter quod unumquodque tale est illud magis tale est Light being the cause and fountain of white must be most white in it self III. Light Lumen is actus visibilitatis saith Scaliger that is it renders a visible thing visible But how not efficienter for then without light in the air there should be no fundamental colours and every colour must be produced through light at the moment of its appulse but as a medium or causa sine qua non As a medium in that it doth defer the ratio obductibilitatis of every Object to the eye The manner of it is thus every mixt colour is nothing else but the degree of the alteration of the mixt objects wrought upon the air by their greater or less pinching contracting or deading of it Supposing that the greatest extention of the ayr causes a pellucidness that which gathers contracts or deads the ayr a little and staies its obtension is white that which gathereth it yet more is yellow That which doth gather it most is black that which gathers it less is brown and so gradually This gathering of the obtended ayr by the objected mixt colour is a kind of a pinching whereby the ayr is continuately pinched to the extent of a certain Sphaere The ayr being pinched doth continuately pinch the optick ayr which if it be a little pinched by an objected colour it discerneth it to be white or if very much it discerneth it to be black hence when we enter into a mourning Room hung about with black cloath we perceive a perfect pinching or contraction in our Eyes Here may be demanded Whence this various manner of pinching proceeds since that pinching is caused by a solid object if so then the solider an object is the more it should pinch and consequently the blacker it should be which seems erroneous for Gold is of a yellow colour which otherwise should be blackest because it is the most solid of all bodies I answer That this various manner of pinching depends upon the degrees of the gathering of light or obtended ayr That which doth most gather or deads the ayr being a continuous or fluid body is a dense and contiguous body so that the more dense that a body is the more light it gathers and pinches the stronger and
rendred of a very unequal temperature where the extraneous Elements uniting together do raise a hollowness in the earth and infinuate into one anothers substance or body to which the coldness of the earth is very much conducing thereby gathering or coagmenting the said Elements together and impelling them into one anothers body and then closing them firmly all which it performs through its coldness Through coldness understand its compressing weighty minima's Wherefore do not still abide in your obstinate conceit that it is the Sun which is the efficient cause of Minerals and Stones For that is absurd I prove it That which is the main efficient of Stones and Metals must be a contracting condensing and indurating substance but the Sun is no contracting condensing or indurating substance Ergo the Sun cannot be the efficient of Stones and Metals The Major is undeniable I confirm the Minor by proving the contrary namely that the Sun doth mollifie because its flame is soft and all heat is soft for softning is nothing else but to dispose a body to bend easily into its self if pressed from without But earth rarefied by fire doth easily bend into it self if pressed from without Ergo The Minor is evident because whatever is throughly hot fiery is soft as we see in red-hot Iron in alive flesh and all Vegetables So that by how much the more heat a body hath by so much the softer it is provided quod caetera sint paria Further What heat is there under the Earth I confess there is more and less coldness under it but no predominating heat What heat can there be in Greenland especially under the earth and yet it is certain that many rocks and stones are generated there They may as well say that fire is the efficient cause of all those Islands of Ice Again so much as a substance consisteth of coldness and earth by so much it participates of hardness or by how much the less heat a body consisteth of so much the lesse hardnesse it partakes of The matter of a stone in the kidneys or in the bladder was sofe when it fluctuated within the vessals but being detained in the kidneys its heat is diminished either through the intense heat of the Kidneys which doth dissipate and attract the lesser heat from the matter retained in the cavity of the kidneys through which ecess of heat the terrestrial and thick waterish parts are coagulated and are closed together through the depressing coldness of the intrinsick earth and water The same matter being retained in kidneys of a cold temperament doth immediately through that degree of coldness coagulate and grow hard The stone in the bladder is generally harder than the stone in the kidneys because the one is of a far colder that is less hot temperament than the other That in the kidneys is more friable whereas the stone in the bladder is affected with a continuous firm thick waterish hardness This I can witness by a stone being taken from a Patient by section which that most learned and expert Physitian Dr. George Bate shewed me six or seven years ago This stone was perduced to that hardness that I am confident an ordinary smart stroak of a hammer could scarce break it Yet when it was within the bladder it was far distant from such a hardness for a piece of the Catheter was unawares run into the body of the stone and broke in it which was afterwards taken out with it but after it had been exposed a little while to the air it grew immediately to that hardness What could be the cause of this but the hotter parts of the stone exhaling into the air whereby the cold parts fell closer and thereby arrived to a greater hardness The errour of Fernelius is obvious in that he stated the intense heat of the kidneys to be the cause of a Lithiasis for it happens as freqently in kidneys of a cold temperament neither is it an insita renum arenosa calculosaque dispositio a parentibus contracta hereditary fixt fabulous and calculous disposition as the same Author conceives which doth consist in a degree of temperament of the solid parts of the kidneys for stones have been generated in kidneys of all kinds of temperaments neither can it be said to be hereditary for many a man hath been troubled with the stone whose Issue never was so much as disposed to it and on the other side many a man hath been miserably tormented with the stone or Duelech as Paracelsus terms it whose Parents never discerned the least symptom of a stone within their bodies Nevertheless as I said before the temperature of the kidneys adds much to the accelerating of a Lithiasis It is then certain that the greatest cause of lapidation or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is internal depending upon the predominance of earth or coldness over the other Elements in a mixture The Focus or Uterus as Van Helmont terms it that is the place where a stone or gravel is generated must be a close hollow place wherefore nothing can arrive to this close hollow place unless it be liquid for a thick or course body will be intercepted before it can reach thither This liquid matter being now lodged within this cavity the hot parts do exhale because now through the hollowness of the place they have got liberty to dislate and free themselves from the heavy terrestrial and thick aqueous parts whereas before when they were kept close together through channels and lodges shutting close upon them the hot parts were firmly contained within and bound up This is necessarily and certainly demonstrative and infers that where ever close hollownesses are groved and that liquid matter containing terrestrial and aqueous parts in it may reach to them there certainly stones and metals can and may be generated By vertue of this position I shall prove and shew by and by that stones and metals may be generated in most hollow parts of the body of man But to persue my discourse The hot parts being now freed from the terrestrial parts and inhering in subtil ayry serosiries do with more ease and force procure their passage through this close and hollow prison than they made their way thither leaving the terrestrial and aqueous parts behind them for a Ransom which by degrees are coagulated more and more according to the expulsion of the fiery and ayry parts Understand also the reasons of the qualification of the Focus or womb of stones and Metals 1. It must be hollow the reason of this is set down already 2. It must be close for were it not close but open the terrestrial and aqueous matter could not be detained there but would have as free a passage as the thin parts Besides closeness conduceth to keep out extrinsick heat which otherwise would again dissolve and mollifie the work wherefore the hardest stones and metals are found some degrees below the Surface of the earth and I dare confidently assert that if metals
Emerald c. A Ruby is a reddish stone A Granate is a worser sort of Rubies A Sarda is of a transparent fiery red colour A Cornelian is comprehended under it A Sardonix is composed as it were out of a Sarda and Onyx it is scarce transparent A Saphire is opake but of a clear sky or blew colour and very hard A Turcois is opake and of a colour between green and blew A Topaze is transparent and of a colour between a grass green and a Saffron yellow it is falsely confounded with a Chrysolite there being a very discernable difference between them II. The less Precious Stones are found either within the bodies of living Creatures or without Those that are found within the Bodies of Living Creatures are 1. The Bezoar stone which is found in the Belly of an Indian Goat-Stag a Beast in some parts like to a Goat in others to a Stag. The Stone is for the most part of a dark green yet some are found of a yellowish others of a Brown and Olive colour They are brittle and friable containing oft-times a Straw or a small Kernel in the midst of them about which there concreaseth a slimy matter baking to it in Blades There are two sorts of them viz. Oriental and Occidental 2. A Tair of a Stag is a little Stone engendred in the corner of a Stags eye It is very bright smooth round very small and light It s colour is yellowish mixt with a few black streaks and gives a strong Sent. 3. The Stones of a Goat are taken out of its Stomack or Gall. 4. There are also Stones found in the Stomack and Gall of an Oxe 5. The German Bezoar stones are taken out of the Bellies of some Does that haunt the Alpes 6. The Stone of an Indian Hogge or as the Portugueses call it Piedra de Puerco is found in the Gall of an East-India Hogge or in the stomack of a Porcupine it is soft and fat to feel to just as if you felt a piece of Castile Sope. Pearles that are generated within the Bellies of Sea shell-fish as of Cockles Muscles or Sea-Oysters These do most gather to the Sea-shore about the Spring where they or rather the Sun through its drying faculty do open their shels whereby that glutinous and clear moysture which they had retained undigested a longtime in their Bellies and now being freed from its ayry parts doth congeal through compression of the remaining thick waterish substance which if they do happen to be engendred when the sky is dampish and cloudy are affected also with a cloudiness as not being sufficiently purified through the driness and heat of the Sun and the ambient air As long as they be under water they are soft but after a short time lying in the dry air they do soon grow hard When they are taken out of the shell some of the Fishes flesh cleaves to them which they usually bite off by covering them for a while with Salt 2. The Alectory Stone is taken out of a Cocks Maw This stone is more frequently found in Cocks when they are in their fourth or fifth year 3. A Bufonite is a Stone found in the head of an old Toad its shape is for the most part long or round 4. A Chelidony is taken out of the Maw or Liver of a young Swallow its colour is a black mixt with a little red Sometimes they breed two together whereof the one is more blackish the other enclines more to a red 5. The Carp-stone is white without and yellow within being found in the throat of a Carp There is also another triangular stone engendred in the head of it besides two long stones more sticking above its eyes 6. The Stones of a Crab otherwise called Crabs-eyes are white and round 7. A Saurite is found in the Belly of a Lizzard 8. A Limace-stone is engendred in the head of a House-Snaile 9. The Perch-stones are taken out of the head of a Perch near to the Back-bone III. The less pretious stones found without the bodies of Living Creatures are 1. The AEtites or Eagle-stone which is found in an Eagles Nest and is of a light red colour 2. Coral which is a shrub of the Sea being green and soft under water but assoon as it is plucked from the bottom of the Sea and exposed to the air it becomes red and hard like unto a stone Hence Ovid. Lib. 4. Metam Nunc quoque coralliis eadem Natura remansit Duritiem tacto capiant ut ab aere quodque Vimen in aequore er at fiat super aquore saxum There are several sorts of it viz. Red Green White Yellow Brown Black and of a mixt colour Some pieces of Coral appear to be half Wood and half Stone Crystal waxeth upon the snowie Hils It is oft found upon the Alpes that divide Italy from Helvetia It s shape is hexagonal the cause is the same with that of the angular shape of Alume Authors are at great variance whether it is generated out of Ice No certainly for Ice is nothing near so clear neither can it be purified after its concretion It s Matter then is the subtiler and purer part of Snow concreased and congealed for what is more crystalline and pure then the liquor of Snow as being purified from all gross parts through its first evaporation from the waters to the Heavens and thence precipitated pure and freed from its greater part of terrestrial admixture I need not add more for to explain its generation since it is generated in the same manner that all other stones are generated The Haematite or Blood-stone is of an Iron colour permixt with bloudy streakes some are more blackish others yellowish The Galactite or Milk-stone is of an Ash colour A Marble is a smooth shining stone admitting of sundry colours It is known by three sorts 1. Alabaster which is a white transparent Marble 2. The Porphirstone which is drawn through with red and white streakes 3. An Ophirstone whose colour is a green spotted with spots like unto those of a Serpent A Sarcophage or flesh-eating stone is of an Ash colour It derives its name from eating mans flesh away without pain A Lazul-stone is of a blew colour speckt within its body with Golden specks like unto so many stars An Armene stone is of the same colour excepting that in stead of Golden specks it is marked with green blew and blackish spots The Themeade is a stone which driveth Iron from it wherein it proves contrary to the attraction of the Loadstone upon which we shall insist particularly in a Chapter by it self as requiring a more distinct and nice search The Nephritick stone is sent hither by the Inhabitants of Nova Hispania it looâ—s greasie about as if it were besmeated with Oyl Iâ—s colour is for the most part a light green others are of a mixt colour It is hought to be a kind of a Jaspis The Judaean stone so called because it is frequently found
lye towards the North Pole of the Heavens or of the Earth because it tends downwards withall Poles are vulgarly described to be the two extremities of an axis axeltree about which a Globe or Wheel moves round If so then properly a Loadstone cannot be said to have either Axis or Poles because according to the vulgar opinion it doth not move round Wherefore the former denomination is improperly attributed to it viz. the extreme central point of its tendency towards the Arctick Pole is termed the North Pole of the stone and the opposite extremity is called the South Pole of it Next remember out of the Ch. of Coct that all bodies in their decoction do run off their temperament through streams or small mixtures of the Elements gradually deserting the decocting bodies and taking their egress or fuming through their pores These pores tend most from the transcurrent Axis towards the North. That its pores tend most towards the North is evident by its intrinsick parts within as you may see when it is cut through running variously intorted towards the North in streaks these streaks are distinguisht from one another through interjacent porosities otherwise they would be continuously one That the Loadstone emits fumes is testified from its looseness and inequality of mixture For all parts as I have shewed before that are unequally mixt suffer a discontinuation of their mixture because one Element being predominant and having its force united through the said unequal mixture must needs make way for its effumation and afterwards break through by egressing fumes but such is the Loadstone Ergo. 2. That these fumes or effluvia do effumate through their Northerly pores the experiment it self doth confirm to us For we see that they attract Steel most at the North side besides they usually rub the cross wires of Sea-Compasses at the North side as being most effumous there Thus much for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and part of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now for the manner of its attraction and here it is disputed whether the Loadstone attracts Iron or Iron the Loadstone Hereunto I answer That neither the Loadstone doth properly attract Iron or Iron it However since Iron is moved toward the Loadstone but accidentally by means of his effluvia or steames therefore the Loadstone is said to draw Iron to it 2. Iron doth improperly move it self to the Loadstone being incited to the same motion through the steames of the Loadstone entring through its pores into its substance The streams of the Loadstone are through their particular form and external shape or figure fitted to enter into the pores of Iron which are in like manner fitted to receive the streams of the Loadstone they being admitted do reserate the substance of Iron or through their specifick penetrability do free the volatil parts of that Iron from the fixt ones whence they do immediately through their fiery principle dilate and diffuse themselves towards that part of the Circumference where they feel the continual effumations of the Loadstone yet more to unite them which reeking out and being further diducted by a continuation of succeeding parts do draw the course parts along with it as being still continuatly united to them Or plainer the said fumes of the Loadstone having entered the pores of Iron do immediately loosen the spirits of the Iron which being dilated and united to the fumes of the Loadstone must needs covet a greater place the want of which causeth them both to spout out at those holes which are most patent which must