Situation is 8. What Duration is I. QUantity is an Attribute of a Being whereby it hath Extension of Parts II. Quantity is either Formal and Immaterial which is the extension of the Form beyond which it is not and within which it acteth or Material which is the Extension of a material Being III. Quality is whereby a being doth act as from a Cause IV. Relation is whereby one being is referred to another V. Action is whereby one being acteth upon another as through a meanes VI. Passion is whereby one being receiveth an Act from another VII Situation is whereby a being is seated in a place A Place is which doth contain a Being VIII Duration is whereby a being continueth in its Essence CHAP. XXII Of Causes 1. What a Cause is That the Dectrine of Causes belongeth to Metaphysicks 2. Wherein a Cause and Principle differ 3. What an internal Cause is What Matter is 4. What a Form is and how it is divided 5. What an external cause is I. A Cause is whereby a Being is produced It doth appertain to Metaphysicks to treat of Causes for else it would be no Science which requires the unfolding of a being by its Causes Ramus did much mistake himself in denying a place to the Doctrine of Causes in this Science and referring it altogether to Logick 'T is true that the Doctrine of Causes may conveniently be handled in Logick as Arguments by which Proofes are inferred yet as they are real and move the understanding from without they may not for Logick is conversant in Notions only and not in Realities II. A Cause differeth from a Principle or is Synonimous to it according to its various acception In Physicks it is taken for that whose presence doth constitute a Being and in that sense it is the same with an internal cause to which a Cause in its late extent is a Genus and consequently is of a larger signification A Principle sometimes denotes that whence a being hath its Essence or Production or whence it is known In this sense did Aristotle take it in the 5th Book of his Met. Chapt. 1. Whereby he did intimate a threefold Principle to wit a Principle of Constitution Generation and of Knowledge or of being known A Principle as it is received in the forementioned sense is of a larger signification then a Cause It is usually taken for a word Synonimous to a Cause In this Acception is God said to be the Principle that is the Cause of all Beings III. A Cause is either Internal or External An Internal Cause is that which doth constitute a Being by its own Presence An Internal Cause is twofold 1. Matter 2. Form Matter is an internal cause out of which a being is constituted So earth is the Matter of man because a man is constituted out of Earth Matter is remote and mediate which is out of which the nearest and immediate matter was produced or constituted or nearest and immediate out of which a being is immediately constituted For example The nearest matter of Glass is Ashes the remote is Wood which was the Matter of Ashes But this Distinction doth more properly belong to Logick IV. A Form is a Cause from which a being hath its Essence A Form is remote or nearest A remote form is from which a being consisting of remote Matter had its Form The nearest Form is from which the nearest Matter hath its Essence The remote matter is either first or second The first is out of which the first being had its Essence The Second is out of which all other beings had their essence A Form is divisible into the same kinds The first Form was from which the first being had its essence The second from which all other beings have their essence These Divisions are rather Logical then Metaphysical V. An external Cause is by whose force or vertue a being is produced The force whereby a being is produced is from without for a being hath no force of it self before it is produced therefore that force whereby a being is produced is necessarily from without This Cause is only an efficient Cause Other Divisions of Causes I do wittingly omit because some are disagreeing with the Subject of this Treatise and belong to another Part of Philosophy as to treat of the first cause belongeth to Pneumatology of final Causes to Morals Others are very suspicious CHAP. XXIII Of the Kinds of Causes 1. The Number of real Causes That a final cause is no real Cause The Causality of Matter and Form 2. The Division of an Efficient 3. That an Efficient is erroneously divided in a procreating and conservating Cause 4. That the Division of a Cause into Social and Solitary is illegal 5. That the Division of an efficient Cause into Internal and External is absurd 6. That all Forms are Material 7. That there are no assistent Forms I. THere are only three real Causes of a Being a Material Formal and Efficient Cause Wherefore a Final cause is no real Cause I prove it A real Cause is which doth really effect or produce a Being But these are only three Ergo. 2. A Final Cause doth not cause any effect concurring to the constitution of a being as each of them three forementioned do for matter causeth an effect by giving her self out of which a being may be constituted A Form doth produce an effect by giving through her presence unity distinction from all others to Matter An efficient Cause effecteth by educing a Form out of the matter and uniting it to the Matter Which three causalities are only requisite to the production of a compleat being and they constituted in actu constitute a being at the same instant If so what effect doth a final Cause then produce Certainly not any contributing to the essential constitution of a being These three being only necessary any other would be frustaneous Possibly you will object that the final Cause moveth the efficient Suppose I grant that it doth not infer that it concurs to the real and essential production of a being The causality which it exerciseth is in contributing per accidens to the constitution of a being which if only so it doth not appertain to this place neither can it be equally treated of with Causes which do act per se. II. An End moveth the efficient An efficient is either Natural or Moral Natural efficients are moved necessarily or act e necessitate Naturae Hence we say a Cause being in actu to wit a Natural Cause its effect is likewise necessarily constituted in actu It is not so with a final Cause for that may exist without producing an effect All Natural Causes move for an end per accidens in that they answer the Ordination of the Creator who hath created all things for an end which accordingly act for the same out of Necessity of Nature Moral Efficients are moved by an end Yet it is not the end which produceth the effect but the efficient it self You
VVhat an alteration or accidental change is That the differences of Temperament are as many as there are Minima's of the Elements excepting four p. 119. CHAP. XIX Of the Division of Temperaments 1. VVhat an equal and unequal Temperament is That there never was but one temperament ad pondus That Adams Body was not tempered ad pondus That neither Gold nor any Celestial bodies are tempered ad pondus p. 120. 2. That all temperaments ad Justiriam are constantly in changing That there are no two bodies in the world exactly agreeing to one another in temperature p. 121. 3. The Latitude of temperaments How the corruption of one body ever proves the generation of another p. 122. 4. That there is no such unequal temperament as is vulgarly imagined That there is an equal temperament is proved against the vulgar opinion That where Forms are equal their matters must also be equal p. 123 124. 5. VVhat a Distemper is That Galen intended by an unequal temperature p. 125. 6. VVhen a man may be termed temperate That bodies are said to be intemperate ib. 126 127. 7. The combination of the second Qualities of the Elements in a temperature Their Effects p. 128. CHAP. XX. Of Alteration Coction Decoction Generation Putrefaction and Corruption 1. VVhat Coction and Putrefaction is The Difference between Putrefaction and Corruption p. 130. 2. The Authors Definition of Alteration The effects of Alteration ib. 3. The Division of Alteration p. 131. 4. That the first Qualities of the Peripateticks are not intended by the acquisition of new Qualities without Matter Wherein Alteration differs from Mixtion or Temperament ib. 5. The Definition of Coction Why a man was changed much more in his youth than when come to maturity p. 132 133. 6. The Constitution of women Which are the best and worst Constitutions in men That heat is not the sole cause of Coction p. 134 135. 7. The kinds of Coction What Maturation Elixation and Assation are p. 136. 8. VVhat Decoction is and the manner of it p. 137. 9. The definition of Putrefaction 139 10. VVhat Generation imports in a large and strict acception Whether the Seed of a Plant or Animal is essentially distinguisht from a young Plant or new born Animal That heat is not the sole efficient in Generation p. 139. 11. VVhether the innate heat is not indued with a power of converting adventitious heat into its own nature Whether the innate heat be Celestial or Elementary p. 140 141 142. 12. The Definition of Corruption Why the innate heat becomes oft more vigorous after violent Feavers Whether Life may be prolonged to an eval duration What the Catochization of a Flame is By what means many pretend to prolong life That the production of life to an eval duration is impossible Whether our Dayes be determined The ambiguity of Corruption Whether Corruption be possible in the Elements p. 143 to 149. CHAP. XXI Of Light 1. VVhat Light is The manner of the production of a Flame p. 150. 2. The properties and effects of Light p. 151. 3. That Light is an effect or consequent of a Flame Whence it happens that our Eyes strike fire when we hit our Foreheads against any hard Body That Light is not a quality of fire alone That Light is not fire rarefied That where there is Light there is not alwayes heat near to it How Virginals and Organs are made to play by themselves p. 152 153. 4. That Light is a continuous obduction of the Ayr. That Light is diffused to a far extent in an instant and how Why the whole tract of Air is not enlightned at once p. 154 155. 5. The manner of the Lights working upon the Eye-sight That sight is actuated by reception and not by emission p. 156. 6. The reason of the difference between the extent of illumination and calefaction That Light cannot be precipitated ib. 7. That Light is not the mediate cause of all the Effects produced by the Stars That Light hath only a power of acting immediately and per se upon the optick spirits How the Air happens to burst through a sudden great light That a sudden great Light may blind kill or cast a man into an Apoplexy p. 157. 8. How Light renders all Objects visible Why a peice of Money cast into a Basin filled with water appears bigger than it is The causes of apparent Colours Why a great Object appears but small to one afar off The difference between lux and lumen What a Beam is What a Splendour is That the Lights begot by the Stars and other flames are not distinguished specie How the Coelum Empyreum is said to be Lucid p. 158 159. CHAP. XXII Of Colours 1. The Authors Definition of a Colour That Light is a Colour Aristotles Definition of colour examined p. 160 161 162. 2. Scaligers Absurdities touching Colours and Light p. 163. 3. What colour Light is of and why termed a single Colour That Light doth not efficienter render an Object visible How a mixt Colour worketh upon the sight and how it is conveyed to it ib. 164. 4. The Causes of the variations of Mercury in its colour through each several preparation p. 165. 5. That Colours are formally relations only to our sight That a mixt colour is not an intentional quality That besides the relation of colours there is an absolute foundation in their original Subjects How the same fundamental colours act p. 166. 6. That there are no apparent colours but all are true p. 167. 7. The Differences of colours What colour focal fire is of The fundamental colours of mixt bodies p. 168 169 170 171. 8. What reflection of light is What refraction of colours is Aristotles Definition of colour rejected The Effects of a double reflection The Reasons of the variations of Colour in Apples held over the water and Looking-glasses The variation of Illumination by various Glasses p. 172. 9. The Division of Glasses The cause of the variation of colour in a Prism ib. 173 174. 10. The Nature of Refraction Why colours are not refracted in the Eye p. 175 176. CHAP. XXIII Of Sounds 1. The Definition of a Sound That the Collision of two solid Bodies is not alwayes necessary for to raise a Sound p. 177. 2. Whether a Sound be inherent in the Air or in the body sounding The manner of Production of a Sound p. 178. 3. Whether a Sound is propagated through the water intentionally only That a Sound may be made and heard under water p. 179. 4. That a Sound is a real pluffing up of the Air. How a Sound is propagated through the Air and how far Why a small Sound raised at one end of a Mast or Beam may be easily heard at the other end Why the Noise of the treading of a Troop of Horse may be heard at a far distance p. 180 181 182. 5. The difference between a Sound and a Light or Colour That it is possible for a man to hear with his eyes
The division of water p. 289. 3. VVhat a Lake is The strange vertues of some Lakes 290 291 292. 4. VVhat a Fountain is The wonderfull properties of some Fountains p. 293 to 295. 5. Of Physical Wells p. 296. Of Baths p. 297. 7. Of Rivers and their rare properties ib. 298. 8. Of the chief Straits of the Sea p. 299 230. CHAP. VII Of the Circulation of the Ocean 1. That the disburdening of the Eastern Rivers into the Ocean is not the cause of its Circulation neither are the Sunne or Moon the principal causes of this motion p. 301 302. 2. The periodical course of the Ocean The causes of the high and low waters of the Ocean p. 303 304 305. 3. How it is possible that the Ocean should move so swiftly as in 12 hours and somewhat more to slow about the terrestrial Globe p 306 307 308. 4. A further explanation of the causes of the intumescence and detumescence of the Ocean The causes of the anticipation of the floud of the Ocean 309 to 312. 5. That the Suns intense heat in the torrid Zone is a potent adjuvant cause of the Oceans circulation and likewise the minima's descening from the Moon and the Polar Regions p. 313 to 316. CHAP. VIII Of the course of the Sea towards the Polar Coasts 1. What the Libration of the Ocean is That the Tides are not occasioned by Libration The Navil of the World Whence the Seas move towards the North Polar Why the Ebb is stronger in the Narrow Seas than the Floud and why the Floud is stronger than the Ebb in the Ocean Why the Irish Seas are so rough p. 316 317 318. 2. VVhy the Baltick Sea is not subjected to Tides The rise of the East Sea or Sinus Codanus p. 319. 3. The cause of the bore in the River of Seyne p. 320. 4. The causes of the courses of the Mediterranean The rise of this Sea ib. 321. CHAP. IX Of Inundations 1. Of the rise of the great Gulphs of the Ocean The causes of Inundations That the Deluge mentioned in Genesis was not universal The explanation of the Text. p 422 323. 2. The manner of the Deluge That it was not occasioned through the overfilling of the Ocean p. 324. 3. That there hapned very great Deluges since when and where p. 325. 4. The effects of the first deluge ib. 5. Inland Inundations p. 327. CHAP. X. Of the causes of the before-formentioned properties of Lakes 1. Whence the Lake Asphaltites is so strong for sustaining of weighty bodies and why it breeds no Fish The cause of qualities contrary to these in other Lakes The cause of the effects of the Lake Lerna p. 328. 2. Whence the vertues of the Lake Eaug of Thrace Gerasa the Lake among the Troglodites Clitorius Laumond Vadimon and Benaco are derived ib. 3. Whence the properties of the Lake Larius Pilats Pool and the Lake of Laubach emanate p. 329. CHAP. XI Of the rise of Fountains Rivers and Hills 1. That Fountains are not supplied by rain p. 330. 2. Aristotles opinion touching the rise of Fountains examined p. 331. 3. The Authors assertion concerning the rise of Fountains The rise of many principal Fountains of the world ib 332. 4. Why Holland is not mountanous p. 333. 5. That the first deluge was not the cause of Hills ib. 334 6. Whence that great quantity of water contained within the bowels of the Earth is derived p. 335. 7. Whence it is that most shores are mountanous Why the Island Ferro is not irrigated with any Rivers Why the Earth is depressed under the torrid Zone and elevated towards the Polars The cause of the multitude of Hills in some Countries and scarcity in others ib. 336. 8. How it is possible for the Sea to penetrate into the bowels of the Earth p. 337. CHAP XII Of the causes of the effects produced by Fountains 1. Whence some Fountains are deleterious The cause of the effect of the Fountain Lethe of Cea Lincystis Arania The causes of foecundation and of rendring barren of other Fountains The causes of the properties of the Fountains of the Sun of the Eleusinian waters of the Fountains of Illyrium Epirus Cyreniaca Arcadia the Holy Cross Sibaris Lycos of the unctious Fountain of Rome and Jacobs Fountain p. 338 339. 2. The causes of the effects of Ipsum and Barnet Wells p. 340. 3. Whence the vertues of the Spaw waters are derived ib. 4. Of the formal causes of Baths 341. CHAP. XIII Of the various Tastes Smells Congelation and Choice of Water 1. Various tastes of several Lakes Fountain and River waters p. 342. 2. The divers sents of waters p. 343. 3. The causes of the said Tastes That the saltness of the Sea is not generated by the broyling heat of the Sun The Authors opinion ib. 4. The causes of the sents of wates p. 345. 5. What Ice is the cause of it and manner of its generation Why some Countries are less exposed to frosts than others that are nearer to the Line ib. 346. 6. The differences of frosts Why a frost doth usually begin and end with the change of the Moon p. 347. 7. The original or rise of frosty minims Why fresh waters are aptest to be frozen How it is possible for the Sea to be frozen p. 348. 8. What waters are the best and the worst the reasons of their excellency and badaess p 349 350. CHAP. XIV Of the commerce of the Ayr with the other Elements 1. How the Air moves downwards VVhat motions the Elements would exercise supposing they enjoyed their Center VVhy the Air doth not easily toss the terraqueous Globe out of its place How the Air is capable of two contrary motions 351 352. 2. That the Air moves continually from East through the South to West and thence back again to the East through the North. p. 353. 3. An Objection against the airs circular motion answered p. 354. 4. The Poles of the Air. ib. 5. The proportion of Air to Fire its distinction into three profundities p. 355 CHAP. XV. Of the production of Clouds 1. VVhat a Cloud is how generated its difference How a Rainbow is produced Whether there appeared any Rainbows before the Floud 356 2. The generation of Rain p. 357. 3. How Snow and Hail are engendred p. 358. 4. The manner of generation of winds ib. to 362. 5 The difference of winds Of Monzones Provincial winds general winds c. Of the kinds of storms and their causes What a mist and a dew are p. 362 to 370. CHAP. XVI Of Earthquakes together with their effects and some strange instances of them 1. VVhat an Earthquake is The manner of its generation The concomitants thereof p. 370. 2. The kinds and differences of Earthquakes ib. 371 372. 3. The proof of the generation of Earthquakes p. 373. 4. Their Effects upon the air p. 374. CHAP. XVII Of fiery Meteors in the Air. 1. Of the generation of a Fools fire a Licking fire Helens fire Pollux
may demand to what Science or Art it belongeth to treat of final Causes I answer That they are treated of in Logick and Moral Philosophy but in a different manner Logick discourseth of final Causes as Notions thereby to direct the understanding in enquiring into the truth of things and Ethicks treats of them as they are dirigible to Good and Happiness III. An Efficient Cause is erroneously divided in a procreating and conservating Cause A procreating cause is by whose force a being is produced A conservating cause is by whose vertue a being is conservated in its Essence I prove that this Division is not real but objective only The dividing Members of a real division must be really distinct from one another But these are not really distinct c. Ergo. The Major is undeniable I confirm the Minor All beings are conservated by the same Causes by which they were procreated Therefore really the same I prove the Antecedence Nutritive causes are conservant causes But Nutritive causes are the same with Procreative causes Ergo. The Minor is evidenced by a Maxim Iisdem nutrimur quibus constamus We are nourished by the same causes by which we do subsist or have our Essence Wherefore Nutritive or Conservant Causes are really for by Nutriture we are conservated or a parte rei the same differing only objectively a parte actus Here you may answer that these Instances are of material causes but not of Efficients To this I reply That no cause can be a conservative cause but a Material Cause As for an Efficient cause I prove it to be no conservating cause That which conservateth a being must conservate its essence namely Matter and Form but Matter and Form are conservated only internally by apposition of that which is like to what was dissipated or which is like to themselves Wherefore an Efficient can be no conservating cause because it acteth only externally or from without A being might be conservated externally if its impairment did befal it from without that is from an external Agent which is only accidental to it An efficient then may Logically be called a conservative cause per Accidens IV. An Efficient is likewise divided in solitary and social A solitary Efficient is which produceth an effect alone or without the assistance of another cause A social cause is which produceth an effect joyntly with another As two Watermen rowing in one Boat are social causes of the moving of the Boat through the water This Division is no less illegal then the other I prove it All beings act alone and in unity as far as they are Causes and although two or more concur to the effect of a being yet they two act formally but as one and their Ratio Agendi is one Ergo formally they are but one as far as they are Causes yet in the foresaid instance as they are men they are two which duplicity is accidental to a cause The same Argument may be urged against the division of a cause in a cause perse and a cause per Accidens in univocal and equivocal in universal and particular V. An Efficient is Internal or External An Internal Efficient is which produceth an effect in it self An external Efficient is which produceth an effect in another This division is stranger then any of the rest The strangeness consisteth in this that thereby a being is capable to act upon it self and consequently upon its like Which if so what can it effect but that which was before It cannot produce a distinct being because it doth not act distinctly but identificatively This granted infers That the Soul being the internal cause of its Faculties as they affirm cannot produce any thing but what is like to it self Consequently that the Faculties are identificated with the soul and thence that a Substance is an Accident and an Accident a Substance 2. A Substance acting upon it self that is upon its sibi simile like for what is more like to a Substance then it self produceth a distinct effect and not its like which is another absurdity following the forementioned Division Iâ— will also follow hence that a substance doth act immediately through it self which is against their own Dictates To remove this last Objection they answer that a Substance may or can and doth act immediately through it self by emanation but can or doth not act by transmutation They describe an emanative action to be whereby an effect is produced immediately without the intervent of an Accident This description doth not distinguish Transmutation from Emanation for transmutation is also whereby an effect is produced without the intervent of an Accident and so transmutation may be as immediate to its Agent as emanation If there is any difference it is this in that emanation is an action not terminating or influent upon any other being but in and upon it self Transmutation is the Termination of its Influence upon another being Pray tell me why emanation may not be as properly called transmutation as not for there is no effect but which is different from its cause and changed by its cause For if it is not changed it remaines the cause still Ergo Emanation is also a Transmutation The Faculties of the Soul are said to be emanative effects Ergo they must be its understanding Faculty only for this only doth not terminate in any other being but in it self As for the other Faculties to wit vital and sensitive they are effects of the soul terminated in other beings Ergo These are no emanative Actions as they affirm them to be That which hath the most probability of being an emanative action and distinct from transmutation is the understanding faculty of the Soul Neither is this action distinct from Transmutation That which doth change the soul is an Object but the soul of it self alone doth not act or cannot act upon it self unless it be changed by an Object for were there no Object the Souls Rational Faculty would be nothing and frustraneous wherefore it is generally held that Angels when created had also notions or species which are objects concreated with their understanding Ergo emanative actions are also transmutative All matter is transient Wherefore the division of matter in transient and immanent is erroneous Transient matter is out of which a being is constituted by transmutation so bloud is the transient matter of flesh Immanent matter is out of which a being is constituted without any transmutation as Wood is the immanent matter of a Ship Here one part of the division is referred to a Natural Production the other to artificial How is this then a regular distribution since its dividing Members ought to be of one Species or kind The same Improbation may be applied against the distribution of matter in sensible and intelligible which distinctions are accidental to matter and therefore may be justly omitted for we ought to insert nothing in a Science but what doth essentialy relate to its Subject Hence Aristotles Precept is in
1 B. of the Parts of Liv. Creat C. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that we ought to divide a being by them parts which are contained in its essence and not by its Accidents The division of Matter in Metaphysical and Physical may be rejected upon the same ground These divisions as they are objective appertain to Logick where only second notions are treated of and are very useful to the directing of Reason VI. Forms are divisible in material and immaterial If material is understood to be that which doth inhere in matter which is its most frequent and ordinary acception for most Philosophers take it in that sense then all worldly beings are material what being is there but which doth inhere in Matter You may say mans soul. The soul of man according to this acception is material But if you take immaterial for that which can or doth exist out of matter then there are immaterial forms Neither can this be naturally for a Natural Form is which giveth an actual specification and numerication to matter If so how can a form give an actual Specification and numerication to matter when it is not united to it I prove that the Form giveth an actual specification and numerication to matter Forma dat esse i. e. Specif Numer non posse esse materiae A Form giveth a being not a power of being to Matter For matter hath the power of being from it self and not from the Form This is true for most Peripateticks hold that Potentia is essential to matter The Soul of man when once freed from its tye to the body ceases to be a Form but therefore doth not cease to continue a being So that I conclude there are immaterial beings but no immaterial Forms It is ridiculous to doubt whether the Soul of man when separated hath an Appetite or Inclination to its Body or to that matter which it did once informate because the soul in its separated estate is a compleat and perfect being and doth not need a Body neither is the Soul a Form in that state Wherefore should it then have an Appetite to its Body Such an Appetite would be in vain You may answer that it wanteth a Subject to inhere or subsist in I grant it and therefore it subsisteth in God VII A Form is improperly divided in an assistent and informating Form because one being is satisfied with one Form for had it two forms it would be a double being 2. That which they intend by an assistent form is coincident with an Efficient Cause CHAP. XXIV Of the Theorems of Causes 1. That a Cause and its Effects are co-existent 2. That there are but three Causes of every Natural Being 3. That there is but one Cause of every Being 4. That all Beings are constituted by one or more Causes 5. That all Causes are really univocal 6. That all Natural Causes act necessarily 7. That the Soul of a Beast acteth necessarily 8. That all Matter hath a Form That Matter is capable of many Forms I. A Cause and its Effect are existent at one and the same time This Theorem is received among most Philosophers who render it thus Posita Causa ponitur Effectus The Cause being stated that is reduced into action its Effect is also stated or produced The Reason depends upon their relation one to the other to whose Relata it is proper to exist at one and the same time according to that trite Maxim Relata mutuo sese ponunt tollunt Relations do constitute and abolish one another II. There are three Causes of every Natural Being whereof one reduced to Action supposeth the others also to be reduced to action The Proof of this is demonstrated by the same Axiom by which the next forementioned was inferred III. There is but one Cause of all Beings A Cause here is taken in a strict sense for that which produceth an effect essentially and really distinct from it self In this Acception is an efficient the only cause of all Beings Matter and Form are no Causes according to this Interpretation but Principles because they do not constitute an effect essentially different from themselves A Cause sometime is taken in a strict sense for that which produceth an Effect different from it self modally and so there are two to wit Matter and Form Lastly A cause as it signifieth in a middle signification participating of each acception comprehends a triplicity of causes viz. An Efficient Matter and Form IV. All beings are constituted by one or more Causes God is of himself and not from any other as from an efficient cause and consisteth of one pure formal cause By formal Cause understand an immaterial being Angels are constituted by two Causes namely by an Efficient and a Form All other Beings are constituted by more V. All Causes are univocal This is to be understood of Efficients only Whatever Effect a Cause produceth it is like to its Form and is formal only For it cannot generate matter that being created Wherefore it cannot produce any thing else but what like to it self and consequently produceth alwaies the same effect whereas an equivocal cause should produce different effects You may demand why it hapneth that many effects are different as we observe in the Sun which by its heat doth produce Vegetables and Animals which are different I answer that the Difference doth result from the diversity of the Matter upon which it acteth and not from the causality that being ever one and the same The diversity of Effects is accidental to the Efficient and therefore not to be allowed of in Sciences VI. All Natural Causes act Necessarily Hence derives this Maxim Natura nunquam errat Nature doth never erre because she acts necessarily Against this Maxim may be objected that Nature erreth in generating a Monster This is no Errour of Nature It might rather be imputed an Errour if when it should produce a Monster it doth not That which acts after the same manner at all times doth not erre But Nature doth act in the same manner at all times Ergo she doth never erre I prove the Minor If she acts differently at any time it is in a Monster But she doth not act differently in a Monster as in the example forenamed of a Dog without Legs she doth through the Efficient cause educe a form out of the matter which she extendeth according to the extent of the subjected matter the matter therefore being deficient in quantity it is accidental to Nature if thereby a being is not brought to the likeness of its Species The Soul of man may be considered either 1. As a Natural Cause and so it acteth also necessarily in giving a Being and Life to the Body For as long as it abideth in the body it cannot but give Life to its Parts 2. As it is above a Natural Cause in that it hath a power of acting voluntarily without the Necessity or Impulse of Nature VII The Soul of a Beast doth act
