of Silver and Gold and Copper adulterando adulteria naturae as he more finely then constantly saith when he had alotted so chast Virtue before unto her But suppose this Virtue in the hard form of Metals not so apparent yet no Man shall deny the daily proof of them opened by rude Skill and set at liberty as the great use of Burnt Brasse Iron-Saffron Metal-smoke and this by Gallen's own witness and marvellous help in Surgery Nay the mighty power both within and without of Antimony which is unripe Lead and of Quick-silver very raw and running Silver so often tried before their Eyes hath so amazed and quite daunted the later Leaches though Galen himself in times past hath termed this rank Poison set straight against our Nature and the least part thereof taken inward to hurt and annoy us to the great laughter of the Countrey Wits which even with Child a dangerous time to take Physick in without any hurt at all nay with speedy and onely help use to drink it against Worms in great quantitie But Galen did but rove by guess at the matter when as in another place forgetting himself as he doth often he saith he never had tried her force neither within nor without the Body But if these Stones Juices and Metals were by greater Skill more finely drest and freely set at liberty as they be by the German what wonders were they like to work in the Art of Healing Neither let us think as Galen and his band thinks of all things that those great and rare Mineral virtues could issue out and come from the gross and foul Body but from an Heavenly gift of a mighty Soul which cannot be kept in awe and held so straâ— with those Earthly bonds as it shall not be able in somâ— sort to stir and break through and shew his force and power Wherefore to return to my purpose If Nature hath bestowed upon these three sorts and suits of Minerals so large Gifts and Virtues what hath she given to Gold the end and perfection of them all which hath passed in that travel through the midst of them all so receiving and holding the Virtues of them all with advantage What say the Leaches to this matter They are loth to say any thing albeit their deeds speak enough when they lay raw Gold to the out-side of the Head to heal his Ache right e against the Heart to comfort his sadness and trembling and when in such sort they apply it to such purposes Again why do they boil it in their d Cullises mix it with their Pills and Electuaries bid the Lepers swallow it c. Do they not seem to smell his great and matchless power against Diseases and marvellous comfort and wholsomness unto our Nature but that like rude and unskilful Cooks they know not how to dress it But if they knew the Skill they should see it rise in Power and Virtue according to his degrees in Freedom and when it came to the top which I call the Sonne of Gold to prove Almighty I mean within our compass for consider Gold is now good and friendly above all unto us for his exceeding store of comfortable Heat of Heaven shining through the mist of a most fine and temperate Body Then what would it be if those properties of Body were by great mingling and breaking of the Stuffe refined and raised in their kind an hundred degrees at least which our Art professeth and those lively and piercing heaps of comfortable Spirits freed and set at liberty and all these seated upon a most mighty Body subduing all things Is there any thing in the World to be compared unto the marvellous Work which he would make in our Body Could any of these very violent and mortal Poisons which I brought in above so easily and roundly destroy as this would help and save us But to come to the Point If that our Old Fine Close and Aethereal Oil which they call a Fifth Nature was able alone for the Reasons set down in their places to breed and beget all those blessed bodily gifts and properties that is Lastingnesse Health Youth and the two springs of Wisdom and Virtue Clearnesse and Temperatenesse How much more shall this Sonne of Gold the Medicine and Stone of HERMES and his Off-spring be sufficient and furnished for it For first when his Soul and Heat of Heaven is much more great and mighty and his Body a more fine and fast Oil that is a more like and lasting Food of Life it both upholdeth and strengtheneth Life and Natural Heat the better and so proves the better cause of Long Life and Youth Then being more temperate and that quality carried upon a finer and tougher that is a stronger Body it is able with more ease and speed to subdue his and our Enemies the distempered Diseases and to cleanse and clear fashion and bring into good order and temper the whole frame of our Body and so procure Health Wisdom and Virtue in better sort and in more full and heaped measure for you must not think that a Fifth Nature of Wine or such like which I brought in heretofore and which many Men do make for their Bodies is so good by twenty degrees as the PHILOSOPHERS STONE I mean the same measure of both when besides that it is not so temperate and near unto Heaven though the name be never so near for it wanteth twenty parts of the Soul and as much of that fine Stuffe closely and finely tied up together and therefore one part thereof will last longer and spread further with all his Virtues and so do more good in our Bodies then twenty times as much of the former Deliver to minde what I say it is worthy marking I shall not need to stand to shew you the Reasons why and manner how this great Medicine of HERMES shall be able to get and purchase these our Blisses of Mind and Body because it is already done at large elsewhere and it may suffice in this place to win by force of Reason which hath been done as much as needs that this Medicine is much better and more able than an Aether Heaven or Fifth Nature Then these Men may see I mean Paracelse and such as know whereof they speak let the rest go how rash and unadvised they prove themselves when they are content to let in the name of Poison into this happy Medicine and to avow that it worketh all those wonders in our Bodies by that way of curing which I shewed by stronger like â—oisons for then it would be at most but a general Medicine and Cure-all against Diseases and fit for Health alone but no blessed way to Long-life Youth Wisdom and Virtue which grant as well as the other both he and all the rest do give unto him for it might not be taken and used in a sound Body no more then a purging Medicine except
and search all about and so scour and cleanse a great Mass of foul Mettals how many times more then a weak and gross Mineral binder fasten and bend your Mindes upon it we see how a weak waterish and earthly Breath in a narrow place within a Cloud the Gramide or Gunne all is but Thunder because he is so suddenly turned into a larger Element and lacketh room bestirs himself and worketh marvellous deeds what may we think then of the heaps of those fat vapours of Heaven and of that most strong golden body closely couched up together in a little room when they be in a narrow Vessel drawn out and spread abroad at large by a mighty fire and thereby still pricked and egged forward for as long as the fire holdeth they cannot be still nor draw in themselves again What thing in the sturdiest Mettal can be able to withstand them How easily shall they cast down all that comes in their way break and bruise all to powder May we not all say plainly that which the Poet by borrowed speech avoweth That Gold loveth to go through the midst of the Guard yea and pâ—ss through the Rocks being more mighty than the stroak of Lightning It is so fit as if it had been made for the matter I have heard that the extreme cold weather in Lappia and Finland which lie under the pinny Girdle of the World pierceth frezeth and cracketh the Rocks yea and mettalline Vessels Again that the poisoned Cockatrice by his violent Cold and dry Breath doth the same on the Rocks where he treadeth Then what may we judge of the force of our fiery Medicine upon the Mettals by these comparisons How fiercely and quickly were it like to divide breâ—k them having an extreme fire the greatest spoiler of all things to over-match the cold dry quality a much stronger Body then those vapors which carried thâ—se former qualities and both these sent with far greater speed and swiftness as appears in the difference of the Movers Lift up your Ears and mark what I say A deaf Judge had not need hear these Matters who hath not seen how Quicksilver enters cuts and rents the Mettals though many doubt and differ about the cause thereof Cardan thinks that like as we said of the cold Weather in those frozen Countries so this marvellous cold Mettalline water entring the Mettals freezeth their Moysture within them and makes them crack and fall assunder and therefore Gold soonest of all other because his moisture is finest even as sodden-water for his fineness freezeth sooner then cold Surely very wittily Paracelse deems this done by the Spiritual subtilty of the Body even as the understanding Spirits of the Air and the lively Spirits of Heaven use to pierce through stone walls and Rocks by the same strength without the force of qualities But I think it is rather for his stronger like Nature seeking to devour them else he would pierce you hand and leather and such like easie things which he leaveth untouched as unlike and strangers As for the qualities of Quicksilver it is a question what they are and which excelleth some judge her very Cold some again marvellous hot as Paracelse for one some most moist other dry But as she hath them all apparantly so I deem her Temperate like him that hath sprung from her and is most like unto her Gold I mean though perhaps the qualities be not all in her as in him so equally ballanced But let the Cause be what it will I love not to settle upon uncertain matters the great Spirit of Mettals after she is first wrought into Gold and then into his Son our Medcine shall be in any reason both for Soul Body an hundred times stronger and more able to do it Nay Antimony and Lead are much grosser then Quicksilver and yet we see how they rend and tear and consume base Mettals even to nothing But what say we to Plants there is as great difference in sharpness and ability to pierce and enter between them and minerals as is between a Thorn and a Needle and yet you hear above the gentle Plant of the Vine and the milde Dew of Heaven yielded stuff to an eating water able within three or four distillings to devour and dissolve mettals Then what shall not onely other sharp mineral eaters but this our almighty Golden medicine shew upon them which besides that wonderful passing sharp and piercing Body hath the great help which they want of that Heavenly fire and of his swiftness stirred up by a mighty Mover These things are enough to suffice any reasonable man if they will not stop their ears against the sound of Reason touching the power might and strength of our Medicine What is then behinde Yes many I heard them whisper that albeit this Stone of ours hath such thundring power yet it may not force to our purpose consuming all the Mettal as the guise and forcible use of so fierce things is without regard or choice of any part or portion But it is not alwayes I hope the guise of violent things I need not go far There is a natural stone in Asia which by a mighty and strong property ueth in forty dayes space to consume and make away all the flesh and bones of a dead mans body saving the Teeth which he leaveth ever safe and whole and therefore they called it in times past 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Flesh-eater and made Tombs thereof for dead and Boots for Gowty men I could cloy a world of Readers with like examples if I might be suffered But weigh this one and our artificial Stone together why may not it as well have his choice and save a part in this great waste and spoiling They know not why And how then there are many deep hidden and causeless properties in the bosom of kinde and nature which no mans wit is able to reach and see into the World is full of them when Art is open and all his wayes known Indeed the World is full of late of such causeless and blinde Phylosophers which like as the Poet when they stick a little call upon Jove by many names to help to shore up the fall of a verse or stop a gap in the number so they when their eyes are dazled upon the view of a deep matter fly to Nature as fast and to her hid and unsearchable Secrâ—â—s to cover the shame of Ignorance as though GOD moved all with his finger as they say without any â—ween means or instâ—uments There is nothing done without a middle cause fore running if it were known as I think it is to some though never so dark and hid from others and therefore to come to the purpose as the reason of the natural eating Stone was clear to Agricola though unknown to Pliny and many moe the Reporters and found to be for the loose and light temperature of his Body apt