necessarily be those through which the Magnetical fumes entered This sudden spouting out must cause an attraction of the Iron because the extrinsick air doth suddenly enter its pores on the opposite side for to recover a place within the Iron which it had lost without by being driven back out of its place by the prorupting fumes This sudden irruption of the air on the opposite side drives the Iron forwards to that place whence it was first repelled This you will the better understand if you compare it with our discourse set down in the Chapter of Local motion and of a Vacuum These steams of the Iron do effumate through all the pores where the vertue of the Loadstone hath touched it especially at the Center of opposition to the stone whence they breaking out in great quantity do draw the body of Iron directly towards the Loadstone But if the objected Iron be defended by being besmeared with Oil or any other greasie substance or by being dipt into water it puts by and obtuses the Fumes of Loadstone That the Loadstone doth effuse Fumes from it is further made known to us 1. Through its inequality of mixture and looseness of Substance as I hinted before 2. Either it must act that is attract at a distance or else operate through steams it cannot at a distance that being only proper to supernatural Agents and denied to all natural ones ergo the last 3. If you burn it it will cast a visible blew sulphurecus smoaky Flame 4. It is not the Iron doth primarily effuse steams towards the Loadstone because it is more compact and less exhalable Hence Scaliger might now have resolved his Doubt whether the Loadstone drew Iron or Iron it Why these Fumes do exhale most towards the North we have told you already Do not let it seem strange to you that the emanations of this stone should reserate the mixture and Temperament of Iron it being common to many other bodies although Authors are not pleased to take notice of it The fumes of Mercury do open the body of Gold The heat of the Sun opens the body of water and attracts Vapours thence Amber through its Emissives attracts Dust Paper c. But of these elsewhere Why the stone moves steel variously according to its diverse position happens through the variety and obliquity of its Pores variously and obliquely directing its steames and variously withal entring the Pores of the objected Steel V. The Reason of the second Property is because two Loadstones being alike in mixture of body and in Effumations cannot act upon one another for all actions are upon Contraries But in case the one be more concocted then the other and in some wise dissembling in their mixtures then doubtless the one will act upon the other and the more concocted will attract the less The cause of the third is that the Emanations of the Loadstone being appelled and harboured in an extraneous body as that of Steel do with more ease and in greater smoakes as I have said before exhale out of it and consequently attract Iron stronger and work with a greater Bent towards the Northern Pole Besides steel collects all the egressing steames of the stone which being concentrated in the body of the said steel and consequently received in greater quantity must prove more forcible The solution of the fourth is containned in the first The Reason of the fifth is
the cause and a false one too by the effect A notion by far inferiour to those of the wanderers and that which adds to this absurdity is to imagine that these streaks should retain their shape notwithstanding their continual and long grinding against the air in their descent and not change their shape a hundred times over Doth not a cloud which must be supposed to be of a firmer consistency than those particles make choice of a new shape every moment But how much the more these small tender bodies And that which is most absurd is to propose that such a vast number or troops of these particles should arrive hither into our North Hemisphere from the South so obliquely without changing their shape further he supposeth them to come bearing down directly through the Earth and through the Magnete which is impossible unless it be in a right sphaere whereas we here are situated in a very oblique sphere and consequently the Magnet is also obliquely seated here wherefore it is requisite that these streakes should alwaies beat against the Magnet in these Regions obliquely and change their shape very oft But how monstrous is it to maintain these particles to flie through the Diameter of the Earth and water being bodies most dense close thick in many places shutting out fire and air being substances by a Million of degrees exceeding Des-Cartes in subtility or how is it possible they should pass the most Icy and deep thick body of water well and yet through all this difficulty they should retain their shape this is an absurdum absurdissimorum absurdissimum The earth is pervious in such a manner as to fit the shape of the Coelestial streakes and were it so certainly it moving about the Sun according to his assent must change its passages and so thwart the entrance of the Coelestial subtilities As for the passages of the Magnete we grant them to be numerously seminated through its body but their shape is quite different My time doth even weary me in making disquisition upon so dishering and monstrous a Chimera I should easier give credit to Rablais his Pantagruel or the Fables of AEsope than to so obtuse a phantasm XIII There remains yet a word or two touching the fabulous property of this Stone which you have described by Famianus de Strada Libavius and others viz. that two Loadstones although at a great distance do so sympathize with one another that they move at one anothers passive impulsion and that towards the same place as for two friends residing in different Countries and intending to signifie their meaning or desires to each other they are only to make use of two steel needles of an equal size to rub them both against the same side of the Magnete and afterwards to place them in a Compass Box and so turning either of the Needles to any Point of the Compass the other is thought to obey to the same motion whereby they come to know one anothers meaning as having mutually at their last meeting agreed to impose a certain signification upon each point of the said Compass Hence they deduce a Magnetical or like to it sympathy in curing of wounds a sympathy in the affinity of bloud a sympathy between the guts and their excrements between superlunary sublunary bodies between men and men men and beasts men and parts of beasts men and plants beasts and beasts beasts and plants some natural bodies and others So that whereas formerly Philosophers used to excuse their ignorance by occult qualities now having worn them out they accur to Magnetical sympathies There is not a Surgeon or Apothecary so ignorant but he will as cunningly find out a cause whereby to explain the most abstruse effect of nature and instantly tell you such or such an effect happens through a Magnetical sympathy as the most learned Mr. Doctor But is this the great advancement of Learning and Philosophy which our Age doth so much boast of Is it not rather a grand piece of impudence to propose such absurdities and much more to give credit to them If Loadstones are subjected to such a necessary sympathy then one Magnet being retracted to a certain point of the Compass all must yield to the same point But the consequence is ridiculous ergo the Antecedence is no less 2. This sympathy is either communicable through means of the air or through it self without any intermediate body and consequently a natural action must agere in distans not the first for it is impossible that its steames should be conveighed to such a distance in their full vigour not the second that sounding absurd in the ears of all Naturalists The other kind of sympathies I intend to treat of elsewhere CHAP. IV. Of Life and living Bodies 1. What Life is 2. The Form of Life Why Vegetables are generated no where but near to the Surface of the Earth 3. The properties of a Vital Form 4. The definiton of Nutrition and the manner of it Whether food is required to be like to the dissipated parts 5. What Accretion is and the manner of it 6. The manner of the generation of a Plant. 7. The manner of the germination of a Plant. A delineation of all the parts of a Plant. 8. What the Propagation of a Plant is and the manner of it 1. HItherto we have proposed to you the nature of Earths Minerals and Stones which are the lowest degree of natural bodies and therefore do most of all resemble their predominating Element in nature and properties the next degree to this is wherein Vegetables or Plants are constituted and through whose prerogative a more noble Essence and dignities are allotted to them consisting in Life Accretion and Propagation The life of a Plant is its singular nature through which it is nourished and accreased and doth propagate As Generation and Corruption in a strict sense are only appropriated to in animated naturals so are Life and Death restrained to animated ones namely to Plants Animals and Men. Peripateticks seem to observe a twofold difference of life viz. Substantial and Accidental The former is taken for the principle of the vital operations The latter for the actions of life as Nutrition Accretion and Propagation We here intend neither abstractly but define the life of a Plant concretely that is a living body substance or plant to be a being composed out of a Physical matter specified by a distinct form from pure naturals and through its Essence to be qualified to nourish it self accrease and to generate Wherefore Aristotles Followers do justly condemn Cardan lib. 7. de subtil and Cornel. Valer. Cap. 44. instit Phys. for maintaining life it self to be an action that is a quality or property really distinct from its subject But withall stumble into no small an inconvenience in defining it to be an Actus which is no otherwise distinguished from an action than a concrete from an abstract So that in inserting actus they must mean an
1. That the total vertue of Accretion lyeth hidden in the spermatick substance 2. That the accretion of living parts happens through increasing their flame and extending their solid substance and by being united to the radicall ones This observation containes the greatest secresie of the art of Medicine and is the sole basis of most of the Theoremes therein expressed and withall detects a fundamental errour of Galen whose tenet distinguisheth the influent heat essentially from the innate heat whereas the former is nothing else but the flame of the latter increased by spirits lately advened and united to it by the last concocted nutriment But of this more expressely in my Archelogia Iatrica Notwithstanding I shall continue the history of Accretion in each part Through the fore-mentioned expansion rarefaction and intumescence the circumduced pellicles being two in number differing from one another only in crassitude are gradually distended untill at last all the parts being perfectly formed by the mechanick or plastick spirits in the manner beforesaid break their Membranes first naturally at the top next towards the Surface of the Earth but counter-naturally at the sides The cause of this first eruption through the top depends upon the swifter and more forcible turgency of the light Elements tending upwards besides upon the upper parts being more rarefied and attenuated through their greater nearness to the influential heat The Root erupts soon after its having pierced through the membranes by means of its weight strengthned by course heat groweth downwards and spreads into branches like the upper parts grow upwards spreading likewise into boughs These are more rare and thin as consisting of a thinner and rarer flame and of a thin yet solid sperm which according to the capacity of the same principles now mentioned do form themselves into boughs and leaves attracting every day nourishment proportionable to what was dissipated The Root doth in the same manner accrease by attracting weighty nutriment being impregnated with a dense heat and therefore can clime no higher but as for that which is more rare and thin it ascends higher or lower according to its proportion of tenuity and rarity The similar parts are accreased out of the more humorous parts of the attracted nutriment the solid ones out of the grosser parts of it The barke is accreased out of the grossest reliques of the Aliment the fibres out of the grosser the fleshy parts out of a mean substance between gross and subtill solid and liquid the medullar once out of the more unctious and rare parts the boughs out of nutriment somewhat more subtil and rare than that of the middle body or trunck The redounding parts draw matter for their accretion froâ—e cavâ— more waterish parts of the plant abounding in her which 〈…〉 contain a remnant of all the similar dissimilar parts of the whole That these are abounding parts their appearance only at such times when a plant is not alone filled but over-filled with nutriment doth restifie which usually hapneth in the Spring Summer and Autumn Leaves do germinate when the said matter is less concocted however supplied in great abundance whence it is that they make choice of a green colour and are expanded into Latitude Flowers appear when the said matter is somewhat more concocted and are only protruded out of the better and subtiller part of it whence many of them become odoriferous Fruits are engendred out of the same subtil matter being yet more concocted whence it is that most do take their beginning from a subtility for to acquire a crassitude according to this trite one substantiae coctione evadunt crassiores whose more terrestrial part falling through its weight to the center concreaseth into a kernel or stone whereupon the other parts do fasten as upon a foundation increasing dayly by apposition of new matter The recremental parts I call so because they are generated out of the greater part of such matters as ought to be excerned but containing some alimentary ones are retained and agglutinated whence they chance to be somewhat like and dislike to the other parts Plants are variously divided 1. Into three species viz. an herb which is a Plant some consisting of a root only others of a root stalk and leaves whereof some comprehend Fruges Olera Corn and Potherbs 2. A shrub is a plant fastned to the ground by a root and spreading into many boughs without a trunck 3. A tree is a Plant obtaining a root trunk and boughs In respect to their place of conception some are said to be terrestrial others aqueous some wild others Garden Plants According to their bigness some great others small And in regard of their fructification some fruitfull others barren or to their germination some to bud forth sooner others latter For instance the Turnip Basil and Lettuce shew themselves within three or sour daies others in five or six daies as a Gourd the Beete c. some in eight daies as the Orach Some in ten as the Cabbage 〈…〉 in twenty daies as Leeks Parsly in forty or fifty Piony 〈…〉 scarce less than within a year Many other diffeâ—… taken from their Colour Figure c. I do wittingly omit The propagation of a Plant is whereby it doth generate its like in specie through semination This is the last function that a Plant exerciseth for it must be nourisht and accreased to a just magnitude before it can attain to this most perfect and compleat action Semination is the means whereby it performeth the same and is a Plants bringing forth of seed this name in the English otherwise soundeth a seeding Seed is the abridgment of an intire Plant whereby it doth multiply it self into many of the same kind But the great question will be whence it is that a Plant obtaineth this power and what Seed properly is Here you are to observe that Seed is twofold 1. It is that which is casually as it may seem to us constituted within the Earth through the concourse of the Elements into one body being particularly so temperated as to be disposed to germinate into a Plant. Of this I have spoken sufficiently before where it appears that it precedes the constitution of a Plant whereas the other whereof I am to treat at present doth consecute a preceding Plant and is generated by it Seed in this second acception is a dissimilar substance consisting of the rudiments of all the parts of a Plant that are to liken the propagatrix or from which it was propagated in specie The manner of semination is thus A Plant having already disburdened it self of its fulness or abundance of nutriment by casting forth Leaves Flowers and Fruits there is still a remnant of abundance of the best nutriment which a Plant being now exalted to its vigour in its operations through the preceding Spring and Summers heat doth concoct to the highest degree and a just consistency wherein the spirits are united with the solid parts so as it may be requisite