any further to propose the Opinions of others concerning the first Principles Elements and Constitution of natural Bodies Baptista van Helmont impropriating the knowledge of true Philosophy and Physick to himself alone cals Hippocrates Galen Aristotle and all other wise men Fooles and terms their Dictates figments but withal propounds new foundations of Philosophy and Physick threatning a great danger to those who did obstinately adhere to their Tenents and promising an infinite treasure to such as should receive his Wherefore I shall first contractly relate his Philosophick Principles then examine them Fol. 33. of his Ort. Med. Dist. 3. He reproves the heathens for falsly teaching the Number of Elements to be four as also for asserting three Principles to wit Matter Form and Privation All things saith he are idle empty and dead and therefore stand only in need of a vital and seminal Principle which besides life have also an order in them He denieth the four Genders of Causes the first matter the causality of a form receiving it for an effect alone Further he states only two causes namely Matter and her internal Agent Efficient or Archeus In the same place he terms Matter a co-agent not a subject which he saith was improperly attributed to her by Philosophers And in Dist. 21. he denieth the congress of the four Elements yea not of two of them to concur to the constitution of mixt bodies His two Causes or Principles he cals bodies in one place in another as you may read below he detracts it from the latter The first of the said Principles is called ex quo out of which the latter per quod through which Dist. 23. he concludes water to be a beginning out of which initium ex quo and the Ferment to be the seminal beginning through which that is Disposing whence the Semen Seed is immediately produced in the matter which it having acquired becometh through it life or the media materia the middle matter of that being extending to the period of the thing it self or to the last matter Dist. 24. The Ferment is a created formal being which is neither a Substance or Accident but neither in the manner of light fire magnal forms c. created from the beginning of the world in the places of their Monarchy for to prepare and excite the semina seeds and to precede them I consider the ferments to be truly and actually existing and to be individually distinguisht through Species kinds Wherefore the ferments are Gifts and Roots establisht from the Lord the Creator to all ages being sufficient and durable through their continual propagation that they might raise and make seeds proper to themselves out of the water to wit wherein he gave the earth a virtue of germinating he gave it as many ferments as there are expectations of fruits Wherefore the ferments produce their own seeds and not others That is each according to its Nature and Properties as the Poet saith For nature is underneath the earth Neither doth all ground bring forth all things For in all places there is a certain order placed from God a certain manner and unchangeable root of producing some determinate effects or fruits not only of Vegetables but also of Minerals and Insects For the bottomes of the earth and its Properties differ and that for some cause which is connatural and coeval to that earth This I do attribute namely to the formal ferment that is created therein Whence consequently several fruits bud forth and break out of themselves in several places whose seeds we see being carried over to other places come forth more weakly like to an undercast child That which I have said concerning the ferment cast into the earth the same you shall also find in the Ayr and the Water The difference which there is between the ferment and efficient is that the former is the remote Principle of Generation and produceth the latter which is the semen which is the immediate active Principle of a thing Here you have a Synopsis of his Philosophy which in the progress throughout his Book he repeats ad nauseam usque II. When I first took a view of the Title of his Volume which was The Rise of Medicine that is The unheard of Beginnings of Physick A new Progress of Medicine to a long Life for the revenge of Diseases by the Author John Babtista van Helmont Governour in Merode Royenlorch Oorschot Pellines c. He might be Governour of himself in those places but not of c. I wonder what those places signified since the people of Brussel admired upon what his Heir liveth This old man in his life-time was strangely melancholy and by Fits transported into Phanatick Extasies questionless had he been of a Religious House he would much have added by help of these Raptures to the incredible Bulk of the Golden Legends but his Daemon turned them to Physick He had a great Design in Christening his Son Mercurius to have made another Trismegistus of him and not unlikely for wherever he is he is all-knowing I was much abused by the Title of his Tract hoping to have found a new sound Archologia and lighting upon ignorance of Terms abuse of words but a most exact Orthography limiting almost every second word with a Comma or a stop as being measured by his asâ—matick breathing The Fame which he deserved from his Countrey-folkes was equal to a famous Mountebank The Church-yard was the surer Register of his Patients His Arrogance and Boastings were Symptomes of his depravate conceptions His Cruelty fell it last upon his own bowels through which he lost his Life for the neglect of very ordinary means This is the account I had at Brussels of his Life and Transactions which I thought was not unworthy of my insertion in this place thereby to disadvise some from a rash belief to his vain words that so they might avoid the same Dangers and Cruelties upon their own and other mens Lives III. But in reference to his Dictates He rejects the number of four Elements without proposing any Argument for Confutation He denieth the existence of a first matter also without giving proof for the contrary Both which we have already demonstrated The form is an effect saith he and not a cause this argueth his misseapprehension of a cause and effect for most Authors agree that a cause in a large sense is whatever produceth an effect now the form produceth an effect in giving a specification to the whole It seems he intends nothing for a cause unless it be really distinct from its effect which in a strict and proper sense may be allowed but if granted nevertheless he is in an Errour for asserting Matter and the Archeus to be causes neither of which are really distinct from the being constituted by them Further it is no reason that because the form is an effect therefore it can be no cause for all beings in respect to their own production are effects and yet
only obducted in its extent according to the force of the flame and when it is so stretcht as it were through the fires obduction it receives the force of the flame partly only because it is contracted by expelling the extrinsick bodies contained within it so yields to the fires obduction The clearer the ayr is the greater light it makes because it containing no extraneous bodies cannot contract it self from the obtension of the fire by expelling such bodies but being totally continuous it is obtended so far as the said ayr is continuous and according to the force of the fire The reason then why a light is terminated is through the contraction of the ayr and oft times through the density of an intermediate body as of thick vapours and exhalations According to the diminution of the flame the ayr relaxes and so the light diminisheth V. The cause why a dense body is uncapable of generating a light is by reason it is contiguous and cannot be obducted or stretcht as it were I have said That that is light which moves our eye-sight even hence I wil sensibly prove to you that light is nothing but a continuous obduction of ayr Suppose that the optick spirits are for the greatest part an ayr to which the external ayr when the Eye-lids are open is joyned in continuity and becomes one continuous body with the optick ayr in a manner as when one float of water toucheth another they become continuately one Wherefore then when the ayr is continuously obducted as far as where it is continuated to our optick ayr it must necessarily also obduct and stretch the same optick ayr because it is continuous to it That light moves the sight by stretching the optick ayr is evident in that when we look against the light although its origin is far off we feel a stretching in our eyes 2. VVhen we have wearied our selves by seeing we complain that we feel a stretching in our eyes In case the ayr is not obducted so far as to reach our eyes then we do not see it as when a thing is out of sight the reason why we cannot see it although nothing is interposed to hinder is because its stretching doth not reach as far as our Eyes Hence you may observe that visus non fit emittendo sed recipiendo motum flammae sight is not actuated through the emission of beams from our sight but through the receiving of the motion of a flame and more through suffering patiendo non agendo than acting VI. The fire of a Flame is to some extent dispersed through the Ayr and so far it heats the Ayr nevertheless its enlightning is much further extended The Sun which is the greatest Flame its heat in the Summer reaches to us in a very intense quality its light would reach a hundred or more times further then it were the tract of the Ayr extended to a larger quantity but because it is not therefore its heat in the torrid Zone and in the temperate ones in the Summer reaches as far as its light which although it doth is not therefore to be accounted the essence of Light as some have simply imagined So that it was no less Mistake to believe that the Sun's light could be precipitated in a Glass and some to have collected of it no less then two Ounces and half a day The vertue of this Precipitate is described to penetrate into the substance of the hardest Metal I do believe that it is very possible to precipitate such small bodies constituted out of the fiery emissions of the Sun whose vertue cannot but be very penetrative through the predominance of fire in them but nevertheless it is not the light which is precipitated but fiery substances neither is fire the light it self but the cause of it Light is a property following the union of a flame with the Ayr wherefore the Ayr is rather to be taken for the principal Subject VII Light is not the primar cause of all the effects produced by the Stars but their temperament and exsuperating heat Accidentally or privatively their remoteness and remission of heat may be a cause of coldness and incrassation of the Ayr and consequently of its obscurity The light of the Sun doth not comfort the vital Spirits neither doth it act immediately upon them at all although through its heat it may help and excite the vital heat of some frigid temperatures The light hath only a power of acting immediately and per se upon the Optick spirits and through altering them may prove a mediate cause of Vital and Animal Alterations I prove it If you go forth out of the dark into the light you feel a distention or rather an obtension of your visive spirits return again out of the light into the dark and you will first perceive a relaxation and afterwards a contraction of your sight The mediated effect of light is a quickning of the Vital and Animal Spirits which are moved by continuation from the obtension of the Optick Ayr. A sudden great light causes a bursting of the Air which happens when the Air is so much obtended that it can stretch no more and then of a necessity it must burst A bursting is a sudden breaking of a body throughout all its dimensions and parts as it were The air is bursted through a great lightning or a flash before a thunder which if the same bursting do reach diametrically to the optick air of an open eye it will certainly blind yea sometime kill a man because the same bursting is continued unto and upon the optick spirits and sometimes is also further continuated that it bursteth the whole Treasure of the Animal spirits which necessarily must effect an Apoplexy A man coming forth suddenly out of the dark into a great light is often struck blind because his optick Spirits are bursted through the sudden and strong obtention or if it obtends the optick Air to the next lower degree so as it may not cause a bursting it then produceth a dazling of the sight that is an over-stretching of the optick spirits VIII How light renders all things visible is a matter worthy of Enquiry The air being thus obtended and made visible through light is terminated every where about by the surfaces of terminated bodies These terminated surfaces resist the obtended air and according to their several degrees of mixture or of fundamental light and darkness do attenuate refract diminish contract or condensate the obtension If the surface of the resisting object is continuous and weighty it attenuates and refracts or reflects the light of the air and of that nature is water for water being adunited to air in continuity doth not only sustain the obtension of the air but also through its reflexion obtends the obtended air yet more and so the obtension upon the water must be greater by reason it stops the obducted air more then any thing else wherefore its light is thinner but withal greater
which is the raising of a feeling It is moved by being diducted either by depression or weight or any other thick continuous diduction So that whatever is thin light or rare doth effuge the sense of the tact hence it is that the air thin vapours exhalations or spirits are not immediately felt That which doth gently stir quaver these tangent spirits is said to feel pleasing and delightful Hence it is that kissing seems to feel so pleasing to many because that hapning to a thin part being withal of an exquisite feeling where the spirits being gently stirred and quavered by the application of other lips doth cause a delightful feeling That this is so is testified by most who kiss for a delight in that they do at that instant of the application of lips feel a creeping quaking spirit in their lips The same delightful feeling happens also to a Dog applying his chops to a Bitches taile A soft object doth gently stir the tangent spirits of the extremities of the fingers and is perfectly pleasing and therefore many men love to handle and feel boys and girles cheeks That which doth so much diduct the tactile spirits as to divide and burst them doth subvert the tact and causes a pain As for the other differences of tangibles they are taken from the degree and property of raising feeling in tangibles so we say a thing feels heavy light hot cold moist dry fiery waterish earthy hard soft rough smooth c. the description of all which I do omit as having set them down above A gentle titillation is one of the delightful tangibles which gentleness if otherwise exceeding and inferring violence doth become painful as appears in the French scab or manginess Titillation sometimes insers violence not by dividing the tangent spirits through it self and immediately but by accident through gathering the spirits too much together through its light appulse to which they do accur in great quantity and oft do as it were thereby overstrain or overreatch themselves It seldom happens that ones proper feeling doth tickle any part of his body as his knee or palm of the hand But if another do gently touch it it tickles him the reason is because that which toucheth a part must be of a certain distant temperament from the part felt which is not in a mans own self but in every other man besides ones fansie adds much to it Natural Philosophy The SECOND PART The Second Book CHAP. I. Of the Commerce of the Earth with the other Elements 1. The Authors purpose touching his Method in the Preceding Book and a further Explication of some terms made use of there 2. That the Earth is the Center of the world Copernicus his Astronomy examined 3. The Earths Division into three Regions and their particular extent 4. What Bodies are generated in the third Region of the Earth and the manner of their Production That the Coldness of the Earth is the principal efficient of Stones and Metals How a Stone is generated in the Kidneyes and in the Bladder A rare Instance of a Stone takenout of the Bladder The generation of a Flint Marble Jaspis Cornelian Diamond Ruby Gold Copper Iron Mercury Silver The places of Mines 5. Of the transmutation of Metals Whether Silver be transmutable into Gold Whether Gold may be rendered potable The Effects of the supposed Aurum potabile and what it is 6. Of earthy saltish Juices The Generation of Common Salt Salt-Gemme Saltpeter Allom Salt-Armoniack and Vitriol and of their kinds 7. Of earthy unctious Juices viz. Sulphur Arsenick Amber Naptha Peteroyl Asphaltos Oyl of Earth Sea-coal and Jeatstone of their kinds and vertues 8. Of the mean Juyces of the Earth viz. Mercury Antimony Marcasita Cobaltum Chalcitis Misy and Sory Whether any of these mean Juices are to be stated Principles of Metals I. HItherto I have discoursed of the Elements their Production Forms Second and Third Single and Mixt Qualities with intention to have declared their Dissolution from the Chaos and separation from one another and therefore I did only mention so much touching their nature as might suffice to discover the reason and causes of their effects produced by them through their dissolution At that time and place I thought it unseasonable to demonstrate the causes of their only apparent contrary motions and effects whereby they return to one another and exercise a mutual commerce between each other and seem but really do not to change into one anothers Nature all which together with the particular relation of each Element as they are consisting at present of local motion in general and in particular of Attraction and Repuision and of Meteors I shall endeavour to propose to you by a sensible Demonstration Why I judged it unseasonable to treat of these Particulars above was because I would not oppress your Phansie with seeming contrary Notions but really agreeing to a hair and so might have endangered the Conception and Retention of the precedent ones which now I may with more safety attempt supposing you to have weighed the Reasons and to have narrowly searcht into their meaning Neither shall I repeat any thing of what hath been set down already but proceed where I left off only since now I may with security discover my meaning of these Expressions of moving from the Center to the Circumference and to the Center from the Circumference both which I have hitherto made use of for to perduce you to a true apprehension of the Chaos and its dissolution By moving from the Center to the Circumference was not intended a deserting of the proper Center of those Elements that were said so to move but 1. To move so from their Center as to tend and be diffused thence to the Circumference into the greatest tenuity or rarity but not to desert their proper Center for then they could not move at all because all motions are peracted upon an immoveable which must be a Center 2. To move from the circumference to the center is not to desert the circumference be reduced by penetration into a central point as Mathematicians do imagine but to be contracted to a Center from a circumference for to gain the greatest dense weight or weighty crassitude like others are diffused for to gain the greatest rarity or tenuity and that naturally for density or crassitude cannot be attained by any other manner then by a contraction to a Center and rarity and tenuity but by a diffusion from a Center 3. Intending by moving from a Center to a Circumference to signifie a tendency to the greatest contiguous rarity or continuous levity I do not exclude but that such light Elements in a confusion with opposite Elements as it happened in the Chaos may also tend from a Center of Magnitude because they are expelled by the overpowering weighty Elements expelling them from their Center and so in this signification I have sometimes intended by moving from the Center a deserting of the Center
ground into whose room a great depth of water is succeeded undermining it all about The Island Ferro is not irrigated atop with any fluent moisture as Lake River or Springs except only with the abundant droppings of a tree drawing moisture from a great depth or by collecting the dew of the air which sufficeth to quench the thirst of all the Inhabitants and their Cattel because consisting throughout of high Mountains their sand lying very close deep and heavy doth detain the water underneath them The earth is much more depressed under the torrid Zone and as much more raised towards the Poles because the Ocean being gathered into a vast body under the forementioned Zone depresseth all the land under it and near to it with one collected and united force of weight towards the Poles which doth undoubtedly assure me that under both Poles Artick and Antartick the firm land doth stick out far above the waters And questionless Greenland is protracted quite throughout the Northern polar Region The Mountain Serra Leona in AEthiopia bearing up to the height of the clouds wherewith the top is alwaies beset although raised within the torrid Zone is suffulted by a great gulph collected through the meeting of two or more parts of the Sea under ground And whole Africa seems to be inflated into high mountains from the limits of AEgypt until the farthest part of the Atlantick mountain through communication of Lakes which again arise out of the concourse of waters propelled from the Mediterranean Eruthrean AEthiopian and Atlantick Seas Arabia is likewise lofty through hills vaunting upon waters immitted from the Persian and Arabian Gulphs Muscovia and Lithuania are for the greater part Champian Countries because their soil is too much soakt for to be raised up into hills 2. By reason of the multiplicity of Lakes and Rivers through which the subterraneous waters are vented Sweden Norway Scania are very abundantly watered with Lakes and Rivers the Sea upon those Coasts exceeds in depth the length of Ships Cables The reason is because those waters are very much intended in their pressure downwards through the vast number of cold and frosty minima's raining down from the North Pole VIII Before I digress from the subject of this Chapter I am only to shew you the possibility of Marin waters their pressure out from the depth of the Ocean in to the innermost parts of the earth This I shall easily accomplish in mentioning that the force of fresh waters within the land have moulded through the ground the length of many Leagues if so the same is much more possible to salt water The River Niger bores through a heavy dense and deep ground the length of 60 miles before it evacuates it self into the Lake Borno The River Nuba doth likewise force a Cavern many miles long into the earth The Spaniards vaunt excessively of a long Bridge whereon ten thousand Goats and Sheep reap their pasture and is nothing else but the passing of the River Anas alias Guadiana the dimension of 8 or 9 Leagues underground beginning to disappear near Medelina The Tigris runs her self under ground on one side of the mount Taurus and comes up again on the other side and beyond the Lake Thorpes hides it self again within the earth 18 miles further Camden in his Britannia makes observation of the River Mole in Surrey diving under ground near white hill and appearing again a mile or two thence near Letherhed bridge Historians tell us that the Alphaeus floats secretly under ground as far as Sicily where with its appearance makes choice of a new name viz. Arethusa famous for gulping up of offals that had been cast into the Alphaeus at the Olimpick Games usual every fifth year The Danow runs some miles under ground before it flows into the Sava Upon the top of the mount Stella is a certain Lake near 12 Leagues distant from the Sea which oft vomits up wracks of Ships that were cast away at Sea CHAP. XII Of the causes of the effects produced by Fountains 1. Whence some Fountains are deleterious The cause of the effect of the Fountain Lethe of Cea Lincystis Arania The causes of foecundation and of rendring barren of other Fountains The causes of the properties of the Fountain of the Sun of the Eleusinian waters of the Fountains of Illyrium Epyrus Cyreniaca Arcadia the Holy Cross Sibaris Lycos of the unctious Fountain of Rome and Jacobs Fountain 2. The causes of the effects of Ipsum and Barnet Wells 3. Whence the vertues of the Spaw waters are derived 4. Of the formal causes of Baths 1. THe Fountains of Thrace Arcadia Sarmatia Armenia Lydia and Sicilia are deleterious through the permixtion of crude arsernical juyces transpiring out of the earth The same causes operate the same effects in the Founts of Wolchenstein Valentia Berosus c. The Lethe of Boeotia owes its effects to crude Mercurial vapours immixt within its substance Another in the same Countrey produceth a contrary effect through a succinous exhalation The Fountains of Cea and Susae differ little in causality from the Lethe The Lincystis inebriates the brain through repletion by sulphurous exhalations The Fountain of Arania makes use of crude nitrous juyces for the accomplishing of its effects The Fountain which Solinus affirms to conduce to foecundity must be a thorowly attenuated and well concocted water like to that of the Nile The other opposite to this in operation must be very Saturnal A sulphureous Nitre or a mixture of Sulphur and Nitre into one close juyce dispersed through the waters of the Fountain of the Sun among the Garamantes renders them very cold in the day time because the Nitre then predominating condenseth and incrassates the waters the more because its sulphureous parts which do otherwise rarefie them are through the Suns beams extracted disunited and dispersed Whereas in the night season the sulphureous parts benâ—g united through the condensing cold of the night and condensation of the nitrous particles turn into an internal flame causing that fervent heat The Eleusinian waters are irritated to a fermentation of heterogeneous mineral juyces through the percussion of the air by a sharp musical string whereby through continuation the waters are likewise percussed and its contenta stirred In the same manner is the next related fountain cast into an exestuation through the shrill acute vibrating and penetrating percussion of the air by the lips whereas the walking about stirring the air but obtusely cannot effect such a penetrative or acute motion The Fountain of Illyrium contains secret Vitriolat sulphureous flames within its substance whereby it proves so consuming The Fountains of Epyrus and Cyreniaca vary in heat by reason of the greater or lesser dispersing and rarefying or uniting and condensing of their sulphureous flames Springs remain cool in the Summer through the rarefaction of their fiery spirits exhaling and passing out of the ground in the Summer they produce a small warmth through the condensation of their igneous
formally distinct from singulars p. 45. 3. Singulars are primum cognita p. 46. 4. Universals are notiora nobis ib. CHAP. XI Of the Extream Division of a Being 1. Another Division of a Being p. 48. 2. What the greatest or most universal is ib. 3. What the greater universal is ib. 4. What a less universal is ib. 5. What the least universal is ib. 6. How the fore-mentioned Members are otherwise called ib. CHAP. XII Of the Modes or Parts of a Being 1. What a Mode is Whence a Part is named a Part. Whence a Mode is termed a Mode The Scotch Proverb verified p. 49. 2. The Number and Kinds of Modes What an Essence or a whole being is p. 50. 3. That a Mode is the Summum Genus of all Beings and their Parts ib. 4. The vulgar Doctrine of Modes rejected ib. 5. That a Substance is a Mode of a Being p. 51. 6. That a Mode is an univocal Gender to a Substance and an Accident p. 52. 7. That a Substance is an Accident and all Accidents are Substances The difference between Subsistence and Substance ib. CHAP. XIII Of the Attributes of a Being 1. Why a property is so called p. 53. 2. The Difference which Authors hold between Passion and Attribute ib. 3. That Passion and Attribute as to their Names imply the same thing ib. 4. That Attributes are really the same with their Essence That all Attributes of a Being as they are united are the same with their Essence or Being p. 54. 5. That the Attributes are formally distinct from one another ib. 6. That that which we conceive beyond the Attributes of a Being is nothing ib. 7. What an Essence is ib. CHAP. XIV Of the Kinds and Number of the Attributes of a Being 1. Whence the Number of the Attributes of a Being is taken p. 55. 2. The Number of Attributes constituting a Being ib. 3. All Attributes are convertible one with the other and each of them and all of them in union with an Essence or Being ib. 4. That all the Attributes of a Being are equall in Dignity and Evidence ib. 5. That the Order of Doctrine concerning these Attributes is indifferent ib. CHAP. XV. Of Essence and Existence 1. That Essence and Existence are generally received for Principles p. 56. 2. That Essence is no Principle ib. 3. That Existence is no Principle ib. 4. That Existence is according to the opinion of the Author p 57. 5. That Existence is intentionally distinct from Essence ib. 6. That Essence is perfecter than Existence ib. 7. That Existence is formally distinct from Substance ib. CHAP. XVI Of Unity 1. That Unity superaddes nothing Positive to a Being p. 58. 2. What Unity is That Unity properly and per se implies a Positive accidently and improperly a Negative What is formally imported by Unity ib. 3. That Unity is illegally divided in unum per se and unum per accidens ib. CHAP. XVII Of Truth 1. Why Truth is called transcendent p. 59. 2. What Truth is ib. 3. An Objection against the definition of Truth That a Monster is a true being That God although he is the remote efficient Cause of a Monster neverthelesse cannot be said to be the Cause of evil p. 60. 4. Austin 's definition of Truth p. 61. 5. That Fashood is not definable How it may be described ib. CHAP. XVIII Of Goodness 1. What Goodness is The Improbation of several Definitions of Goodness p. 62. 2. The Difference between Goodness and perfection ib. 3. What evil is ib. 4. What the absolute active End of Goodness is ib. 5. That Goodness is improperly divided in Essential Accidental and Integral Goodness p. 63. 6. How Goodness is properly divided ib. 7. That the Division of Good in Honest Delectable c. doth belong to Ethicks ib. CHAP. XIX Of Distinction 1. The Authors description of Distinction That the privative sense of not being moved is a Note of Distinction whereby the understanding distinguishes a Non Ens from an Ens. That the Positive sense of being moved in another manner than another Ens moves the understanding is a Note of Distinction between one Being and another p. 63. 2. How Distinction is divided What a real Distinction is p. 64. 3. What a Modal difference is ib. 4. That the vulgar description of a real Distinction is erroneous ib. 5. That the terms of a Distinction between two or more real Beings are requisite both or more to exist p. 65. 6. That one term of Distinction although in Existence cannot be exally predicated of another not existent Oviedo and Hurtado reamined ib. 7. What a formal Distinction is à Parte actus and how otherwise called ib. 8. What a Distinctio Rationis is How otherwise called p. 67. CHAP. XX. Of Subsistence 1. What Subsistence is What it is to be through it self from it self and in it self p. 68. 2. That a Nature cannot be conservated by God without Subsistence That the Transubstantiation of Christs Body and Bloud into Bread and Wine according to the supposition of the Papists is impossible Oviedo 's Argument against this Position answered ib. 3. The kinds of Subsistences p. 69. 4. What Termination is ib. 5. What Perfection is ib. CHAP. XXI Of remaing modes of a Being 1. What Quantity is p. 70. 2. What the kinds of Quantity are ib. 3. What Quality is ib. 4. What Relation is ib. 5. What Action is ib. 6. What Paspon is ib. 7. What Situation is ib. 8. What Duration is ib. CHAP. XXII Of Causes 1. What a Cause is That the Doctrine of Causes belongeth to Metaphysicks p. 71. 2. Wherein a Cause and Principle differ ib. 3. What an internal Cause is What Matter is ib. 4. What a Form is and how it is divided p. 72. 5. What an external Cause is ib. CHAP. XXIII Of the Kinds of Causes 1. The Number of real Causes That a final Cause is no real Cause The Causality of Matter and Form p. 73. 2. The Division of an Efficient p. 74. 3. That an Efficient is erroneously divided in a procreating and conservating Cause ib. 4. That the Division of a Cause into Social and Solitary is illegal ib. 5. That the Division of an efficient Cause into Internal and External is absurd p. 75. 6. That all Forms are Material 77. 7. That there are no assistent Forms p. 78. CHAP. XXIV Of the Theorems of Causes 1. That a Cause and its Effects are co-existent p. 78. 2. That there are but three Causes of every Natural Being ib. 3. That there is but one Cause of every Being ib. 4. That all Beings are constituted by one or more Causes p. 79. 5. That all Causes are really univocal ib. 6. That all Natural Causes act necessarily ib. 7. That the Soul of a Beast acteth necessarily p. 80. 8. That all Matter hath a Form That Matter is capable of many Forms p. 81. The FIRST PART The Third Book CHAP. I. Of Powers according to the Peripateticks 1. THe Opinion of
it self Neither is that first or immediate likeness of a real being properly a likeness but rather an Impression made by its presential action whereas a likeness is properly that which is abstracted from the Impression already made by a real being and in the absence of it that is when we are not employed in the understanding of a real being So that a proper likeness is between two beings formally different from one another I will illustrate this by an example Frame a Likeness upon an Impression of a real being as of a Dog as long as that Impression lasteth you cannot make a Likeness upon it for we can exercise but one act of the understanding faculty at once For one formal power exerciseth but one formal act It is then necessary that the Impression should be finished by the cessation of the alteration of that real being upon the Sensories which I call the absence of a real being a parte rei or the intermission of understanding a real being a parte actus Intellectus The Impression being finisht by the absence of that real being namely of the Dog the understanding by a reflexe and mediate Likeness upon that Impression may by another action relate that likeness abstracted from that Impression to that same Dog again which action is a distinct operation of the mind formally differing from that first action of receiving an Impression and so that Dog framed in the understanding is like to the first Impression of that real Dog again Where observe that this Likeness is not the same Impression which that Dog made upon the Sensories but a being abstracted in the passive understanding by the Active of the same likeness to that same Impression III. Another Argument to prove the formality of an Objective being to consist in a likeness to a real being is this As Beasts and Men are formally distinct in their Essence so also they are formally distinct in their formal Operations Hence I proceed thus The perceiving of a real being is proper to a Beast the perceiving of an objective being is only proper unto men Wherefore as them two operations are formally different so are their Acts which is the perceiving of a real being and of a formal being and consequently an Objective being doth differ from a real being These Operations being supposed to be formally different I say that that which makes them formally different is the Ratio formalis of each That which argues or makes a being to be real is its perception by the animal Senses This is evident because Beasts who do perceive and discern real beings for they discern Grass from water their own Stable from another which they cannot perceive but by their senses Ergo the perception by animal sense is the Ratio formalis of a real being That which makes an Objective being is that whereby a man is distinct from a Beast which is a power of framing likenesses by a reflexion upon the Animal perception or Impression and is an act whereby a man is formally distinct from a Beast For a Beast cannot frame any Likeness Ergo The Formality of an Objective being doth consist in a Likeness to a Real being You may Object that you can apprehend a being existing in your mind to be a real being Ergo Whatever is thought is not thought to be like to a real being but somthing may be thought to be a real being I Answer That that which you think to be a real being you think it to be like to a real being and because of that you say it is a real being For example Suppose you think the Pope to be a real man your thinking of him to be so is nothing else but your thinking him to be like to a man and therefore you say he is a man Moreover although an objective being consisteth in a likeness to a real being the Conclusion thence is not that that which is an objective being is no real being that is that hath no real being for its foundation for the definition doth imply it neither are you to conclude that an objective being is a contradictorily opposite to a real being that is that an objective being doth not respond to a real being because a real being doth not exist in that manner of conjunction as an objective being is somtime conceived viz. a Dog-cat is an Ens Rationis now the apprehending of these both together that is one a top the other doth not make them formally and essentially distinct from each other supposing them to be conceived distinctly for that is but accidental to them and in effect they are conceived distinctly in the same manner as I have declared in the Sixth Chapter This then being granted to be accidental to an Objective being we must necessarily suppose each of them singly viz. the Dog and the Cat existing at present only in the understanding to be an objective being What will you call them beings real beings which now are existent only in your understanding and cannot move your cognoscible faculty really from without at the same time when you know them from within Further supposing that each Component of a compounded ens rationis is an Ens Rationis as formally it is for how can a whole compounded ens rationis be said to be an whole Ens Rationis unless its parts are likewise Entia Rationis Nihil est in effectu quin prius suerit in causis there is nothing contained in the effect but what was before existent in its Causes and such as the effect is such must the Cause have been it is impossible that you can think or conceive any such components but which are respondable to a real being Neither is it proper to call that being which you have conceived in your mind to be like to a real being although that real being be before you a real being because now it is objective and existent in the active Intellect moving the passive Intellect actually But in case you leave that Objective being and reflect your senses to that same being which is before then that being which doth now move your sensual cognoscibility is said to be a real being But here you may say that an objective being is formally different from a real being wherefore an Objective being ought not so much as to have a power of existing really which according to this Discourse it hath and therefore the fore-stated Definition of an Objective is not to be allowed I Answer That an Objective being is formally different from a real being and is impossible ever to be formally a real being For in that I assert a being to be Objective I assert that it is not real neither can an Objective being quatenus objective be real quatenus real Lastly Is a Mule more or less an ens rationis because it is generated from different Species or constituted in unity by partâ— of a different Species Certainly no. So neither is a Hirco cervus Goat-stagge more or less an
