Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	appear_v	common_a	great_a	350	4	2.1119	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52581	Sal, lumen, & spiritus mundi philosophici, or, The dawning of the day discovered by the beams of light shewing the true salt and secret of the philosophers, the first and universal spirit of the world / written originally in French, afterwards turned into Latin by the illustrious doctor, Lodovicus Combachius ... and now transplanted into Albyons Garden by R.T. ...; Traittez de l'harmonie et constitution généralle du vray sel, secret des philosophes, et de l'esprit universelle du monde. English	Nuisement, Clovis Hesteau, sieur de.; Turner, Robert, fl. 1654-1665.	1657 (1657)	Wing N1469; ESTC R4890	78,186	256

seeing it filled with horrid Monsters they have been so confounded as to leave this perillous Path and forsake their enterprise As Poliphilus hath by a most ingenious pencil expressed whose generous and undaunted courage sleighting those common terrors hath effected so much that both the sides of this black dark Word lay open to light and by whose manuduction you may notwithstanding all obstacles arrive safe and and sound at the delicious and grateful habitation of Lady Polia shut up in the rich Temple of Vesta This I can assert for indubitable that the way he held is open to all but all have not that Ariadne's Clew that he had to extricate himself out of this labyrinth neither is every one a Theseus that he can overcome the Minotaure It is certain that Nature like a loving Mother proposes and offers this precious Treasure of life to all and that God our Universal Father keeps open the Gate of this fatall Cavern for the commodity of all men for the descent to Hell is easie but then again to ascend to Heaven hic labor hoc opus est Stay coach-man here 's a straw First then that splendent Branch Dedicated to the infernal Juno must be found out of which Virgil writes Accipe que peragenda prius latet arbore opacae Aureus foliis lento vim ine ramus Junoni inferne dictus sacer hunc tegit omnis Lucus obscuris claudunt convallibus umbrae Sed non ante datur tellures operta subire Auricomos quam quis decerpserit arbore faetus Hoc sibi pulchra suum ferri Proserpina munus Instituit primo acculso non defi cit alter Aureus simili frondescit virga metallo Ergo alte vestiga oculis rite repertum Carpe manis namque ille volens facilisque sequetur Si te fata vocant aliter non viribus ullis Vincere nec duro poteris convellere ferro First see what you must do the golden tree Which to th' infernal Juno we decree Lies hid under a grove in a deep vale And now you may not pass within the pale Of th' Earths deep Cabinet until you have Snatch'd from this tree her off-spring which to grave Proserpina you must present the tree That gave this fruit will not long fruitless be For loe another golden off-spring follows Fix your eyes here and in your hand retain then What you do finde if th' fates do favour now You vanquish but if not no force will do If therefore Nature be sollicitous in hiding these things lest they should be indifferently prostrated to all or Hogs get to the honey-pots no wonder if Ancient and Modern Philosophers have invented so many aenigmatical Figures and hidden Fables to cover and cloath this Science with For they know well enough that ceremonious Nature would never have hid her self under so many different Forms and Species but have appeared naked but that her Venerable Secrets would thereby incur that contempt which alway accompanies common things For which cause I also in this Treatise use the same Solennity and Taciturnity lest I should undergo the same peril that he did who published the Mysteries of the Elysian Goddesses which should have been kept Secret and Chaste and not like common Harlots exposed to publike abuse And whether I have spoken conveniently to my own purpose or no such as have made progress in this search may better judge for experience is the best Dame In the mean time I hope none will give a hard interpretation or pass a bad sentence on me because I have compared Natural and Chymical operations with Divine and Christian Mysteries wherewith they have some conformity For by this application I have no way profaned them but rather Celebrated their Excellences and pointed at that great care and testimony of our Creatour in ratifying the safety both of Body and Soul together Which reason moved one Author so that he wrote that the true Chymistry which Paracelsus calls Spagiry follows the Gospel foot by foot because by the help of this and fire Nature exerts her most potent faculties which Antient Philosophers as Brachmannus Gymnosophisters and all the Egyptians insinuate in their Theology For all the Magick of Paganism and all the fables of Poets signifie no more then what this Book Treats of which the most Learned and subtile Bracescus diligently examined though envious Toladanus writes the contrary after he was deceived in an experiment in this Art which he thought he had wresled from him by his importunity believing that the spume of Iron was the Philosophers Mercury because he asserted that it was extracted out of a vile Matter of small price which was cast into the streets not observing that the discreet Masters of this Art cloath their Matter with strange Vestments calling them by