we are to apply it as it relates to the other Elements and is the proper cause of her Commerce with them Water although appearing fluid yet naturally that is absolutely conceived by it self is void of all fluor but partakes of the greatest weight hardness crassitude smoothness and consistency that is imaginable I prove it Water the more it is remote from the intense heat of the Sun the more heavy thick hard smooth and consistent it is Have you not Mountains of Ice of great weight thickness c. in Greenland in the Summer much more in the Winter yet more directly under the Poles and most of all if apprehended absolute by it self and deprived from extrinsick air and fire when we cannot but judge it to be of the greatest weight thickness and consistency that is apprehensible The Scripture seems to attest the same Job 38. And the waters are hid as with a stone and the face of the deep is frozen By the deep here is meant the Chaos ergo the waters were naturally at their first creation thick and hard Lastly As there are two fluid Elements viz. fire and air So it is also necessary that they should be balanced and met with two opposite consistent ones namely Earth and Water The first being contiguous and hard responds to fire the other being continuous and hard responds to air being continuous and soft Whence we may safely conclude that it is the advent of the fire together with the air that renders the water thus thin and fluid as we see it is II. How Water first gained such a body together as the Sea is our exposition of the worlds creation will advise you The Sea is the greatest collection of water by the Latinists it is called Mare from Meare to go or to flow and not from amarum or the word Marath among the Caldeans signifying bitter as some have thought so it is likewise called Oceanus the Ocean from Ocior amnis a swift current It procures various distinctions from its beating against several shores from those of the East and West India it is surnamed the East and West Indian Ocean of the Mount Atlas the Atlantick Ocean from those of Sarmatia the Sarmatick Ocean near Madagascar the rough Sea from the quicksands that are frequently thereabout of Spain and Brittain the Spanish and Brittish Ocean c. And from the Plage whence it doth flow it is called the East West South or North Ocean The same spreads it self into many particular Seas or great Bayes whereof these are the more principal 1. The Mediterranean Sea so named because it flows through the middle of two great parts of the Earth viz. between a great part of Europe Africa and Asia Or more particularly between Spain France Italy Dalmatia Greece and Natolia of the one side and AEgypt and Barbary of the other Where it toucheth the Spanish coast it is called the Iberick sea and more forward the French Balearick Ligustick near Genoa Tyrrhenian or Tuscan about Sicily Sardinian Sicilian Adriatick Cretick Libyan Phoenicean Cyprian Syriack sea c. its mouth is called the Straits 2. Pontus Euxinus the Euxian sea otherwise named the black sea or Mare Majus whose mouth is called the Hellespont from its narrowness its throat Propontis and the Thracian Bosphor so called from bos an Oxe as if an Oxe were too big to pass through that narrowness 3. The Arabian and Persian sea 4. The Gangetican sea so named from the river Ganges which is disburdened into it 5. The Red sea deriving that name not from the colour of the Sea but of the red sand over which it floweth The Baltick Sea alias the Sinus Coddanus or Suevick Sea from the Suevi a Nation that formerly inhabited those coasts at the mouth it is called the Sound flowing 150 leagues far between Denmark Finland Sueden Prussia Liefland Pomerania and Saxony The pacifick sea is so called from the gentleness of the waves or the South sea because it lyeth to the Southward of the Line limited by the coasts of Asia America and terra Australis or the Country of Megallan III. A Lake is a great and perennal collection of water cirrounded by the Earth whereby it is cut off from the Sea It is distinguisht from a Pool in that the one is perennal the other is apt to be dryed up sometime by the heat of the Sun and driness of the earth and to be filled up again with rain Some of these being famous for their extent others for their admirable qualities I shall willingly insert 1. The greatest Lake in the Universe is the Caspian sea in Asia otherwise called the great sea the Albanian Hircanian Pontick Tartarian Sea the Sea of Sala Bachu Abachu Terbestan or Giorgian It diffuseth it self into three Bayes or Gulph viz. near the Mouth into the Hircanian on the right side into the Caspian and on the left side into the Scytick Gulph It bears the name of a Sea very improperly since it is incompassed by the Earth Nevertheless it is saltish and full of fish 2. The Lake Asphaltites in Judaea otherwise called the dead Sea from its immobility because as Corn. Tacit. relates that scarce any wind be it never so violent is strong enough to lift it up into Waves is noted for sustaining weighty bodies especially if anointed with Alume water that are cast into it in a manner that a man his hands and legs being tyed and cast into it shall swim it breeds no fish nor any other living creatures The Lake of the lesser Armenia and the Lake Aposcidamus in Africa and of Sicily are almost of the same strength On the contrary the Lake Avernum in Campania and that of AEthiopia are unable to sustain the weight of a leaf fallen into them from a tree and according to Pliny there is no fowl that flies over them but falleth dead into them There is a Lake near Lerna and another in Portugal which are so attractive and depressing that they do immediately draw and press down to the bottom whatever is cast into them in such a manner that a man having thrust his hand into either must use force to draw it out again Pomponius Mela and Solinus make mention of a Lake in AEthiopia which to the eye appearing crystalline and sweet to the pallat doth so besmear those that bath in it as if they had been duckt into a bath of oyl In the west of the Isle of Iseland travellers have discovered a great Lake fumous very cold in a short space changing whatever is cast into it into a stonish or rockish body a stick being thrust right up into the bottom that part which is under water is in two daies changed into an Iron substance the other above remaining what it was Hect. Boeth writes of another in Ireland which after some months renders that part of a stick that is thrust into the ground Iron the other part that is under water fliuty the upper part
1. That the disburdening of the Eastern Rivers into the Ocean is not the cause of its Circulation neither are the Sun or Moon the principal causes of this motion 2. The periodical course of the Ocean The causes of the high and low waters of the Ocean 3. How it is possible that the Ocean should move so swiftly as in 24 hours and somewhat more to flow about the terrestrial Globe 4. A further Explanation of the causes of the intumescence and detumescence of the Ocean The causes of the anticipation of the floud of the Ocean 5. That the Suns intense heat in the torrid Zone is a potent adjuvant cause of the Oceans Circulation and likewise the minima's descending from the Moon and the Polar Regions I. HAving in one of the Chapt. of the precedent Book posed a demonstrative and evident ground of the universal course of the great Ocean and the straitness of that Chapt. not permitting the finishing of the fabrick intended by us upon it Therefore this present plain shall serve for to compleat the delineation thereof but encountring with some rocky stones thereon it is requisite they should be rowled aside before the said Atlantick waves may procure a necessary assent of the true cause of their dayly circular floating The conceit of some Philosophers hath induced them to state the copious irreption of many large and deep Rivers into the Eoan Sea for the principal cause of its circulation the which tumefying its body do thereby press it westward This solution seems void of all reason the evacuation of the presupposed Rivers having no proportion to the replenishing of so extended a body as the Ocean scarce of a Lake or an inland Sea as we have observed of the lake Haneygaban and the Euxian Sea Besides many great Rivers disburdening themselves into the Occiduan Sea might upon the same ground return the course of the Ocean Eastward But imagine it was so why should not the said tumefaction rather incline the sea westward than further eastward Others rejecting the former opinion have in their fansie groven the ground whereon the sea beats deeper and deeper towards the west and so the ground being situated higher in the East shelving down gradually to the west the sea doth through its natural gravity rowl it self to the deeper lower Plane but then the eastern waters being arrived to the west how shall they return to the east again for to continue the said motion Wherefore this opinion may take its place among the Castles in the air Shall we then ascribe the cause of this motion to the rarefaction of the sea through the beams of the Sun which as it is successively rarefied doth swell and press its preceding parts forward As touching the Moon she cannot come into consideration here as being rather noted for condensation than rarefaction First I deny that the Sun doth any whit rarifie the Eastern Ocean because according to their Tenent the rarefaction of the sea happens through the commotion of the subsidencies and terrestrial exhalations contained within the bowels of the sea and scattered through its substance whereby it becomes tumefied which I grant in case the Sun casts its beams obliquely into the depth of the Ocean but I prove the contrary supposing the Sun doth cast its beams directly into the Eastern waters In AEgypt it seldom rains because the Sun casting its beams directly into the waters doth through the same degree of heat through which it might raise vapours dissolve them again likewise in the East Ocean the Sun subtilizing the waters doth doubtless through its heat commove exhalations and subsidencies but the waters being through the same heat attenuated are rendred uncapable of sustaining those terrestrial bodies wherefore they sinking deeper to the ground rather cause a detumescence of the sea I have alwaies observed that waters swell more through the cold than heat and that inundations happen for the most part after a frost besides it is obvious that Rivers are much tumefied when they are frozen and that by reason of the foresaid tumefaction inundations happen more frequently in the winter than at any other time of the year Des-Cartes imagineth the compression of the Moon together with the Earths motion about her own Axis to be the cause of the waters circular motion pressing it from East to West and the variation of this pressure to depend upon the various removal of the Moon from the Center of the Earth effecting the anticipation and various celerity of the waters motion So that where the Earth is obverted to the face of the Moon there the waters must be at their lowest being pressed towards the next quarter of the Surface where they are at their highest whence they are carried about through the Earths proper motion c. 1. I deny his supposition of the Earths motion as being fabulous which we have confuted elsewhere He might as well assert that there be as many Neptunes under water moving it circularly as Aristotle stated intelligencies to drive the Heavens for even this he might excuse by saying it was but an Assumption to prove a Phaenomenon of the water 2. What needs he to affirm a tumour of the water for since he assumes the Earth to move circularly we cannot but grant that the water must also move with it as constituting one Globe together 5. Why doth he in vain reassume in the 55 Sect. that out-worn Doctr. of Aristotle touching the Moons driving of the water which argues him to be very unconstant with himself 4. His stating the air to be so complicable and soft a body renders it very unfit for compressing and driving so vast and weighty a body as the Ocean 5. Can any one rationally or probably conceive that the Sun much less the Moon being so remore and whose forcible effects are so little felt by sublunary bodies should be capable of driving so deep so large and so heavy a body as the Ocean which is as powerful to resist through its extream gravity as all the Celestial bodies are potent to move through their extream lightness What because the Ocean and the Moon move one way therefore the one must either follow or move the other What can a passion so durable and constant and so equal depend upon a violent cause Since then such phansies are ridiculous and not to be proposed by any Philosopher let us now proceed in the unfolding of so difficult and admirable a matter as the course of the Ocean which we have formerly demonstrated to flow about the earth once in 12 hours and somewhat more II. Moreover besides this single motion making a sharper inspection into the drift of the Ocean it will appear to us to absolve a compounded periodical course in a perfixt time namely in 15 daies which space may be called a marinal or nautical month The meaning hereof is imagining a part of the Ocean to flow circularly from a certain point or more plainly a Bowle to rowl circularly
The number of these cavities we must suppose to be fifteen on each half of the terrestrial Globe because the Sea doth in every periodical compounded course make thirty stations or so many tumefactions by which it must needs work it self into so many cavities This supposed it doth infer another assumption viz. That since the Ocean moves over so many borders or shelves of cavities it must necessarily move in Bores A Bore or more properly a Bare is a tumefaction of water underneath moving very swift and elevating the waters atop into a tumefaction proportionable to it underneath An example of Bores you have in the River of Seyne and many other Rivers where great shallows obstruct the floud of the waters underneath But of this more hereafter The Ocean then moving in a great bore must raise a tumefaction wherever it passeth This tumefaction being originally in the middle parts causes the floud by sending a proportion of waters falling through their gravity from the top to the sides as being lower situated to the coasts on both sides which it passeth Hence we may collect that where ever the borders of the foresaid cavities do respect the Coasts there the Inhabitants must have a swise appulse of the floud The Ebbe is nothing else but the waters returning from the sides to the middle parts being left lower through the recess of the Oceans bore or tumefaction but this by the way It is most certain that the Western Ocean directs its waves towards the East but whence this continual course of water is supplied may justly be doubted and although the Eastern Ocean doth constantly flow towards the West yet how and where Mar del Nort meets with Mar del Zur remains to be made to appear Their visible communication through the straits of Magallan or of Le maire or the straites of Martin Forbisher and of Anjan cannot be imagined to conduce any thing considerable towards the presupposed evacuation that of Magallan little exceeding a League in breadth or above 10 or 12 fathom in depth besides the many turnings and windings and length of near 110 or 120 Leagues hindering any considerable course of water The others not much surpassing these either in breadth or depth seem to conduce as little But to make the course clear beyond all dispute the West-Indian Earth is boared through deep underneath by the former compression of the Ocean through which immense perforation the great bore of the Sea enjoys a free passage and rowles along under the Peruvian Ocean By means of this vast perforation the Indian Earth is much elevated and in most places hath acquired the full height which it obtaineth being clome up atop the Sea by many Leagues whence it is that the Land by far overlooking the Ocean doth appear to Mariners three or fourscore Leagues off at Sea CHAP. VIII Of the course of the Sea towards the polar Coasts 1. What the Libration of the Ocean is That the Tides are not occasioned by Libration The Navil of the World Whence the Seas move towards the North Polar Why the Ebb is stronger in the Narrow Seas than the Floud and why the Floud is stronger than the Ebb in the Ocean Why the Irish Seas are sorough 2. Why the Baltick Sea is not subjected to Tides The rice of the East Sea or Sinus Codanus 3. The cause of the bore in the River of Seyne 4. The causes of the courses of the Mediterranean The rice of this Sea I. HItherto we have followed the main course of the Ocean Westward In the next place let us cast an eye towards the Northern coasts where we shall meet the Sea rowling contrarily now from the South to the North then from the North back again towards the South This contrariety must not perswade us although authorized with Scaligers subtility that the Sea is an Animal neither need we to lay hold upon that notion of the Libration of the universal waters for to salve this doubt However I will not think it much to tell you the meaning of it The Libration of the Ocean is the projection of its parts from the Center to the Circumference through a diurnal fermentation raised by the torrid rayes of the Sun or according to Libavius his droling through a diurnal-egurgitation of water out of a bottomless pit of the Ocean called its navil and projected toward its extream parts As this kind of spouting should be the cause of the floud so its returning back into the Earths tun belly or the cessation of the foresaid fermentation should be the cause of the Oceans reflux from the said parts be they Northern or Southern c. The exposition it self of this subject will evert its supposed reality for if such a fermentation were granted the Ocean must at one and the same time move to all the points of the Compass and at the same time return from the same points to the Center But what expert Mariner is there that will not testifie otherwise And where is this Center Possibly in the torrid Zone between Madagascar and Los Romeros where a very strong tide is generally observed but not moving Eastward and Westward at one time if so no Ship could pass without yielding her self to the bottom Neither can Libavius his fansie be admitted because such a Gurges spouting out would cast Ships from it at one time into all parts with an unimaginable force and likewise would attract Ships from those parts back again with no less force and swallow them down into her belly That these properties would necessarily accompany such a vast Whirl-Pool is proved by that dangerous Whirl-Pool in the North sea near the coasts of Norway by Mariners called the Navil of the world through its egurgitation casting Ships to a great distance from it and through its ingurgitation drawing them from the same distance into her throat These Hypotheses insisting upon no sparke of appearance we are forced to make choice of our precedent one whereby to demonstrate the different flowing and ebbing of these narrow Seas towards and from the Septentrional Polar There be few but knows that the Narrow Seas undergo a gradual tumefaction a rowling up of their waters being withal very swift and arriving successively from one coast to another as also a successive detumescence and decurrence of the said waters Now the reason why these waters do not accompany the Ocean from the East towards the West is their shallowness and inclosure between narrow borders For the bore of the Ocean coming rowling down the AEthiopian Ocean towards Mar del Nort is discontinued as it were in its depth through the shallow bottom of the polar Seas and therefore doth only give them a cast or throw in passing For the bore arriving and swelling gradually doth through that gradual swelling squeeze the shallow polar seas towards the Poles in passing by notwithstanding continuing its course Westward The bore being passed the Ocean beginneth to wax detumescent whereby the shallow waters being deserted