adorned with that variety of Accidents it is probable that Nature hath bestowed them for Action say they and not for nought They do not only allow one power to a Substance which might suffice but a multitude yea as many as there are varieties of acts specifically differing from one another effected through a Substance This leaneth upon an Argument of theirs thus framed The Soul being indifferent to divers Acts there must be somthing superadded by which it is determined to produce certain Acts. Neither is this Opinion deficient in Authorities of Learned Philosophers Averrhoes Thomas Aq. Albertus magn Hervaeus Apollinaris and others consenting thereunto Dionysius also in his Book concerning divine Names teacheth that Celestial Spirits are divisible into their Essence Vertue or Power and Operation III. The said powers are not only affixt to the Souls Essence but are also formally and really distinct from it They are perswaded to a formal distinction because else we might justly be supposed to will when we understand and to understand when we will or to tall when we smell and so in all others They are moved to a real distinction by reason that all powers in a Substance are really distinct from its Matter and Form Weight and Lightness which are Powers inherent in the Elements whereby they encline to the Center or decline from it are not the Matter of Earth and Fire nor their forms and therefore they are really distinct from their Essence IV. These Powers are concreated with the soul and do immediately flow from her Essence An Argument whereby to prove this is set down by Thom. Aq. among his Quaest. Powers are accidentary forms or Accidents properly belonging to their Subject and concreated with it giving it also a kind of a being It is therefore necessary that they do arise as Concomitants of its Essence from that which giveth a substantial and first being to a Subject Zabarel de Facult an Lib. 1. Cap. 4. sheweth the dependance of the powers from the Soul to be as from their efficient cause from which they do immediately flow not by means of a transmutation or Physical Action which is alwaies produced by motion Others add that the Soul in respect to its faculties may be also counted a Material Cause because it containeth her faculties in her self and a final Cause the faculties being allotted to her as to their End V. Immaterial Powers are inherent in the Soul as in their agent or fountain Material Faculties as the Senses Nourishing Faculty and the like are inserted in the Matter yet so far only as it is animated Hence doth Aristotle call the latter Organical Powers from their inherence in the Organs VI. Powers are distinguisht through their Acts and Objects to which they tend and by which they are moved to act For example Any thing that is visible moveth the fight and is its proper Object which doth distinguish it from the other Senses and Powers which are moved by other Objects Thus far extends the Doctrine of Aristotle touching Powers which although consisting more in Subtilities and Appearances then Evidences and Realities notwithstanding I thought meet to expose to your view since most Modern Authors do persist in the same and thence to take occasion to examine the Contents thereof in these brief subsequent Positions By the way I must desire the Reader to remember that the distinction of Powers from their Subject is commonly treated of in the Doctrine of the Soul and solely applied to it there being not the least doubt made of it elsewhere Wherefore I have also proposed the same as appliable to the Soul but nevertheless shall make further enquiry into it so far as it doth concern all Matters in general CHAP. II. Of all the usual Acceptions of Power 1. The Etymology of Power The Synonima's of Power 2. The various Acceptions of Power 3. What a Passive Natural Power and a Supernatural Passive or Obediential Power is 4. Various Divisions of Power I. THe unfolding the name is an Introduction to the knowledge of the thing it self and therefore it will not be amiss to give you the Etymology of Power 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Power is derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I can or have in my power So Potentia from Possum signifying the same Power in English hath its original from Pouvoir in French noting the like viz. to can or be able Power Vertue Might Strength and Faculty are Synonima's or words of one Interpretation Thus of â—ntimes we make enquiry what Vertue Strength Power or Faculty hath such or such an Herb that is what can it effect II. The Acception of the word Power is very ambiguous 1. Sometime it is understood passively for a disposition whereby a Substance is apt to receive the strength of an Agent 2. Actively for that through which a being can act 3. It s signification doth vary much according to the Subject which it doth respect as when we say a being in power that is a being which is not actually but yet may or can be So likewise a Cause in power is which doth not actually produce an effect but which can produce one Zabarel remarketh a double Acception of Power 1. Improperly it is taken for a Power which is joyned to its Act Thus we say of a man who actually walketh that he can walk 2. Properly it is attributed only to a Power which doth precede its Act Thus we say a man is a Logician when he can be one III. A Passive Power as it is capable to receive a Natural Act is called a disposition As it may receive a Supernatural Act that is an Act from a Supernatural Cause it is then named an Obediential Power The Power which was inherent in Lots Wife of receiving the Form of a Pillar of Salt was an Obediential Power IV. Again those Powers are either Natural Violent or Neutral A Natural Power is such which is agreeable to its Nature as the power in Fire of ascending is Natural to it A violent power is which is disagreeing to the Nature of its Subject as in fire there is a violent Power of moving downward A Neutral power is which is neither the one or the other but participates of both Such is the power in fire of moving circularly A Power may be understood either for a Logical power which is nothing else but a non-repugnance or for a Physical power which is the same with a Natural disposition or for a Moral Power which is nothing else but the Will Lastly in Metaphysicks it is that which is presupposed to be in an actus entitativus There is also mention made in Philosophy of an Objective Power which is not much different from a Non-repugnance or a Logical Power but expresly it is a Possibility of existing in a being which the understanding doth give it before its Existence Many more Additions of Power might be proffered as that a Power is either Created or Increated Accidental or Substantial
acts through a Power as one of its Parts for as I proved a Power is a Mode of a Substance or one of its Parts and therefore it is to be counted as if it acted through it self immediately because the Act of the Part is attributed to the whole So they say a Horse runs because he runs by meanes of some of his Parts namely his Legs nevertheless it is attributed to the whole thing But take it how you will that which a Substance doth effect through one or more of its Parts is effected immediately through it self because its Part or Parts are it self Wherefore if a Substance acted through its power as a being really distinct from it self these Inconveniences would necessarily ensue 1. That a being should exist without an Operation for if a Substance did not act through it self but only through its superadded power then it self must exist without an Operation which thwarts that Maxim Omne quodest est propter Operationem 2. Substances would be censured less noble then their Accidents for that which acteth is more noble then that which acteth not 3. An Accident then would be supposed to be the Efficient of a Substance which contradicts another Maxim Qualis Causa talis Effectus Such as the Cause is such is its Effect 4. It supposeth that a Substance should be generated for an Accident and not an Accident for a Substance for since that all beings are for an Operation it remaines that its Operation can be nothing else but to be a Subject to an Accident 5. Accidents are said to be superadded to a Substance Ergo according to their Philosophy its power was also superadded The antecedence and consequence are false I prove the falsity of the Antecedence which supposes that a Substance is a Substance without Accidents and therefore they say that Accidents are superadded I shew the contrary granting their Supposition that Accidents are superadded there must necessarily be accidents to wit powers allowed to Substances before the superaddition of other Accidents is possible For accidents cannot be superadded unless a substance had a power of receiving those Accidents but that power is an accident ergo a substance is not imaginable without an accident Hence it is that Aristotle was forced to grant a coeval power to his Materia prima Or lastly thus If a Substance acted through its power ergo that Power must be either an Efficient or instrumental Cause or a Causa sine qua non of its acts It is irrational to state it an Efficient because then a Power produces a Nobler thing then it self and an Effect different from it in Specie It cannot be appropriated to an Instrumental because it doth not differ really and specifically from the principal Cause besides an Instrumental cause is moved from its principal but a substance as they say doth not move Suppose I grant it to be a Causa sine qua non then it cannot be capable of producing an univocal Effect V. A Peripatetick power is a Non Ens Physicum for it hath neither Matter or Form and therefore cannot act physically Hence it is shifted off to an Ens Metaphysicum and so they say it hath an Actus Entitativus a plain Contradiction What can a Potentia be an Actus Aristotle teaches that a Power doth alwaies precede its act which I prove to be false The Elements acted at the same moment when they were created Fire was actually light Earth weighty c. Possibly you reply that their Power was obediential to God that is improper for there could be no obediential or any other Entitative Power without a Substance or a Subject wherein it should in here A substance doth act so far as it hath a power of acting By Power understand an actual virtue or an internal and modal Principle of a Being or Essence from which its acts do flow This Principle is a derived and congenited disposition and limitation of a being to action or is a being termined and disposed to act such and such acts for otherwise it would be indifferent to all acts This limitation causes every being to act within its own Sphere beyond which it cannot naturally excur to act any acts dissentaneous and improportionate to its Nature The forementioned disposition is the same which in Physicks is nominated the Form and Activity of a being and is nothing else but a certain Temperament and proportionated mixture of the Elements in a Substance the predominance of which doth dispose the body constituted by their Congress to determinated acts But of this more at large in my Physicks VI. All Powers are really identificated with their Subject A Power as I shewed before is that whereby a Substance is disposed and determined to certain acts and is nothing but the Form exalted to a certain degree I shall make it plain by this Example of Wine or Brandy either having a power of heating the body as the Sectarists of Ceres and Bacchus witness by drinking small Beer after a Debâ—uch That which effects their heat is the fiery parts predominating over the others which predominance is the power disposed to that certain act Is then fire predominating through its Access of Parts over the other constituting Elements really distinct from it self because it is greater 2. The power of moving a Leg or Arm is inherent in the Spirits disposed and determined to motion Are these Spirits when they do not move for then they are counted a power of motion really distinct from themselves when they do move You may object If Substances act through themselves then alterative Medicines are exhibited in vain A Mistake For although I assert that a Substance acts through it self I do not deny but that it alterates moves locally or produceth all other acts immediately through it self VII Powers are distinguisht from their Subject modally and by operation of the Mind A power may be taken in a double sense either in the concrete or abstract 1. If in the concrete then it is no longer to be called a Power of a being but a powerful being it proving impossible to apprehend the one without the other unless with intention to make a Chimara of it for if you consider them apart to wit a Being and Powerful each by themselves you must needs imagine an Accident denoting extrinsecally and from its first Imposition an actual qualification of its Subject not to denote an actual qualification and consequently that a concrete accident is not concrete Powerful is not powerful and that a being is not it self 2. In perceiving powerful separated from its being you do apprehend power in the Abstract which I grant to be possible but not powerful in the concrete which is repugnant so that in considering Powerful in the Abstract you do absurdly confound it with Power in the Abstract VIII Power conceived in the Abstract is taken for an universal Entity abstracted by the Operation of the Mind from its Singulars and in this acception it
is in no manner of a Physical but of a pure Metaphysical Consideration Metaphysical here I understand in the same Meaning as it was intended in by Aristotle The same Philosopher defines Heat Cold Moysture and Dryness by first qualities not first Powers because according to his doctrine they were actually inherent in the Elements at the instant of their Production for power with him presupposeth a non existence of the act thence flowing Wherefore it is apparent that powers in the concrete are not distinguisht from their Substance either really formally or by any other Operation of the mind but if by any at all it is ratione rationante quae absque ullo fit fundamento Powers in the abstract are distinguisht from powers in the Concrete in that they offer a common Mode and manner of qualifying and accidentally specifying their Subject in the Concrete to the Understanding which occasioneth a Modal Distinction Philosophers not daring to desert the Principles of Arist. and yet finding that Natural Substances act through themselves and not through powers really distinct from them are constrained to assert that a Substance acteth and is either through or in actu signato which had they rendred it otherwise to wit that a Substance is and acts through a power it would have been a Contradiction for to act and to be in actu signato are opposite to being in potentia and to act through a potentia or in actu exercito IX Powers are remitted and intended by subduction and addition of parts of the same nature as it is evident in Canary wine which is hotter then Rhenish because it containes more dense and united fiery Spirits One fire is hotter then another because its similar parts are augmented by Access of Parts of the same Nature That Powers are facilitated and slowed through Habits and Defects of them is demonstrated elsewhere X. One similar Substance acts but one Formal Act per se through it self and per accidens by accident that is through meanes of extrinsick Causes many The first part of this Theorem is proved by this Maxim Una numero efficiens producit unum tantum numero effectum One and the same Efficient can produce but one and the same Effect at one and the same time and in one and the same manner But a similar substance is but one Efficient Ergo it can produce but one and the same Effect c. The Major is undeniable I confirm the Assumtion A substance is effective through its form which being but one must also determinate its Efficiency to one 2. Fire is a substance but fire hath but one power per se Ergo I prove the Minor That whereby the fire doth act is its penetrable lightness but that is single in fire Ergo. You may Object That its heating burning and locomotive powers are more then one To this I Answer That the similar parts of fire exercises but one power naturally and in its natural place but if extrinsecally that is by an Efficient from without united and condensed it becomes of a burning Nature Pray take the paines to peruse my Positions of fire in my Natural Phil. They are satisfactory to all Objections As for its locomotive Faculty it is the same with its rare lightness A Second Objection may be Mercury is a similar substance but Mercury hath several powers of heating cooling fluxing killing the Worms c. 'T is true the Effects are various nevertheless the power from whence they descend is but one which unity seems to be multiplied materially that is through the variety of its Objects Mercury cooles in laxe and weak bodies because through its thickness and density it expels the loose heat of the said laxe bodies It heats in hot strong close bodies because it is retained in such bodies and being retained its parts are opened by the strong heat of the said bodies whereby the fiery hot spirits break forth and unite themselves with the heat of such bodies and so it becomes hotter In like manner Fluxing and its other Effects are wrought all through one power their difference hapning from the difference of the Object Obj. 3. If every similar substance obtaines one power of acting then in every dissimilar or mixt body there should be four powers because it consisteth of four similar substances I Answer That the Elements when mixed limit their power within one temperament and one formal power The latter part of this Theorem is That a substance obtaineth many powers per accidens h. e. in statu violento eâdem quidem a principio formali sed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 agente nec non a causa efficienti ab extra impulsa plane quod rei naturae contrariatur by accident that is when a substance is seated in a violent state and although acting from its formal Principle yet it is against its first Nature as being opposed by an External Efficient XI An Organical and dissimilar substance exerciseth naturally as many formal powers as it containes similar substances in it self really different from one another and but one formal power so far as these similar substances tend to the constituting of one formal substance All similar substances contained within the Sphere of an Organical substance tend naturally e naturae quadam necessitate and from a certain necessity of Nature for they could not exist separately because then they would be imperfect to its Constitution A hand is an Organical substance In a hand are comprehended 1. A Locomotive power 2. A sensitive power 3. A Nutritive Faculty These various powers depend from the variety of similar scilicet ad sensum parts to wit the first from Nerves the second the Membranes the third from the vital heat notwithstanding all of them constitute but one formal locomotive sensitive and vegetative power Actus and Potentia in the Concrete are really identificated for Potentia denotes an actual virtue and power in a substance This may be called actus activus and so Anima is defined Actus by Arist 2. It imports Action 3. It sometime implies an Effect otherwise called Actus passivus It is an Actus because it doth act through a power which it had from its first act a different Effect It is Passivus because it receives its power from that first Actus Wherefore you must take notice that it is not termed Actus passivus secundum Idem ad Idem for that would imply a Contradiction XII From this Discourse we may easily be resolved in these Doubts 1. Whether it be not repugnant that any Accidental or Substantial Power should be superadded to its Subject Aff. 2. Whether the volitive power in the Concrete be really and formally identificated with the Soul Aff. 3. Whether the Soul acteth immediately through her self and not through super added powers Aff. 4. Whether the augmentative power be really and formally distinct from the Nutritive power and the Nutritive from the Generative Power There is a modal distinction or a parte rei
a Material one but none Real XIII Besides all this there is an Absolute Power conferred upon Gods Creatures in general and upon man in particular I do not mean Absolute Simpliciter for that were Repugnant as I have proved in my Theol. but secundam quid I will further explain it to you The Power which all Creatures have of being and acting at that present Moment wherein they enjoy their being and do act is absolute because they cannot but enjoy that same being and act at that Moment wherein they have a Being and do act Ergo it is Absolute but not simpliciter for were it so then they would obtain that absolute power of being from and out of their own Nature which we know is dependent from Gods Power and according to this sense none consisteth of an absolute power but God alone because his Nature is alone independent It is then absolute secundum quid because God hath ordained that which is to be and that which ever hath been to have been and that which shall be to come to pass In short Absolute secundum quid I take for that which is unchangeable as all beings and their Actions are in that sense as I have proposed They are unchangeable because Gods Ordination in Creating Giving Forbearing and in all other Particulars is unchangeable This Distinction is of that use that many Points in Divinity cannot be resolved but by its being applied to them I shall content my self with the having named it since I have Treated of it at large in another Part of my Philosophy XIV The Absolute secundum quid powers which God hath conferred upon his Creatures are by Physitians otherwise termed Faculties Facultates which are derived from a faciendo doing that is they are actual dispositions whereby Effects are done Hence Galen Lib. 1. de Natur. Facult Par. 3. Prima euim actionis ipsius potentia causa est The first cause of an Action saith he is the power And in another place of the same Book he renders himself thus Facultatum quatuor naturalium essentia in partium singularum nutriendarum temperie est that is The Essence of the four Natural Faculties consisteth in the temperament of the parts that are to be nourished which is nothing different then if he had said the Faculties Facultates sunt temperamenta facientia are temperaments actually doing effects Now it is evident that Galen held the Temperament of bodies to be their Forms which if so then questionless his Opinion tended to assert that Powers and their Subjects were really identificated and that all powers were actual Moreover we shall find throughout all his Tomes that his sense touching powers and Faculties doth e Diametro agree with what I have set down in this present Treatise As for Hippocrates I cannot read a word throughout all his works but what tends against Aristotle in every Particular forasmuch as it relate to our Subject In the Conclusion I must remember you to observe that many Terms as Formal Substance Accident and divers others I have somtimes made use of in the same sense as I have proposed them in the Foregoing Chapters other times I have intended them in the same Acception which Philosophers vulgarly receive them in But herein the Sense of the Matter will easily direct you FINIS RELIGIO PHILOSOPHI OR Natural Theology The FIRST PART The fourth Book By Gedeon Harvey Doctor of Physick and Philosophy LONDON Printed by A. M. for Samuel Thomson at the Sign of the Bishops-head in St Paul's Church-yard 1663. TO HIS Most Honoured Mother ELIZABETH HARVEY Dear Mother AMong those serious Admonitions which from your singular Affection and Care you have so oft repeated to me This I remember hath been one of the most earnest of them that above all I should mind things of Eternity such as alone can make me eternally Happy Herein I cannot but acknowledge your greatest Love tending to invest me with the greatest Happinesse returning you all thanks that so great a Benefit is worthy of Moreover to shew my entire Obedience to so important a Command I have here drawn up a few Heads touching the Greatest Happinesse and the Means whereby to procure it which I do with all humility present unto you as a Debt due to your self in regard I have extracted the principal Rules from the Rudiments which your constant Practice and wholesome Precepts had in my younger years infus'd in me The cause and object which alone can afford us this infinite Happinesse is the Summum Bonum whereunto we are to direct all our aim which that we may with successe attain unto are the continual Prayers of Your most affectionate and obedient Sonne Gedeon Harvey RELIGIO PHILOSOPHI OR Natural Theology The FIRST PART The fourth Book CHAP. I. Of the Nature of Natural Theology 1. What Theology is 2. That Theosophy is a fitter name to signifie the same which is here intended by Theology That in knowing God we become Philosophers 3. What a Habit is 4. What it is to live happily That there is a mean or middle way of living which is neither living in happiness or living in misery 5. How Theology is divided 6. What Natural Theology is What Supernatural Theology is The first Doubts of a natural man 7. The Dignity of Theology I. THEOLOGY is a habit of enjoying the greatest Good and living in the greatest Happiness This practick Science might from the eminence and transcendence of its end and object crave a more excellent name for Theology signifieth only a discourse of God and expresseth a Theoretick Science and therefore is too strict to adequate the whole and full concept of what is generally intended by Theology This name is fitter to be imposed upon the Doctrine of God as he is theoretically discoursed of in Pneamatology The parts of which Doctrine might be aptly denoted by Theology Angelology and Psychelogy whereas this noble Science is better expressed by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or wisdome of God because wisdome comprehendeth an universal collection of all practick and theoretick Sciences all which we know by knowing God and we know them to be in and from God For do we not know that all natural Beings are in and from God they are in God because God comprehendeth and conserveth them in and by his Power Is not God the Pattern of our Actions And do we not know that our actions are good or evil from knowing them to have some likeness to his Actions or to be altogether different from them Do we not know our selves in knowing God wherefore without knowing God we know Nothing In knowing God to be the first Cause and Creator of all natural Beings we know Natural Philosophy and become Natural Philosophers In discerning good from evil in our actions by comparing them to the most perfect actions of God we attain to Moral Philosophy In knowing him to be the Being of Beings we reach to the knowledge of supernatural Philosophy or Metaphysicks
A Theologick good act is such as God doth require from us and as he first gave man a power of acting it since then we have not such a power as God first gave unto man of acting good it followeth that we cannot act such good acts through our selves as God doth require from us XIV Man hath a free-will of doing a Theologick good act with an extraordinary concurrence of God with him If God doth concur with man in his actions in an extraordinary manner no doubt but God can and doth make them Theologically good that is good in the highest perfection and such as he himself doth require from us Man being so assisted through the extraordinary assistance of God acteth freely notwithstanding for it is still in his choice whether he will do such a Theologick good act or not When God doth assist us in an extraordinary manner it is not without our free-will for we must first will and desire it with a burning desire before God will assist us which burning desire doth move him to assist us neither will God refuse us because he is most good and most mercifull Now then when this desire ceaseth in us then Gods extraordinary assistance ceaseth with it if then we can forbear this desire and continue it we have still our free-wils Besides we also have a free-will of election that is of making choice of one good object before another XV. 1. Man as he is in a natural state hath a free-will through himself and without an extraordinary concurrence of God with him to procure Gods extraordinary concurrence and assistance with and to him in his actions The means whereby a natural man doth appropriate it is by fervent prayer so that man having a free-will of procuring Gods extraordinary concurrence hath a free-will mediately to act a Theologick good act Before I prove the first branch of this sub-Conclusion you are to mark that we can do no action at all through our selves alone without the ordinary concurrence of God with us for God hath not given us an absolute power of being and acting without the concurrence of his preservating and assisting power if he had he would have given all the power over us out of his hands which is impossible and unsuitable to the King of Kings to give away all his Glory Honour and Dominion Again had he done so we should have returned the thanks due for so great a goodness in envying and reviling of him Wherefore it followeth that God hath reserved a preservating and assisting power to himself without which we cannot continue in our beings or do any action If the first man could have been and acted through himself and that without Gods assistance he could never have died but since that he died and could not maintain himself in his being and in that most perfect Essence wherein he was created without adhering to Gods power therefore he having deserted that power but for a moment and confiding upon his own immediately fell and was almost utterly corrupted and lost if then that the first man in that perfect Essence could not subsist or act through himself alone without Gods aid much less can we in this deflected state and weak nature subsist or act without Gods assistance This assistance is Gods ordinary assistance for were it extraordinary we should then act as perfectly as the first man did before his deficience 2. After the probation of the necessity of Gods ordinary and extraordinary concurrence I come now to prove that man being assisted with Gods ordinary power can and doth procure Gods extraordinary concurrence Man as he is in a natural state may and doth know that he hath still some spark of Theologick good remaining in him for all men can and do know naturally that there is a God that there is a Law enjoyned by God upon men as his subjects that that Law is perfect that his actions are observed and acknowledged by him to be evil and sinfull that through himself without Gods extraordinary aid he cannot act that which God doth require from him that God is Almighty good and mercifull and therefore God will not deny any request of good proceeding from a spark of Theologick good because therein man hath still something in him through which he resembleth God which God will not abolish and hath tyed himself through his bountifull promises not to destroy All these acts and knowledges proceed from a Theologick good principle and therefore man is partly Theologically good to whom if he useth that natural power and means remaining in him God will not deny a supply against his defect The natural power and means which a man doth naturally and ordinarily put in action to procure Gods extraordinary assistance is his power of praying with zeal and earnestness for a man whenever he is in danger great need and intollerable pain doth naturally beg and implore help Therefore a zealous and earnest praying is a natural power which nature doth prompt us to and means to procure Gods extraordinary assistance Lastly From all this it is undoubtedly true and evident that man through himself and with the ordinary concurss of God with him doth and can procure Gods extraordinary assistance Which having procured he hath a free-will of acting theologick good 3. That which is only morally good will prove theologick evil at last A thing may properly be said to be good although at last it changeth into evil and corruption for as a Tree which is a good natural thing changeth to an intire corruption when it dieth so a natural man whilest he liveth is morally good and doth moral good acts but when he dieth he becomes entirely corrupted and altogether evil that is theologically evil XVI 4. To shut up this succinct dispute of free-will I say That man without free-will is no man but a Beast That man might justly be excused for his evil acts for had he no principle whereby he acted freely but did act necessarily and by compulsion or coaction of the Divine power he could not act evil it being impossible to God to act evil or if man did act evil it would be without a will and therefore it could be no sinne that man could not be termed the cause of his moral actions but God Many other inconveniencies and absurdities do ensue in denying this truth which to produce will prove tedious By this we may easily reconcile the Calvinists with the Arminians The Calvinists may rightly say That man through himself cannot act a good act that is cannot act a theological good act with the ordinary concurrence of God only The Arminians may with no lesse confidence assert That man hath a free will of doing good through himself that is hath a means and principle resting in him whereby he may mediately do a theologick good act through himself and by that means may procure God's extraordinary concurrence but the greatest controversie probable to arise between them in my opinion is