all the names of Metals in discriminately and yet without the least fraud for he that knows this matter knows also that it contains the seven Metals in it And I would gladly know whether they think Cosmopolita meant of the vulgar Steel when he sayes That Neptune shewed him under one Rock two Mynes the one of Gold the other of Steel The Man was too plain to harbour such frivolous conceits but he named his matter thus because of the conformity with polished Steel And Bracescus had played the part of a Fool and not a Philosopher if he had in one moment opened the whole mystery of his Secret in the acquiring whereof he had doubtlessly spent two thirds of his life But that I may add something to the explication of these Mythologies do we not plainly see That that ancient Demogorgon the Parent of all the gods or rather of all the Members of the World which they say inhabits the Centre of the Earth covered with a green and ferruginous Coat nourishing all kindes of Animals is nothing else but the universal Spirit which by God's command produced the Heaven out of the Chaos with the Elements and all things therein which it always hitherto sustains and enlivens for it truely took up its Habitation in the middle of the Earth as we have declared in the beginning of this Book where it sits as it were in its Throne and thence as from the Heart of some great Body and Seat of Life universal animates and nourishes all things and that green and ferruginous Coat is nothing but the surface of the Earth which is of a blackish and Iron-colour decked and variegated with divers coloured Herbs and Flowers Virgil perfectly skilled in all these mystical Secrets called this Spirit or Soul of the World Jupiter whom his Pastorer Damaeta invokes in his third Eclogue because as he saith all things are full of him And Pan that god of the Woods worshipped by Shepherds is taken for the same for besides that this word Pan signifies All he is also made the God of the Woods because the Greeks for the Governour thereof worshipped the Chaos which they otherwise call Hyle that is a Wood. Orpheus

Distinction and Ornament of which I will say no more because it appertains onely to Nature not to Art the other is made by Decision or Division which I shall now explicate I said before That all things consist of two parts Excrement and Substance Substance is of it self simple and indivisible whether we take it general for the first Universal matter or in particular for any species according to the impression of the Celestial Idea which is infinite This Substance or first Matter in every species of compounded Bodies is one in essence vertue and quality and in one and the same subject one part cannot be of one species and another of another but in Excrements it is otherwise for the better understanding whereof I will lay the following Rule That there are but two means or mediums for the compleating of all Separations to wit Fire and Water and there are but two things separable in Bodies the one whereof is separated by Fire the other by Water In the first place it is indubitable That the Nature of Fire is such as it destroyes and consumes all that is combustible and of Water such as it washes and cleanses all substance from its impurity that commaculates it Fire devours all that 's volatile and of an Airy quality because it is its proper nutriment but Water divides all that 's Terrestrial and gross Betwixt these two extremes then there must be some intermediate disposition which should be kept and conserved containing nothing that 's combustible or impure in it which may be subjected to these two Warriers And it is manifest That Adustion and Dregs are the two Corrupters and Destroyers of all things which Divine Hippocrates was not ignorant of when he said That all Diseases proceed either from the Air or Aliments insinuating that the excess of excrementitious Aliments are apt to receive corruption and Excrements by Fire exceeding natural heat are the inflaming and corrupting causes of each Disease for the Excrements of Aliments fill Bodies with Terrestrial impurities and inflammable Air generates sulphureous and adust matter which easily conceiving hot ardours consumes and dissipates what is radical and vital with it self carrying it away because the greater part of it is volatile the less adustive Dregs then and Adustion are the two Authors of corruption and those that hinder the vigour of substantial actions in all things And if we require any Arguments to prove this the stink of Digestion and Excrements demonstrates it for that same sented in things that are burned speaks little of good to be there The same is also evident in the fumes of Excrements which stinking Bodies emit for those suppose corruption and besides the corruption they generate they also cause these two inconveniences the one is the hindrance of Penetration the other of Fixation which two actions are absolutely necessary for the conservation of life for that which nourishes and supports life must needs be subtile that it may by its subtile parts penetrate Bodies and like a secret Balsam roborate and augment the light of life in the centre of the Body for if it were gross it would rather obstruct suffocate and extinguish then penetrate and pass through such narrow ways and because on the other side it conserves life in its state