of the squeezing Ocean do return into the Ocean The universal intumescence passing twice every naturall day doth cause a double change of the polar Tides in the same time That swiftness which befalls our Tides in these parts is likewise caused through the shallowness of waters which are necessarily impelled swifter forward than if they being imagined to be deep where consequently waters being in a great confluence more weighty must move slower Hence we may learn the reason why the tide in some places doth move swifter than in others namely because the Sea is more shallow there and therefore Ships arriving near the shore make a greater benefit of the Tide than far from it The Floud is commonly weaker and slower near the shores and within the compass of these narrow Seas but the Ebb is stronger and swifter because the waters do clime upwards being forced against their natural impulse and therefore resist more potently but returning do descend fortified with their own natural inclination into places detumefied and therefore meeting with no resistence On the contrary in the middle of the Ocean the floud or rather intumescence is stronger and swifter than the ebb or detumescence because the universal bore which is the cause of the floud or intumescence of the water doth cause a greater impulse of the water atop through her presence than when she is quite passed Hence it is that Ships sailing from East-India Westward do over run a larger tract in one six houres of the intumescence than the other six of detumescence Those Seas which are derived directly northerly from the Ocean do suffer a greater commotion of tides than others than are indirectly thence descending Hence it is that the Irish Seas being directly opposite from the North to the Ocean do undergo more violent Tides than others because they receive the squeezing or impulse of the Ocean directly upon them whereas in the Channel North sea and the Bay of Biscay the waters do perform their Tides more moderately because they floating under the North the Oceans universal impulse is much mitigated by the defence of the Promontories of France England and Spain That which doth further augment the violence of Tides in the Irish Seas is the shallowness of the water and the meeting of Tides viz. First they receive the impulse of the Ocean directly from the Southwest passing between the West of England and the East of Ireland towards the North then the same Ocean continuing its impulse against the west Coasts of Ireland the Sea sets about the Northwest Cape of Ireland towards the VVest of Scotland and the stronger because it is refracted and as it were somewhat pinched by the shallowness of the Hebrides and other Islands Through this thwart setting off of the Tide it meets with the Tide passing through between England and Ireland which it beats back and that more forcibly towards the latter end of the Floud The Tides then meeting here and reflecting must necessarily cause very rough Seas besides this the German Seas seem to set off somewhat towards the Northwest of Scotland where meeting with the Irish Sea do much intend the aforesaid roughness This also causes the duplication of Tides in several parts of the Irish Seas It will not be unprofitable to observe the streams of the Tides where Sea-men do state a general rule viz. That the Tide sets off athwart wherever it beats against a great Promontory Hence it is that throughout the Channel the Tide sets off athwart in many places from the French Coast towards the English where the Land sticks out in great nooks As from the great Promontory of France in the mouth of the Channel and from that which is opposite to the Isle of Wight and from before Calis c. II. The Promontories do very much weaken the Tides and clip them off from waters streaming in the No theast whence it is that there is no Tide in the East or Baltick Seas besides 1. Because the Tide of the German Sea is clipt off by the peninsule of Denmark or Jutland and the narrowness of the Sound 2. The course of the German Sea is the easier kept off because it floats to the Northward whereas the Baltick Sea opens into it from the East Hence it is also that a great part of these Seas consists of fresh waters because the North Sea is not disburdened into it Touching the first production of this Sea to wit the East Sea it is very probable that it derived its rice from a great Lake risen in the deepest and broadest place of the said Sea which by continuance of pressure hath bored through that large tract vvhich novv is That this is so I prove 1. Had the German Ocean bâ—red this Cavern then a greater part of it vvould have been salt and heavy like unto the same 2. It would then have been more deep than it is and have had a greater opening vvherefore it must needs have had its beginning from a Lake and for that reason is very improperly called a Sea more justly deserving the name of a Sinus or Gulph III. In many places the Sea is taken notice to rise to the height of a Pike as before the River of Seyne vvhose rising they vulgarly call the Bare or bore taking its beginning vvith the advent of the Floud and aftervvards overflovving a great length of that River as far as Roan in a great height but gradually diminishing The cause of this is to be attributed to the depth of a Cavern encompassed by shelves and banks wherein the Sea is collected and stayed until such time that it doth gather it self into a bare whereby it lifteth it self up and climbs up the banks and being attended with the same force whereby it did elevate it self is protracted as far as Roan Here again we have an evident testimony of the Seas moving underneath confirming what I have proposed touching the universal Bore If the waters here took their beginning of motion from their superficial parts then a bare were impossible to arise here because the waters are free and in no wise stopt in their motion atop Ergo being stopt underneath it is undoubted that the waters take their beginning of motion thence The same bares you have here and there in the Seas which occasion the oversetting of many a Ship or the casting of them upon rocks and shelves which they could not escape because of the violence of the same bores This bare is seldom visibly perceived in the Seas because it seems to be drowned by the waves nevertheless in many places it is The cause of the breaking of the Sea upon banks you may easily know out of the precedents IV. The Mediterranean Sea undergoeth an intumescence and detumescence although not very strong or swift the reason of the latter is because it being situated Easterly escapes the strength of the course of the Ocean flowing westwards Only the Ocean through its continual passing by doth continually impell the
waters of the straits of Gibraltar or the Pillars of Hercules inwards This impulse of the waters inwards is much stronger at the intumescence of the Ocean but weak at the detumescence nevertheless the current of the Sea runs constantly inwards because of the constant diurnal course of the Ocean from East to VVest so that this constant current into the Pillars of Hercules is an Herculean argument confirming the constant diurnal motion of the Ocean That which causeth the floud or intumescence here is the Ocean impelling the Sea strongly underneath at its intumescence The cause of the detumescence is the water falling from underneath the Mediterranean into the universal Cavern because of the detumescence of the Ocean Moreover observe the property of the ebbing and flowing of this Sea Through the intumescence the water is impelled Eastward as well near the shores as in the middle Through the detumescence or waters falling from underneath the waters of the shores do fall towards the central or middle parts of that Sea yet somewhat westward because the Sea doth fall from underneath westward and notwithstanding the detumescence doth the middle of the Mediterranean float constantly inwards although but weakly because of the aforesaid impulse Hence it appears that the Mediterranean is an exact emblem of all the motions befalling the Ocean Touching its original it is certain that the Ocean did not form its Cavern through its constant motion because were it so that Sea would be largest at its mouth as having withstood the first violence of the Ocean 2. Because it is situated out of the reach of the course of the Ocean floating alwaies westward 3. VVhere this Sea communicates with the Ocean it seems rather to be its ending than the mouth of its narrowness and it is very probable that near the creation the extremity of Spain and the Kingdom of Fez joyned in an Istmus which since through violence of the Ocean and the pressure of the Mediterranean is bored through The rice then of this Sea must be adscribed to the peregrin Element of water breaking out of the Earth through the concussion of the third Division which afterwards was contained within a great rent or Sinus of the Earth Neither did the Euxian Sea derive its original from the Mediterranean because of the narrowness of the Channel through which they have access to each other But this with most great Lakes of the World as the Maotis Haneygaban c. were formed through accidental protrusions of the peregrin Element of water as you shall read in the next Chapter Among the various courses of the Sea we must not forget the inserting the causes of currents whose waters although communicating with the Ocean do notwithstanding make choice of a distinct motion varying withall at certain seasons Thus Mariners observe a strong current from Cabo Delgado towards the Cape of Good Hope streaming Southwest and another floating westward from Cabo das correntes to the River Aguada of Boapaz Near Aguada de San Bras the current runs towards the Land The cause is the different position and degree of depth of their Cavity which varying from that of the Ocean do suffer their waters to be squeezed to a different course Neither must any imagine that the wind is the principal cause of these currents and much less of the universal Tides of the Ocean because the stronger the wind blowes against them the stronger they float against the wind CHAP. IX Of Inundations 1. Of the rice of the great Gulphs of the Ocean The causes of Inundations That the Deluge mentioned in Genesis was not universal The explanation of the Text. 2. The manner of the Deluge That it was not occasioned through the overfilling of the Ocean 3. That there hapned very great Deluges since when and where 4. The effects of the first Deluge 5. Inland Inundations 1. THe Ocean and others of its Arms through their continual violence against the Earth do in time bore great Caverns into her body whence the great Gulphs of Bengala Persia Arabia Mexico most great Bayes and straits took their beginning and no wonder since they were moulded by the strong stream of the Ocean floating westward Neither is the Ocean satisfied of the Earth for possessing the Center for which they have both an equal claim in making such assaults upon her but is still striving to enter and begin new irruptions into her whereby it oft grows victorious of some of her Plains as appears by those frequent inundations sustained in England particularly that of Somersetshire extending to 20 miles in length and 15 in breadth whose fury had drowned several Towns and swallowed up many hundreds of men some making their escape upon deales and pieces of Timber of Houses that were washt away Rabbets fled their lodges and got atop Sheeps backs swimming as long as they could for their lives Corn and straw floated up and down in abundance being filled with Rats and Mice endeavouring their escape besides a great number of dead creatures that were seen adrift Holland many places of Asia Africa c. Among these none was ever more furious than the Deluge hapning in the year of the Creation 1656 mentioned in the seventh Chapter of Genesis whose eminence above the Earth reached to 15 Cubits destroying all living Creatures except some few only that had thitherto fed upon the fruits of the ground I must not forget here to rectifie Peoples judgments perswading themselves that this Inundation should have been universal I grant it was universal in two respects 1. To all the Earth that was inhabited by the Patriarchs and their Tribes 2. In respect to the universal damage and loss for it had destroyed all that was upon Earth excepting those that were miraculously preserved for the preservation and use of the race of Man But pray can any one rationally conceive that the height of 15 Cubits of water above those hills of Asia should have exceeded the tops of all the mountains of the world What proportion is there between those hills 15 Cubits and the Peak of Taeneriffe the Mount Venpi in Queticheu or Jekin in Chingutu or Kesing Mung Hocang Juntay Loyang Kiming where they are nine daies in getting up to the top Funghoan being all Mountains of China reaching higher than the lower clouds The Olympas Athos or those high Mountains upon the West-Indian Coasts No more than there is between a man and a steeple Or is it probable that forty daies rain should drown the whole World when a whole six months rain falling every Winter upon the East-Indies scarce increaseth the intumescence of the Ocean But observe the scope of the Scripture Gen. 7. 18. And the waters prevailed greatly and were greatly increased upon the earth c. Here the divine Text seemeth to intend nothing further than a great prevailing and increase of the waters which could effect little more than a partial Inundation for otherwise to have caused an universal one none less than
to my apprehension all that Country must necessarily be subjected to such deluges since it swims upon the water Touching Inland Inundations as that which befell Friesland in the year 1218 where near 100000 persons were buried in the water and that of Holland and Zealand in the Reign of Charles the fifth Emperour of Germany in the year 1531. and several times since as that of the last year when a great part of the Country all about Gorcum was seized upon by Inland waters Their causes are to be attributed to torrents streaming down out of the melted snow as also to the swelling of the Inland waters through receiving a great quantity of frosty minima's pouring down from the North in a cold Winter The River of Nile proves yearly extravagant in AEgypt for two months and ten daies because being situated very low it is obliged to receive the superfluity of water falling from above out of severall great Rivers and Lakes as the Lakes Zembre Saslan Nuba and the Rivers Cabella Tagazi Ancona Coror and many others besides the water which it draweth from the hills and other grounds These Rivers and Lakes do constantly swell every year by reason of the great rains that fall there at certain times of the year Besides the heat of the Sun exercising its power very vigorously near the latter end of May doth very much subtilize and rarefie those waters whereby they are rendred more fluid penetrating and copious and lastly the Sun conversing in the northern declination doth impell the Ocean stronger against the Northern shores whereby the waters are also much increased Hence it is that the waters of the Nile are so subtill that they deceive the air in carrying of them up in vapours viz. because they are so subtilly strained No wonder then if they prove so healthy The same causes are appliâ—ble to the excessive increase of the Rivers Ganges Padus Arrius Danow Tiber and Athesis CHAP. X. Of the causes of the before-mentioned properties of Lakes 1. Whence the Lake Asphaltites is so strong for sustaining of weighty bodies and why it breeds no Fish The cause of qualities contrary to these in other Lakes The cause of the effects of the Lake Lerna 2. Whence the vertues of the Lake Eaug of Thrace Gerasa the Lake among the Troglodites Clitorius Laumond Vadimon and Benaco are derived 3. Whence the properties of the Lake Larius Pilats Pool and the Lake of Laubach emanate I. VVHat the cause of those effects of the Lake Asphaltites should be the name seems to contain viz. The water glued together by an incrassated air and condensed fire constituting the body of a certain Bitumen called Asphaltos whence the said Lake doth also derive its name It is uncapable of breeding fish because through its sulphureous thickness it suffocates all vitall flames On the contrary the Lakes Avernum although deep 360 fathom and that of AEthiopia are so much subtilized through the passing of rarefied air that they are uncapable of sustaining the least weight Touching their pernicious quality to fowl it must be attributed to the venomous spirits permixt with that rarefied air infecting the whole Element of air as far as it covers them The Lake Lorna and the other in Portugal cause their effects through the permixture of a quantity of crude nitrous bodies which prove very depressing That Lake of AEthiopia is unctious through the admixture of incrassated air II. The Lake Eaug in Ireland acquires a sideropoetick vertue under water from the imbibition of crude Aluminous juyces by means of their indurating and constrictive vertue changing wood sticking in the mud into an Iron-like substance that part which is under water into a stone-like substance because of the diminution of the said Aluminous Juyces which through their weight are more copious in the mud the part of the wood that sticks out of the water remains wood as being beyond the reach of the said heavy juyces The Lakes of Thrace and Gerasa prove pernicious through admixture of crude arsenical exhalations The Lake among the Troglodites being Mercurial is infestuous to the brain The Lake Clitorius through its nitrosity disturbs the stomach and attracts a great quantity of moisture to it and infecting it with an offensive quality causes a loathing of all Liquors The sudden tempests befalling the Lake Laumond and Vadimon are caused through winds breaking out of the earth through the water Lakes resist induration by frost through igneous expirations pervading them The Lake Benacus shews its fury when its internal winds are excited by external ones causing a Concussion and a Rage in the water like unto an aguish body which is disposed to a shaking fit by every sharp wind raising the sharp winds within III. The River Abda passeth freely through the Lake Larius without any commotion of its body because the waters of the Lake through their extream crassitude are depressed downwards and so are constituted atop in a rigid posture whereas the River is impelled forwards and very little downwards But were it to flow through a shallow water whose quantity doth not bear any proportion to receive the pressure of the air downwards against the earth they would soon communicate in streams 2. The waters of a Lake differ much in crassitude and density from those of a River and therefore do exclude its streams The Lake Haneygaban doth not visibly disburden it self of those waters but thrusting Caverns underneath into the earth raises all those hills through the intumescence of the said waters that are near to her out of which some Rivers do take their rice Pilats Pool is stirred into a vehement fermentation by flinging any pressing body into it because thereby those heterogeneous mineral juyces viz. Vitriolat and Sulphureous substances are raised mixt together and brought to a fermentation and working Through this fermentation the water swells and exceeds its borders but the water being clarified the commotion ceaseth Neither needs any one wonder that so small a matter should be the cause of so great an exestuation since one part of the water doth stir up the other and so successively the whole pool comes to be stirred Pools owe their rice to great rains or torrents which sometime do slow visibly over the meadows or through Rivers causing inundations Sometimes through Caverns of the Earth as that near Laubach CHAP. XI Of the rice of Fountains Rivers and Hills 1. That Fountains are not supplied by rain 2. Aristotles opinion touching the rice of Fountains examined 3. The Authors assertion concerning the rice of Fountains The rice of many principal Fountains of the world 4. Why Holland is not mountainous 5. That the first deluge was not the cause of Hills 6. Whence that great quantity of water contained within the bowels of the Earth is derived 7. Whence it is that most shores are Mountainous Why the Island Ferro is not irrigated with any Rivers Why the earth is depressed under the torrid Zone and elevated towards the polars The