things differing according to the Strength of the one and the Obedience of the other And so by reason in that separation of the fine and Male part at first the stuff was throughly tost and mingled and the Heat of Heaven thereby like a hot Summer after a wet Spring very fierce and eager the two causes serving very fitly all Wights Man and all were made alike without any seed sown otherwise than by the great Seedsman of Heaven upon the common stuff of Earth and Water As is still seen in the common Tillage yet used in those lame and unperfect Wights which some call Start-ups and sprung out from themselves As we may be easily led to think if we consider how not onely all kinde of Plants without all setting or sowing grow up by themselves in some places and some kinde of Fish in the Sea are onely Female but also what plenty of Fish there abounds in the frozen Countries for the great heat and fatness of the Waters and chiefly that upon the slimy and hot Land of Aegypt there are yet some bloody and perfect Land-wights as Hares and Goates c. so made and fashioned But because afterward the well-mingled and fat fine Stuff and the strong working Heat failed as it must needs in time and yet the great Lord would have the continual flitting change and succession hold The same two fit Causes were duly kept by continual succession within the Bodies of perfect Wights the Stuff in the She and the Heat in Both yea and as far as need required in seeded Plants also Now we must understand as well that this heavenly Soul which when it is so clothed with that windy Body is called Spirit not onely moveth and worketh with his Heat but also for Food wasteth the Stuff for nothing that is made is able to bear up his state and being without his proper and like food and sustenance Then as our gross Fire here below feedeth upon Weather and Wind called Air as upon his likest meat And as it in his due place is too thin and scattered spreading the Fire so far as it followeth his Food until at last it vanisheth to nothing unless it be plentifully heaped and crowded up together and so kept in a narrow shell of Water which is called Oil or Fatness Even so it is between the fine starry Fire and his like Food the fine Fat of Aether for that cause besides the Divine Purpose above set it cometh down in post into these Quarters to finde and dress himself store of meat as appeareth by his tarrying for as soon as his Food is spent he flieth away as fast and leaves his House at six or sevens uncared for I was about to tell you the Cause of the divers sorts and suits of these lower Creatures but that there was a great puff of Matter came between and swept me away which now being passed over I will go forward Then if the suffering Stuff be Gross Foul and Tough and the making Heat very Small and Easie as it is within and under the Ground things are made which they call Mettals or better by the Arabick word Minerals little broken altered or changed but the gross Beginnings Earth and Water Earth especially rule still and the Life and Soul as it were in a dark dungeon fast shut up and chained is not able to stir and shew it self at all When the Stuff is Finer and Softer with greater Heat upon it there will arise a rooted and growing thing called a Plant better mingled and smaller and further broken from the low and foul Beginnings and the Life of Heaven shall have more scope because Wind or Air and Water and yet Water chiefly swayeth the Matter But if the Soul be yet more mighty and the Stuff yet finer he is able Air and Fire but that above this exalted to shew himself a quicker Workman and to make yet a finer piece of Work moving forward and by mighty sense perceiving But by reason these two Causes passing by those degrees do so mount and rise at last there is an excellent and fiery kinde contrived even Our kinde I mean most throughly and fair and finely wrought even so Fat indeed that he may not easily seem made at all of these All-making Seeds the four Beginnings whence it is that when a Corps is consumed with Fire there are found scarce six Ounces of clean Earth remaining which fineness of Body gives occasion to the greatest freedom and quickness of the Soul and ability to perform as his duty of Life Moving and Perceiving yea and shall I put in Understanding also for albeit GOD hath inbreathed us with another more fine and clean Mover called Minde for a special and Divine purpose yet that Minde as well as the Soul above is all one of it self in all places and worketh diversly according to those divers places as we shall see more at large hereafter Then you see all the differences of the four great Heads or Kindes which contain all things yea and of many lesser degrees and steps lying within every one of these which I named not before as also of sundry sorts not worth the naming of Doubtful and Middle things touching and partaking on each side of the four great ones as between the first two Stones budding like Herbs in the Scottish Sea between Plants and Beasts the Spunge Apes or rather hairy Wildmen between Beasts and Us to proceed from the divers mixtures of the Bodies If you cannot quickly perceive the Matter behold at once the outward Shapes and Fashions as they here go down a short pair of Stairs before you Do you not see Man alone through his exceeding fine and light Body carried up and mounted with a mighty heat of Heaven of an upright stature and carriage of himself that this Divine Wit might be free from the clog of Flesh when other Wights from the contrary Cause which the gross and earthly Leavings or Excrements of Hair Horn Hoof and such like declare are quite otherwise disposed as we see towards the Ground their like Companion and so the less hot and fine they be that is the liker the Earth the nearer they bend unto her being less of stature still and after that many-footed to support them but at length Footless and groveling until it come to their Heads downward and there it stayeth not but passeth quite over and degenerates from Wights to Plants And from thence if I might tarry about it I would send them down still through all the steps of them and Minerals until they came to the main Rest and Stay from whence they all sprang clean Earth and Water But I think it be now high time to take my leave of these Philosophers and to set forward as soon as I have packt up my Stuff round together especially the best and most precious Things Then we gather by that enlarged Speech
one chief and notable Rule in Learning that the Shape Nature Being Perfection and all the difference in all things here below springeth from the Mixture and Temper of the Stuff and Beginnings The Doing Making and Working-Cause that Makes Mingles Brocheth and sets all a running to be a piece of the finer part of the whole parted and packt up together in the SUN Of which finer part some remaining still in the Raw and rude Stuff secretly hid and placed othersome more freely in the half-made Stuff called Seed and in finer Seed yet more lively and in Man most at liberty excepting where I said it was free indeed from all kinde of Body And yet all these but one and the self-same thing called Soul Life Heavenly and Natural Heat c. This meant Divine Hippocrates when he saith Nought is made and nothing perisheth but all are altered and changed up and down by Mingling And again That no Wight can die unless all fall wherein he is most agreeable and jumpeth even with these Grounds and Rules and with the whole Web of our Philosophy If any man doubt of the other two Plato and Aristotle let him reade their Books with heed and he shall finde them where they speak naturally and by the light of humane Reason to draw still towards this one head and point of Truth though they seem to stray sometimes to the infinite Variety of divers-natured and conditioned Stars above causing the like endless odds and difference of all things Let us now I say set forward in our first dayes Journey to Long Life unfolding first What it is and the Cause thereof and lastly the Common and high way to it It seems hard for a Man to appoint what bounds of Life are large and long enough for BLISSE unless GOD who knoweth best both the measure of Happiness fit for us and the race of Time meet for it had first set and marked them So that the greatest Age and furthest Time that the lustiest Men and best disposed Bodies both by kinde and diet have at any time reached and lived may well by the grant and good will of our great Landlord be set the Bounds Stint and End of Life large enough to hold all the Bliss meet for Mankinde and the Mark which we may all aim and level our endevours at yea and with sure hope to hit and reach it and no further is about an hundred and fifty years as you shall hear anon Now if there do three Causes meet to the making up of Things and thereon leaneth all their Being the Stuff the Mover and the Meat of the Mover which is the Fatness of the Stuff then sure the cause of their long Being and Continuance in their Estate can be nothing else but the favour and goodness of those three Causes The Soul and Heat of Heaven is good and favourable to Wights to let the rest go far more dark and further off my Purpose when she pours her self plentifully upon them for there can be no other odds in one and the self-same thing in all places But the Fat Food of Life which they call the first Moisture and the finest piece of all the Seed lying hid and unseen in the sound parts of Wights and yet by skill to be fetched out and set before us must not onely be plentiful and great in store to match the feeding Soul but also Fast and Fine that by his Fineness he may be both friendly and like to Life and Aiery or rather Aetherial we must wear these Words with handling to keep himself both in Cold and Heat flowing and that through his Fastness or Closeness which they call in Latine densum or solidum that is through his much Stuff in a narrow room he may be more lasting and fit to continue Now the Stuff and Body is best when it is Fast and Fine also one to hold and hang long together and that other to give free scope without stopping or lett unto the continual and swift race of Life Then to make a sum of all The Cause of long Life is a fast fine Body sprinkled and seasoned with much-like first Moisture and store of heavenly Heat If this Matter needed any further proof I could easily by cutting up the Nature of Things so lay it open before you as your own Eyes should witness and see the same But if it need to some they shall see something and that sufficient to content them For the first Aristotle saith and we finde it true by Experience that they live longest in hot Countries for the Dry Sound Fast and Fine Bodies but chiefly for their Fineness yielding free recourse and passage unto Life for Age and kindly Death come of Rottenness which flows from the stillness of Heat and slackness to salt and refresh the parts Touching the rest to wit that much Heat and much good Fatness are a cause of Long Life mark the short life of those Wights that either want them by kinde as the maimed and imperfect ones or waste them by motion as the Male Greyhound of Lacedaemon was against the course of Kinde shorter lived than the Bitch for his pains in Hunting and the Cock Sparrow lives but half so long as the Hen and yet this but three years for their Venery The World is full of such Examples And behold again the Elephant on that other side for the great help and favour of all the Causes above the rest as may appear by their great fruits and effects in him that is Strength Bigness and Stomach being able to be the ground-work of a Castle of fifteen armed men to eat nine Bushels at a time and to drink fourteen Tun to endure and hold out much longer than the rest and to live Aristotle is mine Author in the story three hundred years in all Now we know what Long Life is and the Cause thereof let us see whether all Men reach it or no and then which way they may reach it At the first all Mankinde by the will and appointment of Kinde was Sound and Lusty and lived long and all the fail and corruption now adayes which falsly seemeth a weak Condition of our Nature crept in through Disorder in our selves by little and little and so by sowing still the like Children it spred it self at last deeply rooted over all and made it as it were a certain State Nature and Kinde of Man wherefore by good order in our Selves it may be reformed and brought back again unto the ancient State But how may we prove this If GOD and Nature have ordained Man unto a Divine End and Bliss above the rest and yet some Beasts as Theophrastus for a wonder complains live longer than our common rate yea and longer than any Bounds above-set certainly we ought to do as much and more by the rule of Nature and of all Right and Reason and so we did at first before we fell by
one stands out above the rest and recovers some part of his former Power which puts those that can feel to pain and breeds Diseases and at last gets the whole Lordship and rule over all and turns them all into his own Nature Then the old consent knot and body is broken lost and spoiled and a new made and gotten still going downward untill they return to Earth from whence they all came for Example and that near home for the fiery frame of Mans Body when the Soul for want of food fails and flits away they straight retire and run back in order first Fire waxeth moist and lukewarm supt up with Air and this soon after thick and cold that is Waterish and Water muddy still more and more thick and dry till at last it be moist dry and heavy and all be devoured and brought to Earth from whence they all set forth before And this is natural Dissolution and Death of our Bodies forcible Death and Destruction is by Diseases to bar out other force which no man can warrant when either Breath or Meat distemper'd in some quality do feed and nourish some one their like beginning above the rest and make him strong and able to vanquish them and bring in the Jarre of that Musical Consent aforesaid As when by waterish Meat and Air all the beginnings are changed into Water the Hot and Dry into a fiery temper and so forth or else when the Body wants the Exercise which is owing and due unto him which is quick Motion to preserve the Air and Fire in the fine frame and temper of Man from the sloth and idleness of the slow and rusty Beginnings By which grounds laid we see the way to uphold the temper of our Body made plain and easie No more but to feed and cherish it with clean and temperate Air and Meat continually that all the Beginnings served and fed alike one may not be more proud strong and able than another to subdue the rest and overthrow the state And thereof it is that Poyson killeth is because it is extreme Cold and Dry for we may shut out all Rotten as also Fiery and Watery Tempers from the name of Poyson feeding and strengthning the Dregs but devouring the fine Liquor of the Body wherein the Life standeth when as the same Poyson nourisheth and maintaineth the like framed and so tempered Body as venomous Juyces the like Plants and these noisome Beasts as one of these another Nay which is very strange I have read of such natured Men of India that used to eat Toads and Vipers And Albertus saith he saw a Girl of three years old that fed greedily upon Spiders and was never hurt but liked greatly with it Do not think it any Discord when I said above Fast-fineness and now Temperateness upholds the Body all is one It cannot be Fast unless the Earth and Water be well and evenly mixt nor Fine except Fire and Air bear as good a stroke of rule among them But you will say that Nature hath given her Creatures a walk of course not to stand still in one stay and place for ever but to move and walk up and down to and fro from one side to another that is as it was said before GOD hath made a