it should in reason be a stable and no fluxible thing for if it were volatile we might every moment expect death lest it should be introduced by the corruption generated by feculent adustion which continually layes wait for our life Grosness then hinders Ingress and Adustion Stability Hence we may take a good admonition for Medicine to wit that every true Medicament introsumed for the restoring of strength and profligating the cause of instant death should have two properties to wit to pierce to the centre of sanity and preserve the centre by dilating and deducing it through the whole Body which the Ancients with good success revoked to practise and not many yeers ago the too much hated Paracelsus who explained their operations to posterity which were so long kept secret and let him that will affirm the contrary I doubt not to aver That nothing without the operation of Fire can be brought to purity and stability which two parts must be chiefly observed in making Medicaments to which Assertion this valid Reason draws me That no body in its first original and form can be truely Medicinal as immerged in the corruption of its excrementitious Dregs because it cannot attain the place seat of sanity nor yet preserve sanity because it wants subtilty to penetrate and fixedness requisite to the Restauration of what is corrupt and lost and the conservation of what is restored which cannot possibly be attained by the common way of preparation neither in substance nor in infusion the impossibilty hereof in substance appears in that such do not purge without violence which causes rather perilous weakness then salutary Restauration and as to infusions nothing can thereby be extracted out of simples but a little introsity which is innate in all Bodies with a little of their excrementitious Dregs Hence infusion attracts not the internal vertue but onely the external sapour of things which in their centre is quite different from that in their superficial matter for commonly we see all infusions are bitter which we are forced to obdulcorate with Sugar or Honey because most Apothecaries are not so industrious as to extract the natural sweetness wherein the Nature of the things consists from the things they infuse for all bitterness proceeds from Salt which hath sweetness at the bottom which cannot be extracted by simple infusions but by Fire onely and ingenious Artifice this sweetness being the very perfection of the Medicine Hence Arnoldus de villa nova saith That if you know how to dulcorate what is bitter you have the whole mystery Which Brucestus was not ignorant of as appears by his Dialogue entituled Demogorgon But this occult sweetness can never be manifested unless it be quite freed from Terrestrial Excrements and volatile and Aereal Adustion for the earthiness thereof gives it its extraneous sapour arising from the Excrements of Salt from whose variety according to the species and place wherein they are generated the diversity of sapours doth arise for all sapour comes from Salt and by how much there is more Salt by so much is the sapour more intense And on the other side that which is volatile and Aery begets ill and non-natural odours which send out a stinch which we perceive in their burning because of the combustion and inflammation of the unctuous Sulphur and that volatile matter is an Excrement is apparent from the stinking fumes of Bodies that are burning whence smoak proceeds that adhering to the Chimney or other part which afterward retain the odour of the burnt Bodies and the bitterness of the Excrements of Salt And this is yet more manifest by that blackness and obscurity which this fume impresses on all things it

one may be conserved and the other not destroyed and seeing the Spirit and Substance were included in a Body and the Body immerged in corruption it was impossible that corruption should act upon and prevail over the Body and yet the Spirit placed in both should be kept free and incur no danger but rather that with the Body it should yield to deaths Tyranny which alwayes intends Natures destruction and the prostitution of all individuals which thing needs no proof but appears sufficiently manifest from the natural and sometimes the immature end of Animals Vegetables and Minerals which we see every day by their corruption when the Body being dead the Spirit must undergo the same fortune that is the vertue that enlivened it is annihilated but because the prime Opificer would be admirable in all his works of his meer goodness and love to Mankinde who from the beginning he predestinated to be the Instrument of his Glory and to whom he subjected whatever was admirable in the Creation for his Commodity I say he gave certain expedient Remedies whereby he might not onely purifie and perfect the things created but also preserve and arm himself against the assaults of mortal corruption Knowing then that the two parts of Man were one created in another to wit the Spirit in the Body and that the Body would be continually infected by corruption and by sensuality drawn and allured to intemperance which infers the true corruption and weakning of all the members he foresaw that the Spirit inhabiting like a Guest in the Body could not be exempted from its contagious depravation and we ordinarily see That Men given to excess of intemperance and sensuality