salin ones IV. Sents are materiated out of the subtiller parts of the matter effecting tastes wherefore all waters that are discernable by tastes emit their subtiller parts for sents but of this abundantly before whither I must direct my Reader V. Ice is water congealed or incrassated indurated or rather reduced to its natural state That which congeales the water or reduces it to its natural state is the absence or expulsion of those Elements that render it fluid viz. fire and air These are expelled by frosty minima's falling down from the Poles and compressing or squeezing them both out of the body of water whence it is also that all waters swell through the frost viz. through their repletion with the said minima's These are nothing but Unites or points of earth adunited to so many unites of water freed within their body from all air and fire and detruded from the Polars towards the earth whither they are vigorously forced down in a very close order into the Surface of the waters where arriving they press out the air and fire which being expelled the superficial parts of the water cleave naturally to one another about those frosty minima's The first beginning of a frost is taken from the first decidence of frosty minima's which in their passing cause a vehement compression and lighting upon our tact make us give them the name of cold because they compress our external parts with a smart continuous compression thence falling upon the water if in a smal quantity only do thicken it a little if in a greater do forcibly expel the air and fire which being expelled a concretion of the water near its Surface must naturally follow If now it grows no colder and that these minima's fall in no greater quantity the Ice continues at a stand but if otherwise then it proceeds to a greater induration and a larger concretion And the deeper the waters do thicken the more acute the cold must be or the greater quantity of acute and dense minima's must follow for to further and continuate the said concretion because unless they are acuter than the former they will not be minute enough to pass the small porosities remaining in the Surface of the Ice Ice swimmeth atop the water as long as it freezeth not because it is less weighty for it is heavier but because its continuity and concretion together with the support of the air tending from the ground of the waters towards its own Element do detain it When it thawes the Ice sinks down because it is somewhat discontinued and melted and by reason of the same proportion of air descending and bearing down upon it that was ascended before Notwithstanding the thaw people do oft complain of a great cold two or three daies after and especially in their feet which is nothing else but the same frosty minima's repassing out of the earth and water towards the Element of air for to give way to the melting entring air and fire The frosty minima's that begin to fall with a red Evening sky denoting the clearness of the air and passage do oft bring a furious cold with them because finding no obstruction they fall very densely and acutely upon us but those that fall through a cloudy air seldom cause violent colds because they are partly detained by the same clouds Hence it is that most Countries that are beset with water as Islands peninsuls c. and thence attain to a nebulous air are warmer than other Countries although the former be remoter from the Ecliptick than these because their clouds obstruct and detain a part of the frosty minima's and break the rest in their motion downwards Whence it is also that England is less cold in the Winter than most parts of France or Germany although both are of a less Northern declination than it The same clouds do likewise in the Summer break the violence of the fiery minima's descending whence it is also less hot here than in the forementioned places no wonder then if Geographers do so much extoll this Island for the temperature of its Climate VI. This language is supplied with a very apt distinction of frosts viz. a black frost a gray and a white frost The first of these is felt to be of the greatest fury insomuch that if it proveth for any time lasting it deads the roots of young plants and old trees kills all Vermine and penetrates through the very periostium of Animals and depth of Rivers It derives its violence from the extream number of the descending frosty minima's whose density makes the Skies even look black again A gray frost is between a black and white one consisting likewise of a dense proportion of descending minima's A white frost is the incrassation of vapours in the lowermost region of the air Among these a black frost is of the least continuance because the frosty minima's tumbling down in such vast quantities are soon purged out of the air Here may be inquired why a frost usually begins and ends with the change of the Moon For solving of this you must observe that the causes of the decidence are 1. Their great number 2. Their congregating or congress Touching the first unless their number is proportionable to bore and press through the clouds and resistance of the air they are uncapable of descension for to cause a congelation and although their number be great and dispersed they are nevertheless retained through the over-powering of the clouds Wherefore it is necessary a great quantity should be united into heaps and so make their way through To these principal causes add this adjuvant one viz. The compression of the Moon she at her changes driving the frosty minima's more forcibly towards the Poles through which impulsion they are withal thrusted one upon the other and united into a body whence it is that they at those times do oft take their beginning of decidence Again the Moon near the same terms impelling the clouds and thick air thither doth prove as frequent an occasion of dispersing those frosty minima's especially if much diminished of their body through preceding decidencies Moreover these frosty minima's although they are sometimes broken dispersed in their decidence through the said impulses yet sometimes they do recover a body and make a new irruption downwards And thence it is that oft times a frost holds for a day or two then thaws for as long and afterwards returns to freezing again VII In the next place I am to set down the original and rice of these frosty minima's You may easily apprehend that the Sun in the Torrid Zone and somewhat in the temperate one doth dayly raise a vast number and quantity of vapours consisting of most water then air next fire and earth which through the diurnal motion of the air are carried along from East to West And through daily successions of new vapours they are compelled to detrude their preceding ones towards the Poles whither they seem
with bodies discontinuating its substance doth press those heterogeneous bodies together into clouds through its vertue of moving to an union and not through its coldness for air of it self where it doth in any wise enjoy its purity is estranged from cold and is naturally rather inclined to warmth The reason why clouds are less apt to concrease where the Sun hath power is because the parts of the air there are weakned through the rarefaction and discontinuation by torrid minima's These clouds according to their mixture vary in continuation viz. some are thicker and more concreased than others which through their greater renixe are propelled from the others of a less renitency Clouds containing much earth and thence rendred dense appear black if they are much expanded according to their diduction they refract the light variously appearing red white blew c. The clouds through their gradual proportion of renitency being disrupted and sinking gradually under one another refract the light of the Sun according to their graduall situation seeming to be illuminated with several and gradual colours whose appearance is called a Rainbow viz. The lower being more thick and dense than the rest refract the light blackish that above it being less dense brownish that above this purple or greenish the other reddish yellowish c. A Rainbow is not seen by us unless we be interposed between the Sun and the Clouds reflecting and refracting that is we must stand on that side of the clouds that is irradiated In Thomas's Island the Moon doth sometimes cause a light kind of a Rainbow after a rain Touching the figure of a Rainbow it is semicircular because the air is expanded in a circular figure and moved circularly towards us Many do make a scruple whether there ever appeared any Rainbow before the Floud gathering their ground of doubting from Gen. 9. 13. I do set my Bow in the cloud and it shall be for a token of a Covenant between me and the earth Hereunto I answer That these words do not seem to make out any thing else but that God did assume the Bow for a sign rather implying that the Heavens had been disposed to the susception of Rainbows from the Creation For even then were the Heavens filled up with clouds fit for the reflection of such a light That a Morning Rainbow doth portend wet and an Evening one fair weather is vulgarly reported which nevertheless is very uncertain For the most part it either doth precede rain or follow it The reason is because the forementioned gradual declination and incrassation doth cause a rain Rain is the decidence of clouds in drops Clouds although incrassated and condensed gathered and compressed by the ambient air striving to be freed of them yet cannot be expelled and protruded all at once because their extent is too large and their circumference obtuse whence they are unfit to be protruded at once unless they were most condensed into an acute or cutting Surface Why they cannot be compressed into a less compass and a greater acuteness is because of a great quantity of air contained within them Touching their diruption into drops it is to be imputed to the external compression of the clouds squeezing the internal air into particles which as they burst out do each protrude a drop of rain Or thus Suppose the clouds at such times to be puft up with bubbles of internal air and the diruption of each bubble to send down a drop of rain Oft times with rain a great wind blows down along with it which is nothing else but the air pent within the said clouds and bursting out of them A windiness doth oft hold up the rain because it shatters and disperses the parts of the said dense clouds wherby their consistency is broken Rains are very frequent in the Autumn and the Winter because the Sun casting its rayes obliquely towards those Countries where the seasons of the year are manifestly observed doth raise a greater abundance of vapours more than it can dissolve or disperse besides a great number of clouds are sent from other places where the Sun doth through its Summer heat raise such a great quantity of vapours which meeting and being impacted upon one another and etruded cause great rains at those times of the year The Moon hath also great power in dissolving a cloud into rain for she sending down and impelling great abundance of dense weighty minims doth very much further the descent of drops Frosty minims exercise a strong vertue in stifning the air whereby it is rendred more firm to contain the clouds and hinder their precipitation besides they do also disperse the clouds through their effective crassitude Whence it is that it rains so seldom in frosty weather But as soon as the thow is begun likely the clouds meet and fall down in a rain Which if sometimes pouring down in great showers is called a Nimbus if in small drops but descending close is called an Imber The cause of this difference depends upon the density of the clouds and the proportion of air pent within them Those rainy clouds do sometimes contain a great quantity of earthy minims which meeting are through a petrisick vertue changed into stones raining down at the dissolution of the said clouds Other contents consisting of reddish or whitish exhalations drawn up from the earth may give such a red or white tincture to the clouds which when dispersed into rain may appear bloudy or milky Frog or Fish-spawns have sometimes been attracted up into the air being inclosed within vapours where within the matrix of a close cloud they have been vivified and afterwards rained down again A Nebula is a small thin cloud generated in the lower Region of the air out of thin vapours The reason why those vapours ascended no higher is because they were concreased in the lower parts of the lower Region of the air through the force of the air in the night being rendred potent through the absence of the Suns discontinuating raies A mist is the incrassation of vapours contained in the lowermost parts of the air The dew is the decidence of drops from subtil vapours concreased through the privative coldness of nocturnal air III. Snow is the decidence of clouds in flocks whose production depends upon the concrescence of drops by frosty minima's and their attenuation through aerial particles whence they are soft and do reflect the light whitish It usually falls after a degelation when the congealed clouds are somewhat loosened It dissolves or melts through deserting the frosty minima's Hail is the decidence of drops in hard small quadrangular bodies Their congelation is also occasioned through the detention of frosty minima's within the drops of water Their hardness is from a less commixture of air whence the water doth the more enjoy her own crassitude and hardness IV. Wind is a violent eruption of incrassated air pent within the clouds puffing disrupting and taring the Element of air asunder Hence when
remoteness the air is aptest for concretion 2. Those winds blow stronger in the night than in the day Because the internal air of the clouds is then strongest squeezed and least dispersed through the Suns heat 3. The Monzones that blow from the South blow usually stronger and somewhat longer than the others because the Sun being then got into the arctick declination is now obliquely imminent upon the waters and therefore raises the greater quantity of vapours VVhereas on the other side a greater part of its oblique rayes are taken up by the Land 4. They are oft intended by the Moons demission of weighty minima's upon them The common winds are deprehended in the temperate and rigid Zones The East winds blow when a cloud opens at its VVest side in the East the North wind blows when it is vented at the South side in the North c. The winds if any thing durable must spout out of great long clouds otherwise they would soon be emptied besides clouds through the commotion of the air do succeed one another and are united when the former is suckt out as it vvere Sometimes the vvind seems to come dovvn from over our heads because a cloud is opened there More frequently from the finitor because clouds do most usually meet in union thereabout Sometimes the vvindes blovv from the North and South at once because tvvo clouds in those Regions are a venting Sometimes besides the continuation of a durable vvind there breaks out suddenly another vvind upon us by a blast because there is a cloud breaks out underneath those great ones that cause the durable vvind Provincial vvinds are occasioned through bursting out of those clouds that surround the respective Provinces For example If a Country is apt to be most beset vvith clouds on its North sides then Northerly winds vvill prove its Provincials Annual vvinds are caused through the particular aspects of the Sun at such a time of the year raising vapours tovvards such a plage or corner and rarefying their clouds at such a side Winds accidentally and violently are most of them coole and dry because bursting out with a force they must necessarily cause a compression upon objected bodies and through their tenuity must rub off the dampness from the same bodies Yet some winds prove more particularly very cold and dry because many earthy minims that are incorporated with the imprisoned air break forth along with them causing a strong punctual compression or acute cold Hence North winds happen to partake so much of coldness because they are incorporated with many terrestrial minima's transmitted from the Polars North Northeast winds in winter feel very pinching and nipping cold yea numming because of the commixture of frosty minims with their air South winds are moist because their production depends upon clouds transmitted from the Meridies whose body is very damp and waterish they are hot besides because they have been smitten with the Suns torrid rayes These are noxious and pernicious because through their warm moisture communicated to the ambient air they move relaxe swell and dissolve all the humours of the body whence there must necessarily arise an exestuation or fermentation of the bloud By the way let me tell you the reason why many clouds move against the stream of the air Because their winds bursting on the contrary side draw them like fire bursting out of a squib draweth the same after it Winds blow equally through their equal eruption high through their greater union and force directed outward and being augmented by the violent detention of the ambient cloud Some winds rise in the night because the internal breath of their clouds is now united through a privative and positive coldness Others are intended by the help of the dissolving Sun for the cloud being too close outwardly and the inward breath not very strong needed the rarefaction of the Sun Hence Northern winds are raised in the day because the faces of the clouds are objected directly against the heat of the Sun Whereas South winds are laid in the day because the Sun rarefying the back parts of their clouds attracts their breath backwards and disperseth it Tempestuous winds are distinguisht by five names 1. Ecnephias from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out of the clouds or an Oricane which is a sudden and most impetuous wind bursting out directly from above out of the sky and breaking in upon the Sea and Ships cause it to rise into mountainous waves and these oft to be overset if their sails be up wherefore Mariners in the East and VVest Indian Ocean as soon as they spy a small cloud in the heavens seemingly not much bigger than the top of ones hat take in their Sails immediately or if at anchor they are forced to cut their Cables and expose themselves to the free waves of the Sea for to prevent foundring The cause of so sudden a fury is questionless a great quantity of incrassated air admitted to condensed fire pent in hard within the stiff clouds and so setting force against force the air and condensed fire are forced with one violence to break through the thick clouds which although strongly striving to keep themselves in continuation yet at last choose to give way and to suffer some parts of them to be gathered into a small cloud whereupon that furious AEolus soon puts the whole Climate into a commotion scattering withall a spout of hot water kindled through the great sight rotting whatever it touches especially wollen cloaths and breeding worms 2. Turbo Typhon from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to beat or a violent whirlwind is caused through the same condensed fire and incrassated air violently bursting out of several spouts whose circular refraction meeting upon the Surface of the water or land oft carries a Ship sheer out of the water or any other moveable bodies from the land I have oft been told of Ships that have been lifted out of the water and cast upon the shore by such winds as these but how true I know not although it seems probable enough 3. Praester from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I kindle is a surious wind caused through the violent eruption of exhalations or a condensed fire kindled within the clouds and incrassated air which doth not only ruinate houses and trees but oft burns them down to the ground and puts the Sea into a boyling heat 4. Exhydria is a vehement bursting out of wind attended with a great shower of rain and hail But none of these violent winds prove lasting because the flatuosity contained within the clouds erupting in so great a measure must soon be exhausted whereas were it evacuated in a less proportion they must necessarily prove more durable Among all the winds none delights more in the greatest and longest furies and storms than the South Southwest in the winter because it derives from the Meridies or torrid Zone where vapours are drawn up in very great measures and that constantly because of the