changeable World and therefore this frame and building of Mans Body cannot ever hold and hang together but must needs one day be loosened and fall asunder I grant it must be so by the course of Nature because to fulfil the Will of her Lord she hath appointed a stronger means and cause to work it either the want and absence of the inward Friendship and keeping of the Soul in those which the common sort call Living things or in the rest the presence of some ravenous and spoiling Enemy But if cunning Art and Skill which by the help of Nature is above the course of Nature by knowledge of the due Food for Life and defence against the Enemy may be able to defend the one and keep off the other then no doubt the frame and temper of both Dead and Quick may last for ever The way is found already and known by certain and often proof for the one I mean that Art hath often by keeping off the spoiling Enemy with a strong Contrary preserved and upheld a dead thing of slippery state and soon decay for ever as a Corps by Balm or Water of Salt Timber by the Oyl of Brimstone and such like why then should the next prove impossible to wit by giving store of fit Food still to Life and natural Heat for the other two helps of Meat and Exercise are easie to under-shore and keep upright our weak and falling frame for ever The Greeks hold that our natural Heat and Life because it feeds upon and washeth the most fine and unseen Oyl called first Moisture daily which no Food of Air or Meat is fit and fine enough to repair must needs faint and fail withall and cannot be restored Let us see what may be said to this yea and bend all our force unto it for this is all The Soul and Life and Natural Heat of things is often and fitly compared and likened unto the other gross and fierce hot and dry Body called Fire to feed and maintain this his weak Like that is Air cannot be wanting and because it in his due place is too thin and scattered dividing the Fire to nought in pursuit of his Food Sustenance it must needs by heaps be crowded up in a shell of Water called Oyl or Fat as we heard before In that Fight Battel if much Heat and Oyl meet together the work is great and busie thereout ariseth a smoke as a leaving of the Meat and the Fire follows as far as the Smoke hath any Fatness which makes a flame Albeit the Nature of Fire be as long as he hath Food enough to crave no great Exercise and will last well in a close place as under Ashes c. yet a Flame being more than Fire a hot Smoke or Breath besides desires open and clean Air both to receive the thiâ—k refuse which else would choke him as also for his like weaker Food that he be not starved which two are enough besides a little Motion for his Exercise That we may marvel as those Men which bring in Cooling for another needful thing in this business whereas the kinde of Fire and Air abhor Cooling as his contrary as it is engraven in the Nature of all things still to fly from that which hurts it Now in like manner to come to the purpose if the Fire of Life and Natural Heat be not great a little fine Oyl and first Moisture will serve to feed it and out of that slack working small store of refuse Breath and Smoke ariseth to make any need of fresh and open Air to clense and feed it as appears by those Wights which are able to live in
sent into the Body to work Long-life Health and Lustiness did not onely strike and kill and put out of Being all foul and gross distempers his own and our enemies but also cherish nourish and feed our Bodies and bring it towards our own Nature even as far as we would by disposing of the quantity you may easily conceive the plain and certain way of this great exchange when you know his most clean fine clear bright and lightsome Nature Now we have dispatched the first part of BLISSE let us go to the second and because we have not done it before though we talked much thereof we will now begin to bound the Matter and make Virtue as Aristotle and Truth teacheth us A mean in our outward deeds and dealings with other Men or A Reason in Manners and Conditions as Plato termeth it all is one The cause of Virtue is likewise set out in the beginning to wit A temperate Body but I left the Proof unto this place which is all the hardness in this cure of Lewdness for if it be once known that Temperateness is the cause of Virtue we shall easily by that temperate Medicine so notable in the speech going before purchase and procure the same And why that is so it hath been so often worn before that we may quite cast it off and leave it being enough in this place to prove that a temperate state of Body is the cause and way to Virtue But first let us see whether all Manners flow from the Body or not and then from what State and Condition of the Body Among them that have searched the Reason and Nature of things the cause of Manners is laid upon the Disposition either of Stars or of Mens Bodies or of their Wills thus or thus framed either by the bent of Nature or by use of Custome Let us scan the matter and yet briefly They cannot flow from the Will of the Mind of Man lest all Men should perforce be good against our daily proof and experience because the Minde of it self as coming from goodness is good and alike good in all Men as I said before And sure no Custome can alter and turn so Divine and Right a Will to lewdness but by great force of Necessity which force cannot be sent and laid upon it by the Stars for whether the Stars be Wights or no they are all as I shewed above of one good strain and quality Or if they were not or whatsoever they be either in substance or quality they cannot touch the Mind immediately but must needs be let in by the loops of the Body and so change and dispose the Body first and by means of this affect the Mind for if the Mind it self a finer thing then the Stars cannot pierce out of the Body as we heard before then much less shall they make way to get in by themselves without the helps to our Mind allotted and as these are all bodily I mean the first helps so the neerest cause of Manners must needs flow from the Body And if the inward Spirits and Wits likewise do nought without the Instruments of the Body and follow the Affection and Disposition of the same then the appetite of the unreasonable Soul common between us and Beasts upon which Aristotle and his heirs do lay the cause of Manners is dispatched also and all the whole strain must needs cleerly run from the Body But lest some All-denier come and shake these old Grounds which you saw the Philosophers lay so long ago and so this Building might fall and tumble I will shoar it up with Experience a thing most fit to fill and please the sence of them which have nothing else but sence As all Diseases so all Manners spring either from the natural and inherited or from the purchased temper of the Body To keep the first till anon This we have either from the Air and Soil where we live or from the Meat which we take The Air followeth either the place of the Sun or the Nature of the Ground But this is somewhat too hard and thorny a kind of teaching let us inlarge our selves and unfold and prove how though I shewed the manner at large before the Air and Meat alters and changeth and maketh to differ the Bodies first and so the Manners All Astronomers and Philosophers no otherwise than we see by proof hold Opinion that where the Sun is either too neer the People as right over them or too far off as under the two Pins of the World there the Bodies are big and strong and the Manners rude and fierce whereas within the two Middle and Temperate Girdles of the Earth they keep a mean and hit the midst as they say both in Body and Manners for that acquaintance with him and his fellow-wanderers To come down to the Ground for I must be short we see that a fat and and foggy Land makes the Blood and Spirits thick and gross and thereby dull and slow and so the Men fond in Wit and rude and simple faithful chast and honest and still in that strain of Manners whereas a barren and dry Ground if the Sun be temperate therewithal as at Rome and Athens maketh the same thin clear and lively subtil and deceitful Men valiant unchaste and so forth of all other properties appertaining For meet Manners in Men are like the Virtues and Properties of Plants following both the sundry tempers of the Bodies when the Soul in them and Mind in us is one in all Then as the mixtures qualities and virtues of Plants are altered up and down according to their Food and Sustenance as to omit the outward nourishment of the Ground whereby Pepper brought out of Calicut into Italy will after a few settings turn into Ivy and such like the case is plain a cunning Gardiner either by steeping the Seed or Slip or better by enclosing the Root or Stock can give to any Plant any colour taste smell or power of Healing even so the temper of Mens Bodies and Condition of their Manners change to and fro upon the same occasion To let go that hold in Physick That distempered Meats do breed the like distempers in those famous Humors which make Complexions and their Conditions why are the Tartarians so Beastly and Barbarous in Manners but because besides their Soil they eat and drink the Flesh and Blood of Horses we see the Islanders of Corsica prove as bold cruel and false as Doggs whose Flesh they feed upon A man may range far in this Field but let us draw neer home It is not without cause that Plutarch Plato and other grave and wise Philosophers give so strait charge of care and heed in the choice of Nurses Is it not like nay in their opinion certain that the Child sucks in with their Milk their outward Shape and inward Manners Why not As well as Beasts that suck of strangers out
worthy Master Plato If that were the best Life or the Life of GOD why did GOD make the World He lived so before if that had been the best Life But because He was Good He would have other enjoy his Goodness and therefore he was busie in Making and is yet in Ruling the World And yet indeed it is no Business as we reckon it that is no Care and Trouble but an outward Deed and Action clean contrary to the inward Deed of a musing Minde onely shooting at his own good Estate which is Wisdome and Knowledge But if he deny all this as it is like he will because to encrease the heap of sin he grants no Beginning then what can be greater evidence than his own Writings one quite thwarting another as cross as may be for in his seventh Book of State he comes again and saith that Every man hath so much BLISSE as he hath Wisdome and Virtue even by the witness of GOD himself who is therefore happy and not for outward Goods What can be more divinely spoken and more cross to that former foul and godless Opinion Nay see the force of Truth he yields again according to his heavenly Master That to forestall the Place from the worser sort good Men ought to take Office upon them and to manage Affairs of State Yea and further If they refuse which if they be Wise they will quoth Zeno that they may be rightly compelled Then if his Wiseman hath Virtue in possession as no doubt he hath he must as we see by his own confession use it And the same reason is of GOD Himself in this great City of the World But Plato by name thinks these two so nearly tied and of kin together as he dare openly deny his Happiness to that Common-wealth where they be dis-linked and stand asunder Then we see that in the judgement of these two great Philosophers where they be best advised and in deed and truth the Divine Pattern of BLISSE which we ought to strive unto is no more nor no less than that worthy couple of Wisdome and Virtue knit together in that band of Fellowship which may never be parted and set asunder But you may say We have reared our BLISSE aloft and made it a fair and goodly Work but more fit for the dwelling of those single and clean Mindes or Spirits above which they call Messengers or Angels than for us Men so buried here below in these earthly Bodies as we be scarce able to look up unto it And therefore Aristotle both in his Book of Manners and of State with good advice often receiveth in enough of bodily and outward Goods to help this matter though not as any other cause of BLISSE than the Instrument is of Musick and so Plato we see nameth his Servants and Helpers Indeed I grant that this full and high pitch of Happiness I mean that measure above set is free and easie to free and lively Spirits but to us impossible without other outward means and helps which nevertheless shall not be counted as any part of the frame of BLISSE needful to make up the whole but as it were loose and hang-by steps and stairs leading up unto it Then if these be so needful as they be it were as much need to lay them down and in just account which those Philosophers do not lest if there be too few our Happiness should halt if again too many the idle parts might in time infect and marre the rest As we may fear of Plato his first three Delights although they be not hurtful of themselves Without more words the just sum is this To obtain so much Happiness as our Nature is able to take and hold the Body had need be first willing and obedient and then store of outward needful things to be at hand and ready These every Man knoweth But for the Body that is obedient when it is long-liv'd healthful young clear and temperate when all these helps flock together we may be happy if we will if any want we shall never do what we can as we shall hear hereafter Then let us marshal at last these things in Order and comparing BLISSE to a Family make that loving Couple Wisdome and Virtue as Man and Wife and Heads of the Houshold the five Properties of the Body like Children and Riches as Servants These again if the chief of the Houshold will suffer them to Marry will beget other two Bond-children to beautifie the same house Honour and Pleasure But the wise and good Housholder will in no wise suffer it lest his Houshold be troubled with more than may be ruled And although true and right Honour and Pleasure will perforce follow yet he shall not regard them but be minded towards them as those grave Men were towards Hellen and often use their saying Although they be such kinde ones yet let them go CHAP. II. Reproof of the common and lighter sort of Arguments cast against the Way to Bliss NOw that we know what is BLISSE and HAPPINESSE we may when we will go into the Way and shew how all Men may be Blessed wherein I am quite bereaved of an helps from the Grecians as men ever apter to speak and think well than to do and perform any thing though constancy and agreement in their Sayings would have left BLISSE as well as other good things in the power and reach of all Men And I must fly for aid into Aegypt a People so far passing all other Nations as it is better and nearer to GOD to work and do great wondrous things than to behold and look upon them For it is delivered to ancient and true Record that one HERMES a King and Law-giver of that Country a Man of rare and divine gifts in Knowledge above all that ever were found out a Medicine able to bring all men to that BLISSE aforesaid and left it behinde him in writing to his People and that it was after him a long time by the wiser sort closely wrought and used until at last it crept abroad and stole into Arabia when she flourished in Arms and Learning and there got the Name which it now commonly keepeth of the PHILOSOPHERS STONE And that from thence in the same secret and disguised manner for it is the wont thereof as becomes so deep a Secret it hath travelled and spred it self over all Nations now and then opening and discovering it self to a few of the better and wiser Company Then this is THE WAY TO BLISSE which I mean to take And withall to prove it no pleasant Dream and happy Tale if it were true as the common Proverb goeth of it but as it is in Nature an heroical and almost divine deed scarce to be reached or matched with any words so I vow it a true and certain Story a thing often done and again to be done as often I am unfit I grant and unable to bear so great a
