words and thoughts as you do But when they maintain that by a Heavenly Medicine they have made many great and wonderful Changes turn'd all Mettals into Gold Folly into Wisdome Vice into Virtue Weakness into long Life and all Diseases into sound Health and Age into Lustiness and Youth again how can you disprove them when did you see the contrary You scarcely know the Nature of the Deeds and Effects for they require great Knowledge but the Doing Cause and Workman that is this Medicine you never saw nor can imagine what it is much less conceive the Reason Strength and Nature of it Nay you see nothing but grope and blunder in the dark like blindfold men at all things Else how could these exchanges have escaped and been hid from you in a World so full of all kinde of changes I mean you see great and admirable things albeit you do not so take them because you see them often but you do not throughly see them that is you perceive not the Nature Cause and Reason of them and that makes you so childish to believe nought unseen and count all things Wonders which are not Common amongst you Much like that harmless and silly kinde of People of late discovered which made Miracles and Wonders of many matters that in other Countries are common and ordinary insomuch as to take one for all they could not conceive how two Men asunder could by Letter certifie one another unless a Spirit was wrapt up in the Paper to make report and tell the News But if you and they could once by the edge of Wit cut into the Depth and Nature of the great and marvellous Works of Kinde and Skill which are common and daily among you then and not before you would be ready and easie by comparison to receive almost any thing unseen and brought by Report unto you Let me awake your Wits a little You see daily but not throughly how the Moon by drawing the Ocean after her makes the Ebbe and Flow thereof It is likewise commonly I know not how truly reported that the Loadstone roof of Mahomet his Church draws up his Iron-Tomb from the ground and holds it hanging in the middle way like as the Miners in Germany by chance found their Tools which they had left in such a Vault hanging in the Morning which was accounted for a Miracle before such time as the Cause by the skilful was seen and declared unto them What should I say more of this Stone It is not unknown that there are whole Rocks thereof in India drawing Ships that pass by loaden with Iron unto them and yet we see that this mighty Stone in presence of the Diamond the King of Stones is put out of Office and can do nothing To come abroad it hath been often seen at Sea that the little Stay-fish cleaving to the fore-ship hath stopt his full Course I should now pass over to that other side of Skill and Craft and call to minde many great and wondrous Works there done and performed The curious work of that Italian Ring which held a Clock besides a Dial within it Those three common Feats found out of late passing all the Inventions of Antiquity the Gun Card and Printing and many other dainty Devices of Mans Wit and Cunning if this short and narrow Speech appointed would suffer any such out-ridings Let these few serve to awake you and call your Wits together you see these things I say and are never moved but if you had never seen them but heard the stories onely reported what would you have thought and said And because no man so well judgeth of himself as of another Suppose a plain and harmless People such as those Indians were had from the beginning dwelt in a dark Cave under ground let it be the Centre if you will and at the last one odde man more hardy and wise than the rest had by stealth crept out into the light and here by long travel and traffick with our People had seen and learned the Course and Nature of things which I have rehearsed unto you and then returning home had suddenly start up and begun to recount the Wonders which he had seen and learned first that he found the Earth hanging round in the middle of the Air and in like sort a bright and goodly Cover compassing afar off the same This Cover beset and sprinkled with infinite moving Lights and Candles and among the rest One to be short of a foot in bigness to his sight without all Touching or other means and instruments to be perceived to hale and pull huge heaps of Water after her as she passed up and down continually would they not shout and lift up their hands and begin to suspect the Man of infection with strange and travelling Manners But admit when the noise were done and all husht he went forward and told them of such a Church and Vault where other things as well and more strangely than the Earth for that cannot be otherwise unless heavy things flew up against Nature hanged in the Air alone And of such Hills that as the Moon Waters so drew Ships out of their full courses without any strength or means visible Furthermore if he laid abroad the wonderful might of a little Fish like half a Foot long able