swallowed up in the Island AEnaria another in Thrace one in Phaeuicia beyond Sidon and another in Eubaea Others protrude a great piece of earth and cast it up into a kind of mountain but a very uneven one as for instance the mount Modernus near the Lake Avernus This sort is called Egestion Some cast forth a flame withall as hapned in the Mount Vesevus alias the Mount of Somma in Campania and the Mongibell in Sicily Earthquakes have sometimes removed two opposite fields and placed them in one anothers room as those two fields in Italy where the Marrucini were seated in the Reign of Nero. For Rivers to burst out as the River Ladon in Arcadia did and others to be stopt up by earth cast into them by such accidents is very possible Oft times Earthquakes make way for Deluges which may be also incident upon the earth at the bottom of the Sea or near to the shore or may happen to the same places without a deluge whereby the waters have been swallowed up and Ships left dry upon the shore as that which hapned in the time of Theodosius or that vvhen M. Antonius and P. Dolabella vvere Consuls leaving great heaps of fish dry upon the sands In the Reign of Emanuel there vvas a very great Earthquake perceived about Lisbon Scalabis and other Tovvns of Portugal vvhereby the vvaters of the River Tajo vvere so much diffused that the bottom appeared dry There is another kind of Earthquake called Arietation vvhen tvvo subterraneous vvinds vibrate against one another Sometimes this hapned vvithout any dammage there being some earth betvveen to hinder their conflict other times meeting in cavernous places have subverted mountains and all that vvas upon them as those mountains near Modena vvhich Pliny lib. 2. Cap. 83. relates to have been bursted against one another vvith a very hideous noise subverting many Villages and swallowing up a number of Cattel yea whole Countries and Armies have been devoured by these kinds of accidents 2. From their duration some lasting a day a week a month c. 3. From their violence some inferring little or no dammage others being contented with nothing less than ruine 4. From the sounds that accompany them being various as I have related before 5. From their places Some more frequently infesting Islands others the Continent Thus Sicily AEnaria Lucara the Moluccas Islands Tyrus Eubaea Phrygia Caria Lydia Italy and many Countries in the West-Indies have very oft been molested by Earthquakes Cold Countries as the Septentrional ones or others that are very hot as AEgypt are very seldom invaded by them 6. From their efficient some being extraordinarily raised by the Almighty out of his wrath for to punish the sons of men for their sins an instance of this we have in 2 Kings 22. Likewise that which hapned about the time of the Passion of Christ supposed by many as Didymus and others to have been universall and to have shaken the whole Earth but since Ecclesiastick Historians make no mention of it none is bound to give credit to the foresaid Supposition However beyond all dispute it was a very great one if not the greatest that ever the earth underwent Neither is Paulus Oros to be thought more authentick relating lib. 7. hist. Cap. 32. an universal Earthquake in the time of Valentinianus since the holy Scripture and Reason do tell us that the Earth is altogether immoveable 7. From the consequents viz. Some after the earths eruptions are followed by vehement winds emptying out of her others by hot boyling waters others again by damps and stinking sents also by vomiting up of stones clots of earth and other strange bodies 8. From their extent some reaching farther others nearer Thus there hapned an Earthquake in the year 1577 on the 18th day of September that began from Colmar in Switzerland and reached as far as Bern being near upon 60 miles distant c. III. Now it is requisite I should proffer proof for the forementioned causes of Earthquakes 1. I prove that they are caused by winds because they alone are of a capable force to burst out suddenly through the earth 2. Because winds bursting out of the earth do alwaies precede and consecute Earthquakes whence we may certainly collect when waters in Pits and Rivers begin to be turgid and continually raised into a great number of bubbles that an Earthquake is near at hand as appeared by the swelling and bubling of the River Po a little before the before alledged harthquake of Ferrara 2. That these winds are principally raised out of peregrin water collected within a Cavern of the earth is evident by the great spouting out of water that doth follow the eruption 3. It is further made evident in a bottle half filled with water and exposed to the fire which doth also make good to us that the Sun through its fiery minims doth press in a great proportion of air into those subterraneous waters whereby they are attenuated whence those waters that are cast forth presently after the diruption are also rendred boyling hot so that Countries remote from the energy of the Sun are seated beyond danger of having winds generated within their bowels however subterraneous fires may supply the office of the Suns beams in attenuating the waters into winds by impelling air into them whence it is that near the mount Hecla in Iseland concussions and arietations happen frequently Earthquakes are disposed to eruption in the night season as much as in the day because as the erupting force of the internal winds is intended by the Suns rarefaction so is the compressing vertue of the Earth intensed by the more potent sinking down of the air in the night being freed from the discontinuating fiery minims and by the decidence of the weighty minims inherent in the Air. The Spring and Autumn are Seasons of the year qualified for the attenuating and rarefying of the peregrin waters whence also they prove most frequent near those times Why Hills and hilly Countries are subject to tremors and concussions and other moist ones as Holland and Zealand less may easily be understood from our discourse upon the generation of Hills IV. That Earthquakes portend Famine Pestilential Feavers and other contagious diseases is believed by most Grave Authors but whence such a putrefaction causing the said distempers should arrive to the air cannot vvell be deduced from their assigning exhalations to be the causes of Earthquakes since they hold them to be hot and dry being qualities according to the Peripateticks resisting and expelling putrefaction beyond any wherefore it will be most agreeable to hold with us that it is derived from those moist damps and vapours that are the material causes of the disrupting winds CHAP. XVII Of fiery Meteors in the Air. 1. Of the generation of a Fools fire a Licking fire Helens fire Pollux and Castor a Flying Drake a burning Candle a perpendicular fire a skipping Goat flying sparks and a burning flame 2. Of the generation
of Thunder Fulguration and Fulmination and of their effects Of a thunder stone 3. Of Comets Of their production I. THose vapours that are elevated into the air oft contain no small proportion of sulphureous particles within them which if concreasing through their own positive coldness and privative coldness of the night into a low cloud Nebula in the lowermost parts of the lower Region do compress those sulphureous particles otherwise termed exhalations and distinguisht from vapours because in these water and air are predominant in the others condensed fire and incrassated air towards the Center where uniting are converted into a flame by extending the incrassated air through their condensed fire This flame possibly appears like unto a Candle playing and moving to and fro the air and thence is also called a fools fire or Ignis Fatuus seu erraticus because it proves sometimes an occasion of leading Travellers that are belated out of their Road for by their coming near to it the air is propelled which again protrudes the flame forwards and so by continuing to follow it imagining the same to be some Candle in a Town or Village are oft misled into a ditch or hole Or if they go from it when they are once come near the light will follow them because in receding they make a cavity which the next succeeding air accurs to fill up The generation of these lights is more frequent near muddy Pools Church-yards and other putrid places that abound with such sulphureous bodies The said sulphureous parts if being of a less density condensed and united by the dense wool of a mans cloathes or hair or the hairs of a Horse or Oxe and the foresaid coldnesses it takes fire at the forementioned places but flames so subtilly that it is uncapable of burning This sort of Meteor is called an Ignis lambens a licking fire because it slakes then here then there like to spirits of Wine flaming Helens fire sidus Helenae so called because as Helen occasioned the ruine of Greece and Asia so this kind of flaming fire adhering to the shrowds or Yards of a Ship is usually a messenger of the Ships perishing If this flame appears double it is distinguisht by a double name of Castor and Pollux which are generally construed to bring good tidings of fair weather But these kinds of prognostications are very uncertain They may precede storms and may appear without the consequence of tempests For there is no necessity for either This generation depends upon exhalations condensed and united between the Ropes and the Masts or the Yards A flying Drake Draco volans is a flame appearing by night in the lowest Region of the air with a broad belly a small head and tail like unto a Drake Its matter is the same with the former differing in quantity alone and figure so framed through the figure of its containing cloud In the upper part of the lower Region of the air are produced 1. A falling Star representing a Star falling down from the Heavens 2. A burning Lance expressing the Image of a flaming Lance. 3. A burning Candle fax 4. A Perpendicular fire or fiery pillar trabs seu ignis perpendicularis seu pyramis representing a flaming beam or pillar 5. A flaming Arrow bolis 6. A skipping Goat Caprasaltans is a flame more long than broad glistering and flaking about its sides and variously agitated in the air like the skipping of a Goat 7. Flying sparks moving through the air like the sparks of a Furnace 8. Flamma ardens seu stipulae ardentes or a great burning fire suddenly flaming in the air like those fires that are kindled out of a great heap of straw All these depend upon a grosser material cause being somewhat more condensed and united than the former through a greater privative coldness and therefore they are also more durable A falling Star obtains its production near the permanent clouds and being somewhat weighty through earthy minims and rarefying the air through its heat breaks through and falls down lower untill it is arrived to a thicker cloud where nevertheless it doth not abide long in its flame The others procure their figure from their proportion of mixture and shape of the ambient cloud II. Thunder is a great rebounding noise in the air caused through the violent bursting out of incrassated air and condensed fire being suddenly kindled into a flame the manner cause of this eruption you may easily collect from the manner of the eruption of winds How a sound is produced I have set down before The differences of Thunders are various Some are only murmuring without a multiplication of sounds caused through a less proportion of fire and air bursting through a less dense and thick cloud Others raise a great cracking noise hapning through the acuteness of the sound smartly dividing the air and clouds wherever it reaches Lastly some are great hollow sounds variously multiplied hapning through the reflection and refraction of other dense and thick clouds driving in the way Besides these there might be accounted many more differences of Thunders raised through the proportion of air and fire that burst out and the various mixtures of clouds Fulguration or a flashing is fire condensed raised into a flame through incrassated air within a cloud and breaking out from it This scarce effects any great noise because of its subtility although in some it doth Fulmination or Lightning differs from the former only in intention in that it is much more forcible reaching to the ground and piercing into it and other terrestrial thick dense bodies and is more augmented in matter It is ordinarily a concomitant of Thunder both being produced at once although not perceived by us together we seeing the Lightning before we hear the Thunder because a visible object is much swifter communicated to the eye than a sound to the ear as appears in spying a man a far off chopping of wood we seeing His Axe go down before we hear the noise the reason of this I have inserted above A Lightning is either vibrating and is next to Fulguration in intention passing more subtilly Or discutient consisting somewhat of a denser fire and causing a greater Thunder 3. Or burning consisting of the densest fire causing the greatest Thunder and oft melting a Sword in the Scabberd or Moneys in a Bag and the Scabberd and Bag remaining undamaged The reason is because the rarity of these gave a free passage to the Lightning whereas the crassitude and density of the others did stay and unite the passing aduting flame Strong men and beasts are oft killed through an aduring Lightning whereas women and children do escape because the bodies of these latter being laxe and porous suffer the said flame to pass without any great resistance whereas the crassitude of the other bodies do unite and collect it through which their vital heat is quite dispersed having no other apparent sign either within or without their bodies of so
are disposed to be moved downwards because they cannot move themselves thither but concur to that motion only by their disposition V. This disposition is nothing else but the renitency or stubbornness of the weighty mixt body discontinuating the air or fire and resisting their motion to the center-wards the intension and remission of the said renitency depends upon the greater or lesser density or crassitude whence it is also that some bodies are moved swifter downwards because they consist of a greater density sustaining a more violent impulse of the air which were they less dense would be moved slower because of a less renitency 2. Or thus the air being discontinuated by an interposed weighty mixt body doth primarily strive from all parts to a reunion by its expansive vertue especially from above because of its greater strength there as being less discontinuated and weakened by exhalations and vapours whence the greatest force descending doth also direct the impulsion downwards Wherefore a weighty body as Mercury or any other Mineral is moved much swifter downwards or according to the ordinary Ideom of speech weighs much heavier on the top of high hills than below But you shall read more in the next Chapt. VI. All light bodies being seated in a weighty Element are disposed to be moved upwards whence it is that subterraneous air is oft forced upwards by the earths compressing vertue Likewise a piece of Cork depressed under water is by the waters gravity closing underneath in the same manner as we have explained it in the 2. Part. the 1. Book Chap. 16. 