our default which may be amended But lest I may happen to deal with some who will neither grant the Justice of GOD nor yet yield to the End of Man with some I say that have so far put off all Humanity I will bring them to Natural Causes I will open and lay before them both the sorts and suits of Wights I mean of Men and Beasts that they being a monstrous and doubtful Kinde between both that is Beasts within cloth'd only with the outward shape of Men may the better judge of both as in like case they feign of the like mis-shapen Monsters The Poets know my meaning it is not worth the flourish of a chaste and modest Pen which had in kinde the more cause to live long That seeing at last the worser Wights to overgo us in Life and to run to the very goal it self and yet to have received less cause from Nature they may be driven by force of Reason to yield that we have a better Kinde and worser Custom and that we did and might live long but for our own fault which may be reformed To begin with the Soul and Natural Heat for his worthiness let us see which of them is endowed with more store of him that is of the chief cause of Long Life If we call to minde a little we shall remember That Man walketh upright when the rest are thrown to the Ground because they lack the force of this ascending Heat to bear up the weight of their Bodies which we have abundantly But if we leave the outward shape and look into them we shall finde that by the great foresight of Nature all Wights which are Hot and full of Blood have against the Root and Spring thereof to cool and temper the same a Contrary in place and property set the Brain I mean some more and some less still according to the behoof and request of the Heart Insomuch as they that have no Blood and small Heat within them as not needing any Cooler have no Brain at all Then by certain race and course of Kinde if that be true which all Philosophers and Leaches hold that a Man hath the greatest Brain of all Wights it must needs follow that he hath the greatest store of Heat also But enter further into them and you shall see Man by how much more he goeth beyond a Beast in Wit so much to burn in Heat above him for Wit springeth out of the clearness of the Body and this out of Heat as I will prove in his place hereafter Now if this first point be done and granted the next is quickly made even as one Match is made by another It standing with the Justice of Nature that makes nought in vain to match this greedy Heat with store of good Meat that is of Fast and Fine first Moisture suitably or else sure saith Heraclitus the Officers of Justice the Furies would soon apprehend her To be short both this and that and the third likewise to wit a close fine Body and all is cleared if it be so that a Man in making is most far and finely mixt and broken of all the lower Creatures as we heard even now Decreed in the Councel of the best Philosophers For if nought makes but Heat then nought makes well but much Heat if there be no other odds in Souls as was said above And if the Beginnings be well and firmly mingled and the Concoction hold they must needs gather themselves in close together also to make another cause yea and the last for what is fast fine Oil and Fatness but Water where with we flow as our Brain declareth throughly mingled and raised into an Aiery or rather into an Aetherial close Substance But if you will not stand to this Decree then once for all Consider and weigh but this one Example That albeit Man be more given to Lust than any other Wight and thereby drying up the Body plainly pareth off more than any other and weakneth all the helps of Long Life together both the Moisture that knits and holds the Frame and that which feeds our Heat and this and all and so that sum of Life which yet is due to Nature he payeth before his Day to his own Wantonness yet he Liveth and holdeth out longer than almost any other that we may easily see that if he lived as Chastly and in other points as Orderly as the rest he might far pass and over-run them all in this Race of Life and Continuance But methinks I hear them whisper that I forget my self and the Bounds of my Long Life when I make Men able to live as long and longer than any Beast for to let pass the Hart and Camel which overtake the longest life of our old Men sure the Elephant as we have heard goeth far beyond the very bounds of Age especially the Raven whom Euripides will have to live Nine of our Ages These may seem sore matters but chiefly the last uncurable and yet they are indeed light and easie and the last most of all I mean the Raven for if there was never yet Man of sound Judgement and Knowledge in the wayes of Nature that allowed the Story and Aristotle by name condemns it when he giveth the Elephant the longest Life of all and Man next to him what should we reckon of a Poets Record Besides doth not one among them confess himself they are not to be believed and held as Witnesses Doth not Plato once a Poet and then a wise Philosopher chase them up and down in all places and in one say They be besides themselves when they sit on their Muses stool and run like a Spring pouring out all that comes Are they not in all wise Mens account the greatest Enemies to GOD good Manners and all right and true Knowledge that ever the World or the Devil bred But I slide too far unawares and if we must of force receive this aged Raven yet perhaps there shall be no great hurt received and I cannot see why we may not match him with Methusalem and some other aged Fathers in Holy Writ reported to have lived as many years as Nine of our Lives come to with advantage It is not enough to say that which some say those Years to be meant for Moneths and not as we account them for albeit I know the Aegyptians reckon so as we may see in Pliny where some of them are said to live a thousand Years apiece that is so many Moneths yet it is agreed among the Divines Men best skill'd in these Matters that the Jews account was otherwise even as we and almost all other Nations make it But if this ancient Story of our old holy Man be a thing in doubt or certainly untrue and to be meant of Moneths yet our Aged Raven may go with it and the Father of that Tale together And we may when we will pass to the
by cleaning and quickning the Spirits and searching the Body be no little help and comfort in this Journey As we shall easily see if we mark how amongst all Creatures those that lead their lives in the cleaner Element do live the longer Fish than Worms and Land-Wights than These and Winged ones yet longer because the higher the better Air still Insomuch that Cardan dares think that if any dwell in Aether as Plato's heirs affirm they live for ever yet if ill Diet went withall it would marre as much as the other made and greatly cloy and hinder yea and cut short the race of their Long Life I am of the same minde for all other odde and private Persons of great Age and Long Life recorded as for some Italians in Pliny's time registred of one hundred and forty years and such other aged Men in Authors a Man might let in here a Sea of Examples but I must be short Neither would I name King Arganthon that lived a hundred and twenty years and reigned eighty thereof nor yet that old Knight of our Country Sir Allington yet twenty years older but that it is so strange in Nobility that they came as near unto that kindly course of Life as unto the goal and end of Long Life Then we see at length that it is not impossible as they say but an ordinary and easie matter to strengthen the weak Nature of Mankinde to enlarge the straits of his Life and to lead him on still to the ancient Age and Long Life appointed But I see them start and say that like as Cato in Affairs of State used to give Counsel unwisely though never so well as if he had been in Plato's Common-wealth and not in the Dregs of Romulus so I in matter of Diet and order of Body speak as if we lived in the former Golden Age which as Poets feign was under Saturn and not in the corruption of Jupiters Kingdom and that sith the World as it now goeth cannot be brought without a kind of Divine Power to rase out the old and make a new World and that in long time unto the first and kindly custom of Life I must if I mean to do wisely take the Men as I finde them and prove that all such weakness as is now among them may by Mans endevour and skill of Healing be upholden and led forth unto those bounds and that end of Long Life afore-set Albeit I have done as much as reasonably may be required at my hands in this place which was allotted out to shew the possibility of the Matter yet because I count it better by plainness of speech to do good which is the end of my Writing than by subtileness of Argument to obtain my purpose I will come unto you and venture upon that Point also be it never so hard and desperate hoping not that Fortune will favour bold Men but GOD good Men. Then as there are three Causes of Life and Being the Life and Soul it self and his Food the first Moisture and the frame and temper of the Body that holds them both so let us take them all in order and see how they may be preserved and kept together beginning first with the last because it is least and lightest It is enacted by the Law of Nature That no Body mixt or single shall or may live and preserve his estate and being without two helps or stayes that is Meat and Exercise each like his Kinde and of his Nature As in lone and simple or subtile Bodies for it is plain in the first row especially if they be Living as they term them though all things indeed have Life and Soul as we heard above the Hot ones crave fiery Meat and moving Exercise Moist ones as Wind and Water flowing Food and Exercise Cold and Dry things like and Earthly Sustenance and Rest for Exercise which is also like and preserves their State and Being But if all lone and simple things are within the Compass of this Law then Heaven may not be free nor exempted and they speak not altogether fondly that say the Stars feed upon the Sea and for that cause by good advice of Nature the Ocean so rightly placed under the course and walk of the Sun for although the Water be yet so far off and unlike them yet their power and strength is such as they are able by their labour easily to refine it and turn it first into Air and then into Aether a weaker like thing and their proper food That this is so the hungry Souls which are but Imps slipt off the Heavenly Body make it plain here below unto us when we see them still unwilling to tarry and unable to live amongst us without Meat as they bewray themselves by the plain expence and waste of the first moisture Nay take this one away if you will mark well and all lieth on the Ground Then there is an old coyl and fighting here below for Meat and Exercise that is for life and being which makes the cause of all action and doing rest and change and of all things and every one runneth easily and gladly to his like and if his strength be never so little greater he subdues digests and turns him into his own Nature and is strengthned by him But if he miss of his like food at hand and be much stronger he dares encounter and is able to quell unlike things also as I said of the Stars the mightiest things giving Might to all things in the World But in case the unlikes and contraries be of equal power and matches then neither devoureth and consumeth other but both are marred dulled and weakned which they call Consent and Temper and Mixture For Example Fire extreme hot and somewhat dry withall and Water very cold and somewhat wet meeting together in even powers and proportions of strength are both impaired but neither lost and destroyed But if this Water chance by the heat of Heaven to be taken in hand and turned into Aiery and fat substance though there be now two Moistures set against the drought of Fire yet because of the heat of Weather and Heaven abounding it is now become partly like to Fire and friendly or at least his weaker Foe and Enemy yielding himself for Food unto it and increasing his strength and Nature But if on the other side Air unto his exceeding Moisture matching the drought of Fire get some strength and watery coldness as appeareth in a thick and foggy weather it is able easily to overcome the Fire and eat him up Now for a mixt Body which is a consent and dulling the four first famous Enemies made and kept in tune and awe by the force and skill of an heavenly and natural Heat upon them it hath the same reason for when either for lack of Meat or driven by Violence this Heat departeth the friends begin to stir and fight for Food and Freedom until some