to stay the main course of a Ship under sail do you not think with what sowre Countenances and reviling Words and Reproches they would bait him and drive him out of their Company But if the good and painful Man burning with desire to reform the estate of his rude and deformed Country would not be stayed so but espying a calmer time durst come in presence and step forth before them again and say that by his Travel he had learned to make such a Ring as I spake of such warlike Engines as should fall as fearful as Thunder and as hurtful as any Ramme upon the Wall a mile off planted such a kinde of Writing whereby four Men might Record as much in the same time as four thousand of the Common Clerks such a Card wherewith a Countryman that never saw the Sea shall sit in the bottome of a Ship and direct the Course thereof throughout the World without missing Is it not like they would apprehend him for a Cozener and adjudge him to Punishment Then put the case you stood by and saw the Matter I appeal to your own Conscience would you not think the Traveller worthy of Pity and Praise and the People of Reformation Well then let us return to our purpose There is a Nation of Wise-men dwelling in a Soil as much more blessed than yours as yours is than theirs That is As they bide under ground and you upon the face thereof so these Men inhabit the edge skirt of Heaven they daily See and Work many wondrous things which you never saw nor made because you never mounted so high to come
one chief and notable Rule in Learning that the Shape Nature Being Perfection and all the difference in all things here below springeth from the Mixture and Temper of the Stuff and Beginnings The Doing Making and Working-Cause that Makes Mingles Brocheth and sets all a running to be a piece of the finer part of the whole parted and packt up together in the SUN Of which finer part some remaining still in the Raw and rude Stuff secretly hid and placed othersome more freely in the half-made Stuff called Seed and in finer Seed yet more lively and in Man most at liberty excepting where I said it was free indeed from all kinde of Body And yet all these but one and the self-same thing called Soul Life Heavenly and Natural Heat c. This meant Divine Hippocrates when he saith Nought is made and nothing perisheth but all are altered and changed up and down by Mingling And again That no Wight can die unless all fall wherein he is most agreeable and jumpeth even with these Grounds and Rules and with the whole Web of our Philosophy If any man doubt of the other two Plato and Aristotle let him reade their Books with heed and he shall finde them where they speak naturally and by the light of humane Reason to draw still towards this one head and point of Truth though they seem to stray sometimes to the infinite Variety of divers-natured and conditioned Stars above causing the like endless odds and difference of all things Let us now I say set forward in our first dayes Journey to Long Life unfolding first What it is and the Cause thereof and lastly the Common and high way to it It seems hard for a Man to appoint what bounds of Life are large and long enough for BLISSE unless GOD who knoweth best both the measure of Happiness fit for us and the race of Time meet for it had first set and marked them So that the greatest Age and furthest Time that the lustiest Men and best disposed Bodies both by kinde and diet have at any time reached and lived may well by the grant and good will of our great Landlord be set the Bounds Stint and End of Life large enough to hold all the Bliss meet for Mankinde and the Mark which we may all aim and level our endevours at yea and with sure hope to hit and reach it and no further is about an hundred and fifty years as you shall hear anon Now if there do three Causes meet to the making up of Things and thereon leaneth all their Being the Stuff the Mover and the Meat of the Mover which is the Fatness of the Stuff then sure the cause of their long Being and Continuance in their Estate can be nothing else but the favour and goodness of those three Causes The Soul and Heat of Heaven is good and favourable to Wights to let the rest go far more dark and further off my Purpose when she pours her self plentifully upon them for there can be no other odds in one and the self-same thing in all places But the Fat Food of Life which they call the first Moisture and the finest piece of all the Seed lying hid and unseen in the sound parts of Wights and yet by skill to be fetched out and set before us must not onely be plentiful and great in store to match the feeding Soul but also Fast and Fine that by his Fineness he may be both friendly and like to Life and Aiery or rather Aetherial we must wear these Words with handling to keep himself both in Cold and Heat flowing and that through his Fastness or Closeness which they call in Latine densum or solidum that is through his much Stuff in a narrow room he may be more