2. Par. squeezed upwards without any intrinsick propensity for otherwise the same Cork being also disposed to be pressed downwards in the air must be supposed to have two internal propensities which is absurd A flame burning in the ayry Regions is forced upwards by its disposition of levity tenuity and rarity Thus The air sinding it self injured by the discontinuating flame presses upon her and strives from all sides to squeeze her away The flame being over-powered is forced to slip or slide away whether its disposition may best yield downwards it cannot tend because there it is resisted by the courser air infested with weighty peregrin Elements Ergo upwards because there it finds the way most open to give free passage to its light rarity and tenuity On the contrary a weighty body because of its density and crassitude finds the passage clearer downwards by reason it is most driven from the tenuity of the air atop but supposing the air to enjoy its center doubtless those weighty bodies would be cast forth upwards to the Circumference VII Ayry bodies that are seated in a fiery Element are moved downwards because the rarity of the fire sinking downwards for a center doth impell them also thither whose disposition being continuous and thin are the better disposed to slide away from the fire compressing them all about downwards because upwards the said bodies striving to maintain their particular Centers would be more discontinuated where the force of fire must also be strongest Whence you may observe that weighty bodies and light bodies are both moved to one terminus ad quem in the fiery regions Touching the causes of refraction and reflection you shall read them in the next Chapter Hence a great part of the first Book of the second Part will be rendred much plainer which I did forbear to illustrate further because of avoiding needless repetitions intending to treat of these by themselves viz. why water or any other weighty body being violently detained is much intended in its strength or why water is more depressing atop or when it is most remote from her Center than underneath namely because of the depression of the air adding much to the drowning of a man as we have mentioned in 12th and 16th Chapters and so many other passages CHAP. XX. Of Attraction Expulsion Projection Disruption Undulation and Recurrent Motion 1. How air is attracted by a water-spout or Siphon 2. The manner of another kind of Attraction by a sucking Leather 3. How two flat Marble stones clapt close together draw one another up 4. How a Wine-Coopers Pipe attracts Wine out of a Cask 5. How sucking with ones mouth attracts water 6. How a Sucker attracts the water 7. The manner of Attraction by Filtration 8. The manner of Electrical attraction 9. How fire and fiery bodies are said to attract 10. What Projection is and the manner of it 11. What Disruption Undulation and Recurrent motion are 1. I Thought fit to subject these remaining kinds of motion to the preceding and to treat of them in a distinct Chapter viz. Attraction Expulsion Projection Disruption Undulation and Recurrent motion I shall only insist upon some particular kinds of attraction What Attraction is the name doth explain How air is attracted by water and water properly by air hath been proposed in the foregoing Chapters Attraction is further evident 1. In a Siphon or water-spout wherewith they usually cast up water for to quench a fire Here the water is attracted by the drawing up of the Sucker not through a bending for to avoid a Vacuum but through the natural cohesion in continuancy of the air to the Sucker or aerial parts contained within the Sucker Now the air doth cohere more strongly because there is no body to discontinue it within the Siphon but is rather assisted in a continuated cohesion by the continuity of the sides of the Siphon and of the Sucker Or otherwise if the air did strive to separate how could it For suppose it should be discontinuated from the Sucker then through that discontinuation there must be some certain void space effected if so then that air which did before fill up that void space must have been withdrawn into some other place or else it must through penetration have sunk into its own substance besides the air that was expelled up vards must have penetrated into its own body by condensation or into the body of the water all which is impossible since a penetration of bodies is an annihilation But here inquiry may be made whether it is the continuated cohesion of the air with the water causes the succession of the water upon the air or whether the air which through haling up of the Sucker is expelled upwards out of the Siphon doth for to procure a place protrude the air cohering about the external sides of the Siphon downwards into the water through whose insufflation the water is propelled upwards into the Siphon I answer both waies for it is impossible that such a great weight of water should ascend so easily with so little a force as the attraction of the Sucker unless it were assisted by the strong force of the air pomped out out of a necessity and impossibility of shrinking pressing down and protruding the water upwards That this is so the external circular pressure and dent which we see about the outsides of the water about the lower end
and propelled upwards which commonly tends to the emitting body because the greater quantity of those steams are gathered perpendicularly under the said emitting body and so do return the same way Hence observe That Amber doth not attract so potently on the top of high Mountains because its steams being weightier than the air is there do spread themselves further whereby they are deprived of a return Neither will Amber attract in a thick vapourous air because its steams are detained from dispersion IX Fire and fiery bodies as Onions Soap c. are said to attract but improperly because their attraction is nothing else but an expulsion of those bodies which they are imagined to attract For instance Fire is said to attract water air c. This is nothing else but fire piercing into the substance of water or air whereby it doth expel them into those places which it leaves or which are near to it Hence vapours are seldom attracted or rather expelled into the places where fire doth continually pass as directly under the AEquator because it fills those places with its own presence but are reflected towards the sides as towards the North and South Pole whose spaces are not filled up with its torrid rayes Now judge a little of that most barbarous practice among Physitians in applying Reddishes Salt leaven yea Epispastick Plasters to the Wrists and Feet of Feaverish Patients What rage what torments are poor men put to how are their Feavers Paraphrensies exacerbated through their diabolical practice These things do not attract without piercing into a mans Veins and Arteries and through their greater force of heat and violence do protrude the less heat of the body and by a short stay do put the whole body into a consuming fire How many men have I seen murthered in that manner 'T is true in malignant and Pestilential Feavers they have their use but not in single putrid ones Now by what hath been proposed in this Paragraph we may easily apprehend the manner of all water-works and of raising water higher than its source as that which is performed by the invention of Archimedes through a brazen or leaden Serpent or by wheels impelling water into Pipes c. Hence we may also conceive the manner of the attraction or rather expulsion of the degrees of water in a Thermometer or invention to measure the degrees of heat and cold and the differences of them in several Rooms Towns Seasons of the year c. The Instrument is nothing but a long glass Pipe towards the end somewhat turning up being left open for to poure in any liquor which according to the rarefaction or condensation of the air contained within the Pipe above will either ascend or descend in so many more or less degrees as the air is altered by rarefaction through the heat of the ambient air or condensation through the cold minims of earth within the said ambient air compressing the water more or less through its increase of quantity Touching the Magdenburg Invention the air is attracted outwards in the same manner as we have explained the attraction of water by a water-spout namely by a continuation cohesion and adhesion to the Sucker The air attracted out of the capacity of the Receiver doth also through the same means attract air and fire inhering in the rarefied and attenuated water without in the koop that again in the koop attracts air from without for to fill up its spaces which is as ready to press in because that air which was pumped out of the capacity wants room without This succession of air is continuated by pumping untill the air within is quite filled up with the incrassated air attracted from without whose thickness will not suffer it self to be pumped out any longer so that as the air within begins to be incrassated so the pumping without falls harder and harder Towards the latter end there seems to be a forcible retraction of the Sucker making a great noise through its return because the capacity of the Receiver being replenisht to the very pores of the glass which being rendred somewhat flexible through the passing and tumefying of the incrassated and rarefied air afterwards beginning to condense through greater access of fire is violently through the great external force of the pumping somewhat forced to bend or yield inwards whose renitency and force to return retracts the Sucker through continuation and cohesion of the incrassated air Next we are to pursue the manner of acceleration of weighty bodies downwards It is certain that a natural mixt weighty body falling directly down from atop without interruption to the bottom doth acquire a greater celerity the further it recedes from the beginning of its descent because the lower or farther it descends through propulsion of the superiour air the more and the greater body viz. of air under it it compresses which for to prevent the penetration of its own body is the more and violenter irritated to run round about the descending weighty body for to recover the place left by the said body where arriving doth as it were rebound against the superiour parts of the air which doth very much intend the celerity of the said bodies motion and the same gradually increasing doth also gradually accelerate the descending body the further it falls Some are of opinion that the acceleration of descending bodies is caused by Atoms falling down from the Celestial Orbs which as they do more and more encrease by being retained by the descending body do likewise more and more accelerate its descent This can scarce be because those Atoms reflecting and returning from the Surface of the Terrestrial Globe are in greater number underneath the body than above ergo according to that manner of reasoning a body falling from on high should rather be gradually retarded 3. A body should also fall swifter in the Winter than in the Summer in cold Countries than in hot because those Atoms are most numerous there but the contrary is true Ergo no true consequence In like manner do light bodies acquire a greater swiftness in ascending the higher they are propelled whence it is that Fowl flying high move much swifter than below Retardation is caused through causes opposite to these now mentioned X. Projection is whereby a body is moved swifter by the forcible impulse of the Projector than it would do otherwise Thus an Arrow is swiftly moved out of a Bow or a stone being cast out of the hand because of the force of the impulse of the Projector The cause of the intention of this impulse is the great swiftness of the said impulse at the beginning whereby the air is swiftly propelled before whose most swift return about the sides of the body projected causes the continuation of the swiftness of the first impulse but gradually diminishing by how much the further it recedes from the beginning A ball projected out of a Canon is propelled with that swiftness because of the swiftness of
the first smart impulse The truth of the foresaid reason and manner is apparent in shooting a pole through the water where we may see the water at the farther end raised into a tumor which running about the sides to the other end causeth its propulsion Whence it is also that when there appears no more of the tumor of the water before the pole its motion doth instantly cease XI Disruption or bursting is a sudden separation of the parts of a body through a violent force moving from within This we see happens oft in Canons when over-charged or in bottels filled with water being frozen in the Winter o. Wine in the Summer being close stopt The cause of these latter must be imputed to frosty or fiery minims entring through the pores of the bottels in greater quantity than their capacity can take in and disrupting them for to avoid a penetration of bodies Bodies are oft said to burst through driness as Instruments c. but very improperly since it is the fiery or frosty minims entring their pores and filling their capacities and afterwards disrupting them because of avoiding a penetration of bodies So Instrument-strings are apt to break in moist weather because their continuation is disrupted through penetration of moist bodies into their pores Undulation is a motion whereby a body is moved to and fro like to water shaken in a basin or to the motion of a Bell. The cause is likewise adscribed to the first motion of the Impulsor which being terminated at the end of its return is beat back through the direct descent of the air impelling it by reason it lieth athwart Recurrent motion being but little different from this I shall therefore say no more of it The cause of reflection is the return of the impulse impressed upon the air or water both being media deferentia perpendicularly or obliquely upwards from a hard and plane reflecting body Of refraction the cause is the shuving off of the impulse downwards by the shelving sides of an angular hard body CHAP. XXI Of Fire being an Introduction to a New Astronomy 1. The Fires division into three Regions 2. The qualification of the inferiour Region What the Sun is What his torrid Rayes are and how generated 3. How the other Planets were generated 4. How the fixed Stars were generated 5. A further explanation of the Stars their Ventilation That there are many Stars within the Planetary Region that are invisible Of the appearance of new Stars or Comets Of the Galaxia or Milk-way 6. That the fiery Regions are much attenuated I. THe ground of the fires tending downwards you may easily collect from what I have set down touching the waters and airs commerce with the other Elements It s profundity we may likewise divide into three Regions The first whereof containing the Planetary bodies the next the fixed Stars and the third consisting most of purefire II. The inferiour Region through its nearer approximation to the air and its immersion into it is cast into a subtil flame whose subtility doth effuge our sight and Tact. The Sun is a great body generated out of the peregrin Elements contained in the inferiour igneous Region consisting most of condensed fire and incrassated air extended and blown up into the greatest flame and conglomerated within the greatest fiery cloud These igneous clouds are like to the windy clouds of the air which as they do daily blast down wind upon the earth so do these cast fiery rayes among which that which surrounds the Sun doth vendicate the greatest power to it selfe The manner of casting of its fiery rayes is the same with that of winds viz. The Region of fire forceth up every day or continually a great quantity of air somewhat incrassated and condensed into its own sphere through its descending force striving for a Center This incrassated and condensed air is impelled violently into the body of the Stars by other subtil flames as being more forcible to drive the said adventitious matter from them because their parts are so closely ingaged that they can scarce slow a minim without a penetration Wherefore they must necessarily be impelled gradually into the bodies of the Stars because these are mixt bodies that give way so much in themselves by expelling fiery or torrid minima's down into the air as to be capacious enough of receiving so many airy particles as the Elementary fire doth force up every moment But before I proceed in unfolding the manner of the Celestial mixt bodies their ventilations I must insist somewhat further upon their constitution III. The Celestial mixt bodies are not only like to clouds in their daily and minutely ventilations but also in their constitutions viz. The inferiour ones as the Planets are constituted out of the courser and more mixt matter of the finer cloudy air in the inferiour Region of the Element of fire like the clouds of the inferiour Region of air are constituted out of the courser part of vapours Their coagulation is effected through the force of the fiery Element crushing their matter from below upwards and again is repelled back from the superiour parts of the said fiery Elements because through its being pressed up are scanted of room and therefore do press downwards not only for room but also because of reuniting where they are divided by the said coagulated bodies Now it may easily appear to you 1. Whence that rotundity or rather globosity doth arrive to them viz. because they are circularly crusht 2. Because the air and fire of the said Planets do naturally spread themselves equally from the Center to the Circumference whence a circular figure must needs follow Also 3. That Stars are nothing else but the thicker and denser part of the Heavens coagulated into fiery mixt bodies to wit flames 3. That as they do decrease by Ventilation every day so they do also increase by the introsusception of new aerial particles 4. That they must necessarily be very durable because of the duration of their causes For as the great force of the inferiour parts of the igneous Heavens never desist from striving for the Center and do every day cast up great proportions of aerial matter so do the superiour parts never cease from compressing them into the bodies of the other condensed flames being disposed as I said before through their ventilation to receive them 2. Because the aerial parts being got into the Center of the flames cease from all external Local motion striving only to maintain their Center in rest IV. Fixed Stars are generated out of the subtiler parts of the forementioned aerial evaporations being through their less resisting gravity redounding from water earth in them rendred capable of being screwed up higher to the second Region where they are coagulated through the same motions of the Heavens that Planetary clouds are These are responding to the permanent clouds of the second Region of the air which as they are spread into more large