be found even any gentle continual equal and moist that is any rotting Heat But the Seed seemeth hard and unable to be matched because a kinde of strange and hid proportion and temper of our Body which no Man by conceit and knowledge much less by hand and workmanship can reach and counterfeit no not if he boiled all the Mixtures in all the Heats that all the Wits in the World could devise made it thus after his own fashion Then how if we take the same frame and temper not by us but by Kinde proportioned I mean the same Blood Flesh and Seed if we will which the Man of Germany chooseth and commendeth above all and calls it Mummia would it not be very natural for if the Leaches hold it good if any part about us fail in his duty to correct and help him with the like part of some Beast passing in that property as to mend fainting Lust with the Yard of a Lusty Beast the Womb that cannot hold with the Womb of a quick Conceiver Narrow breathing with the Lungs of a long-winded Wight and so forth then consider with how much more kindly consent we might with our own parts finely dressed help our selves in our Diseases But for my part I cannot unwinde the bottom of this great Secret of Germany for we mean not to make a Man which is to be feared in that course if his Rule be true but a first Moisture onely and then sith all things are made of the same Stuff by the same Workman and differ but by Mingling onely it boots not where we begin and upon what Stuff in stead of that Seed if we give him the same Mingling and form at the last which Art is able in time to do because that which Kind is forced to do at once she may do often and so reach the end of Nature What need I say more Is not the Matter clear enough that another fast fine Oyl and first Moisture may be made in all points like to our own and able to maintain or repair it and the natural Heat together and then that by the same though other easie means would serve because it is so temperate the Body may be brought and held in square and temper And so by reason all the Causes meet and flock together that Life may be preserved I dare not say for Ever for fear of the stroke of Destiny which GOD hath made and will have kept but unto that Term and those Bounds above-set and beyond them also if any Man have ever gone beyond them But if it should chance any of our chosen Children to use the phrase of our Family to be unable yet for all this teaching to take and digest this Food of Learning what is to be done shall we cast them off for untoward Changelings as the foolish Women think or else for Bears and Apes as Galen did the Germans No that were Inhumanity Let us rather nourish them still easily and gently hoping that they will one day prove Men and give it out unto them That all the most Wise and Cunning Men in the World I mean all the Hosts of Hermetists have from Age to Age ever held but under Vails and Shadows somewhat covertly and taught for certain that such a first fine Oyl whereof I spake and which they call a Fifth Nature Heaven or by a more fit name Aether is able alone to hold together the brittle state of Man very long above the wonted race both in Life Health and Lustiness Nay for fear there be yet some suspicion left in their Authorities I will go further As many of the other side of Greece as had travelled in these Matters and seen something though not with Eyes but in Minde I think confess the same as besides them which perhaps I know not Fernelius in part and altogether Ficinus and Cardan two as wily and learned Men as any time hath of late brought forth do openly declare in their Writings But if this soft and easie kinde of delivery will not yet serve the turn and they must feed their Eye as well as their Belly as the Proverb goes then let them tell me by what diligence did Plato so order Himself and school his Body to use his own words as he could be able to cause Nature to end his dayes at his pleasure And by Departing upon the same day Eighty one years after his Birth to fulfill of purpose Nine times Ninè the most perfect Number Might he not have had some such Medicine Nay is it not like he had when he was in Aegypt among the Priests and Wise-men and brought home Learning from them and when he speaks so much and often in disgrace of his own Country Physick though Hippocrates himself then reigned But it is for certain written in divers of our Records that many of those wise Aegyptians the Springs of this Water of Life have before and since Plato by the self-same Water kept themselves twice as long as Plato if I might bring in their Witness or if this whole proof which I like full ill were not counted by the Art of proof unskilful Then let this one Example told by Cardan a Man allowed among them serve for all That one Gallus of late Charles the Fifth his Physician by this Heaven of ours beset with Stars as some do term it that is increased with the Spirits of Herbs by an easie feat put into her preserved himself in lusty sort until a hundred and twenty four Years Neither think that Mixture better than our single Oyl though Lully Rupescisse Paracelsus and some others allow it so but rather worse in Reason for too much Heat in a weak and loose Body worse I mean for Long Life by his over-greediness in eating up too fast his own and our first Moisture It may be better because it is stronger against Diseases even as the Leaches judge between a Dunghill and a Garden Herb for the same cause But I think the devise not good in either nor agreeable to the Justice of Nature which more evenly weigheth her Works nor yet to the kindly skill of HERMES who to the great heat of his Medicine hath a most fast tough and lasting Stuff according as we shall shew in that which followeth Now it is time to rest we have made the first a long dayes Journey CHAP. II. Of HEALTH AFter a Man hath ended his desire to Live he begins to wish for Health without which no Life is sweet and savoury Then let us bend our Selves that way next and endevour to shew the Means besides the Way of HERMES how every Man may get and keep his Health that is as I partly told you before the consent and equal I mean agreeable to Kinde temper and dulling of the four first Beginnings the Stuff of our Bodies for if this Knot be broken and they let loose towards their former liberty they wax proud and strong and fight
Medicines secretly hid and couched in the midst and Oyl of Bodies to be fetcht out and gotten by skilfull means of Alchimy even of that Art I say which is so much condemned of his Fellows and Companions To this Harbour also the best of his Fellows before and since him have fled and do daily fly apace from the toil and trouble of their fruitless and barren dead Sea Then let us shift our Sails and fly as far and further too I hope if Tide and Wind and all which we have at will fail not But first let us describe that Haven of Medicine and see what Marks it hath and how it differs from other Creeks adjoyning lest at our Journeys end we miss with more shame and grief and suffer shipwreck A Medicine is that which kills the force of that which hurts us and this it doth many wayes and yet all to one end which is the End of all doing and working as I said before for his Food and Sustenance then let us come again and sort our Speeches A Medicine heals us and kills our Enemy either by dulling or consuming it for when it meets with the contrary of even strength as when Oyl and Poison c. joyn then in Fight they neither eat up nor destroy each other but both are dulled and weakned and make one blockish thing which Nature casteth out for an unlike and unkindly dead thing which they call a Leaving or Excrement But in case it be of more strength and power than our Enemy then it quite destroys devours and turns him into his own Nature And this Consumer is either like the thing that hurts us In which sore even as every Herb of sundry qualities draws and feeds upon his own Juyce in a Garden so one Poison doth cure another and all purging and drawing things do heal us and all Fernel's hid and divine Properties work by plain reason Or else it is unlike and contrary after which manner As dry Sticks and Towe and Vinegar quench wilde Fires or other fat Fires before Water whose fatness feeds it for the stronger contrary quality quelling and eating up the weaker so doth any cold and dry thing as Bole Armin Terra Lemnia c. cure a rotten Poison and so are a great number of Cures done which onely course in word the Graecian Physick taketh though not in deed for we heard even now of two oother wayes of Healing which they themselves and other Folk did take unawares though Paracelse found out the name belike of late but he strayeth as much as they on that other side when he thinks all Cures thereby performed Now when the consuming Medicines have done their duties Nature expels them for Poison and unlike strange things according to the Graecian Rules because all their Medicines were by their own confessions such But if they had either Thought of the dulling Nourisher which as I told you takes the nature of Leaving or had known our Mens wholsome Medicines they would have made another reckoning But let them go and let us set out in time towards the Haven of Health If the Art of Healing be nothing else but the matching of hurtful things and their stronger Enemies but equality will sometimes serve the turn or Likes together and the world be full of both these kindes of Creatures following the nature of their Parents the four Beginnings which are as we see some like and some contrary one to another Then sure our All-healing Art is not impossible and wanteth nought but a Man well skilled in the Nature of things a Philosopher by name for I need not put in a Physician also to know that other part the causes of Diseases which must be matched because as Paracelse well saith in that he that knoweth the causes of Changes and Chances in the great World may soon espy them in the little But our nought-healing Leaches will step in and say Diseases are some so great and in all so many Mans wit so weak and shallow and the Medicine so hid and drown'd in the deep of Nature that it is not possible to finde them all or if they were found to apply them with such discretion as Nature might abide those poisoned frayes and battels within her And again that admit all this untrue yet there be some Diseases sent from Witch-craft and Sorcery and other means which have their Cause and so their Cure without the compass of Nature to let pass our tickle standing daily and hourly so beset with Destinies that a man can warrant nothing I marry Destinies are too deep and bottomless to return straight Homer-like upon them and therefore it were best indeed to let them go and the applying of the Medicines with them the rather because the other the former I mean is so slight a matter to a discreet and well-ordered Leach such a one as is pointed out by their old and famous Leader Hippocrates who both in this and all other duties of his Art hath made such speed and so far passed all his Fellows as none since which is a good time could ever overtake him no nor yet come so near as to keep the sight of him whom they had in chase and followed Then for those unsearchable and supernatural Causes as they call them if they flow from unclean and wicked Spirits as some think they are not the Stuff of the thing that hurts us though they sometimes dwell in and possess the Body but windy movers workers and disturbers of the peace and good order of our Bodies much like unto those fierce and sudden changes of Weather proceeding from the Stars and working the like effect in Mens Bodies so that sith the nearest Cause is Natural let the rest be what it will and the Cure be done by Natural Means as we see it sometimes amongst us And therefore Paracelse who puts the fault in the Faith of the wicked Witch a thing as far above Nature yet holds it curable with a natural Medicine which they call a Quintessence Although I am not unwitting that sometimes his Sickness is such he bids us withstand it with another as strong a Belief set against it But for my part I cannot reach it with my Conceit let deeper Heads think upon it How those Beliefs and Imaginations and other parts and powers of the Soul or Minde of Man can so fly out of their own Kingdom and reign over a forreign Body when we know the whole Soul and Minde so fast bound in durance and so like to be until it be the pleasure of the great Magistrate who hath committed them to let them loose at once and set them out at full liberty let old Wives buz of Hermotimus and such like Tales what they will But if those Diseases spring as some of Learning hold and with Reason from neither of both those two Roots named but from a foul and venomous Breath sent forth from a Poisoned temper of the Witches