lasting and fit to continue Now the Stuff and Body is best when it is Fast and Fine also one to hold and hang long together and that other to give free scope without stopping or lett unto the continual and swift race of Life Then to make a sum of all The Cause of long Life is a fast fine Body sprinkled and seasoned with much-like first Moisture and store of heavenly Heat If this Matter needed any further proof I could easily by cutting up the Nature of Things so lay it open before you as your own Eyes should witness and see the same But if it need to some they shall see something and that sufficient to content them For the first Aristotle saith and we finde it true by Experience that they live longest in hot Countries for the Dry Sound Fast and Fine Bodies but chiefly for their Fineness yielding free recourse and passage unto Life for Age and kindly Death come of Rottenness which flows from the stillness of Heat and slackness to salt and refresh the parts Touching the rest to wit that much Heat and much good Fatness are a cause of Long Life mark the short life of those Wights that either want them by kinde as the maimed and imperfect ones or waste them by motion as the Male Greyhound of Lacedaemon was against the course of Kinde shorter lived than the Bitch for his pains in Hunting and the Cock Sparrow lives but half so long as the Hen and yet this but three years for their Venery The World is full of such Examples And behold again the Elephant on that other side for the great help and favour of all the Causes above the rest as may appear by their great fruits and effects in him that is Strength Bigness and Stomach being able to be the ground-work of a Castle of fifteen armed men to eat nine Bushels at a time and to drink fourteen Tun to endure and hold out much longer than the rest and to live Aristotle is mine Author in the story three hundred years in all Now we know what Long Life is and the Cause thereof let us see whether all Men reach it or no and then which way they may reach it At the first all Mankinde by the will and appointment of Kinde was Sound and Lusty and lived long and all the fail and corruption now adayes which falsly seemeth a weak Condition of our Nature crept in through Disorder in our selves by little and little and so by sowing still the like Children it spred it self at last deeply rooted over all and made it as it were a certain State Nature and Kinde of Man wherefore by good order in our Selves it may be reformed and brought back again unto the ancient State But how may we prove this If GOD and Nature have ordained Man unto a Divine End and Bliss above the rest and yet some Beasts as Theophrastus for a wonder complains live longer than our common rate yea and longer than any Bounds above-set certainly we ought to do as much and more by the rule of Nature and of all Right and Reason and so we did at first before we fell by
among them If any one chance to fly away from you to those heavenly Places and after like experience to return and make the like Reports you give him like Rewards Compare the rest I say no more But if GOD would give you leave and power to ascend unto those high places I mean to those heavenly Thoughts and Studies you might quickly by view of deep Causes and Divine Secrets and comparison of one to another not onely believe the blessed-Art but also learn and perform the same But they will not be rid so and follow as fast again another way That whereas so many have been and are daily seen to wear their lives in Alchimy and to finde nothing that good is but contrary for the most part to wit untimely and unordinary Death Sickness and Age for Long-life Health and Youth and alwayes Smoke for Gold and Folly for Wisdome and very near as often bad and lewd Conditions for good and honest Natures for by boiling themselves long in such deceitful stuff as though they were burnt in the Pots bottome they carry most commonly for ever after an unsavoury smack thereof It is a plain sign the Trade is vain false and deceitfull This is the third Charge they give unto us let us see how to bear and withstand it The most wise and great Philosophers albeit they knew GOD had made all Mankinde for that happy Life abovesaid and that it was at first enjoyed or else it had been made in vain and that by corruption of ill Custom by his secret appointment our kinde is grown out of kinde and therefore may be restored because it is a mis-leading and no intent of Nature which fore-castings gave them occasion to seek the remedy Yet they thought it unlawful and set straight against the Will of GOD that all should be restored for that he seemed of purpose to have sown Good and Bad and great store of both together in such sort as we see them lest if all were alike and in one state of Happiness the great variety of business and stirring and so the society and Common-wealth among Men should be clean taken away Like as if the four first striving Seeds whereof all