accustom themselves to ill manners and take liberty in all corruption both of Minde and Spirit neither regarding Love nor Fear to God Honor or Respect to the World nor Piety to themselves nor Charity towards their Neighbours So that it is impossible if they be thus bound to inquinations in death but their Spirits must undergo punishment as they have participated of pleasure Seeing moreover all mankinde by the fall of our first Parent obnoxious to death and thence every Man inevitably to incur total destruction and perdition he mitigated or rather redintegrated this Misery by an admirable Remedy far exceeding our capacity for knowing Man by his Spirit and his Body to participate of Heaven and of Earth the Remedy also he made to partake of Heaven and Earth which is competible solely to our onely Lord Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ who descended from Heaven into the Earth and by a mystery incomprehensible by us and common sense was miraculously made Man without the abdication of his God-head because our health could not come from Earth alone corruption reigning there but it was necessary that the Water should come from above where the Fountain of purity is he therefore came down that he might dwell in us and with us and conclude us within the terms of justice and temperance regenerating us to newness of life by the mutation of our Spirit and Body and mortifying in us our corruptions and sins and restoring us to the study of purity of vertue which could not have been effected save by him alone the extream of both Natures for he is God-Man that he might conjoyn superiour with inferiour things which were dis-joyned by the incomparable distance of life and death purity and corruption The Earth doubtlesly received this inestimable treasure far exceeding its merit by a medium that cannot be comprehended from which he again ascended into Heaven by the Water of purification and Fire of the Spirit without accidents and corporal passions though he deposed not his Body but retained it incorruptible and glorious having acquired immortality by death who shall again descend from his Fathers right-Hand into the Earth after the Universal conflagration to renew the World and make a Separation betwixt the good destined to life and the evil condemned to death See now how well the Omnipotent Father the Father of all compassions consulted for Mans good to whose Body joyned with his Soul he gave an equal Preserver whom he sent from Heaven that he might be born on Earth and whom by the light of Nature we ought to seek Seeing Man was therefore endued with Reason and Judgement that he might acknowledge and comprehend his great gifts but Man created heavenly for the indagation of this benefit as too forgetful of his birth lays out that noble and divine Light within him in searching out frivolous and transitory vanities and not in the pursuit of solid wisdom and verity Briefly he had rather follow the inclination of his Terrestrial Geniture then Divine and Celestial Wisdom which he neglects as a thing indifferent and casually sent to him from above Wherefore the Root of Mankinde is as it were extinguished before it grow out except some few who have had better Stars and more favourable Aspects in their Nativity they desiring the possession of transitory goods more then the attainment of Divine and precious Gifts which our fecund Mother Nature hath publickly and in all places fixed for the conservation of life hurt rather then helped by their abundance immerged in mortal corruption And it is apparent That those that are of a higher Spirit though they look upon the fulgour and splendor of those Mundane Riches as no way despicable yet they will not rest in this surface but seek to Divine Vertue occluded in the Centre which hath indeed been cause of great errors both in Medicine and Philosophy to such as destitute of true light groape at and in the dark pass by both Recalling then my mind to the clear light by whose guidance we may attain that salutary and best remedy which God ordained particularly for the conservation of mankinde and for the obtaining of Celestial benediction I shall endeavor with all humility and requisite sincerity not as a Divine but as a Disciple of Wisdoms followers to adumbrate my conceptions in a rude style which the lovers of verity may accept gratefully if they finde them rational and pleasing I say then that all understanding communicated to any man from man alone is uncertain and confused because man is ordinarily loaden with ignorance and slow resolutions but that which he receives from the univerial Light is clear and immoveable For to know absolutely is to understand a thing by its first causes and there is no certitude in second causes till we come to their original wherefore we cannot know the Nature of a Species unless we foreknow its Genus neither can we know the Nature of Microcosmes which are almost infinite unless we first find out the Nature of the Macrocosme that gives them being Man likewise cannot be known without the precedent cognition of the world whose effigies he is nor yet the great world unless we know whence and how it was made For how shall one know a man whose principle is nothing but a small deformed mucilage