moral or voluntary actions We need not augment the number of internal principles by adding Habits to them these being supposed to alter the forestated principles accidentally only and not essentially How Habits ' are acquired and how intended remitted and corrupted we have set down elswhere Neither are God or Angels properly said to be external principles since all principles strictly are required to be internal But God may be justly termed the coefficient of the actions of man since God worketh in us to will and to do Angels whether good or evil Wizards and Witches cannot concur efficiently to the effecting of humane actions to which an infinite power is onely sufficient whereas they consisting of a limited power are therefore render'd uncapable They may concurre to the specification of an act as persuasive causes in bending man's will to this or that act by changing the phansie in stirring up the humours and spirits of the brain whereby it may represent objects otherwise than they are or by presenting objects through a false image or representation or by changing the external sensories Whence we may observe that it is not in the Devils power to make or force us to doe a thing against our wils but that we may discover resist and refuse his deceitfull motions or otherwise we might be justly thought excusable wherefore if we do at any time commit evil through the perswasion of an evil spirit we must not onely accuse the wicked spirit but our selves also After our discourse upon the will there remains alone to appose a word or two touching humane actions II. Humane actions otherwise called moral and voluntary are such as are effected by man as farre as he is a man or are produced by his will or practick understanding Wherefore whatever man acteth with the fore-knowledge and fore-command of his practick understanding is humane and voluntary A voluntary action may be purely voluntary and free or mixt out of a Voluntas and Noluntas that is willed with a reluctancy The first acception of Voluntary Aristotle terms voluntary strictly so called the latter he denominates involuntary but improperly III. It is absurd to assert man to do a thing ignorantly since it is impossible for a man to do any thing which he doth not fore-know Wherefore it must be an errour in the Peripateticks to affirm that man can act an involuntarium quiddam ex ignorantia because he acteth nothing but what is consented unto partially or totally by his will which cannot will any thing as the Peripatetick definition holds forth without the foreknowledge of the understanding Hence I conclude that nothing is to be termed involuntary or mixtly voluntary unlesse a man is forced to it violently or by a cause acting from without IV. Here may be demanded Whether evils of omission of duties required by a Law committed by man when he is ignorant of the said Law are to be termed involuntary No certainly for they are voluntary in that the omission of an act is as much an act of the will as the effection of it But whether such omissions or commissions which a man doth will are to be termed evil in regard he willed them through ignorance which had he not been ignorant of he would not have willed is to be decided from the circumstances of such actions and not from the imputing such actions not to be the actions of man or not to be voluntary Moreover I answer That no kind of ignorance doth make an action neutral that is neither good or evil and excusable but an invincible ignorance What invincible ignorance and other kinds of ignorances are I do wittingly omit the inserting since they are vulgarly enough known As for such circumstances which are required to render humane actions good or evil I have set down in the latter end of this Book V. The action of the will is accidentally divided in fruition and intention Fruition is the continuated coveting and willing of an object already before coveted and now enjoyed Intention is a mediate coveting of means whereby to covet an object immediately or to arrive to the fruition of it Intention contains in it three inferiour actions 1. Election whereby the practick understanding doth by a preceding deliberation covet one or more objects for a means out of many 2. Consent which is a further coveting of that or them objects which it hath elected so as to be confirmed and pleased in that election 3. Usus or Usance otherwise called execution which is the application of the means now elected and consented unto to a further action CHAP. XIII Of Natural Faith 1. That Faith is the sole means through which we are to attain to our greatest good What Faith is The Definition confirmed by Arguments deduced from reason 2. The two-fold object of Faith A proof from reason that God is the Creator of man That God and Nature are one 3. An enquiry into the end of man's creation 4. That man doth know the summe of God's Law through the light of Nature A summary enumeration of the Law of God as it is imprinted upon every man's heart 5. Moral virtues compared with the moral Law A comprehension of all moral virtues I Have just now finisht my Discourse upon the subject of this Tract that which fals next under our consideration is the means through which we are to attain to our greatest Good and happinesse The sole means is Faith Faith is a certain knowledge of God and the Law and an assurance in and of God's mercy and goodnesse The genus proximum and differentia proxima are signals that their Definitum or thing defined is not an historical or temporary faith or saith of miracles onely but a justifying and glorifying faith necessarily comprehending in it self the three other kinds as degrees by which the soul doth gradually ascend to an exalting faith Among other School-Divines it goeth under the name of an explicite Faith Fides the same with the Definitum deriveth its denomination from fidere a word not in use among the later Latinists whose signification the verb confidere hath since supplied which is to rest contented and fully satisfied Wherefore assurance implying a certain practical knowledge freed from all doubts and causing this rest and satisfaction doth justly and properly deserve the place of the Genus in this Definition The certainty which Faith doth bring with it depends upon the certainty and necessity of its premises which being necessary and certain infers a certain and necessary conclusion If God is mercifull he will save them that beg mercy But God is mercifull and I do beg mercy Therefore God will save me This Conclusion as depending upon unchangeable and certain premises holds forth that Faith is an undoubted assurance of God's mercy and that he will save a zealous believer No wonder then if Faith doth create this quietnesse rest and satisfaction Austin de Civit. Dei lib. 19. cap. 18. tels us no lesse To the Acadamicks all things are
quemadmodum à lampadis flamma flammam excipimus illa nihilominus integra remanente He moveth a Question Whether the soul of a whelp is a part of the soul of the dog that begot him And why not For a material soul is divided according to the division of the matter and she is whole in its part which is most evident in plants Wherefore a soul begetteth a soul by protruding her self much after the same manner as we kindle a flame with a flame of a lamp the which neverthelesse remaineth entire Here Scaliger explains the propagation of beasts and plants and others do impiously apply the same to the rational soul and consequently make her material But to the point the rational soul cannot protrude her self in this manner because she is indivisible As for a flame that protrudes its self because it is divisible and communicateth a part of its self to another combustible matter and so raiseth a flame but this is not so in the soul. V. After the confirmation of my opinion it is requisite I should answer to what may be objected against it If the soul cannot generate a soul may one say or cannot generate his like then man is inferiour to other living creatures which do generate their like I answer That man doth generate his like for it is apparent that the Sonne i◠like the Father and that in a nobler manner than animals or vegetables who do naturally generate their like as to matter and a corruptible form but man doth generate the matter and disposeth it for the reception of an incorruptible form which done the form is immediately united to it in instanti not from the soul singly and originally but from the divine power which is alwayes concomitant to God's benediction by which he hath through his ordained will freely tied him self The divine power being then alwayes present and concomitant to the generating soul doth as it were give a rational soul to the plastick faculty of the genitures when she is ready to unite it to the body where observe that the generating soul is a subordinate and mediate cause of the infusion of the other rational soul. The creating power of God is the primar principal and immediate cause of man's rational soul and its production It is the primar and immediate cause of the soul because it createth her God of his goodnesse and blessing doth give the soul now at that instant created to the generating soul as to a subordinate and instrumental cause VI. By the generating soul I intend a material and divisible form inherent in the genitures mixt out of that which is contributed from the Father and that other from the Mother This form is analogal to a sensitive soul but notwithstanding must not be counted to be of the same species and doth informate the body of the Infant untill the advent of the indivisible immaterial immortal and rational soul and then it doth acquit the name of a form and becomes a faculty power and instrument to the said rational soul. VII God is the remote cause of man's generation and production because God doth notimmediately unite and insuse the soul into the body for were God the next cause of uniting the soul to the body then true enough man could not be said to generate man because the introduction or eduction of the form into or out of the mattor is the generation of the whole Now then man is the subordinate cause of the soul and its infusion by reason his propagature receiveth the soul which is to be infused from God who is the primar and original cause of it VIII Conclus 2. Man doth generate man naturally and per se although he doth not propagate the soul from himself I prove it He that uniteth the form to the matter as in this instance of uniting the soul to the body doth produce the totum compositum as to generate or produce the whole man But man uniteth the soul to the body therefore he generates or produces the whole man 2. Man generateth man naturally and per se because he hath an absolute secundum quid power of uniting the soul to the body for otherwise he were inferiour to other creatures This power is given him in these expressed words of Scripture saving my purpose Let man multiply How could man multiply had he not this power For did God infuse the soul immediately as Divines generally hold man could not be said to multiply but God The generating soul therefore is the Causa proxima of the infusion of the soul into the body Wherefore there are alwayes souls ready that are created at the same moment when needfull which are given to the generating soul otherwise were its uniting power in vain V. It is well expressed by Austin If the soul be seminated with the flesh it shall also die with the flesh And by Jerome If the soul of man and of Beasts be ex traduce then consequently both must be corruptible Plato in his Dialog Phaed. infers the soul's advent from without as an Herculean argument to prove her immortality Coelius Rhodoginus lib. 6. Antiq. Lect. doth wittily expresse Aristotle's meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first whereof was asserted by him to be mortal the latter to be immortal And if I mistake not he seems to affirm no lesse Lib. 2. d. gener cap. 3. viz. that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is inherent in the sperm but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of a divine rice and immortal Well may Tho. Aquinas pronounce 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon all those that should maintain the rational soul to be extraduce since most Heathen Philosophers did believe otherwise What because those dull Lutherans had not the wit to know that original sinne was propagated through the body therefore they must revive that Bombastin opinion concluding the soul to be propagated likewise for to demonstrate her to participate of the said sinne This we have shewed with more probability already and therefore let us henceforth beware of so dangerous and atheistical an assertion CHAP. XXI Of Practick Natural Faith 1. What a man is to consider to prevent his downfall 2. Man's danger and folly the Devils policy A certain means whereby to be delivered from this imminent danger The whole mystery and summe of man's salvation 3. The main Question of this whole Treatise decided 4. Scripture proofs accidentally proposed inferring implicit faith in a natural man to be justifying 5. The general Rules of practick Faith 6. The occasion of man's fall briefly repeated 7. Fifteen Reasons against all passions 8. Arguments against all bodily pleasures 9. The military discipline of a natural man instructing him to warre against all his enemies that oppose him in his way to his greatest happinesse 10. The greatest and most necessary rule of this military art A scandal taken off from Physicians 11. Another great measure of the said Art 12. Whence a natural man
aeternum O the harmony of their quavering wings and smooth voices O the glorious order in their moving O the splendour that encompasseth them O the glistering of their appearances O those bright Stars moving swister than the Heavens O the â—lustery descent of the myriads of Seraphims then of Cberubims and of Thrones O but what misery is it to be shut out from this celestial consort and have ones brains dashed against the fiery pins and burning stakes of Hell Wo the most horrible sight of that monstrous Arch-devil Satan piercing the most tender sinews of man with his serpentine tongue haling each limb of him with so many Drakes heads scruing his conscience by trusting his eyes into that dread magnifying glasse of Hell which serveth him to shake his shattery bones through seeing the monstrous greatnesse of his sins Wo that multiplying Glasse expressing the vast number of his detestable wicked deeds Wo the fearfull thunder of those innumerable legions of wretches roaring out through the most intollerable pains of their sinews the rigid torments and the gnawing fretting distracting inflaming Gangrene of their sad consciences Wo the everlasting pricking pinching convulsion rotting of their sinews Wo the deformity of their ulcer'd swelled rankled bodies Wo the fearfull spectacle and disorder of hellish monsters here is a fiery Serpent there a roaring Lion here stands a dreadfull Drake formed out of the body of an Atheist there a raging Crocodile grown up out of the body of a Traitor Wo the unexpressible innumerable torments and dreads of Hell And this you see is the end of Good and Evil and of this Treatise CHAP. XXII Comprizing a brief account of the Religion of the Heathen Philosophers 1. Socrates his belief of God 2. What God is according to Homer 3. What Plato thought God to be 4. Thales his saying of God 5. Instances proving the Heathens to have known Gods Attributes particularly That Thales believed God's Omniscience and God's unchangeable Decrees 6. That Socrates asserted God's Omniscience Omnipotence his creating of the world in time his justice and mercy God's Omnipresence 7. The Articles of Plato 's Faith 8. Aristotle 's Belief 8. Virgil 's opinion of divine things 10. The divine Song of Orpheus 11. Trismegistus upon the Creation of the world AFter the proposal of a Rational Divinity and its evidence through humane Reason it will not a little conduce to the proof thereof that Heathens have through the light of Nature attained to the same I. Socrates who might more justly be surnamed Divine than his Scholar Plato who received most of his learning from him constantly used to say That the only amiable wisdome was to know and understand God and Nature which knowledge saith he was not be got in men but it was called to mind as if he would have said the soul must needs retain some impression from whence it was derived He asserted also That the supream God was the Father and maker of all things II. Homer declared God the Father of all the gods which are created and maker of beasts and all other things that had no souls By gods here he meant men who for their excellency of wit and parts were after their death remembred with Sacrifices and honoured with the name of gods Neither did men really take these for gods but only in the same manner as Papists do their Saints for they were not ignorant that these had been men and could then perform no more than men Hence Heraclitus affirmed That this world was not made by any of the gods or men III. Plato his assertion was That God of all causes was the most excellent and the first IV. God saith Thales is the most ancient of things for he never had beginning or birth V. Now I come to produce that they had attained a particular knowledge of God's Attributes Thales being demanded whether a man might do ill and conceal it from God no nor think it said he Stobaeus relates of Thales that he being asked what was the strongest answered Necessity for it rules all the world Necessity is the firm judgement and immutable power of Providence A golden saying inverting Fate into God's unchangeable Decree VI. Socrates his knowledge of God was after this tenour viz. That God knoweth all things said done or silently desired That God through his care sustains all his creatures in providing light water and fire for them But particularly for man for whose service and subjection he hath ordained plants and all other creatures That God is one perfect in himself giving the being and well-being of every creature what he is I know not what he is not I know That the way to true happinesse is Philosophy whose precepts are two to contemplate God and to abstract the soul from corporeal sense That God not Chance created the world and all creatures is evident through the reasonable disposition of their parts as well for use as defence from their care to preserve themselves and continue their kind That he hath had a particular regard to man in his body is no lesse apparent from the excellency thereof above others from the gift of speech from the excellency of his soul in Divinations and fore-saying dangers That he regards particular beings from the care of their whole kind That he will reward such as please him and punish others that displease him from his power of doing it from the belief he hath ingraffed in man That he will do it That he is professed by the most wise and civilized Cities and Ages That he at once seeth all things from the instances of the eye which at once over-runs many miles and of the mind which at once conceiveth things done in the most remote places Lastly That he is such and so great as that he at once seeth all hears all is every where and orders all Plato maintains That God is incorporeal and an unchangeable Light That the knowledge of God was the true wisdom and that we are render'd like to God through our justice and holinesse What saith Austin concerning Plato That his followers would have been Christians a few words and sentences onely being changed That the greatest happinesse consisted in knowing God and in being like to him But possibly you may reply That Plato according to what is asserted by Justin Martyr had read some Books written by an inspired pen as the Books of Moses and the Prophets Unde Plato inquit currum volantem Jovem agere in Coelo didicit nisi ex Prophetarum Historiis quas evolverit Intellexit enim è Prophetae verbis quae de Cherubim it a script a sunt gloria Dom ini ex domo exivit venitque in Cherubim sumserunt Cherubim pennas suas rotae eorum cohaerebant Dominique Dei Israel eis in Coelo coharebat gloria Hinc profectus Plato clamat his verbis Magnus in Coelo Jupiter currum volantem incitans alioquin à quo alio nisi à Mose
observe that nature is the Seal and Impression of Gods Will and Omnipotence upon every being through which they are that which they are Hence Nature is called the Hand of God Hence it is also called the Order and universal Government among all natural beings through which one being doth depend upon the other and is useful and necessary to the other This is evident in many moving living Creatures as most Cattel whose dependance and Preservation is from and through Vegetables as from Herbs their 's again is from the juyce of the earth and that from a mixture of all the Elements The same subordinate use and good is also observed among all other beings in the world Hence nature is called the strength and vertue of a being for their strength and vertue is nothing else but an actual disposition and propension in beings In this sense we say the nature of fire is to levitate of earth to gravitate IV. I did rather chuse to say a natural being then a natural body for to avoid an improperty of speech because a body is properly and ordinarily taken for matter and so we usually say that man consisteth of a Soul and body and that a natural being consisteth of a form and body or matter Neither is it a motive rather for to say a natural body then a natural being because a being is of too large an extent for a being is restricted from that Latitude of signification by adding natural V. After the exposition of this Definition of nature it will not be amiss to compare that of Aristotles to it Nature is the Principle of Motion and rest of a being wherein it is existent through it self and not by accident It was the Opinion of Aristotle that nature was a substance and nevertheless here he seemeth to make an Accident of it for that which acteth immediately through it self is not a substance but an Accident because according to his dictates a substance doth not act immediately through it self but through its accidents if then a natural being acteth through its nature that is its Matter and Form then nature must be an accident and consequently matter and form are also accidents which he did in no wise intend 2. Suppose that nature were a substance it would be absurd to assert that a natural being did act through a substance of rest and motion which doth inhere in it self for then there would be a penetration of bodies and an Identification of Subsistencies You may reply That nature is not a substance of motion and rest but a substantial Principle Pray what is a substantial Principle but a substance 3. It is plainly against the Principles of Aristotle to say that a Principle is no substance for Matter and Form are Principles but these he granteth to be substances 4. If again granted that these are substances and not vertues then it must necessarily follow that a Form being an active Principle doth act through it self and thence a Form is called active It must also follow that Matter which is another Principle of motion acteth efficiently withal because motion proceedeth from an Efficient or from a Form and wherefore is Matter then called a passive Principle Your Answer to this will be that Matter is not the Principle of Motion but of Rest. I take your Answer but what kind of rest do you mean Is it a rest from local Motion or a rest from Alteration or Augmentation It must be a rest from some of these three It cannot be a rest from local motion because all beings are not capable of a rest from local motion then it must be a rest from alteration or augmentation Neither can it be a rest from any of these For all beings are constantly and at all times in alteration and consequently are either augmented or diminished What rest can it then be It is no rest from Action for then matter could be no Principle or cause for all causes do act 5. How can Matter and Form which are Principles before their union be substances since that a substance is a perfect being which doth subsist in unity through it self and thereby is distinct from all other beings but matter or form can neither of them subsist through themselves or have any unity or distinction 6. A Form is not a Principle of rest in all natural bodies through it self but by accident for all bodies are through themselves continually in motion as will further appear in its proper place VI. Wherefore for to avoid all these Absurdities Contradictions and Improperties of Speech it is necessary to assert 1. That Nature is a Property of a natural being through which it acteth 2. That a Property is really Identificated with its subject and consequently that Natural is not really differing from a natural body This property denotes a propension or actual disposition through which the said body is rendred active By activeness I understand whereby all is constituted whatever is actually inherent in a being as Existence Subsistence and all its other Properties so that Nature or Natural in Physicks is a Property equivalent to the Modes or Attributes of Truth and Goodness in Metaphysicks VII Nature differeth from Art in that she acteth conformably to the Divine Idea or Intention but Art acteth conformably to the intellectual Idea Wherefore nature is infallibly immutable constant perpetual certain because it dependeth from an infallible immutable constant perpetual and certain Cause but Art is fallible changeable inconstant and uncertain because it dependeth from the humane Intellect which is fallible changeable inconstant and uncertain As man is uncapable of acting without God so is Art incapable of effecting any thing without Nature Nature is infinitely beyond Art What Art is there which can produce the great world or any thing comparable to the little world Whatever excellent piece a man doth practise through Art it is no further excellent then it is like unto Nature neither can he work any thing by Art but what hath nature for its Pattern What is it a Limner can draw worthy of a mans sight if natural beauties are set aside VIII Whatever nature acteth it is for an End and Use It is for an end in respect to God who created all things for an end it is for an use in respect to one another because all beings are useful to one another as I have formerly demonstrated but we cannot properly say that all things act for an end in respect to one another because that which doth act for an end is moved by that end and doth foreknow it but natural beings do not foreknow their ends neither are they moved by them IX Nature is either universal or singular An universal nature may be apprehended in a twofold sense 1. For the Universe or whole world containing all singular natures within it 2. For a nature which is in an universal being and so you are to take it here A Singular nature is which is inherent in every
perfect being where was then the materia prima of Aristotle which is said to be without any Form and nothing but a pura potentia You cannot reply that the Chaos was produced out of a Materia prima for if I grant that then materia prima is a non ens nothing because the Text mentions that God created Heaven and Earth out of nothing The Objection which may be offered against us from Gen. 2. And the Earth was without form is not matterial for by form here is meant an ulterior forma and not a Prima Forma IX The Fâ—â—m which did informate the Chaos was that whereby it was that which it was namely a Confusion of the Elements This confused form or forma confusionis being expelled there immediately succeeded a less confused or more distinct form arising from a partial solution and separation of the Elements I term it distinct because it was distinct from that first confusion and a more distinct form because the Elements were yet more separated untied loosened and distinct But as for a most distinct form whereby every Element should exist separately one from the other and every Element have a form of it self whereby it is that which now it is namely Earth a weighty dense and massie substance Fire a penetrable rare and diffusive essence c. Before I sound into the depth of this Mystery give me leave to expose to your view the admirable manner of this divine Artifice First God created a Chaos or a confused mixture of the Elements in like manner to a Potter who having several sorts of Earth mixes them all together into one exact mixture afterwards he again diducts or draweth its parts from one another and each part again after that he draweth more and more from one another until at last it acquires that form which he doth ultimately intend in it So that the more he draweth it asunder the more compleat form it receives through each several and further Diduction So God draweth the Chaos more and more asunder and every drawing diduction expansion or opening giveth it another and a perfecter form After the same manner is the production of the Foetus in the Mothers Womb perfected where there is first a Chaos or exact Confusion of Genitures then again its parts are more and more diducted which finisheth it with a perfect Form I shall therefore delineate each part of the Creation accomplisht by Gods several and distinct as to us diduction which was performed by Gods Command upon an obediential Subject of Let there be The effect resulting through vertue of this Command was immediately answered by And it was so The Perfection and excellency of it by And God saw that it was good There are two forms observable in the Elements one absolute which is whence the particular force power and vertue of each Element derives This is essential to every Element There is also a respective form which doth naturally derive from the first and is whereby every Element doth essentially encline to the other for its Existence and Conservation for without each other their absolute form could not subsist which flowes from their truth and goodness Neither did they ever exist singly but were at the same time created together These two forms are really and essentially one but modally distinct from each other What Finiteness Unity Durability or Place are the Elements capable of single The earth through its Gravity would be incited to an infinite motion so would also fire and consequently neither could possess any place or be of any duration but the Earth and Water being occurred by Fire and Ayr their Gravities are ballanced by the Lightness of these latter and so become withal to be terminated and to be placed but of this elsewhere CHAP. IV. Of the Nature and Essence of the Elements 1. The nearest Definition of a Natural being 2. The Definition of an Element That all Physical Definitions ought to be sensible The proof of the Existence of the Elements and of their Number 3. An Exposition of the Definition of an Element It s Etymology and Homonymy 4. What Distinction the Author makes between Principle Cause and Element 5. What a Natural Cause is That the Elements are no single real beings That they are treated of separately and singly Ratione only 6. That there are but three Natural Causes Their Necessity proved in Particular 1. I Have hitherto given you the remote Definition of a natural being and now I state one somwhat nearer to our Senses and such as is through it self perceptible by sense A Natural being is an Essence constituted out and through the Elements or thus A natural being is that which is constituted out and by natural Causes but none are natural causes but Elements only wherefore the former Definition being the nearer and proved by the latter somwhat more remote We shall rather commend it as being perceptible by sense for none can deny but that the Elements are the sole natural causes Shew me by any of your senses what natural being there existeth in the world but what is Elementary Possibly this Definition may disrelish you as being different from Aristotle's Let me tell you that most part of the Perepatetick Definitions in Physicks are too remote from our senses which causeth a difficulty of apprehending them and proves a doubtful way for to lead us into Errour II. An Element is an internal natural Cause out and through which a natural being is essentially constituted In Metaph. we have defined a natural being to be internally consistent of Matter and Form which are also called Natural Causes in general but remotely because we cannot apprehend Matter and Form unless by a nearer thing representing both to our senses as through the Elements we know what Matter and Form is were it not that our sight perswaded us that a being was produced out of the Elements we should be ignorant what Matter were and so the like of the Form Here you may take notice of the difference between a Metaphysical Definition and a Physical one the latter being immediately perceptible through our Senses and abstracted from sensibles the former being proper to reason and the mind which doth mediately abstract its notions from these according to that Trite Saying Nihilest in intellectu quin prius fuerit in sensibus the understanding knoweth nothing but what it hath first perceived by the senses Now I will make clear to you that all natural beings do proxime immediately owe their essence to the four Elements Herbs spring forth out or from the Earth but not where there is no Water for there it proves sandy or barren unfit to protrude any vegetable 2. Although earth is sufficiently moistened by attenuated water yet unless the Sun can or doth through its Beams cast a fire to it or by the same fire raise and excite that fire which is latent in the earth it remaineth nevertheless barren Lastly Ayr is comprehended by water attenuated that
is Water and Ayr mixt together in such a proportion that the tenuity of the air may render the water attenuated and fluid that so it may be apt to penetrate through the depth of the Mixture for otherwise water of it self is of that thickness that it exceeds Ice or Chrystal Now this Ayr incrassated or Water attenuated doth open and expand the density of the earth makes way for the fire to enter and at last retaines the whole mixture in a coherence and compactness Of this more hereafter Again A body consists of the same Principles or Elements into which it is dissolveable but all natural bodies are dissolveable into the first Elements therefore all bodies consist of the said first Elements I shall only instance in some few examples for proof of the Minor Milk in its dissolution is changed into Curds which through their weight go down to the bottom are analogal to earth 2. Into Butter which containeth in it incrassated ayir and fire for it is also inflammable a sign of fire Lastly Into Whey which is responding to attenuated water The like is observable in Blood dividing it self into Melancholy expressing earth in its weight colour and Substance for drying it it becomes perfect Sand into Choler agreeing with fire in its motive and alterative qualities into pure blood through its gluing quality or lentor not unlike to incrassated ayr Lastly into Flegm or Phlegme resembling water Doth not the ordinary division of mans body in spirits impetum facientes humors and solid parts demonstrate its composition or constitution out of the Elements For the Spirits are nothing else but fire and ayr Humors contain most water and the solid parts most earth The Spagyrick Art proves the same by distillation through which water Spirits and Oyl the two latter being made up most of Fire and Ayr are separated from the Caput mortuum Sal fixum or earth and Subsidencies 'T is true Sal Sulphur and Mercurius are different Names but re ipsa are the Elements What is Sal but Earth Sulphur but fire and ayr Mercurius but water Hereby I have not only proved the existence of elements but also their Number nominatim atque in specie III. Give me leave to expound the Definition in the first place quantum ad nomen In the word Element is considerable its Etymology from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 capio quod element a in sese omnia capiunt mixta It s name is likewise homonymous in a large sense promiscuously convertibiliter denoting a Principle or Cause In a strict sense it is differing from both Eudemus Alexander and Thomas Aq. opiniate that through Principle Principium is only meant an agent cause through Cause a formal and final Cause through elements Matter Averrhoes and Albert. by Principles intend an efficient cause through Causes final Causes by elements Matter and Form Generally Principles are understood to be of a larger extent then Causes and Causes then elements So that Aristotle B. 5. of Metaph. Ch. 1. describes a Principle to be that from whence a thing is is made or is known by this you see that a principle is of a more large signification then either of the others but a cause is which contributeth to the being of a thing either by substituting it self for a Subject as the Matter or through actuating and giving it an essence and its consequence as the Form or by determining it to an end as the final cause IV. The distinction which I have made between them is that cause is of a larger extent then Principles are taken in Physicks but in Theology a Principle is larger then it these denoting the internal causes of a natural being as matter and form but remotely as I have already hinted Elements point out to sensible and immediate internal causes of a natural being V. A natural cause is which hath a vertue of acting naturally or which acteth according to that power which God hath conferred upon it at its first Creation So that Van Helmont saith well in his Physic. Arist. Dist. 3. Ego vero credo naturam jussum Dei quo res est id quod est agit quod agere jussa est But I believe that Nature is Gods Command through which a thing is that which it is and acteth that which it is commanded to act They are Causes to wit internal causes or principles of a being because they contribute themselves to the constitution of that being I said out of which because they are the matter of all natural beings and through which because they are also the Form of all the said beings How they are or become so you may expect to read below The elements are described and taken singly or separately ratione only or ex supposito and not realiter for they never did exist singly neither could they exist so supposing they were created in that nature in which they were because of their relative forms but confusedly in the Chaos Aristotle nameth the bodies constituted by those mixt bodies as if they were different from naturals but that was only to make good the first part of his Metaphysical Physicks and thereby to distinguish them from the others namely his proper and elementary Physicks VI. Three causes do concur to the production of a natural being whereof two are internal to wit natural matter and form the other is external namely the Efficient I prove the necessity of these three first there must be a Subject or Matter out of which a being is produced for ex nihilo nihil fit out of nothing nothing can be produced But I instance in some particulars the good wives know that for to make a Pudding they need Matter namely Flower Eggs c. to make it out of or to build a House a Mason will require Stones for his Matter c. Now when they have these materials they endeavour to make somthing of them that is to introduce a new thing shape or face into it or educe a new thing out of it which locution is more proper then the former it being the efficient doth ex intrinseco quasi formam educere and what is that but the Form And lastly Experience tels us that quod nihil fit a seipso nothing is produced from it self but from another which is the Efficient as in the building of a house you may have stones and Morter for your matter yet unless a Mason who is the Efficient place them together and introduce or rather educe the form of a House the matter will abide matter CHAP. V. Of New Philosophy and the Authours of it 1. Helmontius his Arrogance and Vainglory How and wherein he rejects the Peripatetick Philosophy His own Principles 2. The Life and Death of the said Helmontius 3. A Confutation of all his Physical Principles in particular 4. Some few Arguments against Rerè des Cartes his Principles in general I. I Thought fit to make a stop in my Discourse and before I proceed