things are made and spring were all alike and one friend to another all should be still and quiet without Succession Change and Variety in the World and so there should be no World For GOD when he cast his Minde upon the building of the World he meant to make a goodly and beautiful Work meet for the Power Wisdome and Pleasure of such a Builder and therefore a stirring and changeable Work because there is no might nor cunning shewn no delight taken in one ever-like or still thing But light footing for speed is ever best in such a ground Let us away Wherefore by the example and as it were by the secret blast and motion of GOD after our Men had found this Restorative and used it for the time and meant to leave it as becometh good Men to Posterity they took this way of Counsel to lay it up safe in a strong Castle as it were in the which all the broad Gates and common easie Entries should be fast shut up and barred leaving onely one little and secret back-door open fore-fenced with a winding Maze that the best sort by Wit Pains and Providence might come into the appointed BLISSE the rest stand back forsaken Their Maze and Plot is this first they hide themselves in low and untrodden Places to the end they might be free from the power of Princes and the Eyes of the wicked World And then they wrote their Books with such a wary and well-fenced Style I mean so over-cast with dark and sullen shadows and sly pretence of Likes and Riddles drawn out of the midst of deep knowledge and secret Learning that it is impossible for any but the wise and well-given to approch or come near the Matter And therefore it is when godless and unlearned Men hovering over Gain and Honour presume against Minerva's will to handle their Words when the Things should rather be handled they wrest and wring them a hundred wayes for nothing is so soft and gentle as Speech especially so throughly temper'd and yet all besides the secret meaning thrust up in deep Knowledge Then if these Wayes and Fantasies they practice and set on work as fast as their Fingers itch and miss as fast as they must needs do shall they say they followed our Rules and Precepts and put our Work in practise and found them false That were like as if a cunning Archer and Huntsman had delivered dark Rules of Shooting and Hunting unto his Countrymen and these by chance had fallen into the hands of another wilde and untaught Nation which simply mis-led by mis-taking his Drift and Meaning had made them Ploughs to shoot in and goared their Oxen to the game and then missing of their purpose cried out and blamed the Arts of Shooting and Hunting and sought to blow Envy upon the Man that taught them would not a Wise man judge hold and deem both these and them and all other busie-bodies that so use to myne dig in other Mens dealings to be sent unto their own Trade and Business wherefore they were made and fashioned and to let the rest alone for the right owners And for these of HERMES house do not think they make claim sue and recover their own in open Court as others use that were a way in such a wicked World to lose Land Life and all together quickly but in that secret sort which falleth not within the compass of your Reproof Neither would I have you follow so hard and be so earnest upon the next Reason That albeit our Men had cause to hide their Works and Practise yet they would have shewed the fruit and effect thereof advancing themselves as others do to Honour and Pleasure and not have lived like the refuse of the World in such mean plight and wretchedness for that is the lightest of all other though it seem the greatest If I list to rifle in the Rolls of ancient Records I could easily finde and shew you that although the most part of purpose lived in this harmless and safe Estate which I told you yet some again were Kings and Men of great Place and Dignity and yet I think by Remainder and not by Purchase so but I love not this kinde of reasoning Let them that thirst go to the Fountain and us remember that in the Houshold of BLISSE Riches are made but Servants and not Masters and Rulers because they be for the most part unruly and ambitious and for that cause they have no liberty granted them but are injoyned to serve lowly their Betters and to look no further So that if our Men were Happy or at least lovers of the same their Riches ought to be imployed in their own service that is to purchase and win Wisdome and Vertue and not sent out