Martial Serpent should be sown is nothing but a vessel wherein Souldiers armed with Spears are elevated But this Vessel should not be a Glass-Alembick as Polydorus thinks but made in form of a Cooperculum or Covert narrow below and capacious above made of good Earth well cocted and not of Iron or Glass In whose bottom Mars his Field must be elevated rigid with Lances and Spears representing souldiers provoked and fighting And this is onely an ingenious Fiction of the Poet to make the thing somewhat admirable to the vulgar which yet is so plain and familiar to us that if I should name what it is I should make my self ridiculous And when Jason had finished his work he must needs make the watching Dragon that kept the Golden Fleece sleep that he might no more eructate Fire and Fume which he did by suffocating him in the Stygian Waters that is by dissolving and fixing him with his Spirit And then Jason had nothing to do for the possession of the Golden Fleece and restoring his old Father Aeson to Youth again but onely one business that Medea taught him that is the fermentation and conjunction of solar burter with the paste of prepared Mercury which is not of it self fit for two such excellent actions being onely Earth wherein pure ferment produced by Nature and promoted to perfection should be sown When he had finished this last work he saw himself possessor of his twofold Treasury which he gloriously brought back to the place of his Nativity by benefit whereof he became very rich and reduced his aged Father to sanity by removing his languishments But I will now leave Jason with his Medea to the enjoyment of their felicity and onely adde this That by the Dragon that watched continually and vomited fire out of his throat nothing can be more conveniently denoted then our Universal Spirit or Mercury which is the most vivacious and inflammable thing in the world wherefore it is called burning water or aqua vitae because as Bracescus notes it always burns before its coagulation and it is aqua vitae because it vivifies all things And if one should look on its superficies who would think it fixed and inconsumeable being so easily inflammable or vanishing at the least touch of fire or who would think that there were any conservative vertue in its Centre seeing it looks as if it were full of mortal poyson rather then life But as God set a Cherubim with a flaming Sword to keep the tree of Life So Nature set this ignivomous Dragon in the door of the Garden to keep the Tree of golden Apples that is the knowledge of her hidden Secrets which our prudent Ancestours would not deliver in writing but onely by word of mouth to such as they thought worthy of such knowledge And this is the cause why those great and admirable Sciences have in progress of time vanished and are accounted as Fables and Tales Which thing Esdras considered for foreknowing that the Israelites should suffer banishments flights and captivity he feared lest the secret Mysteries of the Scripture should perish because without the benefit of writing mens memory might easily fail He therefore Congregated all the Elders in number LXX who with himself wrote all these things in as many Books as himself attests saying That after forty days the Lord spake and said Publish those things which thou hast written that all may read them and keep those later LXX Books that thou maist deliver them to the Wise-men of thy people for herein is the vein of Understanding and the Fountain of Wisdom and the Flood of Knowledge and so he did Picus Mirandulanus the Phenix of his time for Learning and Knowledge speaks of those Books with great reverence in these or the like words These are LXX Cabalistical Books wherein Esdras said plainly That the Fountain of all Understanding and Knowledge was contained that is the inestimable Theology concerning the Supream Deity the Fountain of Wisdom and the entire Metaphysicks of intelligences the stream of Knowledge that is the firmest natural Philosophy When these Books had been long kept secret they were by the command of Xystus the fourth turned first into Latine for the benefit of Religion but this good Work was interrupted by his death Yet they are had in such veneration amongst the Jews that no one under forty years of age may touch them And this is most admirable that in those Cabalistical Doctrines some Heads of Christianism should be contained Thus Mirandula And now having I hope omitted nothing which might serve to the interpretation of Hermes his Table or obscure Philosophical Cabala I shall betake my self to the Port of this unsearchable Ocean and dry my wet cloathes under the Sunshine of your Favours wishing well to all and upon good grounds judging that the Good Honor and Glory of the World is the true Philosophy FINIS Books worth buying to be sold at the Lamb at the East-end of Pauls 1 MAscal's Government of Cattel 2 Wentworth's Miscellania a piece of School-Divinity 3 Two Sober Paradoxes written by Malvezzi 4 Elementa Optica 5 The Soveraigns Prerogative discussed in Parliament in the third and fourth years of King Charls 6 The Secretaries Study an excellent Book of elegant Letters 7 The fourth Book of Cornelius Agrippa in English 8 The compleat Bone-setter translated by R. Turner 9 Arts Notoria or The Notory Art of Solomon c. There is now in the Press an excellent Piece called The Devil Anatomized being a Philosophical Discourse touching the Nature of Spirits