are causes of the constitution of others All things saith he are idle empty and dead without a vital principle Judge his absurdity What are all idle empty and dead things without a life but a materia prima Aristotelica For he himself affirms that there are but two principles Matter and a vital Principle yea those very words idle empty and dead square with these of Arist. Materia prima est nec quid nec quale nec quantum He allots only two causes Matter and her internal efficient to the generation of a being First as I have proved it is impossible for this internal efficient to be reduced in actum unless an extrinsick efficient be it the Sun or some other particular efficient excite it by contributing some of its own virtue to it Secondly Would not all Philosophers deride him for saying an intrinsick efficient since that all have consented to term an efficient extrinsick in contradistinction to intrinsick or internal which is ever a part of the being constituted by it whereas an efficient is named extrinsick because it doth not constitute a part of that being to whose production it was concurring Thirdly Wherein is his Archeus or internal efficient different from a form which he doth so much detest Is not this Archeus an effect also of its preceding cause Doth he not affirm that this internal efficient giveth life to its matter and what is a form but which giveth life or a being distinction and specification to its matter Here again he saith that Matter is a Co-agent and before he stated that she was idle and dead certainly idle and dead things do not use to act or to be agents or co-agents That matter is not a subject he asserts and before and afterwards he granted that she contained the Archeus What is a subject but that which doth contain a thing Here again he addes a Note of distinction to his Archeus which is to be per quod and is not this also an inseparable Attribute of a Form Dist. 23. Here again he delivers a new Foolosophy in stating water to be the sole material Principle although below he adjoynes earth to it the ferment to be the remote efficient and the semen to be the immediate efficient so then now there are three Principles yea four Water Earth and a double Archeus whereas before there were but two Besides here he vaunts out with a threefold matter a materia prima which is a co-agent with the fermentum or first Archeus a materia media a subject of the semen or second Archeus and a materia ultima quickned through life it self So now he is got beyond the number of the Peripateticks three distinct matters and three internal efficients make up just six Principles Surely the old man was climed up into one of his Raptures Well let us go on in making disquisition upon the 24 h. Dist. The Ferment is a created formal being Just now there were no forms and now the ferment or the prime Archeus is metamorphosed into a form Where was his Memory It is not a Substance or Accident saith he but neither in the manner of Light Fire c. How neither a Substance or Accident neither Spirit or Body neither quid quale or quantum Ergo it is nothing but a merum figmentum If it be in the manner of light or fire it is in the manner of a quality or substance Now I think I may let him run on in telling out his Tale. IV. Cartesius a great Proficient in the Mathematicks laboured much to reduce all Philosophical conclusions to demonstrations depending from certain Hypotheses but wherein they excelled the ordinary or Peripatetick ones either in truth certainty or evidence I have hitherto not yet learned If they may be comprehended within the limits of Demonstrations they must be a posteriori concluding only the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of things or their effects by improper and affinged Causes so that the causes remaining still under a cloud we cannot be satisfied in any such Science 'T is true did those forementioned suppositions appear to us as Phaenomena appearances like unto others in Astronomy there might thence some ground be afforded but they being mera figmenta and entiae rationis must necessarily prove very sandy for to build real truths thereon Neither do his suppositions cohere in all places he admitting many supposita non supponenda yea contradicentia to their number Besides to frame think or imagine that God like unto a Potter turning his Wheel round with a staffe and grinding the Clay thereon into many pieces figures and whirles should grind the materia prima into several pieces whirles figures and shapes is no small absurdity especially when Scripture doth so positively teach us the contrary Would a mans mind be carried forth to such Chimaera's furer and evidenter Principles might be proposed by the means of Numbers But tell me what satisfaction can any one expect from such Conclusions as long as their Premises are not granted but thought figments and falsities For it is not the effects we enquire into but into their real and adequate causes Doth he make any thing more plain or doth he thereby escape all falsities Certainly no for many of those Assertions that are thence deduced do manifestly partake of falsities and Errours as 1. That the nature of a body doth not consist in weight hardness colour or the like but alone in extension 2. He speakes a word or two only of rarefaction and condensation and so away I conceive the rest did surpass his Mathematical demonstrations 3. That a corporeal substance when it is distinguisht from its quantity is confusedly conceived as if it were incorporeal 4. He disproves a vacuum by an idem per idem thus there is no vacuum because the extension of all bodies is equal to their internal and external places The question is the same still viz. Whether all external places are filled up with extensions of internal places of bodies 5. He denies real Atomes 6. That motion taken properly is only to be referred to the contiguous bodies of that which is moved neither is it to be referred but to those contiguous bodies which seem to lie still A fundamental errour 7. That matter is infinite or divisible into infinite parts 8. That the world is of an indefinite quantity 9. That the second matter of Heaven and Earth is one and the same 10. That all matter is really single and obtaineth its diversity of Forms from local motion 11. That in one body innumerable motions are possible 12. That the Moon and the other Planets borrow their Light from the Sun 13. That the Earth is in nothing different from a Planet and consequently that the other Planets are inhabitable 14. That the Moon is illuminated by the Earth 15. He assumes most of the erroneous Opinions of Copernicus 16. That all the parts of the earth are light 17. That Water is convertible into Ayr. Neither are his Definitions
necessarily be so for water strictly so named had it been heaved up it would have been against its first nature and been moved violently which is improbable since that nullum violentum est perpetuum no violent motion is lasting The nature of air certifieth us that it must be it which moved above the waters under it Lastly The waters above the waters strictly so termed are called the Firmament from its firmness because they are as a deep frame or a strong wall about the waters underneath for to keep them together in a counterpoise from falling to an insinitum but it is ai◠that is above the waters and is a Firmament to them ergo the ayr must be comprehended under the Notion of waters Or thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Hebrew is by the Rabbi's and Hebrews expounded an Expansion or thing expanded for its Root is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to attenuate if so then by the waters above must be implied ayr whose nature it is to be expanded as I shewed before So whether you take the word according to the interpretation of the Septuagints 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Firmament or of the Rabbi's Expansion there can be nothing else intended by it but ayr I say then as by waters a duplicity of Elements is implied so by the Heavens ayr and fire are implied I prove it Light is fire flaming but the light was drawn from the Chaos if from the Chaos ergo not from the earth for by earth there is only meant earth single but from the Heaven which imports a conjunction of Elements viz. of Ayr and Fire Secondly Is light being a flaming fire drawn from the Heaven ergo there was fire latent in it So let this serve to answer Van Helmont his Objection who denieth fire to be an Element because its name is not set down in the first Chap. of Gen. neither is ayr mentioned among the Elements in so many Letters yet it is comprehended among them 'T is true Fowl are called Fowl of the ayr but what of that this doth not infer that ayr is an Element because Fowl are named Fowl of the Ayr. Secondly Earth and Water are there expressed in so many letters ergo the Chaos was made up of all the four Elements III. The Elements in the Chaos underwent an exact mixture because each being a stem and perfection to the other they required it for had they been unequally mixt then that part which had not been sufficiently counterpoysed by its opposite Element would have fallen from the whole Hence it followeth that they must have been of an equal extent and degree in their first vertue or quality and not only so but also in their quantity that is they consisted all of an equal number of minima's that so each minimum of every Element might be fitted sustained and perfectionated by three single minimum's of each of the other Elements Now was there but one minimum of any of the Elements in excess above the other it would overbalance the whole Chaos and so make a discord which is not to be conceived But here may be objected That the earth in comparison with the heavens beares little more proportion to their circumference then a point I confess that the air and fire exceed the earth and water in many degrees but again as will be apparent below there is never a Star which you see yea and many more then you see but containes a great proportion of earth and water in its body the immense to our thinking Region of the air and fire are furnished with no small proportion of water and earth so that numeratis numerandis the earth and water are not wanting of a minimum less then are contained either in the fire or ayr IV. The efficient of this greatest and universal body is the greatest and universal cause the Almighty God I prove it The action through which this vast mole was produced is infinite for that action which takes its procession ab infinito ad terminum finitum sive a non ente ad ens from an infinite to a finite term or from nothing to somthing is to be counted infinite but an infinite action requireth an infinite agent therefore none but God who is in all respects infinite is to be acknowledged the sole cause and agent of this great and miracuious effect It was a Golden saying upon this matter of Chrysippus the Stoick If there is any thing that doth effect that which man although he is indued with a reason cannot that certainly is greater mightier and wiser then man but he cannot make the Heavens Wherefore that which doth make them excels man in Art Counsel and Prudence And what saith Hermes in his Pimand The Maker made the universal world through his Word and not with his Hands Anaxagoras concluded the divine mind to be the distinguisher of the universe It was the Saying of Orpheus That there was but one born through himself and that all other things were created by him And Sophocles There is but one true God who made Heaven and the large earth Aristotle Lib. 2. De Gen. Cor. c. 10. f. 59. asserts God to be the Creator of this Universe And Lib. 12. Metaph. c. 8. He attests God to be the First Cause of all other Causes This action is in the holy texts called Creation Gen. 1. 1. Mark 10. 6. Psal. 89. 12. Mal. 2. 10. Creation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not alwaies intended for one and the same signification sometimes it implying the Creation of the world as in the Scriptures next forementioned other whiles it is restricted to Mankind Mark 16. 15. Mat. 28. 19. Luke 24. 47. In other places it is applied to all created beings Mark 13. 19. Gen. 14. 22. Job 38. 8. Prov. 20. 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To create is imported by divers other Expressions 1. By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To Form Gen. 2. 7. Esay 43. 7. 2. By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To make Gen. 1. 31. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He hath establisht Psal. 89. 12. Psal. 104. 5. Mat. 13. 35. Heb. 6. 1. 1 Pet. 1. 20. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To stretch or expand Psal. 10. 2. Es. 42. 5. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To prepare or dispose Prov. 8. 27. Psal. 74. 16. V. Creation is a production of a being out of and from nothing Tho. gives us this Definition in Sent. 2. Dist. 1. Quest. 1. Art 2. Creation is an emanation of an universal Being out of nothing By an universal being he intends a being as it comprehends all material and immaterial beings So that this is rather a definition of the creation of the material and immaterial world then a definition of the Formality of Creation 2. His Definition is defective and erroneous for he adds only out of nothing This is not enough it being possible for a thing to emanate out of nothing and yet not be created the immaterial operations of Angels and
contradict him 2. He did mistake the nature of Essence and Existence as further apppears out of my Metaphysicks 3. It infers an absurd Definition of Creation to wit that it is the mutation of a being a non esse accidentali ad esse accidentale consequently an accident only is produced de novo and not a Substance 4. That the essences of things are eternal a great absurdity I grant they are from all eternity that is from an eternal being 5. Did God contain the essences of things in himself it followes that he also contained their matter in himself a great Blasphemy A mediate Creation is the production of a being a nihilo termini vel formae sed ex aliquo materiae a nihilo formae supple ultima This kind of Creation is expressed by two different words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or making is whereby God created a being ex aliquo materiae sed a nihilo formae ulterioris In this sense did God create the Fishes and Fowl 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or an artificial formation is whereby God formed man also a nihilo formae ulterioris Mediate Creation differs from Generation through that thereby a form is introduced in an instant hereby successively by a preceding alteration 2. Thereby a being is constituted a nihilo formae ulterioris hereby ab aliquo formae ultimae tanquam a termino a quo That is effected by the immediate causality of God this by a mediate one VIII The Chaos being so equally mixed and balanced abided in one place The place which did contain it was not corporeal because it would have been needless since its own balance did sufficiently preserve it in its own internal place It s magnitude was equal to the present magnitude of the world For although through its expansion and opening the fire and ayt were heaved up yet they were heaved up no further then the weighty Elements descended so that what space was left by the one was taken up by the other but had there been a vacuum left by any of their egressions then indeed it must have possessed a larger place As for the tangible quality which it had it must needs have been soft because it being temperated ad pondus could acquire no other then a temperate one and such is soft Colour it had none ex accidenti because there was no light to discern it nevertheless that doth not hinder but that it had a fundamental colour in it self which must have been red that being the only colour issuing out of a temperamentum ad pondus Tast is also detracted from it ex accidenti but in it self it must have been sweet for the same reason We cannot edscribe any smell to it per se because being close shut or not yet opened none can grant that it could have affected any supposed smell since it could not have emitted any Exhalations from it That it had a finite time Scripture testifieth Gen. 1. 1. In the beginning c. but the beginning is a distinction and Note of finite time Ergo. Reason proves no less That which was finite in all its other modes could not be capable of one single infinite mode But such was the Chaos and such is the world now Ergo. Whose parts are subject to a beginning and ending its whole must also have been subject to the same But our daily experience confirms to us that all things are subjected to a beginning and ending Ergo. It s figure is round we know from the form of the Elements Besides rotundity is a figure of the greatest equallest and perfectest extension but such is most sutable to the greatest equallest and perfectest body Ergo. The Chaos was also finite in its globosity and extent of parts I prove it The compleated world being finite in its globosity and extent of parts doth necessarily infer the finiteness of the Chaos in the same particular because the compleated world was framed out of it Now that the world is terminated in magnitude the circumvolutation of the Aplane and the Planets in a finite time to wit in 24 hours doth certainly demonstrate for were the world infinite in magnitude they must then also require an infinite time to rowl round about it the contrary of which is doubted by none Here that trite Axiom may be objected qualis causa taelis effectus Such as the cause is such also is its Effect But God is an infinite cause ergo his effect namely the world must also be infinite I answer That this Maxim holds only in univocis and naturalibus but not in their opposites 2. It is a Character of Gods infiniteness that he can act finitely and infinitely for could he act only infinitely then might he be supposed to act necessarily which is a note of finiteness and limitation in a cause 3. The action whereby he effected this finite work is infinite as I have observed before wherefore in this he acteth both finitely and infinitely And since I am about answering Objections it will not be amiss to insert some objected by Bodinus in Theatr. Nat. and Cajetan against the pre-existence of the Chaos before the compleated world 1. Eccles. 18. 1. Where God is said to have created all things at once Ergo there was no pre-existent Chaos I answer that Creation here doth imply an immediate creation through which God created the matter of all things at once 2. They resume the words of Austin asserting that to God there is nothing before or after another no past or future time but that all things are like as it were in one moment filling that which hath a most perfect being Wherefore say they Moses did distinguish the Creation into several sections and divisions to accomodate things created in an instant to our capacity I answer That had Moses writ that God had created all things in a moment we could have understood him as plainly as he hath writ otherwise for we know that Scripture containes many harder sayings then this would have been So that it is a great levity in them to retort the genuine sense of sacred words to their oblique brow As for that of Austin it hinders not but that all things past present and future are as in an instant to God and yet to us may be past present and future The Chaos is not only finite in duration and continuated quantity but also in discrete as they term it quantity or number It s quantity is the least and the greatest it is the least in discrete quantity for there was but one Chaos 2. But the greatest in continued quantity The proof of these depends reciprocally from one another The Chaos is but one because it is the greatest were there then more then one Chaos but two three or more or infinite it could not be the greatest but part of the greatest and so the whole must be greater then the part on the other side it is the greatest because
the Furnace and beating against the Roof of it doth not reverberate into it self but reflects to the sides and so moves along circularly about the sides of the wall which doth more evidently appear in a globous Furnace Fornax reverberatoria The same is also manifested by the fire of kindled Gunpowder in a Squib which thickneth the ayr by impelling the Vapours and Exhalations therein contained one upon the other and augmenting them by its own fumes is almost every way resisted and beaten back whence therefore we observe it betakes it self to a circular motion The reason is because through a circular motion it is less resisted for one part of it preceding the other doth not stop the following parts but rather one part draweth another after it or bears another before it and moving alwaies round it never meets with any other resistance for the one part is gone before the other can overtake it or what should resist it It is just like un to two horses going both one pace round in a Mill the one can never be a stop to the other but rather the one draweth the other after him because they move both one way Was this motion any other but circular it would meet with resistance This motion is as it were natural to the fire and therefore is also of an eval duration for its nature is ever to move from the Center which it doth in moving circularly not primarily but secondarily it moving first directly to the Circumference and thence reflecting to the sides it creeps as it were all about the surface of the ayr one part drawing the other after it or pushing and thrusting it before it or both waies Did not the fire continue in motion it would soon lose its flame for the flame is continued by being united that which unites it is besides its own motion the crassitude of the ayr which the fire impelling one part upon the other renders thicker and so unites it self the more So that in all Particulars this motion is natural to the fire necessarily of an eval duration because the said motion preserves it in its being and is its proper nature Now were this motion the effect of heat it must be violent and consequently of no long duration for what is violent destroyes the essence of a being It would he violent because heat is produced by a violent cause from without namely the opposition of the ayr 2. We read of no burning heat in the Mosaick Philosophy but only of a moving spirit which is that I call fire or at least an effect impressed upon part of the Chaos by which it moved to the surface for you read that this moving vertue was upon the face of the waters before there was light that is it was drawn out from the Chaos before it could raise a flame to give light What can be more plain Lastly it was necessary that the Elements should be of an eval duration for they were created to exist the same duration which Adam had he abided in his primitive state of Innocency would have existed By all which it appeares that there is no other Principle whence its eval duration is deducible but from hence CHAP. XI Of the second Division of the Chaos 1. An Enarration of Effects befalling the Elements through the second Knock. The proportion of each of the Elements in their purity to the Peregrine Elements 2. The ground of the forementioned proportion of the Elements 3. That fire and ayr constitute the Firmament 4. A grand Objection answered I. LEt us pass to the second Division and speculate the effects of that Through this vibration did the earth yet more concentrate and the waters gulped also upwards equally from all parts for as I said the Chaos was equally mixt otherwise how could the waters equally cover the earth as they did the waters being got atop the ayr got loose in a far greater measure then it did before which being expanded constituted this great tract of the air which now we breath into This breach although in a manner agreeable to the absolute propension of fire and ayr could not since they were soexactly mixed with the weighty elements but give occasion of conveighing a greater proportion of both with them Neither was that little remaining bowl of the great mole whereon we now tread destitute of all her former adherents there still being immerst in her the same proportion of the light Elements to the weighty as there is a proportion of weighty elements attending the separated light ones Consider now the proportion of each to it self 1. Although the earth doth harbour some of the other Elements in her yet she is triumphant over them in the fourth degree that is there are three parts pure earth to one part of the others and amongst these others that constitute a fourth part in her own bowels it is to be conceived that water doth transcend the ayre and so the ayre the fire Supposing then the earth to-consist of 64 parts 48 thereof are pure earth 6 1 â— pure water 5 1 â— pure ayr and 4 1 â— fire Hence from its predominance it is called earth and so the like of water ayr and fire to wit water reserves 48 parts of pure water 5 1 â— of ayr 5 1 â— of earth 5 of fire Ayr is called ayr also from its greater predominance over the other elements not from its purity as if it should be all pure ayr that is impossible It s purity appropriates 48. water and fire each 5 â— â— earth 5. Fire is pure in 48. ayr in 6 1 â— water in 5 1 â— earth in 4 1 â— The proportion of these forementioned elements take thus 64 parts is the whole three fourths of it which are 48 denote the proportion of each element in its purity Then there remains 16 which is the last fourth signifying the proportion of the admisted elements to the principal element as it is considered to be in its purity Again there is another proportion observable among the perigrine elements as they are sharers of the last fourth which is 16. Wherefore in earth 6 parts and a third is taken up by water one less to wit 5 1 â— by ayr and also one less namely 4 1 â— by the fire In water five and a half is equally attributed to earth and air one less that is the overplus fraction of each compleat number of earth and air makes socially one more to fire The last fourth or 16 of the air is supplied in five and a half by each of the ingress of fire and water In five by fire Fire is tied to 6 1 â— of ayr 5 1 â— of water to 4 1 â— of earth II. The ground and reason of this proportion is 1. That the least predominance whereby an element may acquire its name must be triple that is thrice as many times more in quantity then the elements affixed to it for did an element in its purity
Arcess Nature make her process in the elaboration purification and exaltation of the Elements neither was she yet arrived to her ultimate intention or end but proceeded in her scope by a more arct and pure coagulation of parts in dividing the heterogeneous parts yet more from the body of water and so knitting them together again This was the fifth Division whereby God divided the purest and subtilest part of the Elements before divided and coagulated from the course and impure parts and promoted them to an arcter coagulation this was as it were a fourth rectification of the Elements In the water the coagulated bodies through the vivification of the Planetary influences became Fishes In the Ayr Fowl VI. The Sixth Division respected the Earth out of whose more purified and rectified parts protruded to her superficial Region Cattel and Beasts were animated by the same Influences Lastly By vertue of the Seventh Division Man was created and formed out of the most exalted Quintessence of the purest coagulalation of Earth animated through the Benigne vivifying Beams of the Sun after which a Mens sive Spiritus sive Lux Rationalis a Mind or a rational spirit or Light was inspired or infused from God into this most sublime Tabernacle The Representation of the Chaos after its latter Divisions How a Creature is vivified and animated I shall demonstrate in its proper place Man again was further purified and defaecated by having a woman created out of his grosser and less digested Parts CHAP. XIV Of the Second and Third Absolute Qualities of the Elements 1. What is understood by Second Qualities 2. What the Second quality of Earth is 3. Aristotle's Definition of Density rejected 4. The Opinions of Philosophers touching the Nature of Density 5. The forementioned Opinions confuted 6. The Description of Indivisibles according to Democritus disproved That all Figures are divisible excepting a Circular Minimum That Strength united proveth strongest in a round Figure and why 7. What the Second Quality of Fire is Cardan Averrhoes Zimara Aristotle Tolet and Zabarel their Opinions touching the Nature of Rarity confuted 8. The Second Quality of Water Aristotle Joh. Grammat Tolet Zabarel and Barthol their sence of Thickness and Thinness disproved 9. What the Second Quality of Ayr is 10. What is intended by third fourth or fifth Qualities An Enumeration of the said Qualities What Obtuseness Acuteness Asperity Levor Hardness Rigidity Softness Solidity Liquidity and Lentor are and their kinds 1. THe Second Qualities are those which do immediately descend or emanate from the first without any neerer interposing Their Number is adequated to the Number of the first qualities and therefore are only four because an immediate and univocal cause cannot produce more immediate and univocal Effects then one Second qualities proceed from the Elements either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Second qualities 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or per se are such as emanate primarily from the absolute forms of the Elements Second qualities 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or per accidens emanate primarily from the respective forms of the Elements In the Precedent Chapters hath been indistinctly treated of the first and second qualities united into one as really they are but they are tow and distinct from each other ratione because we conceive them distinctly and apprehend one to be the cause of the other The reason why I did then propose the first and second qualities as one form of the Elements is because there I handled them as they were really inherent in their Subjects Here my purpose is to describe them as they are successively apprehended by us one after the other II. The first quality power or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the earth is gravity with contiguity the second or next quality emanating nearest thence is density for conceiving a thing to be weighty and contiguous in its parts that which we apprehend next is density for if a thing is weighty or pressing to the Center and its parts contiguous it cannot but be pressed very close since its parts are contiguous whereby they give and make way to and for one another which closeness of parts emanating from a contiguous weight is called density III. Aristotle describes Density to be that whereby a substance containes much matter in small dimensions I cannot well guess what he cals much matter whether he means much matter only without the intention of its form or much matter with much of its form The first is not possible for whenever matter is augmented its form is alwaies intended with it and likewise the diminution of matter attendeth the remission of its form which is evident in fire cast more fewel to it and its first quality will also be intended If he implies the last where then consists the difference between Density and Rarity For dense bodies contain no more matter then rare ones for each their matter is adequately extended to the extension of their form Doth a Lump of earth contain more matter then a tract of ayr of the same proportion No certainly for there is as much matter in that proportion of ayr as there is in the same of earth Matter is that whereout a thing is made but there is as much of that whereout the ayr is made in the ayr in the same extent of place as there is in earth whereout that is made But answer me whereby will you know what hath much matter in a little place or dimension and what hath little matter in a great place You will say by its weight So that whatever is weighty that containes more matter then that which is light Why shall a body be said to have more matter from its gravity then another from its Levity Or why shall a light body have but little matter and a weighty one much If a weighty body hath more matter because it is weighty then it is more a body then a light body but that is absurd By more matter I mean magis materia But you answer your meaning to be major materia neither that for as I said before the least particle of ayr hath as much whereout it is made as the least particle of earth It is true it hath not so much weight for it hath none but weight is not the matter of a thing but its form how then can a weighty thing be said to have much matter because of its weight Wherefore let me tell you that density doth not derive from the matter of a thing but from its form and that it is not the Modus solius materiae but totius The same may be urged against the Paripatetick Definition of Rarity which is whereby a body containeth little matter under great dimensions The matter which is to be contained under great or little dimensions must be of that quantity as to fill its place which rare and dense bodies do equally under the same proportion But doubtless these Definitions cannot be defended unless they be