Body through the Windows of hateful Eyes for Thought fashioneth the Blood and Spirits almost at his pleasure then all the Causes being ordinary and agreeing to the course of Kinde they may be cured and put to flight by the same course and means which Opinion bear with the tarrying it is worth the handling taketh hold upon this Reason because as good Authors do witness some Beasts of ranker Venom do bewitch and hurt after the same manner As an old Toad by stedfast view not onely amazeth and benums a Weasel but also kills a young Childe And by the same means the Benummer hurts the little Fish and takes his prey but most fiercely and mischievously of all Creatures in the World the two Monsters in kinde the Cockatrice and Catoblepas Again for that the Eye of a Menstruous Woman as they all report doth spot the Glass which it beholdeth And moreover because Pliny out of Tully forth of his Books which are lost belike and many good Authors telleth of many Folk that through a Poisoned Prerogative which a monstrous mark of a double-sighted Eye gave unto them were able to bewitch to death all those upon whom that Eye was angerly and surely set and fastned But chiefly because we see them that use this wicked Trade to be by kinde of a muddy and earth-like Temperature and Complexion brought by Age as they be most commonly lone-life and foul Diet unto the pitch of Melancholy that is unto a cold and moist dry Temperature which is the most poisoned and venomous Temperature in the world for certain proof whereof bring one of them out of that beastly Life unto merry company and full dainty Diet and within twenty days as hath been found true by Report of a good Author the whole state and order of her Body will be so changed as it shall not suffer her to bewitch and hurt again To come to the next and chiefest point Let us not say for shame those Helps and Remedies lie hid in Nature too far for the Wit of Man to finde unless we will accuse our own sloth and dulness for Nature hath brought them forth and laid them open as well as the Poisons and hurtful things or else she were very cross and ill-willing towards him for whose sake it seems she doth all things Nay further her good will is such as she hath not onely laid them open but given us wayes to come by them and means of Speech Hands and Wit also far above all other Wights and Creatures And yet she hath not left us so but lest by chance we might go wide and miss them to shew her Motherly Love and Affection towards us she hath guided many witless Beasts even by common sense unto their speedy help and remedy in their Diseases that we by the plainness and shame of that Example might be taught and moved to seek find us help in the like Diseases As to name a few not unworthy naming she maketh the Beast Hippopotamus in time of his fulness and fatness to go to a Reed and by rubbing a Vein against a Knot to let himself Blood and to stop it again by laying Mud upon it A sick Dog to seek an Herb and purge himself and the Bear to do the same after his long fast in Winter She leads the Panther when he is poisoned to our foul and nameless Leaving and the Tortoife after he hath eat a Viper to Summer-Savoury and many such like Examples hath Nature laid before us for our Instruction By the which at last wise and painful men of Greece as themselves report be they Apollo or his Son or whosoever and by laying Reason and further Proof together first made the Art and Rules of Healing to know whence Diseases come and how to Remove them And then seeking all about for Remedies to serve each turn by little and little they matched the most part of the lesser rank with single Medicines and for the greater ones they doubled and coupled a-many of them together Insomuch that at last which was in Hippocrates his time they were able to heal all saving four of the greatest and deepest Diseases the Gout the Dropsie the Leprosie and Falling-sickness This race they have held on ever since both in Greece and all the World Thus much with much ado they could and no more leaving the rest with one consent uncurable But to come to the point What wrong this was both to Skill and Nature they do easily see and laugh at which know that in this labour they did not onely oversee and skip the Minerals the stoutest helps in the whole store-house of Kinde although they could dig them out well enough to other and worser uses but also which is all in all did let HERMES skill of dressing Medicines whereby weak things are made almighty quite escape them Wherefore to make up the Art of Healing and to make it able to help and cure all Diseases came in or rather went before them the Aegyptians Men in great favour with Nature both for their soil and bringing up so notably commended above all Nations having for example to move and teach them even the great Wight of the World as HERMES saith for Wits to devise and Bodies to put in practise Whereby in short space they unfolded the Knot why the Minerals were of greatest force and power against Diseases And soon after which was a divine Light and insight they perceived the huge labour in seeking such an infinite sort of Singles and Mixtures to be vain and empty and pitiful among Wise Men. Because first there is nothing hurtful and a breeder of Disease but it hath the help and remedy for the same about him for as the Wings and Feet of Cantharides the Fruit of the Root Bezar the Ashes of Scorpions Toads and Vipers and divers other stronger Poisons both by Nature and Skill drest and prepared do cure and heal their own and all other Poisons Nay as all stronger Likes do cure their Likes throughout the whole World of Diseases Even so when a Man hath once found out the thing that hurts him he may by easie skill mingle and break the temper of the same further that is make it stronger and able to eat up and consume it self as easily without any further doubt toil or labour But especially because there is no one thing in the World take what you will that hath not all the Virtues of Heaven and of the qualities thereof within it self that is not as good as all and may not serve in stead of all and that is not able to cure all Diseases which thing weighed and with discourse of Wit and Reason fully reached they went to practise and by the like sharpness of Wit they found out as soon the kindly and ready way to dress and make fit those three kindes of Medicines aforesaid
and cherish the Life within and you may help and amend Nature and make any Plant flourish and bear in Winter How is that But an easie matter plant it in a Stove and cover the Root with Horse-dung and the rest with Chaff and you shall see the proof if not the profit worth your cost and travel The same is seen in Beasts But let us leave the middle that we come not to the end too late Then why are Children and old Folk less active fruitful and beautiful than the younger sort but for want of heat for let the Sun the first day as Galen saith or before the Birth as I shewed be greatest in store bulk and quantity because it waxeth and waneth still with his food our first Moistner and this from thence decayeth daily yet this quality strength and activity which maketh him worthy the name of Heat is then little as drowned with over-much forreign and strange wetness like as we see in a green Faggot and unable to work his will and shew himself either to knit the Sinews for Strength or concoct the Blood for Seed and Colour before that forreign moisture be spent and gone which is not in long time Now for old Folks what is so clear as this that by reason of the daily decay of the food of Life the fainting heat le ts the strong knot of Strength and Lustiness slack and loose again and the good concoction and colour of Blood which before made Seed and Beauty to decline and grow to waterishness In the same case are sick Men and Women for the same cause And albeit Women have their Seed yet it is not hot and quickning Seed but a dead Stuff onely fit to receive Life and Fashion And admit they be more fair and smooth than Men which are hotter it comes by chance because the foul Leavings the blemish of Beauty by the force of manly heat are driven outwards when the slackness of the heat of Women suffers them to remain within and turn into Menstrues a thing more grievous and noisom in truth than Beauty is delightsome And thereof Aristotle very well calls her a Weak Man which our Tongue more fitly calls a Wombed-man and he makes the Male in all kindes to be that which is able to concoct the Blood and that which is not the Female Then if it be cleared of all doubt that the chief strength of heat is the cause of the flower of Age and Youth and nothing else in the World Let us take and stick to that matter and see how that may be maintained first and then restored I will not urge the way of upholding heat in Plants abovesaid nor yet the witness of the German who hath found out means for the same both in Plants and Wights as he teacheth in his High Opinions Nor yet make Account of those Examples which by course of Nature good Order of Life have done well and drawn near to this matter as of Lucia the Player who pronounced upon the Stage at Rome an hundred years together nor of Cornelia who bare Saturnine the Consul after sixty two years nor yet of King Massâ—nissa who about Ninety got a Childe and ever tâ—avelled both in Frost and Snow bare-headed nor of such other like notably marked with long continued Life and Lustiness I will come to the point at once Pliny such an Autbor reporteth that the whole Nation of India liveth long free from all Diseases well-nigh and grief of Body not once touched with ache of Head Teeth or Eyes nor troubled with spitting all the great Companions as we see of Age that we may gather by likely guess when they know not the Companions the thing it self is unknown to them But what needs any guessing when the same Man sor certain and in plain Terms assureth That in that part of India where the Sun being right over their heads casteth no shadow the Men are five Cubits and two handfuls high and live an hundred and thirty years never waxing Old and being when they Die as in their middle Age and chief Strength and Lustiness what needed more words If this Report be true as we may not easily doubt of such an Author then sure this matter is not impossible as they would have it but all Men if they lived in such an Air and took so good a race of Life as I described I must still fly to that succour might preserve their Youth and never was Old until the term and stint of Life appointed Or if this kinde of teaching be now somewhat stale and bare with wearing yet perhaps some other means may be found for the matter in the Store-house of Skill and Cunning. Let us see much more briefly than we have done before because this part is already well-nigh dispatched so straight is the link of all these helps that one can scarce be loosened without the rest and all must go together Then what means may we finde what preserveth this natural and heavenly Heat of ours the common use taketh hot Meats and Drinks and thinks that these preserveth Heat and Nature as simply as if a Man should put Lime to the Root of a Tree which he loved for as this hastneth the Fruit with Heat but kills the Stock with Drought and soaking up the lively juyce and moisture so in them their hot Meats out of kinde laid to the Root of Life quicken and stir up the Spirits the fruit of Life for a season but withall under-hand drink up and waste the first Moisture that is the whole Stock of Nature and so by softning thus the hardness of Age as if it were Iron in the Fire they make it seem for a time Youthful and Lively yet it is but a vain and empty shew and shadow and as Iron when it comes out of the Fire is the harder for it so they make their Age more unwieldy and draw it on the faster by that means And that is the very cause together with Care and Pleasure why Princes and Nobles by drying up their Bodies in that sort live not so long for the most part nor in so good Health as other Folk and depart especially at such times if the Report be true as those bushed Stars called Comets appear Because whether it be a stedfast Star or an Elemental Flame I am not to dispute such Questions here it is never seen but in very fine and dry Weather which consumes dry Bodies and sends them packing and besides though it be besides my purpose turns good humours into scum called Choler cause of Broil and Sedition and so making as we see the Bush-starr a plain sign of both these matters but causes of neither What then preserveth Heat Learned Men have brought in certain fine fat and aiery Meats as Butter Oyl and Honey and commended them for very great helps and means to preserve Life and Youth for both are done by one way and under one but
denies it possible to change any of the lower Metals into either Silver or Gold because of over-sudden Heat as I said of Iron and Copper being burnt they cannot be brought to their old Quick-silvery cleanness nor yet be made abiding and stedfast in the Fire This he would never have said if he had been brought up in our Trade of Learning He should have seen us easily lead the Metals back from whence they all came and then by means aforesaid stay them for he grants himself that all the cause of uncloseness unsteddiness and wasting in the Fire is that our fatty Brimstone and that it may be cleansed out of Silver Why not out of the rest also Will they not abide the violence Not at first but by little and little they will as Gentle and Wise Men know how to use them There are others also as well as he Erastus and such like that deny this Art of Changing if I thought these Men needed any labour of reproof who through ignorance of the points they handle blunder and rush in the dark cross and reprove themselves all about in such sort as they seem rather to move pity to the standers by than to make a challenge and to call forth an Adversary Then such Men I will exhort to be better advised by the view of certain plain examples which I will lay down before them and thereby wish them to stay their over-swift and fore-running judgments until they come to the trial and battel it self in that which shall follow Lead as the Workmen know is one of the greatest spoilers of his fellows the foul Metals in the World save them from the rage of him upon a shell of Ashes which they call a Test and he is counted safe sure and stedfast enough against all assayes Cardane tells of a Man at Millain which I know not how so dressed and armed his face and hands as he could suffer to wash them in molten Lead Might not then a tougher and hard Metal be more easily armed and fenced against all force and violence Nay you shall see more Wonders by the skill of Nature easily performed Clear Chrystal saves the Cloth that is wrapt about it from the rage of Fire so doth Oyl defend Paper insomuch that you may seethe Fish therein without either burning the Paper or the Oyl soaking through and all this is because the extreme and deadly feuds do save the middle thing by their fighting Is it then a Wonder if Iron or Copper be by some pretty slight or kindly skill defended from all Fire and made sure and stedfast To draw neerer unto you It is very well known that base and unripe Gold as it were a mean between Silver and Gold wanting Colour and Closeness wasting much away in time of proof and trial may by some of the lesser and lower degrees of binding be refined and made as good as the best Gold in the world Then is there any lett in Reason why the rest especially Silver by strong and more forcible means may not be bound and coloured and reach perfection To conclude if we may by tracing the Path of Kinde which she treadeth daily turn a Plant or Wight into Stone and a Mineral into a Metal and Lead into Tinne nay Lead into Copper as I will prove hereafter with so great exchange and increase of Colour and Closeness then tell me why by means fitted in proportion Lead or rather Copper may not be turned into Silver or either of these especially Silver into Gold Therefore to make up all Paracelse