things differing according to the Strength of the one and the Obedience of the other And so by reason in that separation of the fine and Male part at first the stuff was throughly tost and mingled and the Heat of Heaven thereby like a hot Summer after a wet Spring very fierce and eager the two causes serving very fitly all Wights Man and all were made alike without any seed sown otherwise than by the great Seedsman of Heaven upon the common stuff of Earth and Water As is still seen in the common Tillage yet used in those lame and unperfect Wights which some call Start-ups and sprung out from themselves As we may be easily led to think if we consider how not onely all kinde of Plants without all setting or sowing grow up by themselves in some places and some kinde of Fish in the Sea are onely Female but also what plenty of Fish there abounds in the frozen Countries for the great heat and fatness of the Waters and chiefly that upon the slimy and hot Land of Aegypt there are yet some bloody and perfect Land-wights as Hares and Goates c. so made and fashioned But because afterward the well-mingled and fat fine Stuff and the strong working Heat failed as it must needs in time and yet the great Lord would have the continual flitting change and succession hold The same two fit Causes were duly kept by continual succession within the Bodies of perfect Wights the Stuff in the She and the Heat in Both yea and as far as need required in seeded Plants also Now we must understand as well that this heavenly Soul which when it is so clothed with that windy Body is called Spirit not onely moveth and worketh with his Heat but also for Food wasteth the Stuff for nothing that is made is able to bear up his state and being without his proper and like food and sustenance Then as our gross Fire here below feedeth upon Weather and Wind called Air as upon his likest meat And as it in his due place is too thin and scattered spreading the Fire so far as it followeth his Food until at last it vanisheth to nothing unless it be plentifully heaped and crowded up together and so kept in a narrow shell of Water which is called Oil or Fatness Even so it is between the fine starry Fire and his like Food the fine Fat of Aether for that cause besides the Divine Purpose above set it cometh down in post into these Quarters to finde and dress himself store of meat as appeareth by his tarrying for as soon as his Food is spent he flieth away as fast and leaves his House at six or sevens uncared for I was about to tell you the Cause of the divers sorts and suits of these lower Creatures but that there was a great puff of Matter came between and swept me away which now being passed over I will go forward Then if the suffering Stuff be Gross Foul and Tough and the making Heat very Small and Easie as it is within and under the Ground things are made which they call Mettals or better by the Arabick word Minerals little broken altered or changed but the gross Beginnings Earth and Water Earth especially rule still and the Life and Soul as it were in a dark dungeon fast shut up and chained is not able to stir and shew it self at all When the Stuff is Finer and Softer with greater Heat upon it there will arise a rooted and growing thing called a Plant better mingled and smaller and further broken from the low and foul Beginnings and the Life of Heaven shall have more scope because Wind or Air and Water and yet Water chiefly swayeth the Matter But if the Soul be yet more mighty and the Stuff yet finer he is able Air and Fire but that above this exalted to shew himself a quicker Workman and to make yet a finer piece of Work moving forward and by mighty sense perceiving But by reason these two Causes passing by those degrees do so mount and rise at last there is an excellent and fiery kinde contrived even Our kinde I mean most throughly and fair and finely wrought even so Fat indeed that he may not easily seem made at all of these All-making Seeds the four Beginnings whence it is that when a Corps is consumed with Fire there are found scarce six Ounces of clean Earth remaining which fineness of Body gives occasion to the greatest freedom and quickness of the Soul and ability to perform as his duty of Life Moving and Perceiving yea and shall I put in Understanding also for albeit GOD hath inbreathed us with another more fine and clean Mover called Minde for a special and Divine purpose yet that Minde as well as the Soul above is all one of it self in all places and worketh diversly according to those divers places as we shall see more at large hereafter Then you see all the differences of the four great Heads or Kindes which contain all things yea and of many lesser degrees and steps lying within every one of these which I named not before as also of sundry sorts not worth the naming of Doubtful and Middle things touching and partaking on each side of the four great ones as between the first two Stones budding like Herbs in the Scottish Sea between Plants and Beasts the Spunge Apes or rather hairy Wildmen between Beasts and Us to proceed from the divers mixtures of the Bodies If you cannot quickly perceive the Matter behold at once the outward Shapes and Fashions as they here go down a short pair of Stairs before you Do you not see Man alone through his exceeding fine and light Body carried up and mounted with a mighty heat of Heaven of an upright stature and carriage of himself that this Divine Wit might be free from the