light and rare parts to it I wonder what accidental change it is he means it must be either to quantity and then it is the same with augmentation and diminution or to quality and then it is an alteration or a locomotive quality but he mentions none Supposing it to be a quality the question is whether this doth arise in that subject with the adherence to its primitive matter of the extrinsick Agent or whether it doth migrate out of its own subject into another It is not the latter for I have proved in my Dispute of Powers that an Accident doth not migrate out of one Subject into another If the first then it is by the entring of another body between the parts that are separated and what body is that but fire It is that which through its contiguous lightness doth render a dense body rare and so condensation is by expelling the light parts or admitting more parts of a dense body as of earth which doth condensate through its contiguous gravity Wherefore we are not forced to grant a vacuum in Rarefaction because a body is rarefied through the supplying of the supposed voyd spaces by the presence of fire Neither need we to assert a penetration of bodies in Condensation since that those parts which are supposed to be penetrated into the substance of others are expelled It is not then as Tolet writes that rarefaction is become great out of little without the apposition or detraction of a new Substance for were it so then of a necessity there must be allowed a penetration of bodies in condensation and a vacuum in Rarefaction wherefore Scaliger saith well in his 4th Exerc. That there can be no addensation or rarefaction although Rarity and Density are really in them in any single body Ergo dum inter unum minimum naturale ignis puri minima continua circumsita nullum medium corpus intercedat quonam igitur modo queunt esse propius ant longinquius sine intervallo mutuave cor porum penetratione Wherefore since between one natural minimum of pure fire the surrounding continuated minima's which are the minima's of the ayr there is no middle body interposed how then can they be nearer or further without an interval or mutual penetration of bodies The reason as I said before is because without the adjunction of another body to a single one there is no rarefaction or condensation Observe by the way that many of the Parepateticks make a two-fold rarity in bodies The one they confound with a thinness as you may read in Arist. Lab. 2. de part Anim. Cap. 1. And Grammat Lib. 2. de ortu inter Context 8. This they refer to the Category of Quality and doth consecute heat The other which is the more frequent and proper acception of Rarity as they say is which doth not consist in a Tenuity of a substance but in the distance of parts between one another and so they call a sponge rare because it hath parts distant from one another through an interposed space not really void which containes no body but is filled with another thin and insensible body as in a Sponge whose parts are called void wherein notwithstanding ayr is contained This kind of Rarity they refer to the Category of Situs I take them in this last Acception and demand whether it is not the ayr which causes that situation and distance of parts For the Sponge is condensed through expressing the ayr by compression of the Sponge If so then it is not a single quality educed out of the power of matter but the entring of the ayr into its pores which doth rarifie as they term it the Sponge Zabarel Lib. de Calore Coelest Cap. 3. attributes Rarity to the causality of heat and density to Coldness But before he had proposed an Objection which was that heat is produced by rarefaction and attrition To this he strives to answer below but finding he could not go through with it recants and states That in the Elements as they are simple their heat doth produce Rarity and so doth Rarity reciprocally produce heat An absurdity to affirm the effect to be the cause of its cause and the cause to be the effect of it self 2. Heat is not the cause of Rarity because fire is the rarest of all in its own Region and yet as they confess fire is not hot in its own Seat VIII The first quality of water is gravity with continuity the second emanating thence is Crassitude which is a thick consistence exporrected through all its dimensions You will grant me that Crassitude proceeds from an arct and near union of parts or from a close compression of the said parts This compression and union derives from gravity this gravity being continuous doth necessarily cause a crassitude for were it contiguous it would effect a density There is nothing unless it be water or waterish bodies that is thick as Oyles Gums Rozzens fat Tallow are all waterish so far at they are thick yet not without the admistion of most Ayr Ice Chrystal Diamonds and most Precious stones are waterish and therefore thick Choler Pepper the Stars c. are rare because they are fiery that is participate more of fire then of any other Element Flies Cobwebs Clouds c. are thin because they are ayery All earthy bodies are dense as Minerals Stones c. Now as it is necessary that all the Elements should meet in every body so it is necessary that there should concomitate Rarity Density Tenuity and Crassitude in each mixt body Wherefore do not think it strange that thinness and thickness should be in one body although they are counted contraries among Authors I cannot but admire that all Philosopers to this very day should have confounded the signification of these words thick dense thin rare naming thick bodies dense thin ones rare and so reciprocally as if they were one whereas there is a great distinction between them Aristotle Johan Grammat Tolet Zabarel and many others take thinness and rarity to be the same as also thickness and density whereas you may now evidently know that they are altogether distinct and wherein they are so It is erroneous to say that water is dense or fire thick ayr rare c. but water is alone thick ayr thin earth dense and fire rare Bartholin Lib. 1. Phys. Cap. 5. defines Thickness by an adulterine cause Thickness saith he is thought to derive from coldness and density And a little before he described Density to be derived from coldness and thickness Mark his thick dulness in asserting thickness to be the cause of density and density of thickness The cause must be prior causato natura saltem but here neither is prior He makes a difference in their names but in re he concludes them to be one IX The first quality of Ayr is Levity with Continuity its second is Tenuity which is a thin consistence of a substance wherefore Thinness and Thickness are
a more convenient position of your hands So water when it is violently detained is intended in its gravity because its expansion which is a more convenient position doth intend its motion and yet the same strength and force of gravity was latent in the water when it was in its natural position Water doth alwaies affect and covet a globous figure now through this globosity the water is rendered disadvantageous to exert its weight because all its parts cannot joyn together in opposing the body which it is to depress but being in a Globe the undermost parts of that Globe do partly sustain the force of the uppermost and centrical parts and the same undermost parts being interposed between the other body and the other parts cause that the others parts cannot come at the body That this is so the trial of this Experiment will soon certifie you weigh some long pieces of Iron or Wood in a payr of Scales and observe the weight of them then divide them into less pieces so as they may lie closer and weigh them again you will find that the last shall be much lighter then the first besides I have tried it many other waies This Reason will also serve to illustrate the manner of intention of weight in earth when it is violently detained Ayr moveth stronger upwards when its parts are more divided and expanded for then every particle of the ayr contributes its motion and so in fire Nevertheless the same force was actually in the ayr and fire below In this sense it is I have made use of Intention of Qualities above in the Precedent Chapter Wherefore it appeares hence that there is no such refraction or intention of qualities as the Peripateticks imagine to themselves V. A mixt body is usually divided into a body perfectly mixed and a body imperfectly mixed and as usually received among the Vulgar but whether this Division be lawful is doubted by few An imperfectly mixed body they describe to be a body whose mixture is constituted only by two or three elements a great errour there being no body in the world excepting the elements themselves but their mistion consisteth of four Ingredients This I have proved before Others think to mend the matter by saying that an imperfect mixed body consists of Ingredients but a little alterated and therefore its form is not different from the element which predominates in it To the contrary the Ingredients in imperfectly mixed bodies are as much alterated as there is vertue in them to alterate one another and who will not assert the form of a Comet to be different from the form of fire or Snow from the form of water c. There is no mixed body but it is perfectly mixed for if it be imperfectly mixed it will not constitute a mixt body 'T is true some mixt bodies contain a fuller proportion of Elements then others and therefore are more durable and may be of a more perfect proportion yet the mixture of a body which lasteth but a moment is as much a mistion as that which lasteth an age and consequently as perfect in reference to mixture CHAP. XVIII Of Temperament 1. That Temperament is the form of Mixtion That Temperament is a real and positive quality 2. The Definition of a Temperament Whether a Temperament is a single or manifold quality VVhether a complexion of qualities may be called one compounded quality 3. VVhether a Temperament be a fifth quality A Contradiction among Physitians touching Temperament Whether the congress of the four qualities effects but one Temperament or more 4. That there is no such thing as a Distemper What a substantial Change is 5. What an Altsration or accidental change is That the Differences of Temperament are as many as there are Minima's of the Elements excepting four 1. THe Form of Mistion is Temperament I prove it That must be the Form of Mistion which doth immediately result out of or with the union of the elements but a temperament doth immediately result out of or with union of the Elements Ergo. 2. Since there is no deperdition or refraction of the absolute forms of the Elements that must needs be the form of Misture which the union of those absolute forms doth immediately constitute but that can be nothing else but a Temperament Ergo. 3. That is the form of Mistion which chiefly causeth all the operations and effects produced by a mixt body but the chief cause of all the operations and effects of a mixt body is the temperament ergo The Minor is asserted by all ingenious Physitians Hence we may safely infer that a temperament is not a relative only but a positive and real quality for were it only a relation its essence would wholly depend from the mind and be little different from an Ens Rationis II. A Temperament is the union of the forms of the Elements By union apprehend the forms of the Elements united into one quality The name of temperament soundeth a temperating or mixing yet not primarily of Matters but principally of Forms for none doubteth of its being a quality or formal power Kyper in his Medic. contract Lib. 1. Cap. 3. alledgeth this doubt whether a temperament be a simple or manifold quality but before I apply my self to the solution of it observe that simple may either have respect to the Matter materia ex qua out of which a temperament is constituted which are the four first qualities or forms of the Elements or to the form of a temperament which is one quality resulting out of the union of its materials Wherefore if simple be taken in the former respect doubtless a temperament is a manifold quality if in the latter it is simple I prove it simple in the latter respect is equipollent to unity but a temperament is but one quality and not manifold although out of many yet united into one ergo a temperament is a simple quality 2. Were a temperament formally a manifold quality its effects would be equivocal and manifold but to the contrary the effects per se of a temperament are univocal and simple the one not differing in specie from the other The said Kyper proposes the very words of my Solution for a doubt in the next Paragraph whether complexion of qualities may be called one compounded quality which he determines very well In Metaphysicks saith he there is not only allowed of an unity of simplicity but also of an unity of composition wherefore it is not repugnant that there should be an unum compositum of qualities since there is an unum compositum of substances III. This puts me in remembrance of another controversie which I have formerly read in Mercat his works Lib. 1. Part 2. de Elem. Class 2. Quaest. 39. whether a temperament be a fifth quality or rather a Concord or Harmony of the four Elements Avicen defines it a fifth quality to which the said Author subscribes but Fr. Vallesius Lib. 1. Cap. 6. contra Med.
and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 innate some taking them for one others limiting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to heat that is only proper to living creatures and applying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to heat that is common to all mixt bodies and is subjected to Putrefaction as if connate heat were not subjected to Putrefaction as well as the innate Doth not the connate heat of man suffer putrefaction in a Hectick Feaver You may further read of a fourfold difference of innate heat in Argenter his Treatise of the innate heat 1. I conclude that the connate heat is elementary and not astral I prove it There was connate heat before the Stars were created ergo its Original was not thence The Antecedence is plain from Scripture Gen. 1. for there it appeares that Herbs which questionless were actuated by connate heat were created the third day whereas the Stars were not created before the fourth day 2. Where the effects and operations are alike there the causes cannot be unlike but the effects and operations of Astral heat are no others then of Elementary ergo although I granted it to be Astral it must also be elementary 2. Innate heat is said to be a spirit because its rarest substance is adunited to the least bodies of the other Elements whereby it is fortified and becomes more potent and is constituted a most subtil moveable body The purest and most potent spirits are about the Center they next to them are not so subtil others yet more remote are grosser 3. The connate heat hath a power of converting influent heat into the same nature it self is of I prove it Hippocrates teacheth that the maternal bloud and the sperm are perfused with innate heat if then advenient bloud can be united to primogeneal bloud ergo influent heat may be united to the innate heat and converted into the same nature 2. Flesh contains a part of connate heat in it but cut off a piece of flesh and Nature will restore it again if restore it again then innate heat must be restored with it if so then this innate heat must be generated out of the bloud by the innate heat of the next adjacent parts 4. Childrens teeth are regenerable but teeth contain innate heat in them ergo innate heat is regenerable 5. That which the fore-quoted Opinion stated a putrefactible innate heat is a volatick and moveable heat which not being subtil enough to be united to the fixt or connate heat is protruded to the external parts and is subjected to putrefaction so that in the body of man the food that is daily ingested its subtilest part serveth to be converted into innate heat and to be substituted into the room of the last consumed innate heat The courser parts are converted into moving and external heats By Heats Calida understand hot Particles 6. How is it possible that so little innate heat as is contained within a Dram or two of Sperm should be sufficient to heat the body of a big man XII Corruption is the dissolution of a mixt body into the Elements or into other bodies more resembling the elements then it The Cause of Corruption as I said before is the greatest putrid alteration whereby the innate heat is violently dissolved In Putrefaction the moving heat alone is altered which is reducible but if it continues to a great putrefaction then the innate heat suffers danger and is yet likewise reducible but if the greatest putrefaction seizeth upon a body then the innate heat is strongly putrified and is rendered irreducible because through it the greatest part of the innate heat is corrupted which to expel the remaining innate heat finds it self too impotent But if only a less part be corrupted and the greater abide in power it may overcome the other and reduce it self Hence a reason may be given why many men having been oft seized upon by Feavers yet have been cured and their innate heat is become more vigorous then ever it was yea some live the longer for it The reason is because in most curable Feavers the moving spirits alone are affected neither doth the Alteration reach so deep as greatly to disturb the innate heat but oft times the body being foul and the bloud altered by peregrine humours the body is cleansed and by its fermenting and expelling heat the bloud is freed from these noxious humours after which the primogenious heat is less oppressed and acts more naturally then before through which life is prolonged Here we may answer fundamentally to that so frequently ventilated doubt whether life may be prolonged to an eval duration Paracelsus and many of his Sectators do maintain it affirmatively to whom three hundred years seemed but a slight and short age and in stead of it promising a Life of Nestor to those as would make use of his Arcana Mysterious Medicines yea a life to endure to the Resurrection But these are but Fables and Flashes for since that a man is unequally mixt and that one Element doth overtop the other questionless the predominant element will prove a necessary cause of the dissolution of that Mixtum but was a man tempered ad pondus equally and as Galen hath it tota per tota his Nature would become eval all the Elements being in him composed to an equal strength in an equal proportion If then otherwise the radical heat and moysture do sensibly diminish certainly old age or gray haires cannot be prevented Possibly you may imagine a Medicine the which having a vertue of retarding the motion of the vital heat must of necessity prolong its life in the same manner as I have read in some Author I cannot call to mind which a Candle hath been preserved burning for many years without the adding of Moysture to it by being placed in a close and cold Cave deep under ground Here if true a flame was retarded in its motion by the constringent cold of the earth and thereby the Tallow was saved by being but a very little dissipated through the motion of the fire I say then could the natural heat be retarded by such a constrictive medecine as to catochizate it and hinder its motion life might be protracted to some hundreds of yeares But again then a man could not be suffered to eat or drink in that case because that must necessarily stirre up the heat which excited if it were not then ventilated by the substracting the forementioned constrictive Medecine whereby it might dissipate the acceding moisture must incur into danger of extinction But this prolongation of life pretended by Theophrast Par. is attempted by hot Medecines such as they say do comfort and restore the natural Balsom of man which is so far from retarding old Age that it rather doth accelerate it for if the heat is augmented then certainly it must acquire a stronger force whereby it procures a swifter declination as hath been shewed Besides Experience confirms this to us Many having accustomed themselves to take a Dram
in the 17th Chap. declares the necessity and certainty of mans death particularly in v. 5. Seeing his dayes are determined the number of his Moneths are with thee thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass I cannot here omit the detecting of that dull vulgar Errour and Doubt arising about these very words of Job Their way of Argumentation is If the life of man is determined to a year a Moneth Day and Minute ergo it will prove in vain for me to have that care of my health and caution of hazarding my Life at Sea or at Land In fine there is neither Anticipation or Posticipation of Life Man acts voluntarily that is freely without any necessary or fatal impulse wherefore one who is drowned at Sea was not compelled to go and be drowned but went thither freely or might have stayed away if then he might have stayed away ergo his life might have been prolonged by staying away Or otherwise suppose a man is diseased with a Gangreen in some one extreme part of his body Cannot we say that this man if he lists may have his life prolonged by ampntating the gangrenous Member or if he will that he may accelerate his death in suffering it to increase and creep on But to Answer to the Text. Determination of Dayes is twofold 1. Of the Natural Course of mans Life as suppose that the Temperament of man will last and endure if it run off in a Natural Course to a hundred and twenty yeares some more some less now this term may be said to be Gods Determination of the Dayes of man when he hath determined that his temperament shall endure no longer then he hath made it to endure naturally 2. There is a Determination of life before it hath run out his natural course as when God doth manifestly cut down a man in the full strength of his years Again there is an ordinary determination of the duration of beings by which God hath determined that all things shall have their natural course of being acting and continuing Were it not for this ordinary determination of God he would never suffer the wicked to live or that any Natural thing should be serviceable to them 2. There is also an extraordinary Determination through which God hath determined to act beyond his ordinary determination in through or upon things which are ordinarily determined This determination is secret and called Gods hidden will Neither doth his extraordinary determination contradict or clip or change his ordinary determination but that God may or doth sometimes determinate beyond it This premitted I do assert that the determination of mans dayes in the Text is to be understood of Gods ordinary determination of the Natural Course of mans Life I confess although God according to his ordinary determination hath determined the Natural course of mans dayes yet he may through his extraordinary determination prolongate the same mans life to many years and notwithstanding thereby he doth not contradict his ordinary determination for a man having run out his full Natural course of life hath therein answered Gods ordinary determination which being expired God may and sometimes doth supernaturally and by his extraordinary determination superadd other natural Principles through which his life is prolonged thus was the life of King Hezekiah prolonged by God superadding new Principles of life whereby his life was protracted 15 years longer for through Gods ordinary determination he must have died fifteen years before because all his natural heat was spent through his Disease and his temperament run off Wherefore as the Text saith 2 Kings 20. 1. he must have died of a necessity but God extraordinarily superadding a new heat and a new life prolonged his dayes In the same manner doth God oft-times through his extraordinary determination cut down the wicked and shorten their dayes Psal. 55. Look back to the 9 and 10 Chap. of my Natur. Theol. Here may be demanded how Adam and Eves Bodies could have been of an eval duration supposing they had remained in their Innocency their bodies being tempered ad justitiam only and not ad pondus I Answer That according to all probability their primogenial temperature was by far more perfect compariativè then ours and therefore did not consume faster then their Natures could adunite other parts in the room of the dissipated ones besides that heat which was dissipated was only part of the moveable heat as for their fixt heat that was so arctly united and tempered that its nexe was indissoluble which through their Fall is become soluble This Controversie is stated and handled more at large by Beverovit Lib. de vit term and Gregor Horst Lib. 2. de Nat. human Exerc 4. Quest. 10 11. whom you may peruse at your leisure As Generation did import a twofold signification so doth Corruption 1. In a large sense it implies a natural dissolution together with the declining alteration thereunto tending 2. Strictly it signifies a violent dissolution of a mixt body through a preceding Putrefaction Hence those may be advertised who do erroneously confound Putrefaction and Corruption taking them for one Its Species are Combustion Petrification Corruption by waterish moysture and Corruption through ayry moysture You may easily understand the natures of them by what hath been spoken before Whether Corruption is possible to the Elements as they are now consisting mutually mixt one with the other is a Doubt moved by some I Answer that a total Corruption is impossible a partial one happens every hour for we see ayry bodies as Clouds dissolved every day the like happens in the Region of Fire where fiery bodies are dissolved every day and others again generated In the Earth and Water some bodies are likewise corrupted and others generated every day so Gold Silver and all other hard Metals are sometimes violently corrupted under the earth from an extrinsick potent and putrifying heat CHAP. XXI Of Light 1. What Light is The manner of the production of a Flame 2. The Properties and Effects of Light 3. That Light is an Effect or consequent of a Flame Whence it happens that our Eyes strike fire when we hit our Foreheads against any hard Body That Light is not a quality of fire alone That Light is not fire rarefied That where there is Light there is not alwaies heat near to it How Virginals and Organs are made to play by themselves 4. That Light is a continuous obduction of the Air. That Light is diffused to a far extent in an instant and how Why the whole tract of Air is not enlightned at once 5. The manner of the Lights working upon the Eye-sight That sight is actuated by reception and not by emission 6. The reason of the difference between the extent of illumination and calefaction That Light cannot be precipitated 7. That Light is not the mediate cause of all the Effects produced by the Stars That Light hath only a power of acting immediately and per se upon the optick
spirits How the Air happens to burst through a sudden great light That a sudden great Light may blind kill or cast a man into an Apoplexy 8. How Light renders all Objects visible Why a piece of Money cast into a Basin filled with water appears bigger than it is The causes of apparent Colours Why a great Object appears but small to one afar off The difference between lux and lumen What a Beam is What a Splendour is That the Lights begot by the Stars and other flames are not distinguished specie How the Coelum Empyreum is said to be Lucid. I. VVE are now to ennumerate and unfold the remaining qualities risen from the mixture of the Elements such are Light Colours Sounds Odors and Sapors We will first begin with Light as being the excellentest among them Light is a quality emanating from flaming fire A flame is nothing else but incrassated Air expanded and deducted in rotundity by condensed fire which is detained and imprisoned within the foresaid qualified Air. The difficulties requiring illustration are 1. How the fire comes to be condensed 2. How imprisoned 3. Why the Air doth immediately surround it 4. How light is propagated and the manner of its action As to the first Fire I have told you will not burn unless it be condensed for being naturally rare it penetrates through the incrassated Air with ease but being condensed it doth not because it is adjoyned to a heavy gross body namely the minima's of the Earth and Water which doth put a stop to its pass but nevertheless the force of fire is stronger by reason of those adjoyned heavy minima's For fire being violently detained by them is grown stronger 2. Fire being to divide another thick body makes use of the compressing accuteness of Earth to divide it which it effects by protruding those dense parts before it for through its single rarity it could not 2. Fire flying out and being expulsed out of a mixt body if it doth not meet with incrassated Air to retain it will pass and vanish but hitting against incrassated Air it strives to pass the Air again being continuous doth maintain her continuity with all her force and thirdly the fire moving circularly makes a circular dent into the mass of the said thickned Ayr which it beats against the advenient Ayr also striving from all parts to recover its situation and therefore necessarily surrounding the fire The Ayr again is also become stronger because of its violent detention notwithstanding the fire being the more potent doth diduct it into an oval or round Figure in the same manner as Wind striving to pass the water doth blow it up into a bubble Fire being thus condensed imprisoned and surrounded with thick ayr and diducting the same ayr into an oval or round Figure is called a flame II. The properties of a flame are 1. to be burning hot 2. to be an lux illuminans illuminating light The burning proceeds from the particles of condensed fire violently striking through the moisture of a mixt body whereby it divides it into ashes or a black crust tending to ashes Before I shew the manner of emanation of Light let us first examine what it is we call Light Light is that which is visible and renders all things about it visible Wherefore you do mark that Light is nothing but that which affects and moves the eye-sight If then I make it appear to you whereby it is that fire doth affect the Eye-sight therein I shew you the manner of emanation or operation of Light You must apprehend the optick spirits to be a thin continuous body equally interwoven through all its parts with a proportion of thin yet a little condensed fire for were it not a little dense it could not heat so that it is very like to the ambient ayr in substance and its other qualities 2. Supposing it to be an ayr we must conceive it to be continuous with the ambient ayr when the eyes are open This premitted I infer light to be nothing else but a continuous obduction of the Ayr caused by a flaming fire But let me here intreat your serious intention upon what I shall discover concerning the nature of Light it being one of the difficultest mysteries of all Philosophy and although its effects are luminous to the Eye yet its nature is obscure to the Understanding The search of this moved Plato to leave Athens and set saile for Sicily to speculate those flames of the mount AEtna Empedocles the Philosopher hazarded himself so far for to make a discovery of the nature of a flame and its light that he left his body in the Mongibell fire for an experiment although much beyond his purpose It is almost known to all how that the Learned Pliny took shipping from the promontory Misenas to be traversed to the Mount Pomponianus whither curiosity had driven him to fathom the depths of the Vesuvian flames but before he could feel the heat the smoak smothered him III. First then I prove that Light is an effect of a flame There is no flame but it causeth light and by the light we know it is a flame Ergo Light is an inseparable accident and a propriety quartimodi of a flame the Antecedence is undoubted Doth not a Candle a Torch a focall flame cause lights Or did you ever see light and doubted of the flame of it What is the reason when we hit our fore-heads against any hard thing we say there strikes a light out of our eyes It is because the violence of the stroke did discontinuate the optick ayr through which the condensed fire did unite and diduct the intrinsick ayr which was incrassated through the same stroke and so made a flame or rather a flash which is a sudden flame that is quickly lighted and quickly laid Secondly Light is not a single quality inhering in fire alone for were it so then where ever fire is there should be light but to the contrary we find that there is fire inherent in the ayr and many other bodies yet the ayr remains dark after the descent of the Planets 2. Were fire naturally light we could never be in darkness because the vast Region of fire is so large that it could not but illuminate thrice the extent of the ayr Thirdly Light is not fire rarefied and exporrected throughout all the dimensions of the ayr for who could ever imagine that a Candle being so small a flame should serve to be drawn out through the ayr and fill it with light to the extent of six or eight Leagues for a Candle may be seen at Sea in a clear dark night six or eight Leagues off or further so that it is absurd to imagine this and unworthy of a Philosophers maintaining it 2. It is impossible that fire could be so exactly mixt with ayr in an instant for so large an extent 3. There is never a particle of illuminated ayr but it is light to the full extent