the way VI. Before I go on any further I will prove that such a vast measure of fiery winds blows down from each of the Polar Regions for six months together It is certain That a great proportion of fiery clouds is cast from the middle or Equinoctial of the fiery Heavens towards the Poles because there they are the strongest as appears by their strong and swift motion measuring more way by far there than about the Polars wherefore the greatest part of those fiery clouds must necessarily be detruded towards the Polars as being the weaker parts of the heavens and therefore the apter for their reception These clouds being obtruded thither in great quantities are compressed by the force of the Superiour heavens whereby the condensed fiery minims break forth in great showers which blowing constantly for six months do alwaies blow the Sun from them towards the opposite side 2. If clouds of the air are most detruded towards their Polars and blow thence constantly for a long season as Mariners tell us they do Ergo the same must happen in the fiery Region since the efficient causes and materials are corresponding 3. The fiery Region pressing strongly about the middle parts must needs cast up most air towards the Polars 4. Before there can be an eruption of these fiery clouds there must a certain abundance or proportion be collected through whose over possession and exceeding swelling they may sooner give way to burst out and then being opened they continue their fiery winds for six months and by that time they are quite evacuated In the mean time the other Polar side is a filling and is just grown swell'd enough for to burst out against the other is exhausted Here may be objected That whilst one Pole is evacuating it should attract all the matter from the other Pole because it gives way whereas the other cannot I answer That those fiery clouds through their giving way are still daily somewhat supplied by the continual casting up of the heavens for otherwise their ventilation could hardly be so lasting but however that is sooner evacuated than the clouds can be shut up again so that the ventilation lasteth untill all its contained matter is expelled 2. It is impossible that the air should be attracted from the opposite side since the greatest force of the middle parts of the inferionr Region is between which screweth the matter up equally towards each Pole VII The Suns deficient motion that is when he is accidentally moved through the succession of the Constellations of the Zodiack if compared to himself is observed to be regular that is in comparing one tropical or deficient course with another both do agree in the measure of space being over-runned in an equal time viz. of 360 Solar daies and in an equal Velocity moving in the same swiftness through the same Constellations in one year that he doth in another But if the particular motions of one defective or tropical course be referred to others of the same annual motion we shall find that the Sun is more potently withheld under the Meridional Signs than under the Septentrional ones That is moves swifter through the Austral Mediety in the Winter consuming but 178 daies 21 hours and 12 minut in that peragration and flower through the Boreal Signs in the Summer spending 186 daies 8 hours 12 minutes computing with the Vulgar 365 daies 5 hours 49 min. 16 sec. in the year so that the difference is 7 daies and 11 hours 2. The Sun appears sometimes at some seasons of the year higher then at others that is sometimes nearer to us and other times farther from us or otherwise the Sun is at the highest and farthest in the Summer in the month of June being then in Cancer and at the lowest or nearest in the moneth of December being then in Capricorn VIII The greatest declination of the Sun hath formerly in the daies of Hipparchus Ptolomy been observed to be of 23 deg 52 mi. which according to Copernicus his observation is reduced to 30 min. by others since to 28. The cause is evident and is to be imputed to the Suns or rather the fiery Regions gaining upon the inferiour Elements namely the water gains upon the earth and diducts her mole the air gains upon them both and insufflates their bodies and lastly the fire gains upon the air through which means it must necessarily incline nearer to the Center of the Earth which approximation must cause a diminution of the Suns declination For instance suppose the Sun in Hipparchus his time to have been at the height of o being then in his greatest declination from the Equinoctial a b if then since through the fiery Regions having gained upon the other Elements the Sun is descended from o to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being there nearer to the Center of the Earth his greatest declination in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 must needs be less to ε than it is from o to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 IX Hence we may easily collect the duration of the World thus If the fiery Region hath gained from the time or years of Ptolomy to Copernicus so many minutes of the other Elements in how many years will the fire gain the restant minutes This being found out by the rule of proportion will resolve us when the World shall be returned again into a confusion or Chaos so that you may observe as at the beginning of the world the weighty Elements did gradually expell and at last over-power the light ones so the light ones do now gradually gain upon the weighty ones and at last will again over-power them and so you have a description of the long year consisting of 20 thousand Solar Circuits gaining near a degree every 68 years but towards the latter end will prevail much more because the nearer they incline the more forcibly they will make way And so you see all things are like to return to what they were viz. The immortal souls of men to God and the Universe in o the same Chaos which as I said formerly will abide a Chaos to all Eternity unless God do divide it again into a new World and raise new Bodies for the Souls that have of long been in being At the latter end of this descent you shall have Christ descending in the greatest Triumph Glory and Splendor appearing in a body brighter than the Sun Here must needs happen a very great noise and thunder when the Elements do with the greatest force clash against one another which cannot but then strike the greatest amazement and anguish into the Ears of the Wicked This Doctrine may prove a plain Paraphrase upon those mysteries mentioned in the Revelation of St. John For instance Chap. 9. v. 1 2. where a Star is described to fall down from heaven namely the Sun opening the bottomless pit and raising a smoak viz through his burning and consuming rayes c. No wonder if mens fancies are so strongly missed in
a Board or Ship upon the water Because the water being continuously thick coheres together and will not suffer her self to be divided whereby they happen to be lifted up by the water VI. Whether all hard waterish bodies are freed from fire No For although a slame is extinguisht by them yet that hinders not but that fire may be contained within them in particles and close shut up between their pores This appears in Crystal which being smartly struck by another hard body doth emit sparks of slaming fire from it like unto a Flint So neither is Ice it self bare within its pores of some small particles of fire CHAP. III. Comprizing Problems touching the Air. 1. Whether Air be weighty 2. Whether a Bladder blown up with wind be heavier than when empty 3. Why water contained in a beer glass being turned round with ones hand doth turn contrary against the motion of the Glass 4. Why a breath being blown with a close mouth doth feel cool and efflated with a diducted mouth feel warm 5. Why an armed point of an Arrow groweth hot in being shot through the air 6. Why Beer or Wine will not run out of the Cask without opening a hole atop 7. What difference there is between an Oricane and a Travada 8. Whether it be true that Winds may be hired from Witches or Wizards in Iseland 9. Why is it quieter in the night than in the day I. VVHether Air be weighty Answ. Air considered as enjoying its Center is light and doth not participate of any weight since it would only move from the Center to the Circumference and ever force extraneous bodies upwards Ergo Air absolutely conceived is only light 2. Air in its present state is also weighty but accidentally only and not essentially because of its sinking downwards towards the Center II. Whether a Bladder blown up with wind be heavier than when empty Answ. There hath been trial made of this to wit of the weight of a bladder blown up by Bellows atop of a high hill in a pair of Scales and it was found that an empty bladder weighed heavier than one filled with wind the same is also deprehended by casting them both into the water where we shall find the empty bladder first to be equal with the Surface of the water and afterwards to sink down a little whereas the windy one swimmeth atop The cause is by reason a bladder extended by the air within is supported by it and being rendred more porous and subtil through its obduction the air doth easily pass without any resistance and therefore doth not depress it so much as an empty bladder which through its corrugation and lesser diduction is more dense and therefore receiving the depressing force of the air much stronger besides being more acute is apter for to cut through the inferiour air whereas a bladder blown up is obtuse and doth as it were swim in the air But if a bladder be blown up with ones breath then doubtless it will prove heavier than an empty one because of the vaporous or heavy waterish air contained within III. Why doth the water contained in a beer glass being turned round with your hand turn contrary against the motion of the glass the same is observed in rouling a barrel full of water where the liquor turns contrary against the barrel Ans. The water is here detained flat or held fast by the air sinking down whence it is that the water seems to move against the motion of the Vessel being glib or slippery and smooth and therefore not detaining the vessel in its motion IV. Why doth a breath being blown with a close mouth feel cool and efflated with a diducted mouth feel warm Answ. Because the breath or incrassated air of a close mouth is more united and longer continuated whereby it doth vigorously puffe the ambient air whose compression felt causes cold as I have explained it in Book 1. Part 2. Now through the union of the incrassated air that is efflated the hot minims of the breath are deeply and equally impressed into the substance of the vaporous air whence their vertue is also suppressed but in breathing of the said air out of an open mouth the fiery minims do come forth in troops unequally and but superficially mixt in or supported by the said incrassated air whence they abide energick besides the air being but little puffed makes little or no compression Hence you may also collect a reason why the air doth refrigrate being agitated with a Fan. V. Why doth an armed point of an Arrow grow hot in being shot through the air Answ. Because its body and pores are somewhat opened by the air grinding against it whereby its fiery parts procure an occasion of being unired and condensed This doth also resolve us why a Knife being smartly whetted emits sparks of fire or why a Flint being struck hard against a piece of Steel doth likewise sparkle fire from it viz. because its solid parts are opened and disjoyned through the concussion whereby the fiery minims happen to be united and condensed Likewise many cold bodies by being chawed or contrited do afterwards grow hot VI. Why will not Beer or Wine run out of the Cask without opening a hole atop Answ. Because of the continuous adhesion or cohesion of the continuous parts of the liquor to the continuous parts of the Cask but as soon as it is averruncated divided and impelled downwards by the air entring at the upper hole it runs freely out of the Tap. That it is the air entring atop which presseth out the liquor is apparent by the cavity atop which the fore-impulse of the air entring causeth VII What difference is there between an Oricane and a Travada Answ. An Oricane is usually much more violent and therefore also much less lasting bursting down circularly from all parts like to a Whirlwind A Travada is more lasting and less violent and erupts directly down from one tract and in no wise circularly which as it oft rages upon the Seas off the shores of Coramandel Manicongo Guiny c. so the former is more frequent in the West-Indian Climates VIII Whether it be true that Winds may be hired from Witches or Wizzards in Iseland Answ. It is certain that the Winds blow very variously and manifold about that Island insomuch that it is not rare to see Ships sailing several courses at once all of them being equally favoured by a good wind The cause of this being vulgarly not known hath occasioned people to brand the old men and women there with Witchcraft whom the roughness of the air may cause to look rugged like the devils correspondents selling the winds by retail The causes of this variety are great winds erupting oft out of several holes of the earth about the Island especially about the Mount Hecla which many believe to be the mouth of hell because of those prodigious thunders and murmurings of winds that are perceived thereabout IX Why is it
in the 17th Chap. declares the necessity and certainty of mans death particularly in v. 5. Seeing his dayes are determined the number of his Moneths are with thee thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass I cannot here omit the detecting of that dull vulgar Errour and Doubt arising about these very words of Job Their way of Argumentation is If the life of man is determined to a year a Moneth Day and Minute ergo it will prove in vain for me to have that care of my health and caution of hazarding my Life at Sea or at Land In fine there is neither Anticipation or Posticipation of Life Man acts voluntarily that is freely without any necessary or fatal impulse wherefore one who is drowned at Sea was not compelled to go and be drowned but went thither freely or might have stayed away if then he might have stayed away ergo his life might have been prolonged by staying away Or otherwise suppose a man is diseased with a Gangreen in some one extreme part of his body Cannot we say that this man if he lists may have his life prolonged by ampntating the gangrenous Member or if he will that he may accelerate his death in suffering it to increase and creep on But to Answer to the Text. Determination of Dayes is twofold 1. Of the Natural Course of mans Life as suppose that the Temperament of man will last and endure if it run off in a Natural Course to a hundred and twenty yeares some more some less now this term may be said to be Gods Determination of the Dayes of man when he hath determined that his temperament shall endure no longer then he hath made it to endure naturally 2. There is a Determination of life before it hath run out his natural course as when God doth manifestly cut down a man in the full strength of his years Again there is an ordinary determination of the duration of beings by which God hath determined that all things shall have their natural course of being acting and continuing Were it not for this ordinary determination of God he would never suffer the wicked to live or that any Natural thing should be serviceable to them 2. There is also an extraordinary Determination through which God hath determined to act beyond his ordinary determination in through or upon things which are ordinarily determined This determination is secret and called Gods hidden will Neither doth his extraordinary determination contradict or clip or change his ordinary determination but that God may or doth sometimes determinate beyond it This premitted I do assert that the determination of mans dayes in the Text is to be understood of Gods ordinary determination of the Natural Course of mans Life I confess although God according to his ordinary determination hath determined the Natural course of mans dayes yet he may through his extraordinary determination prolongate the same mans life to many years and notwithstanding thereby he doth not contradict his ordinary determination for a man having run out his full Natural course of life hath therein answered Gods ordinary determination which being expired God may and sometimes doth supernaturally and by his extraordinary determination superadd other natural Principles through which his life is prolonged thus was the life of King Hezekiah prolonged by God superadding new Principles of life whereby his life was protracted 15 years longer for through Gods ordinary determination he must have died fifteen years before because all his natural heat was spent through his Disease and his temperament run off Wherefore as the Text saith 2 Kings 20. 1. he must have died of a necessity but God extraordinarily superadding a new heat and a new life prolonged his dayes In the same manner doth God oft-times through his extraordinary determination cut down the wicked and shorten their dayes Psal. 55. Look back to the 9 and 10 Chap. of my Natur. Theol. Here may be demanded how Adam and Eves Bodies could have been of an eval duration supposing they had remained in their Innocency their bodies being tempered ad justitiam only and not ad pondus I Answer That according to all probability their primogenial temperature was by far more perfect compariativè then ours and therefore did not consume faster then their Natures could adunite other parts in the room of the dissipated ones besides that heat which was dissipated was only part of the moveable heat as for their fixt heat that was so arctly united and tempered that its nexe was indissoluble which through their Fall is become soluble This Controversie is stated and handled more at large by Beverovit Lib. de vit term and Gregor Horst Lib. 2. de Nat. human Exerc 4. Quest. 10 11. whom you may peruse at your leisure As Generation did import a twofold signification so doth Corruption 1. In a large sense it implies a natural dissolution together with the declining alteration thereunto tending 2. Strictly it signifies a violent dissolution of a mixt body through a preceding Putrefaction Hence those may be advertised who do erroneously confound Putrefaction and Corruption taking them for one Its Species are Combustion Petrification Corruption by waterish moysture and Corruption through ayry moysture You may easily understand the natures of them by what hath been spoken before Whether Corruption is possible to the Elements as they are now consisting mutually mixt one with the other is a Doubt moved by some I Answer that a total Corruption is impossible a partial one happens every hour for we see ayry bodies as Clouds dissolved every day the like happens in the Region of Fire where fiery bodies are dissolved every day and others again generated In the Earth and Water some bodies are likewise corrupted and others generated every day so Gold Silver and all other hard Metals are sometimes violently corrupted under the earth from an extrinsick potent and putrifying heat CHAP. XXI Of Light 1. What Light is The manner of the production of a Flame 2. The Properties and Effects of Light 3. That Light is an Effect or consequent of a Flame Whence it happens that our Eyes strike fire when we hit our Foreheads against any hard Body That Light is not a quality of fire alone That Light is not fire rarefied That where there is Light there is not alwaies heat near to it How Virginals and Organs are made to play by themselves 4. That Light is a continuous obduction of the Air. That Light is diffused to a far extent in an instant and how Why the whole tract of Air is not enlightned at once 5. The manner of the Lights working upon the Eye-sight That sight is actuated by reception and not by emission 6. The reason of the difference between the extent of illumination and calefaction That Light cannot be precipitated 7. That Light is not the mediate cause of all the Effects produced by the Stars That Light hath only a power of acting immediately and per se upon the optick