clog of Flesh when other Wights from the contrary Cause which the gross and earthly Leavings or Excrements of Hair Horn Hoof and such like declare are quite otherwise disposed as we see towards the Ground their like Companion and so the less hot and fine they be that is the liker the Earth the nearer they bend unto her being less of stature still and after that many-footed to support them but at length Footless and groveling until it come to their Heads downward and there it stayeth not but passeth quite over and degenerates from Wights to Plants And from thence if I might tarry about it I would send them down still through all the steps of them and Minerals until they came to the main Rest and Stay from whence they all sprang clean Earth and Water But I think it be now high time to take my leave of these Philosophers and to set forward as soon as I have packt up my Stuff round together especially the best and most precious Things Then we gather by that enlarged Speech
our default which may be amended But lest I may happen to deal with some who will neither grant the Justice of GOD nor yet yield to the End of Man with some I say that have so far put off all Humanity I will bring them to Natural Causes I will open and lay before them both the sorts and suits of Wights I mean of Men and Beasts that they being a monstrous and doubtful Kinde between both that is Beasts within cloth'd only with the outward shape of Men may the better judge of both as in like case they feign of the like mis-shapen Monsters The Poets know my meaning it is not worth the flourish of a chaste and modest Pen which had in kinde the more cause to live long That seeing at last the worser Wights to overgo us in Life and to run to the very goal it self and yet to have received less cause from Nature they may be driven by force of Reason to yield that we have a better Kinde and worser Custom and that we did and might live long but for our own fault which may be reformed To begin with the Soul and Natural Heat for his worthiness let us see which of them is endowed with more store of him that is of the chief cause of Long Life If we call to minde a little we shall remember That Man walketh upright when the rest are thrown to the Ground because they lack the force of this ascending Heat to bear up the weight of their Bodies which we have abundantly But if we leave the outward shape and look into them we shall finde that by the great foresight of Nature all Wights which are Hot and full of Blood have against the Root and Spring thereof to cool and temper the same a Contrary in place and property set the Brain I mean some more and some less still according to the behoof and request of the Heart Insomuch as they that have no Blood and small Heat within them as not needing any Cooler have no Brain at all Then by certain race and course of Kinde if that be true which all Philosophers and Leaches hold that a Man hath the greatest Brain of all Wights it must needs follow that he hath the greatest store of Heat also But enter further into them and you shall see Man by how much more he goeth beyond a Beast in Wit so much to burn in Heat above him for Wit springeth out of the clearness of the Body and this out of Heat as I will prove in his place hereafter Now if this first point be done and granted the next is quickly made even as one Match is made by another It standing with the Justice of Nature that makes nought in vain to match this greedy Heat with store of good Meat that is of Fast and Fine first Moisture suitably or else sure saith Heraclitus the Officers of Justice the Furies would soon apprehend her To be short both this and that and the third likewise to wit a close fine Body and all is cleared if it be so that a Man in making is most far and finely mixt and broken of all the lower Creatures as we heard even now Decreed in the Councel of the best Philosophers For if nought makes but Heat then nought makes well but much Heat if there be no other odds in Souls as was said above And if the Beginnings be well and firmly mingled and the Concoction hold they must needs gather themselves in close together also to make another cause yea and the last for what is fast fine Oil and Fatness but Water where with we flow as our Brain declareth throughly mingled and raised into an Aiery or rather into an Aetherial close Substance But if you will not stand to this Decree then once for all Consider and weigh but this one Example That albeit Man be more given to Lust than any other Wight and thereby drying up the Body plainly pareth off more than any other and weakneth all the helps of Long Life together both the Moisture that knits and holds the Frame and that which feeds our Heat and this and all and so that sum of Life which yet is due to Nature he payeth before his Day to his own Wantonness yet he Liveth and holdeth out longer than almost any other that we may easily see that if he lived as Chastly and in other points