makes all bodies therein contained shew greater Besides water containing much air in her body suffereth also an obtension of that whereby bodies must necessarily appear bigger then they are The reason why a piece of Money in a Bason with water appears bigger then it is is because the water through impregnation with peregrine air proper thickness and continuity doth reflect and admit much obtended air or light which being altered by the colour of the money doth appear much bigger then if seen through thin air alone Light is diminisht because the air is condensed so that whatever doth condense the air must diminish its light and obduction Whatever body light appulses against it is thereby darkned because the body which it strikes against condenses the air According to this degree of condensation the light is gradually diminisht and darkned if it be terminated in a most dense earthy body then it appears black if against a body that hath less earth or density it appears brown that is to say at the point of reflection against an Object and so gradually in all other This change being wrought upon the terminating obtension by an objected body it is repercussed to a certain distance namely as far as the repercutient action of that object can reach which is as far as until the Air doth recover its proper station If we are far off from an Object it appears less then it is because its action doth diminish gradually like unto the streams of water which about the center of action are greater but the more remote they are the less they grow A Flame is called a Light Lux because it begets light The light begot in the Air is called Lumen an Illumination Wherefore these lights are not really distinguisht but ratione Neither is a flame to be called a light unless when it doth obduct the Air neither is the Air to be termed a light or illumination unless when it is obducted by a flame Radius a Beam is a diducted line of a flame tending directly from the Center to the Circumference A Splendor is the intention of light by a reflection or refraction upon a thick continuous smooth body The Lights begot by the Stars and other flames are not distinguisht specie because they depend upon the same causes namely upon Fire and Air. Their difference consists in consistency purity bigness c. The Coelum Empyreum or Heavens of the Angels are said to be lucid which may be understood tropically or properly If properly possibly it hath a vertue of obducting the air like unto a flame If tropically lucid is equipollent to glorious The Bodies of the risen Saints shall appear glorious and splendid possibly because they shall be more ayry and fiery that is flammy CHAP. XXII Of Colours 1. The Authors Definition of a Colour That Light is a Colour Aristotles Definition of colour examined 2. Scaligers Absurdities touching Colours and Light 3. What colour Light is of and why termed a single Colour That Light doth not efficienter render an Object visible How a mixt Colour worketh upon the sight and how it is conveyed to it 4. The Causes of the variations of Mercury in its colour through each several preparation 5. That Colours are formally relations only to our sight That a mixt colour is not an intentional quality That besides the relation of colours there is an absolute foundation in their original Subjects How the same fundamental colours act 6. That there are no apparent colours but all are true 7. The Differences of colours What colour focal fire is of The fundamental colours of mixt bodies 8. What reflection of light is What refraction of colours is Aristotles Definition of colour rejected The Effects of a double reflection The Reasons of the variations of Colour in Apples held over the water and Looking-glasses The variation of Illumination by various Glasses 9. The Division of Glasses The cause of the variation of colour in a Prism 10. The Nature of Refraction Why colours are not refracted in the Eye I. COlour is a Mode or Quality of a mixt being through which it moves the sight if so then certainly Light is a Colour For 1. It proceeds from a mixt body 2. It moves the sight primarly immediately and per se. I prove it We do distinguish light from darkness and a light body from a dark one by our sight ergo it moves the sight Probably you may deny my Definition of colour wherefore I shall for your further satisfaction compare it with that of Aristotle and prove it to be consentaneous to it differing only in Precision ours being less universal and nearer to sense then his Lumen which is equipollent to colour est actus perspicui quatenus perspicui Light or rather Illumination is the act of a perspicuous body quatenus perspicui is redundant By actus is implied an actuation or motion 2. By perspicuous is intended a body that is capable of receiving or rather of reflecting light And is not the sight capable of receiving or reflecting light and of being actuated by it Or if you will take colour for a quality following the temperament and mistion of the Elements the difference is not great this being a Definition of colour as it is considered in it-self a priori the other described a posteriori relatively and accidentally for it is per accidens to it to move the sight I cannot but reflect at Scaligers boldness who pretending to exceed Cardan in subtility so as he seemed to reprehend and correct him in every Distinction but with more absurdity then he supposed Cardan to be less subtil and particularly about Colours and light Exercit. CCCXXV d. 2. Here he infers a real and formal difference between an Accident and its Subject the contrary hath so plainly been demonstrated 2. That an Accident is constituted out of a Power and Act. The falsity of which is detected in my Disp. of Pow. These Assertions are not exempted from Absurdities 1. An Accident and a Substance being really and formally different and owing their production to one substantial efficient it follows that a Substance produceth effects differing from it self in specie 2. That a Substance is an efficient of a Power and Act. Power and Act being two positive contraries one substancial efficient is inferred to be an efficient secundum idem ad idem of two positive contraries for a power according to Aristotle is not a privation for then it were a non ens reale but a positive 3. Neither is Power or Substance the true matter of colour Not the power for that is like to the matter not the substance that being the sole whole substance Wherefore if neither power or substance be the true matter it cannot be any real thing because whatever is real consists of Matter and Form Wherefore saith he we should say that it hath a substance for its subject wherein it is inherent but in it self it hath a power and act out
of which it is made one in the subject and distinct from the subject out of which essence that property of visible is produced A manifest contradiction First he saith that an Accident hath alwaies a substance for its subject and yet in it self it hath a power and act Assuredly none will affirm a power to be in an accident but in the subject for to receive such an Accident this he alloweth himself for an accident saith he is alwaies in a substance as its subject ergo it hath its essence from a subject if then a subject giveth its essence it giveth praecedentia and consequentia esse it is then the power that is from the subject as also the act ergo an Accident is nothing but the subject modified 4. Constituting Principles as Matter and Form are required to exist at one time but the power and act cannot exist at one time for assoon as the act is advened the power is fled If then you assert it to be a principium generationis then the subject thus constituted doth consist of a Principle perse and another per accidens Besides it followes that an accident is an actus purus if so then an accident is more perfect then a man or an Angel Wherefore it appears that a colour is nothing else but a modification of a subject and of the same rank that other accidents are of besides that colour is exempted from a power and act and that the substance is rather to be conceived to be instructed with a power of being coloured The subsequent distinction confirms my Interpretation of his words For saith he light is an act of visibility that is it is an action upon a visible substance for visibility in the abstract being invisible he ought rather to have declared how a lucid substance acted through its modality or action upon our sense The same Scaliger in the said Dist. asserts that Light is neither white or whiteness No doubt it is no whiteness for that he never saw existent without a body unless it was a Spirit in his Fancy But the question is whether it is not white His Argument alledged against it is because it cannot be seen in the Air and doth not terminate the sight The former condition of his Reason is simpliciter necessary the latter is only necessary necessitate consequentiae by consequence I reply to his Argument 1. That light is visible in the air as I have shewed before 2. Light were it imaginable to inhere in an infinite subject it would be interminate and yet move the sight terminately for a man who is blinded by a thin Cataract knowes when it is day and when night because the light of the Sun moveth his Optick Air although very obtusely and yet he neither sees the termination of the Sun or of the Air. 3. Light is not invisible because of the thinness of the Air but visible because of its obductibility 4. The airs intermination is falsly supposed to be the cause of its invisibility for it is really terminate because a being and termination in the concrete are convertible Further it is evident that light must be necessarily terminated both in the body whence it is derived and in the body wherein it is received notwithstanding it is not alwaies necessary for us to perceive or see the lights termination in it self for that we seldom do although it is terminated in and by our sight According to our forestated definition light is accounted a colour but most single that is without any composition or reflection II. I call light a single colour not absolutely as if it were so in its own nature and constitution but because it moves our sight singly without representing any mixt colour with it to the sight This single motion of light is only its obtension continuated in the optick air is otherwise known by the name of an interminate Pellucid In case light be reflected and gathered in great quantity by air thickned and somewhat condensed by thin and by a little condensed clouds it produces a thick pellucid or whiteness in the air which continuated to the optick air produces the same whiteness there This we perceive when the Sun is said to shine which it doth ever when no thick dense clouds are interposed that its Raies are condensed by thin clouded air being a little condensed That the thin shining light is whitish is further apparent by the Peripatetick description of white White is a colour which doth most disperse the sight but so doth the Sun shining light ergo it is whitish Or according to others White is that which containeth much light ergo light is most white because propter quod unumquodque tale est illud magis tale est Light being the cause and fountain of white must be most white in it self III. Light Lumen is actus visibilitatis saith Scaliger that is it renders a visible thing visible But how not efficienter for then without light in the air there should be no fundamental colours and every colour must be produced through light at the moment of its appulse but as a medium or causa sine qua non As a medium in that it doth defer the ratio obductibilitatis of every Object to the eye The manner of it is thus every mixt colour is nothing else but the degree of the alteration of the mixt objects wrought upon the air by their greater or less pinching contracting or deading of it Supposing that the greatest extention of the ayr causes a pellucidness that which gathers contracts or deads the ayr a little and staies its obtension is white that which gathereth it yet more is yellow That which doth gather it most is black that which gathers it less is brown and so gradually This gathering of the obtended ayr by the objected mixt colour is a kind of a pinching whereby the ayr is continuately pinched to the extent of a certain Sphaere The ayr being pinched doth continuately pinch the optick ayr which if it be a little pinched by an objected colour it discerneth it to be white or if very much it discerneth it to be black hence when we enter into a mourning Room hung about with black cloath we perceive a perfect pinching or contraction in our Eyes Here may be demanded Whence this various manner of pinching proceeds since that pinching is caused by a solid object if so then the solider an object is the more it should pinch and consequently the blacker it should be which seems erroneous for Gold is of a yellow colour which otherwise should be blackest because it is the most solid of all bodies I answer That this various manner of pinching depends upon the degrees of the gathering of light or obtended ayr That which doth most gather or deads the ayr being a continuous or fluid body is a dense and contiguous body so that the more dense that a body is the more light it gathers and pinches the stronger and
Iron Sory is a Mineral hard and thick like to a Stone glistering with yellowish Sparks These three are of a causting quality thereby burning Scars and Crusts into the Flesh besides they are somewhat adstringent Misy is the strongest and Sory is the next to it in strength Antimony is a Mineral of a blewish colour shining throughout its Body like Streeks of Silver its mixture is out of course earth and dense fire yet less dense then any of the foregoing It s vertue is internally vomitive and purgative externally it is discutient detergent and adstringent All these are natural recrements of Metals yet not recrements alone as I said before Bombast and his Sectators analyze all Metals and Minerals into Sal Sulphur and Mercury as if they were all generated out of these as their first Principles for say they our Art instructs us to reduce every Metal or Mineral into each of those foresaid Principles Either this is to be understood that it is possible to reduce all Minerals really into Sal Sulphur Mercury or into some certain more concected beings analogal to them Generally they seem to pretend to educe real Mercury out of all Minerals but as for the others they are only analogal Why should they more expect to extract real Mercury then real Salt or Sulphur Wherefore it will be more consisting with Reason to conclude them all equally analogal that is like in consistency to ordinary Mercury Sal and Sulphur but not in effects It is a Madness for any one to imagine that Gold is constituted by the same Mercury but more concocted that is usually digged out of Mines and that Mercury is convertible into Gold if thereunto intended by a strong concocting preparation They might as well say that Gut-Excrements were convertible into Flesh and that flesh consisted out of the said real Excrements The Case is thus Mercury is by them accounted to be an Excrement of Metals wherefore as an Excrement is a Body really different from those bodies from which it is rejected and in no wise convertible unless it be some of the purest parts of it that have escaped natures Diligence so neither is Mercury any part of Metals nor convertible into them unless it be the smallest purest parts which had fled the earths Metalliferous quality Possibly you will Object that Gold feeds upon Mercury and Mercury upon it wherefore they are convertible into one anothers Nature I deny the Antecedence for Gold is dissolved and destroyed by it as appears in Amalgamation or dissolving Gold by the fume of Mercury ergo it is not fed by it Mercury effects no less in the Body of man for it dissolves his humid parts yea his solid parts too as Mercurial Salivations testifie All which is a sufficient Argument to induce us to forbear from explaining the Causes of Natural Beings by Sal Sulphur Mercury Probably you reply That this is not the meaning of Bombast who intended these Names only to be analogal to those things vulgarly so called Wherefore by Mercury is understood a thin pure liquor by Sulphur a subtil Spirit by Salt the gross substance of a Body I Answer Either you must take these for first Principles or for mixt bodies they cannot be the first because his Mercury is constituted out of water reduced from its greatest hardness into a subtil fluor through admixture of Air and Fire His Sulphur consists of fire condensed by Earth and of Air ergo they must be mixt Bodies if so they are no first Principles of Metals because even these are reducible into more simple bodies viz. his Mercury into thick water a thin air and a rare fire Sulphur into air fire c. This I will grant them that all Metals are dissolveable into such kinds of analogal Substances which are not bodies less mixt but only changed into bodies of several consistencies viz. thick and thin course and fine CHAP. II. Of Stones and Earths 1. A Description of the most Precious Stones 2. A Description of the less Precious Stones that are engendred within Living Creatures 3. A Description of the less Precious Stones that are engendred without the Bodies of Living Creatures 4. An Enumeration of common stones 5. A Disquisition upon the vertues of the forementioned stones An Observation on the Effects of Powders composed out of Precious stones Whether the Tincture of an Emerald is so admirable in a bloudy Flux 6. A particular Examination of the vertues of a Bezoar stone Piedra de Puerco Pearles c. 7. The Kinds of Earth and their Vertues I. OUr Method hath led us to propose the Demonstration of universal Natures before that of particulars and that of Metals before the other of imperfect Minerals and Stones as being more excellent through their perfection of mixture wherefore we have next allotted this Chapter for the treatise of the particular natures of Stones Stones are either known under the name of most Precious less Precious or Common The most Precious Stones are ordinarily called Jewels being 18 in number 1. An Agathe 2. An Amethist 3. An Asterites 4. A Beril 5. A Carbuncle 6. A Chalcedonie 7. A Chrysolite 8. A Diamond 9. An Emerald 10. A Jaspis 11. An Jacinth 12. An Onyx 13. A Ruby 14. A Sarda 15. A Saphir 16 A Sardonix 17. A Topaze 18. A Turcois An Agathe is a stone of divers mixt colours and in no wise transparent An Asterites is a stone somewhat resembling Crystal and within the Moon when she is at full An Amethist is a stone of a Violet colour A Beril is of a Sea-green colour and sometimes is found to have other colours mixt with it A Prase is not unlike to it only that it is not of so deep a green neither so hard for it wears away by much usage A Carbuncle is esteemed for the most precious of all Stones and is of a Gold or Flaming colour It is said that there is a kind of a Carbuncle called a Pyrope to be found in the East-Indies which shines as bright in the Night as the Sun doth in the Day A Chalcedonie is a stone of a Purple colour A Chrysolite is of a Golden colour hard and transparent A Chrysoprase is hard and of a greenish colour A Diamond is thought to be the hardest of all Stones An Emerald is hard and of a perfect green colour A Jaspis is of a greenish colour sported here and there with bloudy Spots An Jacinth is of a Gold or flaming colour Some of them decline from a Yellow to a deep Saffron red or sometimes to a blewish colour They are neither perspicuous or opake but between both An Onyx is of a brownish white but of a dull transparency An Opale stone is by Pliny Lib. 37. c. 6 accounted for the best and rarest of Stones as participating of the rarest Colours of the rarest Stones its fire is more subtil then of a Carbuncle shining with a Purple of an Amethist greenish like to the Sea-green of an
separated by our weak heat if Aq. Regia is too inferiour to separate their spirits from their earth much less our mild Ferment But supposing an impossibility to be possible viz. that by length of time this might be effected yet it cannot answer to the cause of so immediate an effect neither must we fly to that worn out Sanctuary of ignorance Ocoult Qualities for it is denied to these also to act at a distance But to keep you nolonger in suspence the truth of the matter is this the Heart the Brain and the Liver do alwaies sympathize with the Stomack the one through commonness of Membranes and Nerves of the sixth pair the other through the Branches of the Coeliacal Artery the last through the Mesenterical and other Branches of the Vena Portae especially in extream weaknesses This is evident Drink but a Glass of Wine and immediately your vital spirits will pulsate more vigorously your Animal motion will be rendered stronger and your Veins will swell upon it Wherefore the Stomach being much relaxed in most weaknesses and filled with Damps and Vapours and sometimes partaking of a Malignancy doth through the same Relaxation by continuation relaxe the Arteries Nerves and Veines inserted into her body whence their spirits are necessarily rendered feeble and moist Now then the Stomack being somewhat cleared of these moist evaporations doth recover a little strength which in like manner the foresaid Channels and Spirits do immediately grow sensible of which if so the case is plain to wit that the benefit which the noble parts receive doth derive from the depression of these damps through the weight of those precious Powders the same sinking to the bottom to conglomerate and contract the stomach by which contraction they expel the aforesaid Vapours Exhibite any weighty Powders as of Coral Crystal Bole Armen c. they will refocillate the Spirits and prove as suddenly cordial although ex accidenti as others of the most precious Carbuncles or Magistery of Pearl which is an undoubted sign that it is nothing else but their dense weight whereby they operate those Effects Neither must you infer hence that I assert that all weighty bodies are cordial no but only such as are densely weighty and have no noxious quality accompanying of them provided also their weight be not so excessive as to overpress the stomach By all this it appears how far Jewels may be said to be Cordial as for any other effects that are adscribed to them they are fictitious and deceitful You may Object that the Tincture or rather Magistery of Emeralds is commended for its miraculous vertue of stopping a Looseness I Answer That it is not the Emerald which is the sole cause of this Effect but its being impregnated with Spirits and volatil Salt of Urine which being very detergent and almost as adstringent as Alume do principally work that Miracle as you call it for digest its Powder with any other Menstruum and its Operation will vary Or abstract the Tinctures of any other Stone or Mineral Earth provided they partake of no noxious quality with the same Menstruum of Spir of Urin and you will assuredly find the vertue to be the same Thus much touching their Intrinsick vertue As for their External Effects they are more certain and evident 1. They do clarifie the sight through their Lustre and splendor by obtending the optick air They do cheer the visive spirits by moving them gently and as it were quavering upon them through their flashes and glisterings of Light This is very true for when you look suddenly upon a great Jewel the sparkling of it will immediately quicken your eye-spirits and as it were by consent cheer you The same effect we do plainly perceive in our selves when wecome suddenly out of a dark Room into the Sun-shiny Light wherefore I say the production of stones are ordained by God for to remain entire and to please the eye by being lookt upon and not to be broken into pieces and spoiled when they are become scarce worth a Bodel whereas before their value was of a great price Before I leave this Subject I will only insert a word touching the cause of their glistering and splendor A Carbuncle and particularly a Pyrope is alone said to shine in the dark although Sennert in his Phys. doth ignorantly deny it The cause of its actual light in the dark is an actual flame kindled within the body of the stone and there remaining Catochizated whose Light is further intended by a Reflection upon the thick waterish parts of the stone and glisters through its refraction by angles adherent to the matter and dividing the intrinsick Light The same to wit reflection and refraction is also the cause of the shining and glistering light of the other most precious stones VI. Among the less precious stones the Bezoar or as the Persians call it Pa Zahar a word compounded out of Pa against and Zahar Venom that is a stone against all kinds of Venom or Poysons But we here in these parts have a way of commending a thing far above what it is esteemed beyond Sea and Quack-like of extolling it against all putrid and malignant Feavers the Plague Small Pox Measles malignant Dysenteries and what not There are many of these Goat-Stags in Persia which are fed in Fields near a place called Stabanon two or three daies journey from Laza a great City of that Countrey These Fields protrude a great quantity of an Herb very like to Saffron or Hermodactyls whereon those Beasts do feed out of the subsidence and faeces of whose juyce remaining in the stomach the foresaid stone concreaseth which doth very miserably torment their bodies But if the same beasts seed upon other mountainous herbs this stone doth happen to dissolve and comes away from them in small pieces Now that a stone engendred out of an unwholsom and poysonous herb should work such Miracles doth by far exceed the Extent of my Belief Moreover Physitians are very conscientious in dispensing the dose of it imagining that 5 or 6 Graines must be sufficient to expel all Malignancy out of the humoral Vessels through a great sweat but I have taken a whole Scruple of it my self to try its vertues and found it only to lye heavy at my stomach and that was all Besides I have several times prescribed it to Patients in whom I never could observe the least Effect of it Supposing this stone were exalted to such faculties there is scarce one amongst a hundred is right for those Mahometical Cheats have a Trick of adulterating them and so thrusting two or three one after another down a Goats throat they soon after kill him and take the same stones out before witness who shall swear they are true ones for they saw them taken out The Tair of a Stagge doth expel sweat extreamly and may be used against poysons and all contagious Diseases Horstius commends it besides to facilitate hard Labour in Women
hold of their Iron Pins II. Before we apply our selves to the enumeration of the properties of the Loadstone let us in the first place search into its internal principles The Loadstone is as it were imperfect Iron but not so neer resembling it as Iron resembles Steel It is between a Stone and a Metal and therefore in a manner is not perfectly concocted It s material principle is a loose earth rarefied by dense fire and incrassated air being unequally mixt and tempered It s forma ultima is sometimes a compleat Metal like to Iron other times like to a hard reddish blew stone Both these have been found by many not knowing what to make of them which in all probability were concocted Loadstones That they were Loadstones is evidenced by the remaining vertues although but very weak of attracting Iron It s body being throughout porous that is loose and not very solid its intrinsick parts must of necessity partake of a certain figure as all porous bodies do although in some more in others less Iron it self as also a Lyzzard stone consists of intrinsick parts Cuspidally or Pyramidally formed that is with streaks transcurring as it were into Pyramidal points In Alume likewise we see its parts are Hexagonal in Crystal the same and so in all bodies although it is not alwaies visible however appearing in our present subject The cause you know is from the manner of exhalation proruption of the ayry and fiery parts that have left it and minutely do still leave it Between these triangular pointings we do imagine insensible cavities or pores through which those emanations do continually pass and by whose figure they are directed to their passages outward those I say are continuous and very potent III. Now we have declared enough to demonstrate most of its properties which I shall instantly enumerate They are either Mechanical Nautical Medicinal or fabulous It s Mechanical property is of attracting Iron Nautical of inclining or moving towards the North Pole and thereby of directing Mariners in steering their course of which more anon Medicinal of adstriction and strenching blood AEtius lib. 2. tetrabl cap. 25. gives us this account of its medicinal vertues The Magnete or Herculean stone hath the same vertues which a blood stone hath They say that it doth asswage the pains of the Gout in the feet and in the wrist if held in the hand This is fabulous but if applied being mixt with other ingredients in a plaster it doth really give ease in some kinds of Gouts Serapio lib. de simpl part 2. cap. 384. commends the Magnete for curing wounds befaln by a venomous weapon it is to be powdered and mixt with other Oyntments and applied to the part affected besides the Patient is for some daies to take a Dose of it internally untill the venom is purged away by stool Parey lib. 7. Chir. cap. 15 attributes a very memorable cure of a bursted belly to it Fabr. Hildan Cent. 5. Observ. Chir. 31. obs rehearses a famous cure luckily done by it by the advice of his Wife at a dead lift I suppose upon a Merchant who was tormented with a miserable pain in one of his eyes caused by a little piece of steel that was accidentally peirced into it All kind of Anonynes were applied but to no purpose at last the Loadstone was thought upon which he caused to be held near to the eye whereby it was soon drawn out The fabulous properties of this stone are of losing its attractive vertue by the apposition of a Diamond of curing wounds at a distance for which purpose it is added to Bombasts sympathetical oyntment and of preserving youth for which end they say the King of Zeylan causes his victuals to be dressed in Magnete Dishes I return to its Mechanical property about which Authors are very various some as Nicander Pliny Anton. Mercat lib. 2. de occult prop. cap. 1. Matthiol in Dios. lib. 5. cap. 105. Encel. de re Metal lib. 3. cap. 8. fabr Hildan in the late quoted observ asserting it to attract Iron at one end and to repel it at another Others affirming the contrary viz. That it attracts Iron from all parts but by several impulses as it were moving in several Figures some being direct others oblique It is true in an oblique motion the Steel at the first impulse seems to recede because of its changing its position towards the Loadstone besides this change the Steel also varies according to its diverse position towards the stone we need not confirm the truth of this by arguments the experiment it self viz. placing small pieces of filings of Steel round about the stone will gâ—ve you a further proof of it Wherefore these forementioned Authors imagining the North part of this stone to be alone properly the Loadstone accused Pliny of an errour for affirming the Theamede stone to reject Iron which they affirmed was no other but the South part of the Magnete Whether the Theamedes doth repel Iron or no I know not only thus much I know that the description of it is altogether differing from that of the Loadstone neither can I believe that Pliny being so well versed in stones should so easily mistake in this Letting this pass it is certain 1. That in the North hemisphere it doth attract Iron most at its North part and more directly at the other sides its attractive vertue upon Iron is less potent and draws more oblique 2. One Loadstone doth not draw the other unless the one be more concocted than the other and then it doth 3. That a Loadstone capped with Steel attracts more vigorously than when naked 4. That it draweth Iron stronger at some places than at others at some seasons than at others 5. That it attracts Steel more potently than Iron 6. That it doth also attract Copper although but weakly 7. That its Mechanick and nautical vertue is communicable to Iron 8. That the Magnete loseth its vertue by rust by lying open in the air by moisture by lying near to hot Spices as the Indian Mariners who transport Pepper and other Spices do testifie by fire by being touched with the juyce of Garlick or Onions That in length of time its vertue doth intirely exhale leaving only a course rusty stone behind it 9. That a Loadstone being intersected by a section almost perpendicularly incident upon the supposed axeltree of the said stone and its pieces placed one against the other so that the faces of each section may constitute a side of an acute angle terminated by a common point of their South or North Pole doth attract Iron more potently by far than otherwise IV. I should now begin to demonstrate the first effect of the Loadstone through its proper cause but before I can arrive to its solution it will be requisite for you to know what is ordinarily meant by its North part The said Part is otherwise by Authors termed the North Pole of the Loadstone because it doth look or
moisture as may force them through their intumescence to raise a womb where they meet where being arrived they are immediately cherished and further actuated united and condensed by the close and cold temperature of the womb This actuation conceives a flame because through it the fire happens to be united and thence dilated by the incrassated air whose immediate effect is a flame now being come to a flame they attract nutriment out from their matrix in the same manner as was set down before The spiritous parts of this advening nutriment is united to the central parts of the flame which it doth increase it s other parts that are more humorous and less defecated are concreased by the lesser heat of the extreme parts or a heat lessened through the greater force of the extrinsick cold That which is worthy of inquiry here is Why the heat or vital flame strives to maintain the central parts moreover this seems to thwart what I have inserted before viz. That it is the nature of fire to be diffused from the center 2. Whence it is occasioned that the weighty parts as the dense and humoral ones are expelled to the Circumference For solution of the first you are to call to mind that the Elements in that stare wherein they are at present do war one against the other for the Center which if each did possess this motion would cease in them the fire then being now in possession of the Center contracts it self and strives to maintain its place nevertheless it doth not forbear diffusing its parts circularly to the circumference because through its natural rarity it is obliged to extend it self to a certain sphere The reason of the second is Because the igneous and ayry parts being united into a flame and into a greater force do over-power the other Elements and impell them to the Periphery where they being strengthned by the ambient coldness of the Matrix are stayed and do concrease into a thick skin by this also the internal flame is prevented from dissipating its life and the better fitted to elaborate its design which is to work it self into shapes of small bodies of several Figures and of various Properties and in those shapes to diffuse each within a proportion of other Elements likewise variously tempered And so you have in brief a perfect delineation of the Earths conception and formation of Seeds whose spirits being now beset with thick dense parts are catochizated that is the flame is maintained in such a posture which it had when it had just accomplisht the plasis of the internal organical parts or in some the flame may be extinguisht through the near oppression by heavy parts which afterwards being stirred and fortified by an extrinsick heat relaxing its parts returns to a flame Whence it happens that seeds may be kept several months yea years without protruding their parts but being committed to the ground especially where the mild heat of the heavens doth penetrate perfused also with a moderate moysture do soon after come to a germination The same may be effected by any other mild heat like we see that many seeds are perduced to a growth before the spring of the year in warm chests or in dunged ground Eggs are frequently harched by the heat of an Athanor or by being placed between two Cushions stuft with hot dungs Silk-worms Eggs are likewise brought to life by childrens heat being carried for two or three weeks between their shirts and wascoats all which instances testifie that the heat of the Sun is no more then Elementary since other Elementary heats agree with it in its noblest efficience which is of actuating and exciting life within the genitures of living bodies possibly it may somewhat exceed them as being more universal equal less opposed and consequently more vigorous and subtil The time when the Earth is most marked with Matrices is in the Spring and Fall because the astral heat is then so tempered that it doth gently attract great quantity of exhalations and humours neither is it long after before they conceive the influences of the Stars being then pregnant in subtilizing and raising seminal matter The cause of the variety of Seeds and Plants thence resulting I have set down above and withall why it is that Non omnis fert omnia tellus every kind of Earth doth not produce all kinds of herbs but why herbs of the hottest nature are sometime conceived within the body of water might be further examined In order to the solution of this Probleme you must note that the seeds of such herbs as do bud forth out of the water were not first conceived within the water as water but where it was somewhat condensed by Earth as usually it is towards the sides where those Plants do most shew themselves for water in other places where it is fluid is uncapable of receiving the impression of a womb excepting only where it is rendred tenacious and consistent through its qualification with glutinous or clayish earth And this shall serve for a reason to shew that herbs germinate out of water although they are not conceived within it The ground why the hottest herbs as Brooklime Watercresses Water crowfoot c. are generated in the water is in that the spirits informating those Plants are subtil and rare easily escaping their detention by any terrestrial matrix as not being close enough by reason of its contiguity of parts but water be the spirits never so subtil or rare is sufficient to retain stay congregate and impell them to a more dense union whence it is that such substances prove very acre and igneous to the pallat by reason of its continuous weight Next let us enumerate the properties of a vegetable Seed 1. Is to be an abridgment of a greater body or in a small quantity to comprehend the rudiments of a greater substance so that there is no similar or organical part of a germinated plant but which was rudimentally contained within its seed 2. To be included within one or more pellicles 3. To lye as it were dead for a certain time 4. To need an efficient for the kindling of its life whence it is that the Earth was uncapable of protruding any plants before the Heavens were separated from the Earth through whose efficiency to wit their heat living substances were produced 5. To need an internal matrix for its production and germination which is not alwaies necessary for the seeds of animals as appears in the Eggs of Fowl and Silk-worms 6. Only to be qualified with a nutritive accretive and propagative vertue 7. To consist intrinsecally of a farinaceous matter VII The germination of a plant is its motion out of the Seed to the same compleat constitution of a Being or Essence which it hath at its perfection Motion in this definition comprehends the same kinds of motion which Accretion was said to do and withall is specified by its terminus a quo the seed and a