reporteth for certain that in Carinthia they commonly turn Copper into Silver and this into Gold in Hungary Though he names not the means whereby they made those exchanges yet we may easily judge those wayes of binding and colouring set down before that is lesser wayes then HERMES Medicine and yet sufficient to serve our turn and to raise that Wealth appointed as we may see by guesse of their common practise which else were empty vain and foolish as also by the light charge of Middle-Minerals in respect of the return and gain of Gold And if the praise of an Enemy be lightly true and uncorrupt let us hear what Porta a denier of the Art of Hermes confesseth upon his own experience that Quick-silver divers wayes may be bound and coloured and made perfect Gold and Silver and one way when it is with Brimstone burnt and made Cinabar very gainfully which thing Joannes Chrysippus also found true And further that in his due time and place Mercury by the smoke of Brimstone within one Moneth will be turned into perfect Luna I might press you with more as good proofs and trials of Men of credit but here is enough I say to stay your judgment for a while Let us go forward CHAP. V. Of VVISDOME and VIRTUE SIth now Long Life Health Youth Riches are dispatched and we have gotten such a goodly Quire of Helps Instruments and Means to Wisdom and Virtue that is to perfect BLISSE and HAPPINESSE what is wanting but Will and Diligence to bring all Men unto it unless there be some as there be many so lewd and fond by Birth and Nature having the difference defaced and being so far from their Kind estranged unto the kind of Beasts that although they lack not those helps and furnitures no nor Good-Will and Endevour to set them forward yet all will not serve to amend them and bring them to Wit and Goodness Then let us seek the salves for these two sores likewise that we may make it at last a whole and perfect Happiness let us I say bend our selves to shew the means how all foul and vicious persons may be cured and brought to health of Mind which is Wit and Goodness No cure can be skilfully performed without the cause be first known and removed The cause of Wisdom and Virtue and so of their contraries for one of these do bewray another I opened heretofore when I brought into the Bound and Houshold of BLISSE yet two other properties that is Clearness and Temperateness of Bodies But because we have no such grounds and beginnings as the Measurers have given and granted and it behoves if we mean to build any thing our selves to lay all the foundation let us take the matter in hand again that those two are the very causes and makers of this health of Mind that is of Wisdom and Virtue and then teach the way to apply the remedies To begin with Wisdom for that Knowledge had ever need to go before Doing and therein to let pass all the idle subtilties about the difference between Sapience and Prudence if I may so term it for once and use it not as one of them to be seen in general and everlasting the otâ—er in particular and changeable things c. because they ought evermore as I shewed at first to go together even as our Tongue better than either
Quickness and stirring of the Spirits appears in Sickness Age and sound Sleep especially in Age and Sickness more cleerly than needs any light of teaching But how in Sleep when the heat of the Spirits serving Wit is either loaden with the clogging Fumes and Breaths of the Stomach or spent either with Labour or with Sweat and still beholding for Rest abates Heat as I ever said or else lent for a time unto his fellow-servants the Spirits of Life for digestion sake then the Spirits of the Brain be still and quiet and outward and inward Senses Wit and Vnderstanding all cease at once But if the Meat to omit the expence of Heat was neither much nor of an heavy and clogging kind and so neither breathing out loading stuffe nor needing forraign help to digest it then our perceiving Spirits begin to take their own and Natural Heat again unto them and to move a little before the Minde whereby she beholdeth some old shapes and shewes of things in their passing which is called Dreaming But in case they recover all that Heat they bestir themselves apace running to the out-side of the Body and bringing back new tidings to the Minde which when she perceiveth it is called Waking Then the cause of Wisdom is clear at last as we see to wit a clean and stirring Glass and of Folly when the same is foul and still If the Glasse be fouled all over it causeth natural or willing folly as in Fools Children and Drunkards but if it be but here and there besmeared and drawn as it were with dark strokes and lines of foul humors the shapes appear in the Minde even as the forms in a broken Glasse appear to the Eye by halfs and confusedly and it maketh Madness But how came the Spirits of this inward Glass so foul and slow when they are of themselves as becometh the Beams of an Heavenly Soul both very clean clear quick and lively But we need say no more but clear and foul alone when these two qualities make or mar the whole work of perceiving for if the Spirits be clear it is a sign they are in their own Nature and so hot and quick withal but if they be foul it is a token their whole condition and property of Kinde is lost and gone and so that stilness is come upon them also Neither is that aethereal thing which is called by the name of a Spirit that carrieth the Soul and all his Beams down into the Body and broketh as I said above between them foul or still of it self for Spirits are not as some Leaches think made of but fed with the breaths of our Meat but very fine cleer and lively as all Men grant of Aether How then Must it not needs follow that all the cause of fail and want in this case springeth from the Body and from that part especially where the Wits inhabit If the naked Reason brought in above will not serve to content this matter let us leade him forth clad with proof of Eye-sight and Experiences the plainest greatest most filling and satisfying Reason in the World If Man alone doth passe all other Wights in Wit for his Aiery and Fiery temper above them as we heard before then if one Man goeth before another in Wit it must needs follow from the same cause Now as Air and Fire are cleer and quick when Earth and Water are foul and slow so are the Wights where they bear the sway affected both in Wit and Body as appears in difference between the Hart and the Toad and all other wholsom and noisom Wights To go further why are the Men so gross and rude under the two Pins of the World in the frozen Countreys and so Civil and Wise in Hot as Aristotle well noteth but for that the outward Heat cleanseth as it is a cleanser and drieth and so cleareth the Bodies whereas Cold on the other side binds and thickens and so likewise by stopping the flying out of the gross foul and waterish humors and leavings makes all not onely dark and cloudy but hot and moist also as it were drunken by boiling together as e Aristotle termeth it But methinks I must favour them a little because they are our Neighbours he might have done better to have resembled those broiled People to Old Men otherwhere and the Aged Men in frozen Countreyes to the Youth in hot Soyles because the odds between the Wisdom of Age and Youth flows from the same cause of Drought and Moisture that is Clearness and Foulness of the Bodies And therefore Plato was not ill advised when he said that at such time as the Eye of the Body failed the Eye of the Understanding began to see sharply because when this waterish Instrument drieth up with the rest of the Body though it puts out the sight of Sense yet it is a Token that the light of Wit increaseth for Drought as I said breeds Clearnesse if it be not mixt with coldness for then it brings in Earthliness the most foul and sluggish Element of all And therefore those that are very old and cold are very doting and childish again But if that Drought be seasoned with Heat the more the better they make the Man very wise and full of Understanding as it hath been alwayes observed Caesar is described so but more strangely before him Alexander whose Body by his great Heat and Drought was not onely most sweet in his life-time but also able lying dead above the Ground in a hot Soil and Season without any balming alone to keep it self fresh and sweet without all taint and corruption many dayes together But I am too long Therefore Prophets are said to be wiser than Men and the Spirits wiser then they and the Stars most wise of all for the odds and degrees in the Heat Droughth and Clearness of the Bodies Now when we know the cause of this Hurt and Disease let us upply the Medicine let us clear the Ideots body In many kindes of foolishness as in Childhood Drunkenness Sleep and Doting Diseases Nature her self is this Salve to disperse in her due time and season and scour out the foul and cloggy cold and gross humors which overwhelmed the Spirits and made them unclean and quiet or at least in the ranker sort of them as in Doting Diseases she may be holpen easily and enabled by little skill to do it that we may judge if great and strong and mighty means of Art chanced once to joyn with Nature the rankest of all and deepest rooted that is Natural folly it self may be rooted out and dispatched But you may reply as some do that the rest which sprung out from outward light and hang-by causes may be cured when this being so rooted in the Nature and first mixture of the Seed a mixture as ill as a Beastly mixture can never be mended unlesse we grant that a Beast may be holpen also and put on Manly
Nature I had need send you back to the degrees of Kinde allotted and bounded out above by the Counsel of Philosophers whereby you may see if you consider well that a Beast standing in a lower kind of mixture can in no case be bettered and made a Man unless his temper be marred first and made anew and so his Life and Being put out and razed when as a foolish Man hath no such cause and reason being both for his Divine Minde though it be eclipsed by the shadow of an earthly Body in respect of his temper a degree above a Beast and in the state and condition of Mankinde fire abounding in him as his shape declares as well as in other Men though not so much and in the same point and measure And what is the cause Not because Nature meant it so but by reason she was lett and hindered by some cross thing laid in her way within the stuffe whereby she was driven to stray and misse and come short of her purpose like as the Mole Aristotle saith for all her blindness is in the same kind with all other hot and bloody perfect Wights which should have all their Wits and Senses because having all the parts of an Eye whole and perfect it is a sign that Nature meant to have gone forward and was lett with the bar of a grosse and thick Skin Now then we see the failes and errours of Kinde by Skill daily corrected yea and some hold opinion that the blemish in the Mole may be washed out and mended also that we may hold it possible to do the like in this fault of Folly Nay we may think it more easie than some of them because there is no several degree and whole kinde as if Nature had run this race of purpose which seemeth so in that work of the Mole but some odd and rare Examples and as it were Monsters in kind or more fitly Diseases left by Nature Descent and Inheritance sprung out from some ill temper of the seed of the Parents But how may this Disease be cured All things in kind by the course of Kind have both their highest and deepest pitch and end and as it were their South and North turns from whence they still return and go back again to avoid Infinity So these natural and left Diseases have their Race which they run and spend by little and little And when it is all run and all the stock of corruption spent which is within nine or ten Off-springs then they mend and return to health again such is the Race of Wisdom also and of all health of Body for the health of the Mind is inclosed within that other as we see by the Children which Wise men beget and so forth the case is plain and easie Then we see in this Matter how Nature inclines and is ready to help her self and if Art would lend his hand we may think the cure would be much more speedy and many parts of the time cut off and abated And as we find in sores and other lighter inward hurts this done by slight means of slender Skill so we may deem that by more mighty means more great and mighty deeds may be performed But what do I fetch about the Matter when it is above and as I think sufficiently proved that all left Leprosies and other Natural Diseases of the Body by those Heavenly and Mineral Medicines which I call the Cure-alls and Cure-the-greats may be quite cleansed and driven away and this is among the number of Left and Natural Diseases all sprung out from an ill temper of the seeds of Parents And to omit the rest if the Leprosie flowing from the foulness of the Blood of all the Body may be cured much more this which proceeds from the ill frame of one part onely that is from a muddy Brain Or if that Disease may be said to come from one part alone that is the Liver because it is the maker of all Blood yet that one is a most dangerous part if it be ill-affected because by need of Nature it sends to all places and so reacheth through all and striketh all by contagion whereas the Brain as other more keep themselves within their bounds and stretch no further But let us go further If a good and fine Temper through ill Diet and passions of the Soul hath often fallen from a good Wit to a kind of Madness scarce to be descried from the state of an Ideot then sure through the contrary cause a foul frame may be cleared and rise to Wisdom by as good reason as the Art of Reason hath any especially if those contrary Passions and Diet be holpen and set forward by meet Medicines which the Graecians know and teach and wherewith they make great changes in Mens Bodies But without all doubt and question if that our most fine clear and hot Aegyptian Cure-all came in place to help the matter for if the mightier Enemy shall in fight overcome the weaker as you all grant and thereon stands your Physick then shall this passing fineness and clearness when it ariseth in the Body like the Sun in the Morning scatter and put to flight all Mists and Darkness clearing and scouring mightily by his matchless heat strength and swiftness every part of the Body Neither shall you say Life will not suffer such violent and forcible dealing when as Life it self shall do it for what is that which made and mingled at first the foolish Body but a Beam of Heavenly-Fire carried on a Couch of Aether And what is this our Heavenly Medicine but the same as is above shewn at large Then let us put same to same strength to strength and if one before was too weak to break as it would and mingle the fond Body finely now both together one helping another and still with fresh supply renewing the Battel shall be I think able to overcome the work and at last to bring it to the wished end pass and perfection If you fly to the last Hold and Shift and say the time is now past and occasion of Place and Stuffe now lost and slipt away being too hard for Nature upon so hard a Stuffe and Place to work such exchanges If you look to her ordinary race in all things you shall see that she is able and doth daily rule square and frame very gross and unmeet Stuffe in most unfit Places to our thinking yea much more then these in this Work and not onely the thick and sturdy stuffe of Minerals cleansing the Rocks yet in unseen places down to the bowels of the Ground and that grosse and rude gear in the bottom of the Sea to make Shell-fish But also living moving and perceiving Land-Wights in the close Rocks as you heard before and in the cold Snow and burning Fire as those Wormes and Flies in Aristotle To close up all and end this matter at once If you remember how this our Heavenly Cure-all when he was