as Orderly as the rest he might far pass and over-run them all in this Race of Life and Continuance But methinks I hear them whisper that I forget my self and the Bounds of my Long Life when I make Men able to live as long and longer than any Beast for to let pass the Hart and Camel which overtake the longest life of our old Men sure the Elephant as we have heard goeth far beyond the very bounds of Age especially the Raven whom Euripides will have to live Nine of our Ages These may seem sore matters but chiefly the last uncurable and yet they are indeed light and easie and the last most of all I mean the Raven for if there was never yet Man of sound Judgement and Knowledge in the wayes of Nature that allowed the Story and Aristotle by name condemns it when he giveth the Elephant the longest Life of all and Man next to him what should we reckon of a Poets Record Besides doth not one among them confess himself they are not to be believed and held as Witnesses Doth not Plato once a Poet and then a wise Philosopher chase them up and down in all places and in one say They be besides themselves when they sit on their Muses stool and run like a Spring pouring out all that comes Are they not in all wise Mens account the greatest Enemies to GOD good Manners and all right and true Knowledge that ever the World or the Devil bred But I slide too far unawares and if we must of force receive this aged Raven yet perhaps there shall be no great hurt received and I cannot see why we may not match him with Methusalem and some other aged Fathers in Holy Writ reported to have lived as many years as Nine of our Lives come to with advantage It is not enough to say that which some say those Years to be meant for Moneths and not as we account them for albeit I know the Aegyptians reckon so as we may see in Pliny where some of them are said to live a thousand Years apiece that is so many Moneths yet it is agreed among the Divines Men best skill'd in these Matters that the Jews account was otherwise even as we and almost all other Nations make it But if this ancient Story of our old holy Man be a thing in doubt or certainly untrue and to be meant of Moneths yet our Aged Raven may go with it and the Father of that Tale together And we may when we will pass to the
Elephant Aristotle indeed is the Author of this Story that the Elephant liveth three hundred years How then shall me mislike in like manner of this Man and refuse his Witness I cannot tell what to say It is a very hard matter that he saith And again I know that when by the power and purse of his King and Scholar Alexander who gave him eight hundred Talents of Silver a huge sum to that use he heaped up a rabble of all kinde of Reports and Hear-sayes into those Books thereof by some called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some false and untrue Tales might creep in among them yet I owe much to that Mans worthiness and again the Books have ever held the place of a true Record And besides this matter of the Elephant both for the fore vouched Causes and for his Wit and Manners somewhat near our Nature may reasonably well agree with the sound of Reason How then I say again Methinks I feel my Minde ebbe and flow within me and yet suppose it true that the Beast liveth so many years The Islanders of Zeil near Calecut and the Inhabitants of the Hill Atho both of them commonly and usually reach our appointed time of one hundred and fifty Years by the favour of the Air onely and Soil where they dwell taking besides for ought I can know the common race and course of the World That we may lawfully deem if they lived as chastly as the Elephant who comes but once in two years to Venery and followed his other good Orders of Life as well that they might easily draw forth their age longer and come to the dayes of the Elephant For as we in our less happy Soils by our own ill Diet and crooked Custom have cut off and lost the better half of our Time so it may seem of them for we must not think in this disorder of the World that any Man fulfilleth the time of Nature but all are swept away with the blast of untimely Death But it may chance that long race of Life which the Author makes the Beast to run was no common and ordinary course in that Kinde but some odde and rare Example And then no doubt as there be some amongst us which by their diligence and I know not by what good hap double the common Term so they be not wanting in those places which sometime prove aged Men and which live twice as long as the common sort that is as long as the Elephant Wherefore for all this or ought else that can be cast against us let us conclude That Man if he kept the good and kindly Diet and Order of Life which other Wights void of Reason by the true and certain guide of Nature keep having more helps and means unto it might live longer than any of them yea and with ease reach the bounds of Long Life appointed and perhaps further also but we have staid in