under water over the bottom of the Sea along with the course of the Ocean from any noted point that the same part of the Ocean or Bowl shall in the space of 15 natural daies arrive to the same point and exactly at the same time begin its next periodical course thence when it departed from that term the month before Nevertheless the Ocean doth not omit its single course in fluctuating about the Earth in somewhat more than twelve hours but then it doth not dayly arrive to the supposed point of a compounded periodical course at the same minute when the latter viz. the compounded begins its progress Expresly the great Ocean through its diurnal course flows the length of 348 degrees about from East to West performing also the same circuit through its nocturnal course That is every twelve AEquinoctial hours it absolves 348 degrees of the terrestrial AEquator Wherefore for to flow 360 degrees it requires 24 24 2â— minutes of an hour above the foresaid twelve hours that is the Ocean flows about the terrestrial AEquator in twelve hours and 24 14 2â— minutes absolving every hour 29 degrees How this swiftness is possible to the Ocean we shall make further declaration of it anon Besides a single diurnal and a periodical compounded monthly motion another must also be added which I call an augmentative motion through which the Ocean doth gradually accrease every high water to some certain cubits of which more fully hereafter Since that time is nothing but a measure of motion and that one time is made known to us by another it is thence occasioned that we come to know the time of the Ocean by comparing it with the time of the Moon and of the Sun as being general marks whereby to calculate the seasons of the Ocean This premised it states a ground reason of the measure of this great Sea viz. That it is usually high water in the Ocean under the AEquinoctial and Ecliptick as also upon the shores of the same at six in the morning and evening when the Moon is in opposition to or conjunction with the Sun and at the same hours about the Moons quarters the waters there are at their lowest On the other side it is as common among Mariners to measure the motion of the Sun and Moon by the Tides or motions of the Seas they being exquisitely skill'd in discerning the hour of the day and night or the season of the several aspects of the Moon by the said tides Wherefore it may be thought as equal a consequence that the Moon in her motion depends upon the course of the Ocean as pressing the air through her tumefaction which again doth impel the Moon forward as that the Moon should tumefie the air and thereby impel the waters forward But I pass by this as ridiculous Although the Ocean keeps so constant and exact a rule and measure in its course as likewise the Sun and Moon yet we must not therefore conceive the one to depend upon the other because two great marks of their time that is one of either viz. The greatest height of waters and the greatest aspect of the Moon are concurring in one day that rather happening because the Ocean began its course at that instant when the Moon after her creation being placed in opposition to the Sun began hers But possibly you will propose this instance to evince that the highest water doth depend upon the greatest compression of the Moon because when she is at her Full she may cause some compression and commotion of air and water she then being in her greatest strength and situated in Perigaeo of her eccentrical Aspect and therefore nearest to the water and so may add somewhat to the enhightning of its stream I answer That it is a mistake to apprehend the Moon to be nearest at the Full most Astronomers asserting her rather to be remotest then and to be nearest when she is in her quarters Ergo according to that rule the highest waters should happen at the Moons quarters and the lowest at the Full of the Moon Or otherwise how can the Moon further the said motion when she is upon the extremity of her decrease her rayes drowned by those of the Sun and she in Apogaeo deferentis Certainly none can be so obtuse as to maintain her in that capacity to have a power of compressing the air when she being most remote the air doth most enjoy its freedom yet nevertheless some are so obstinate to assert that the greatest altitude of the Sea because it hapneth then doth likewise depend upon the compression of the Moon What is more constant certain periodical and equal than the course of the Sea Whereas the Moon is vulgarly maintained to be subjected to anomalies then in this part of the Heavens then in another now in Apogaeo perigaeo concentrical excentrical then swift slow c. if so then a constant and equal effect cannot consecute the efficience of an unequal cause III. Against our discourse touching the diurnal course of the Ocean might be objected That it seems very improbable that the Sea should move so swift as in a little more than 12 hours to overflow the whole terrestrial Globe whereas a ship through the advantage of her sails and a prosperous wind and weather being supposed to out-run the Tide can scarce accomplish that course in a Twelvemonth Hereunto I reply that the water takes the beginning of her motion from underneath for as I have formerly proved that the formal cause of the waters perennal motion is her gravity which bearing down upon the Earth for to gaine the Center is resisted by her and nevertheless continuing in its motion is necessarily shoven there to the side and so the same hapning to the succeeding parts are all impelled through a natural principle of gravity sidewards like unto an Arrow being shot against a stone wall and there resisted is shoven down the side VVhence it is apparent that the waters take beginning of their motion underneath not far from the ground where being pressed by the great weight of many hundred fathoms of water lying upon them must needs cause a very swift course of waters removing underneath and withdrawing from that of the Surface which is prevented of a swift motion because it sinks down to that place whence the subjected parts do withdraw themselves which gives us a reason why the superficial parts of the Sea do not flow by many degrees so swift as the subjected ones Nevertheless some small motion is visible upon the Surface which may accelerate or retardate the course of a ship but not comparable to the waters in the deep This instance will further certifie you touching the truth of the matter before said a flat-bottomed Kettel filled up with water having a hole at the bottom near to the side of the said Kettel doth emit the water underneath spouting out with a very great swiftness through the hole whereas the
to my apprehension all that Country must necessarily be subjected to such deluges since it swims upon the water Touching Inland Inundations as that which befell Friesland in the year 1218 where near 100000 persons were buried in the water and that of Holland and Zealand in the Reign of Charles the fifth Emperour of Germany in the year 1531. and several times since as that of the last year when a great part of the Country all about Gorcum was seized upon by Inland waters Their causes are to be attributed to torrents streaming down out of the melted snow as also to the swelling of the Inland waters through receiving a great quantity of frosty minima's pouring down from the North in a cold Winter The River of Nile proves yearly extravagant in AEgypt for two months and ten daies because being situated very low it is obliged to receive the superfluity of water falling from above out of severall great Rivers and Lakes as the Lakes Zembre Saslan Nuba and the Rivers Cabella Tagazi Ancona Coror and many others besides the water which it draweth from the hills and other grounds These Rivers and Lakes do constantly swell every year by reason of the great rains that fall there at certain times of the year Besides the heat of the Sun exercising its power very vigorously near the latter end of May doth very much subtilize and rarefie those waters whereby they are rendred more fluid penetrating and copious and lastly the Sun conversing in the northern declination doth impell the Ocean stronger against the Northern shores whereby the waters are also much increased Hence it is that the waters of the Nile are so subtill that they deceive the air in carrying of them up in vapours viz. because they are so subtilly strained No wonder then if they prove so healthy The same causes are appliâ—ble to the excessive increase of the Rivers Ganges Padus Arrius Danow Tiber and Athesis CHAP. X. Of the causes of the before-mentioned properties of Lakes 1. Whence the Lake Asphaltites is so strong for sustaining of weighty bodies and why it breeds no Fish The cause of qualities contrary to these in other Lakes The cause of the effects of the Lake Lerna 2. Whence the vertues of the Lake Eaug of Thrace Gerasa the Lake among the Troglodites Clitorius Laumond Vadimon and Benaco are derived 3. Whence the properties of the Lake Larius Pilats Pool and the Lake of Laubach emanate I. VVHat the cause of those effects of the Lake Asphaltites should be the name seems to contain viz. The water glued together by an incrassated air and condensed fire constituting the body of a certain Bitumen called Asphaltos whence the said Lake doth also derive its name It is uncapable of breeding fish because through its sulphureous thickness it suffocates all vitall flames On the contrary the Lakes Avernum although deep 360 fathom and that of AEthiopia are so much subtilized through the passing of rarefied air that they are uncapable of sustaining the least weight Touching their pernicious quality to fowl it must be attributed to the venomous spirits permixt with that rarefied air infecting the whole Element of air as far as it covers them The Lake Lorna and the other in Portugal cause their effects through the permixture of a quantity of crude nitrous bodies which prove very depressing That Lake of AEthiopia is unctious through the admixture of incrassated air II. The Lake Eaug in Ireland acquires a sideropoetick vertue under water from the imbibition of crude Aluminous juyces by means of their indurating and constrictive vertue changing wood sticking in the mud into an Iron-like substance that part which is under water into a stone-like substance because of the diminution of the said Aluminous Juyces which through their weight are more copious in the mud the part of the wood that sticks out of the water remains wood as being beyond the reach of the said heavy juyces The Lakes of Thrace and Gerasa prove pernicious through admixture of crude arsenical exhalations The Lake among the Troglodites being Mercurial is infestuous to the brain The Lake Clitorius through its nitrosity disturbs the stomach and attracts a great quantity of moisture to it and infecting it with an offensive quality causes a loathing of all Liquors The sudden tempests befalling the Lake Laumond and Vadimon are caused through winds breaking out of the earth through the water Lakes resist induration by frost through igneous expirations pervading them The Lake Benacus shews its fury when its internal winds are excited by external ones causing a Concussion and a Rage in the water like unto an aguish body which is disposed to a shaking fit by every sharp wind raising the sharp winds within III. The River Abda passeth freely through the Lake Larius without any commotion of its body because the waters of the Lake through their extream crassitude are depressed downwards and so are constituted atop in a rigid posture whereas the River is impelled forwards and very little downwards But were it to flow through a shallow water whose quantity doth not bear any proportion to receive the pressure of the air downwards against the earth they would soon communicate in streams 2. The waters of a Lake differ much in crassitude and density from those of a River and therefore do exclude its streams The Lake Haneygaban doth not visibly disburden it self of those waters but thrusting Caverns underneath into the earth raises all those hills through the intumescence of the said waters that are near to her out of which some Rivers do take their rice Pilats Pool is stirred into a vehement fermentation by flinging any pressing body into it because thereby those heterogeneous mineral juyces viz. Vitriolat and Sulphureous substances are raised mixt together and brought to a fermentation and working Through this fermentation the water swells and exceeds its borders but the water being clarified the commotion ceaseth Neither needs any one wonder that so small a matter should be the cause of so great an exestuation since one part of the water doth stir up the other and so successively the whole pool comes to be stirred Pools owe their rice to great rains or torrents which sometime do slow visibly over the meadows or through Rivers causing inundations Sometimes through Caverns of the Earth as that near Laubach CHAP. XI Of the rice of Fountains Rivers and Hills 1. That Fountains are not supplied by rain 2. Aristotles opinion touching the rice of Fountains examined 3. The Authors assertion concerning the rice of Fountains The rice of many principal Fountains of the world 4. Why Holland is not mountainous 5. That the first deluge was not the cause of Hills 6. Whence that great quantity of water contained within the bowels of the Earth is derived 7. Whence it is that most shores are Mountainous Why the Island Ferro is not irrigated with any Rivers Why the earth is depressed under the torrid Zone and elevated towards the polars The
particles in the Winter That Fountain of Arcadia exerciseth such a penetrable concentrating force upon Gold and Silver through the quantity and strength of its nitrous spirits which are only obtused by a Mules hoof through the Lentor and obtuseness of its body and therefore may easily be contained in it The Fountain of the Holy Cross appears red through the admixture of red bole The overflowing of Fountains for a certain space depends upon the pressure of a greater quantity of water thither which in the Summer time may prove more copious through the attenuation of the water and rarefaction of the earth The reason of their detumescence after their repletion is the waters further impression towards other parts or repression thither whence they came through the expiration of the air flatuosities out the mouths of the Fount whence the earths gravity depresseth them back again Those that increase and decrease with the course of the Moon or rather of the Ocean vary through the change of the universal Tides of which hath been sufficiently treated above Touching the Lithopoetick vertue of waters it is much agreeing with that of the earth of which above The Sibaris causeth sneezing through its acre and vitriolat spirits Some waters are apt to change the temperament of the body into a cold or phlegmatick disposition causing the hair of Cattel to be protruded with a faire colour others into a cholerick habit causing the hair to be of a reddish colour The Fountain Lycos is unctious and therefore serveth to burn in a Lamp Whether to adscribe the egurgitation of that oyly Spring discovered near the Incarnation of our Saviour to the collection of unctious exhalations permisted with water or to a miracle both being possible I leave to the inclination of your belief But the disclosing of a false swearer if there be a Fountain of that vertue is an extraordinary impression of God upon the waters Jacobs Fountain changeth in colour and motion through the fermentation of various heteregeneous bodies contained within it II. Wells are distinguished from Fountains in that the former do oft appear in a plain or valley as the foot of a hill are subject to fill up and after to be dried up again Neither do they spout out water with a force like unto Fountains Ipsum and Barnet Wells operate their effects through a thick Chalchantous or Vitriolat juyce which through its sulphureous particles irritates the belly to excretion and through its subtiller spirits to urine By the way you must not imagine that their admixture is right and true Vitriol for in distillation by the colour of the subsidence it doth appear otherwise Neither is the taste a perfect vitriolat taste or their operation so nauseous as Vitriol dissolved in water Besides those juyces are indisposed to concretion into Vitriol since these are more sulphureous and less digested Nevertheless they are somwhat like to Vitriol in taste operation and grayness of colour as being nearest to green Although the main effect is adscribed to a Vitriolat like juyce it hinders not but that some Ferrugineous and Aluminous juyces may be commixt with them Tunbridge waters are impregnated with a thin chalchantous spirit wherby they are usually pierced through with the urine except in some delicate fine bodies whose bellies partake likewise of their effect III. Among the Spaw waters as Pouhont and Savenier agree in vertue with those of Tunbridge so likewise in their causes And Geronster with Ipsum Nevertheless Hendricus van Heer doth not forbear lib. de Acid. Spadan cap. 5. imputing their effects to red Chalck which he found together with some Oker and a little Vitriol upon the bottom of the body of the Still after distillation of the waters I wonder how he guessed those substances so readily which had nothing in them like to the said bodies but their colour Besides the red chalck he named the mother of Iron A wise saying In effect those subsidences were nothing else but the caput mortuum of the forementioned chalchantous juyces whose subtiller parts being abstracted and exhaled left the courser insipid like to what the caput mortuum of Vitriol useth to be But pray who ever knew â—ed Chalck or Oket to be eccoprotick or diuretick Particularly he found Geronster to leave dregs which being cast upon a red hot Iron would not yield to liquefaction Ergo it must be steel he concluded Neither would his Oker or Chalk have melted presently because they were deprived of their Sulphur But will the infusion of Steel purge by stool and urine like those waters Certainly no. Ergo their purgative ingredient must have been a crude chalchantous juyce Fallopius beyond him attests to have found Alume Salt green Vitriol Plaister Marble and chalk in those waters which they cal Physical waters a meer guess these partaking in nothing but colour and scarce that with the forenamed Minerals Doubtless nature had never intended them for such bodies Touching the commistions of these juyces with the waters they do immediately mix with them as soon as they are exhaled out of the earth which had they been intended for those pretended kind of Minerals nature would have lockt them up in a matrix IV. Baths derive their natures from the actual hidden flames of a thick and dense sulphureous and chalky matter the proportion of which do cause a greater or lesser ebullition The waters of the Rivers descending out of the Alpes breed such congestions under the throat through a permixture of coagulating and incrassating particles to wit of nitrous juyces Touching the other properties of Rivers we have already treated of them and therefore judge their repetition needless CHAP. XIII Of the various Tastes Smells Congelation and Choice of Water 1. Various tastes of several Lakes Fountain and River waters 2. The divers sents of waters 3. The causes of the said tastes That the saltness of the Sea is not generated by the broyling heat of the Sun The Authors opinion 4. The causes of the sents of Waters 5. What Ice is the cause of it and manner of its generation Why some Countries are less exposed to frosts than others that are nearer to the Line 6. The differences of frosts Why a frost doth usually begin and end with the change of the Moon 7. The original or rice of frosty minims Why fresh waters are aptest to be frozen How it is possible for the Sea to be frozen 8. What waters are the best and the worst the reasons of their excellency and badness I. VVAter besides its own natural taste of which we have spoken above is distinguished by the variety of adventicious tasts viz. some are sharp and sowre as the Savenier Tunbridge waters and those near Gopingen in Suevia and others near Lyncestus in Macedonia Others are of a sweet taste as the water of the River Himera in Sicily Those of the River Liparis have a fat taste Some waters in the Isles Andros Naxos and Paphlagonia do taste like wine The
waters of the Fountain Campeius are bitter and flowing into the river Hipanis in Pontus infects it with the same taste There are other fountains between the Nile and the red Sea that agree with the former in taste likewise those of Silicia near Corycius The pit waters of Galniceus are acerbous The salt taste of waters is unknown to none since the Ocean is pregnant enough with it Some inland Lakes and Fountains are of the same taste viz. Three in Sicilia the Concanican Agrigentinian Lakes and another near Gela. There is another called Myrtuntius of the same relish between Leucades and the Ambracian Gulph The Taus in Phrygia Thopetis in Babylonia Asphaltites in Judaea Sputa in Media Atropacia Mantianus in Armenia one in Cyprus near Citium another between Laodicea and Apamia two in Bactria another near the Lake Moeotis and that of Yaogan Forrien besides many more are all of a saltish taste Touching Fountains there is one in Narbone exceeding the Sea in saltness There are six more of the same taste near the Adriatick gulph where it bends towards Aquileia besides several other salt pits in Italy Illyris Cappadocia c. II. Waters vary no less in their sent Some stinking as the Lake between Laodicea and Apamia the Fountain among the Phalisci another near Leuca in Calabria and those rivulets near the Lake Asphaltites c. Others give a sweet sent as the Fountain of Cabara in Mesopotamia The Pit Methone in Peloponesus smells like a Salve III. Next let me make address to the causes of these qualities A sharp taste is derived from those acute and Vitriolate particles immixt in the water A sweet taste is produced in water through an exact aerial mixtion or percoction with it The waters of Paphlagonia afford a vinous taste through the admixture of tartareous exhalations or such as are like to the mixture of Tartar of wine Bitterness flows from adust terrestrial particles admixt to waters Aluminous exhalations dispersed through water render it acerbous The saltness of the Sea and other Inland waters is communicated to them from the admixture of saltish particles exhaling out of the mud Touching the generation of salt and its mixtion I have inserted my opinion above I shall here only have a word or two with those that state the Sun the efficient cause of the said saltish particles broyling and aduring those exhalations contained with the body of the waters whence they assert the superficial parts of the Sea to be more saltish than the lower parts of it because the Suns heat is more vigorous there If the broyling Sun be the efficient whence is it then that some Lakes and Fountains are very salt where the Sun doth not cast its aduring beams 2. It is very improbable that so vast a number of saltish partiticles should be generated in the torrid Zone where the Sun doth only broyle as to infect the waters within the polars that are so remote thence How then is it that the waters prove as saltish there where the cold is as potent as the heat elsewhere as in Greenland Or absurdly supposing the Sea to be so far communicative of its savour why doth it not obtain a power of changing those sweet waters which it is constrained to harbour within it self As those which Columbus relates to have found in the American Sea near to the road of the Drakes head Moreover he attests to have sailed through fresh water a hundred and four Leagues far in the North Sea Pliny lib. 2. c. 103. affirms the same viz. to have discovered fresh water near Aradus in the Mediterranean and others by the Chaledonian Islands And in lib. 6. c. 17. he reports that Alexander Magnus had drank a draught of Sea water that was fresh and that Pompey when he was employed against Mithridates should have tasted of the same 3. The Ocean being alwaies in such an agitation cannot be a fit matrix to concrease or unite such mixtures 4. The broyling Sun doth rather render salt waters fresh as hath been experienced among Seamen by exposing pails of Sea water upon the deck to the torrid Sun under the Line which after a while standing do become much fresher An open heat doubtless sooner dissolves a mixture than it generates one for boyl Sea-water long upon the fire and it will grow fresh or distill it and you will find the same effect Beyond all scruple these saltish particles must be united into such mixtures out of earth proportioned to the other Elements in a close place or matrix yet not so close as to concrease them into a fixed subterraneous body or mineral whose coldness doth adact impact and bind the said Elements into an union and mixture which through defect of an entire closeness do soon exhale or transpire In a word the saltness of the Sea is generated within its mud whose closeness impacts and coagulates the exhalations of the earth into salin particles whence they are soon disturbed through the motion of the Sea and the attracting heat of the Sun Hence it is that old mud clay and such like bodies prove generally saltish so that the Sun adds little excepting in the stirring up of the said exhalations And touching the foregoing instance of the waters greater saltness atop than below it is fictitious for the Sea is much fuller of salt below than above because of its weight Nevertheless the Sea doth taste more saltish atop than below because the subtiller parts of the Salt are attracted or forced by the heat of the Sun towards the top which meeting there are apt to strike the tongue more piercing than otherwaies But whence these fresh waters do burst up into the Sea is worth our inquiry To resolve you you must know that the earth in many places under water is raised up into hills or shallows analogal to them whose earth atop lying very close doth hinder the water above it from passing especially in the Northern Climate where the Sea is somewhat thicker than under the Line but is nevertheless bursted through propulsion of the waters underneath which evacuated into the body of the Sea do cause that extent of fresh water without suffering themselves to be infected with the Saltness of the Sea because the Sea-water is so thick and closs that it excepts the fresh water from making an irruption into its continuity Hence it is that the River of the Amazons besides many others although irrupting into the Sea many Leagues far yet is maintained impolluted and fresh But why those salin particles should be generated near to those fresh springs and not close about them may seem strange It is because one ground is muddy and disposed to generate salt the other about the said spring is sandy dry as it were and close and not at all masht through as mud is The Sea-water deposeth its saltness in being percolated through the earth suffering the subtiller parts alone of the waters to pass but keeping back the grosser and
of Thunder Fulguration and Fulmination and of their effects Of a thunder stone 3. Of Comets Of their production I. THose vapours that are elevated into the air oft contain no small proportion of sulphureous particles within them which if concreasing through their own positive coldness and privative coldness of the night into a low cloud Nebula in the lowermost parts of the lower Region do compress those sulphureous particles otherwise termed exhalations and distinguisht from vapours because in these water and air are predominant in the others condensed fire and incrassated air towards the Center where uniting are converted into a flame by extending the incrassated air through their condensed fire This flame possibly appears like unto a Candle playing and moving to and fro the air and thence is also called a fools fire or Ignis Fatuus seu erraticus because it proves sometimes an occasion of leading Travellers that are belated out of their Road for by their coming near to it the air is propelled which again protrudes the flame forwards and so by continuing to follow it imagining the same to be some Candle in a Town or Village are oft misled into a ditch or hole Or if they go from it when they are once come near the light will follow them because in receding they make a cavity which the next succeeding air accurs to fill up The generation of these lights is more frequent near muddy Pools Church-yards and other putrid places that abound with such sulphureous bodies The said sulphureous parts if being of a less density condensed and united by the dense wool of a mans cloathes or hair or the hairs of a Horse or Oxe and the foresaid coldnesses it takes fire at the forementioned places but flames so subtilly that it is uncapable of burning This sort of Meteor is called an Ignis lambens a licking fire because it slakes then here then there like to spirits of Wine flaming Helens fire sidus Helenae so called because as Helen occasioned the ruine of Greece and Asia so this kind of flaming fire adhering to the shrowds or Yards of a Ship is usually a messenger of the Ships perishing If this flame appears double it is distinguisht by a double name of Castor and Pollux which are generally construed to bring good tidings of fair weather But these kinds of prognostications are very uncertain They may precede storms and may appear without the consequence of tempests For there is no necessity for either This generation depends upon exhalations condensed and united between the Ropes and the Masts or the Yards A flying Drake Draco volans is a flame appearing by night in the lowest Region of the air with a broad belly a small head and tail like unto a Drake Its matter is the same with the former differing in quantity alone and figure so framed through the figure of its containing cloud In the upper part of the lower Region of the air are produced 1. A falling Star representing a Star falling down from the Heavens 2. A burning Lance expressing the Image of a flaming Lance. 3. A burning Candle fax 4. A Perpendicular fire or fiery pillar trabs seu ignis perpendicularis seu pyramis representing a flaming beam or pillar 5. A flaming Arrow bolis 6. A skipping Goat Caprasaltans is a flame more long than broad glistering and flaking about its sides and variously agitated in the air like the skipping of a Goat 7. Flying sparks moving through the air like the sparks of a Furnace 8. Flamma ardens seu stipulae ardentes or a great burning fire suddenly flaming in the air like those fires that are kindled out of a great heap of straw All these depend upon a grosser material cause being somewhat more condensed and united than the former through a greater privative coldness and therefore they are also more durable A falling Star obtains its production near the permanent clouds and being somewhat weighty through earthy minims and rarefying the air through its heat breaks through and falls down lower untill it is arrived to a thicker cloud where nevertheless it doth not abide long in its flame The others procure their figure from their proportion of mixture and shape of the ambient cloud II. Thunder is a great rebounding noise in the air caused through the violent bursting out of incrassated air and condensed fire being suddenly kindled into a flame the manner cause of this eruption you may easily collect from the manner of the eruption of winds How a sound is produced I have set down before The differences of Thunders are various Some are only murmuring without a multiplication of sounds caused through a less proportion of fire and air bursting through a less dense and thick cloud Others raise a great cracking noise hapning through the acuteness of the sound smartly dividing the air and clouds wherever it reaches Lastly some are great hollow sounds variously multiplied hapning through the reflection and refraction of other dense and thick clouds driving in the way Besides these there might be accounted many more differences of Thunders raised through the proportion of air and fire that burst out and the various mixtures of clouds Fulguration or a flashing is fire condensed raised into a flame through incrassated air within a cloud and breaking out from it This scarce effects any great noise because of its subtility although in some it doth Fulmination or Lightning differs from the former only in intention in that it is much more forcible reaching to the ground and piercing into it and other terrestrial thick dense bodies and is more augmented in matter It is ordinarily a concomitant of Thunder both being produced at once although not perceived by us together we seeing the Lightning before we hear the Thunder because a visible object is much swifter communicated to the eye than a sound to the ear as appears in spying a man a far off chopping of wood we seeing His Axe go down before we hear the noise the reason of this I have inserted above A Lightning is either vibrating and is next to Fulguration in intention passing more subtilly Or discutient consisting somewhat of a denser fire and causing a greater Thunder 3. Or burning consisting of the densest fire causing the greatest Thunder and oft melting a Sword in the Scabberd or Moneys in a Bag and the Scabberd and Bag remaining undamaged The reason is because the rarity of these gave a free passage to the Lightning whereas the crassitude and density of the others did stay and unite the passing aduting flame Strong men and beasts are oft killed through an aduring Lightning whereas women and children do escape because the bodies of these latter being laxe and porous suffer the said flame to pass without any great resistance whereas the crassitude of the other bodies do unite and collect it through which their vital heat is quite dispersed having no other apparent sign either within or without their bodies of so