Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	cold_a	heat_n	hot_a	2,925	5	7.7399	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

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

lives of these influences concentricate And seeing the Earth is a Body so solid that it gives solidity to all others it is requisite that that which penetrates it be very subtile The Heavens therefore being of most subtile matter produce alike effects for the operations ordinarily follow the qualities of the Body that operates And this penetration would profit nothing but like a Torrent running over a Field because of its swift motion scarce wet the surface unless it be by somewhat stayed But seeing it tends infallibly to the Centre and there is stopped because there is no lower place whereto it may descend there it is compelled to subsist and collect it self Hence some have said That the Centre of the Earth is most precious because in it all the influences are united which meeting there have an infinite potency not onely because they continually flow thither but because they proceed from Bodies infinite incorruptible and indeficient in vertue The ancient Poets who involved their Conceits in Fables divide the Earth into three parts assigning the Heaven to Jupiter as first-born of Saturn though some attribute the primogeniture's right to Neptune and the election of the superiour Kingdom to Jupiter for certain Sophistical Reasons impertinent to my purpose Neptune they make the Lord of the Sea and that by lot To Pluto as the youngest Son they assign the Earth for Heritage who is yet thought the richest of the three Brethren because in his Dominion all the Treasures of the World are contained yea he seems to make his two Brothers Tributaries in those things they possess as best This Son they call The King of Hell and to him they give the Elysian Fields as a delightful place where the blessed Souls shall follow his Court after death Divines also assert That Hell and the torture of Souls is in this place adduced by this Argument That seeing the Nature of the Stars is fiery and all their influences concur there must needs be incredible burnings there Again That place is infernal because none is more inferiour But that Souls should be here tormented and that the heat of this place should be so vehement as they say is a Solaecism in Reason and a Contradiction to Philosophical Axioms for besides that Souls possesse no place according to their own confessions and that being devested of the earthy part and corporeal prison they would naturally elevate themselves and ascend by vertue of their spiritual levity which participates more of a fiery then any other quality they cannot but with violence be detained in this subterraneous place seeing they are light nor yet being simple suffer under the action of Fire which cannot act on its like Why therefore they should assert That they descend to this place to be tormented I see no reason unless that the burthen of their sins wherewith they are implicated should detrude and depress them compelling and forcing them to the Centre of the Earth or else that sin hath got them under its Dominion and hath incorporated it self therewith by some unknown kinde of composition and so make them passible and subject not to the simple and natural action of Fire but to some other violent created one destined by God to that effect and perhaps the vertue of the Fire we speak of is by divine Power doubled for this action which may be proved by Holy Writ But I will not rashly cherish any particular Opinion or separate my self from the Orthodox Faith in the defence whereof I will not onely spend my Life but Industry by God's assistance yet I say in my Transient that I may further recede from my intended Discourse That they conclude strangely that say Vehement burnings arise in this place because the influences of the Stars concur there whereunto I would yet yield if they can evince That the heat of the Stars burns and consumes like our Culinary Fire and doth not enliven conserve and nourish for if it were such as they imagine not onely the Earth but the whole Universe had been long since burnt to ashes Those influences indeed in old Demogorgon's bowels calefie but not with a mortal and destructive but with a vital heat which there implants an uniform Vertue which by mediation of heat dilates it self through the whole Body of the Earth being the first moving cause of Generations But we must not here conceive That it is onely the external heat that comes from the Sun which calefies the Earth and causes Generation for in Winter-time when the Sun is furthest distant the Earth hath abundance of heat in it as experience shews in Fountains Cisterns and profound Cells so that in the coldest Winter-Season Metals are cocted and indurated yea it is credible that they are then most of all ingrossed because the heat of the Centre is kept in and retained because of the frigidity of the ambient Air. The Suns approach and more perpendicular Aspect is not the sole cause of vegetation in the Spring for if so then doubtless as its Ascent were more sublime Vegetations would augment more proportionably to the encrease of the heat of the Rayes but the contrary is observed But because every like attracts its like and the recess of the one causes the recess of the other The Sun by the magnetical Vertue of its Rayes attracts and revokes the heat of the Central Sun detruded by the rigid cold of the ambient into the interiour parts of the Earth which returning to the surface thereof affects all things with a vegetative faculty It is not therefore the external heat of the Celestial Sun but rather the innate heat of the Central Sun that calefies the profundity of the Earth for heat is twofold the one acts by reverberation which is external the other by influx and penetration which is internal whereof I now speak whose Nature is to enliven augment and conserve by the sustentation of radical moisture contained in this Fire which I made mention of in the precedent Chapter But that now we may prove this Central Fire not to be so intense as to torment and burn let us consider how the Stars do not by their influences cause heat solely but work other effects for Saturn is cold and dry Jupiter hot and moist the Sun hot and dry Mars hot and dry Venus cold and moist the Moon moist and cold and Mercury all in all participating of all qualities alike Whence we may gather That all the influences are temperate equally consisting of heat cold moisture and siccity which thus meeting in moderation cannot make the place where they meet immoderate The Vapour then or Spirit that comes from the Centre participates of these four and hence all the qualities of simples have their origine whereof some calefie because in them heat is predominant others dry because siccity superabounds others moisten or refrigerate according to the degree of their moisture or cold but on the other side Stars project many other qualities besides these into the