it weare off that Viperous kind aforesaid for he would then battel with our Nature spoil and overthrow the first moisture and the whole frame of the Body fo far would it be from nourishing the Natural Heat and Moisture from clearing and tempering the Body to cause Long-Life Youth Wisdom and Virtue And the reason of this reproof is because when every Poison is very barren and empty of Heat of Heaven and very distemperedly cold and drie in body set straight against our Hot and Moist Nature as appears by flying the Fire and Oil his Enemies The PHILOSOPHERS STONE was temperate in respect at first and is now exactly so and a very fine Oil and full of Heavenly Spirits and so for these three causes not onely most friendly and like to our Nature but also a very deadly Enemy and most crosse contrary to all Poisons CHAP. II. That the PHILOSOPHERS STONE is able to turn all base METALS into SILVER and GOLD ANd thus we have lightly run over the former part of Long-Life Health Youth Clearnesse and Temperatenesse which make up all good gifts of Body needful Let us now come to the outward help of Riches and borrow so much leave again as to use the Cause for the Effect and to take Gold for Riches and strive to shew that the Son of Gold is able to turn any Metal into Gold and not so sparingly now and hardly as we did before by those bastard kinds of Binding and Colouring though a little if it were without mispence of time and travel would serve our turn but as fully and plentifully as any of our Men avow to the amazement of the World They set down no certain summe nor stint which I will do because I have to do with thirsting Ears and because again I love not to run at random but to have a certain mark whereat to aime and level all my speeches Then let us say By this great Skill of HERMES and a little Labour and Cost we may spend with the greatest Monarch of the World and reach the Turks Revennue yea though it be Fifteen Millions Sterling as I find it credibly reported yea let us be bold and not as Socrates did when he spake of Love hide our Face for the Matter The Truth is vouchable before GOD and Man and will bear it self out at last though it be my luck still to be crost by Men of our own Coat HERMES Foster-children But what do I call them so Albeit Paracelse with whom we dealt of late was plainly so yet his Scholar Dorne which now comes in place is out of this account as cleerly This Man I say to excuse his own Ignorance hath learn'd a new trick in unfolding of HERMES Riddle that neither HERMES nor any of his Followers in saying they turn the four foul Metals Lead Tinne Iron and Copper into Silver and Gold mean plainly according to common speech but still Riddle and double the matter understanding the four Complexions of our Body which he busieth himself to match with those four Metals into good form and temper changed And these to be the Silver and Gold which they make at any time and that by this token because they fetch their Medicine as you heard even now out of all things Then he flieth out and lifteth up his Master with high praises for finding first and untwining the Knot and Riddle whereas there is nothing so plain both in Paracelse and all other of his Hidden Science as their Opinion as touching this matter Nay see the worthy Memory of the Man he himself in construing the words of his Master concerning the same Matter makes as well as he and the rest a plain division of this Work and yieldeth in open tearms that our Medicine serveth both for Men and Metals This Noble Doctor when I was a Novice and first-ling in this study as he mis-led me in other things which he took upon him to unfold so he amazed me in this before he himself knew the least of them But after I went forward and began to consider earnestly and weigh the things by their own weight and not by the weight of Words and Authorities the onely way to Knowledge I quickly saw the falshood of that new opinion and more plain reason and cause of belief for this point then for all the rest which he allowes and which I shewed before Then let us not stay for him nor for any thing else but let us march forward with all speed and courage And if it be never good in discourse of Speech to heap and huddle up altogether but for light sake to joynt the Matter and cut it in divers pieces let us do so too and prove first that the Son of Gold is able to turn Metals that are base into Gold then that he can change so much as to make up that Sonne I set as needful He is to turn Metals two wayes first as a Seed if a Man list to sow him upon them And then after his Birth by Nourishment or turning them into his own Nature And this is either into his Fathers which is his own after a sort or into his now-being and self same Nature Of these I will treat severally And first of Seed which cannot be denied unto Gold if all things have Life and Life have three powers and abilities to be Nourished and to Wax and to beget his Like also The second part is clear and granted among all Philosophers And that all things have Life it hath been often shewed before by their feeding and divers other Arguments But because it is a thing whereon almost all the frame of my speech leaneth and yet much in doubt and hardly believed among the Learned let us take it again and prove it by name in Minerals because they be both farthest from belief and nearest our drift and purpose Those things that have Diseases Age and Death cannot but live and we see plainly the Diseases Age and Death of precious Stones but most clearly in the precious Load-stone though he be foul in sight which is kept fed and nourished in the filings of Iron his proper and like Food when Quicksilver or Garlike quite destroyes him and puts out all his Life Strength and Virtue But how if the g Minerals by feeding wax and grow as well as Plants or Wights As Miners have good experience of that when they see them by those due and constant fits so dangerously voide their Leavings Agricola saith that Salt-Peter after that by draining it hath lost its taste and virtue if it be laid open in the Weather will within five or six years space grow and ripen and recover his power and strength again The same man telleth of one Lead-mine and two other of Iron which after they be digged and emptied within few years space ripen and grow to be full again and one of these every tenth year But admit these by the slight and
thred and the extreme red and white colours carried with their bodies take a Yellow mean also even so you must think when an hundred Ounces of silver and one Ounce of our Medicine are both by the Fire beaten and driven out at length and to the farthest thinness every part overtakes fits and reacheth other and the small part being as strong as the bigge in striving one overcomes consumes and turns the other that neither shall be quite razed but both equally changed and mingled into a third Mean thing both in fineness and colour which is gold for the Medicine is as far above gold as this beyond Silver both in fineness and colour and all other properties whatsoever And so you see the Colour also dispatched which I kept unto this place and which seemeth a wonder in some Mens sights for I hope you will not ask me how gold got this high red and unkindly colour unless you be ignorant how all such Hang-bies fleet and change up and down without hurt unto the thing that carrieth them and except you know not that by a kindly course whereby all soft and alterable things gently and softly boyled wax first black then white next yellow and lastly red where they stay in the top of the Colour we see changed and drawn up our seed of gold unto this new unwonted Colour And thus you have at last all the Reason which I saw or at least thought good to deliver to writing for the truth of HERMES or the PHILOSOPHERS STONE and MEDICINES why it is the ready way to bring all Men to all the Bliss and Happiness in the VVorld that is to Long-life Health Youth Riches VVisdom and Virtue it is now time to sit down and take our rest CHAP. IV. That Gold may be wrought into such a fine oyl as we speak of BUt methinks I hear them mutter among themselves that there is never a Reason given as yet no not one because all standing upon a feigned and supposed ground which being nothing all that is built upon it must needs come to nothing For even as Paracelsus in his supposed Paradise in the end of his High opinions concludes that if it were possible to be made by any Labour of Wisdome it would prove no doubt a notable place for Long-life and Health even so may be thought of this Stone of gold if any Art or skill were able to contrive it that it would without doubt work those wonders aforesaid But as his Paradise if he mean plainly as he sayes and not of the Philosophers Stone whereto it may be wrested is impossible to be made unless he would include himself in a place free first from the contagion and force of the outward Earth Water and Weather yea and therefore of the Fire of Heaven and Light also and secondly where all the Beginnings were in their pure and naked Nature which they call a Fifth nature which is no where save in Heaven and which were a Miracle to be conceived And lastly except he could live without Meat and his Leavings which both Learned and unlearned hold ridiculous to think Even so it is as hard in opinion and unlike that Gold may be spoiled and brought to nothing as he must be first and then restored and raised to such dignity Because as Heaven is ever one and unchangeable for that in it all Beginnings are weighed so evenly and surely tyed together in a full consent and unable ever to jarre and to be loosned in like sort Gold is so close and fast for his sure and equal mixture of his fine earth and water that no force of nature neither of earth air or water no nor of fire although he be helpen with lead antimony or any such like fierce and hot stomach easily consuming all other things will ever touch him nay which is strange the greatest spoylers in the world fire and his helpes are so far from touching him that they mend him and make him still better and better what is to be said to this Albeit I confess that to be the main ground and stay of all the work and building yet I supposed it not nor took it as granted as if I had been in Geometry but left it to be proved in the fittest place As for that supposed Paradise it is hard to judge because he did but glance at it and so leaves it unlawful to be told Albeit a Man may devise in thought as well as he for I think he had not tryed it what may be done and what Nature will suffer Then what if a Man inclosed himself in a pretty Chamber free from all outward Influence which is easie overcast for lights sake if need be with such Marble as Nero made his temple shine in darkness withall floored thick with Terra Lemn or the Earth of a Fifth nature which is better but much more hard to be gotten and had such Water within the lodging as that not long since found under ground between two silver Cups in Italy then if he could ever live quiet without Meat which I shewed not impossible or preserved himself with a Fifth nature which breeds no Leavings what think you of the matter But think what you will If it jarre and sound not well in the ears of any Man let it be among other his incredible and impossible Monsters yet our Cause shall not be the worse for it but easily possible as I will open unto you as far as my leave will suffer me which hath been large indeed and must be because I made a large promise at first perhaps too rashly but for the good meaning which must be paid and performed Aristotle saith like a wise Philosopher that nature makes her Creatures and subjects apt to move and rest that is changeable and again that a Body that is bounded cannot be without end and everlasting And therefore that when Heaven ever moveth and Earth ever resteth it is beyond the compass of Nature and springs from a more Divine cause If his Rule be true as it is most certain then Gold a thing not unbounded nor yet an extraordinary and divine work but made by the ordinary hand of Kind as we heard above must needs decay and perish again and cannot last for ever And if Nature can dissolve him much more shall she with the help of Art performe it And that which was said of Fire and his helpers is nothing for why do they better Gold but because they remove his Enemies when Nature had secretly laid about him to destroy him And so a very stick as I said above may be saved from decay But let nature have her swinge under Ground or skil above and they shall cause his enemies in time to spoil and consume him We cannot tell say they Country-like it may be a divine and no natural work for we see it everlasting Go to be it so I will overtake them that way too for as we know