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

calls the Spirits Nurse by the Mediation of the Air in whose Belly he shall be carried because the Celestial Influences cannot be communicated to the Earth unless the Air which is like an Intercessor carry them to it and as the Divine Restorer and Protector of our Souls in the assumption of humane Flesh deposed nothing of his Divinity so saith he the Universal Spirit shall retain and keep all its Vertue entire when it is turned into Earth that is when it assumes a Terrestrial Body God also willed his own Son and our Redeemer in his assumed Humanity be as it were regenerated by and with the Water of Baptism and Fire of the Holy Spirit not that he needed any such purgation but because he was to converse with Men contaminated with corruption that he might in all things yield himself an example of Renovation and Purification giving Men a visible and ample Testimony That according to the Flesh he was of the same Nature with them not contaminated or corrupted but obnoxious to passion and equally mortal as they In like manner our fecund Mother Nature willed her first-born though pure in his Centre That he should be regenerated by Water and Fire that is by Separation of the Terrestrial from the fiery part the spisse from the subtile and the impure from the pure which Hermes also aimed at when he said That the Earth should be separated from Fire for what God hath conjoyned Man should not separate but onely the impure and gross from the subtile and pure by Fire And besides this Sense which first offers it self to our Intellects there is yet another more occult meaning for seeing by the Separation of Earth from Fire he means that that 's gross from that that 's subtile he seems to hint that we should separate the natural qualities of these two Elements by detracting the moist frigidity mixt with heavy Terrestrial things without which that cold cannot subsist and by putting on hot siccity which is of the Nature of Fire and consequently light and spiritual For which cause he adds That it must ascend from Earth to Heaven that is from imperfection to perfection for Paracelsus calls Fire the Firmament and as nothing can attain perfection unless it first depose its imperfect gross and mortal bark wherein this cold quality abounds the cause of all mortification as heat is of life so also prudent Nature observes this Rule That each subject should sustain and pass the obsure blackness of death and expect the cleer and candid renovation of life and immortality that is impassible essence whereon neither Fire nor corruption hath any power And assuredly the acquisition of this life by death is naturally exercised by all Creatures continually for all Sperm or Seed of Animals is mortified in some Matrix and of Vegetables in the Earth before any specification can be made But if this rule takes place in the members by how much may we more exactly observe and directly imitate it in the head and if the life acquired by mortification be of any duration how much more shall that be perpetual which is principal Jesus Christ taught these things by similitude of a Grain which he says cannot fructifie unless it first die signifying the mystery of his Resurrection which his Death should precede for he willed Death that he might rise to a glorious and perpetual Life therein not onely giving example to men but expressing the whole Idea of Nature That divine and learned Ermite Morienus Romanus who is often quoted by modern and natural Philosophers avers the same of the fixed Grain whereto Nature hath given power to perfect Metals for he saith Unless it putrefie and grow black it cannot be perfected and compleated but returns to nought I have taken liberty to say thus much that I may teach the younger sort how the Creator should be acknowledged by simple Creatures and because the vulgarity of Men begs this knowledge from remoter things acting as they do who seek the perfection of Sciences from the Scholars of the lowest Form whereas they should require it from the best Directors and Doctors I would excite them by these natural conceptions that they would convert the principal endowments of their Souls to the search of the general principle and that in more exquisite things such as impart life and preservation to all mortal Creatures Mortification then necessarily precedes all entrance into life and principally in this Spirit the first-born of Nature when it assumed a Body for else no Man could separate it from Body which hinders its Regeneration to Life and Pacification of its Essence not as though by combustion and destruction it lost its Body in Death nor yet by Putrefaction but so that in Germination the Putrefaction of Seeds annihilates not that which is corporified in them for which cause in the Exaltion of Mercury or the Universal Spirit after the first degree which is made by Separation all that 's corporeal and spiritual becomes volatile because the sublimatory vertue therein overcomes the fixing faculty but the fixed part afterwards retains the volatile with it being helped by the action of heat which augmenting the power of the two nobler Elements destroyes the power of the two weaker which Hermes hints at in a certain Treatise by a plumous Bird detained with a Bird without Feathers And Nicholaus Flumellus by two Dragons one with and another without Wings But that I may not longer fold my self in these Daedalean Labyrinths see we not all Vegetables encrease and elevate themselves upwards by vertue of this volatile Spirit which as I said before would carry them higher towards the place whence it came whereto it hath an appetite but that it is detained by its proper Earth and corporal Mass wherein some fixed matter resides But lest some not sufficiently accustomed to Philosophical terms should think we contradict our selves I will here explicate my self I say then That I mean not by this volatile Spirit that which I before called volatile and separable Sulphur for that is rather the Author of Corruption then Growth but that most simple part of the primaeve vapour which never loses it s subtily whose Nature is to be elevated and tend to perfection for to sublimate is properly and Philosophically no more then to perfect and exalt matters from imperfection to perfection As therefore this Mercury hath an elevable so hath it a stable substance the first is naturally innate in it the second is in its centre or power yet it cannot compass its effect without the help of Art And that I may shew more plainly in what ways Nature proceeds in her operations I think it convenient to add a little about the causes and manner of Fixation Repeating therefore that indubitable Axiome I alledged in the beginning of this Book as perpetually observed in the Worlds Constitution to wit That all that hath life hath also some duration and that nothing is produced under the cope of Heaven which