the midst and mean as it were because it seems to obey the secret Will of GOD the better and yet withall to fulfill the whole desire of Nature Then say you it were good to learn the Order of Life which Beasts do use to keep and follow if it were meet and seemly for Men to lead a Beastly Life Do not so take the meaning of a good thing with the snare of a foul and filthy word A Man is not one and single as they be but double and two things and partly a Wight nay a Beast be it spoken with reverence and partly a more divine thing and therefore albeit according to his Divine Part and Reason he ought to follow the Divine Pattern and Form of Life above-set yet as he is a Wight and an earthly Creature also it is not uncomely nay it is necessary to do as they do after a sort And if it were altogether so it were better and more agreeable with the Will of Nature who knoweth best what belongs to Life that is unto her self for Kinde leadeth them still after one due and orderly manner when great variety of Wit and Device guideth us against Minerva's will as they say and quite besides the way of Nature unto a Thousand by and forraign Customs which is the onely Cause of our degeneration from our ancient and first whole and sound Estate Wherefore if a company of pickt and lusty Men and Women would agree to live together in some wilde open clear and sweet Air scatteredly like a Country Village and not like a close and smothered City which one thing prevents a thousand Diseases and Deaths alone and to lie together to the right end of Nature that is for Children and not for Pleasures sake for this was made a Spur to the right purpose and in as seldome and due a course as the better sort of Beasts the ready way to preserve Life and fore-stall Diseases but specially to get good Children and to bring up their Children in Labour and Hardship mingled with much Mirth and Sleep together no small helps to Long Life and Health as the Dieters themselves confess and know But for this Meat and Diet wherein those Leaches offend and fail greatly if they would consent to take no Physick but in great danger cast in by misfortune in which case the Beasts do not want their Remedies never to drink Wine the shortner of Life and to be short not take any Meat and Drink that the fire hath touched for it sunders the Fine from the Gross that is the best from the worst which we now choose but as Nature hath left them and other Wights use them If these things I say were duly kept and performed I am fully perswaded within three or four Generations and Off-springs it would come to pass that we should see this People prove a Nation of Giants not onely passing the age of Beasts and the bounds of Long Life afore-set but wholly recovering and restoring all the Blessings of the first estate of Body And this I gather not by our own contrary Customs onely taking effects as cross and contrary but chiefly by the Life and Use of Giants and lusty People in times past and some other yet at this day which was and is the very self-same race and course which I described And sure for the Inhabitants of Zeil and Atbo which I brought in even now filling the Term of our Long Life although I am not certain of their use and custom and where I finde the Story I know the Cause is laid upon the goodliness of the Soil in the first for it is thought to be the blessed Paradise and upon the goodness of the Air in the next for the height of the Hill without all Wind and Rain two great troubles of Mens bodies yet I am led to think that they do keep the same orderly and kindly form and rule of Life or at the least do draw near unto it because albeit clean Air
by cleaning and quickning the Spirits and searching the Body be no little help and comfort in this Journey As we shall easily see if we mark how amongst all Creatures those that lead their lives in the cleaner Element do live the longer Fish than Worms and Land-Wights than These and Winged ones yet longer because the higher the better Air still Insomuch that Cardan dares think that if any dwell in Aether as Plato's heirs affirm they live for ever yet if ill Diet went withall it would marre as much as the other made and greatly cloy and hinder yea and cut short the race of their Long Life I am of the same minde for all other odde and private Persons of great Age and Long Life recorded as for some Italians in Pliny's time registred of one hundred and forty years and such other aged Men in Authors a Man might let in here a Sea of Examples but I must be short Neither would I name King Arganthon that lived a hundred and twenty years and reigned eighty thereof nor yet that old Knight of our Country Sir Allington yet twenty years older but that it is so strange in Nobility that they came as near unto that kindly course of Life as unto the goal and end of Long Life Then we see at length that it is not impossible as they say but an ordinary and easie matter to strengthen the weak Nature of Mankinde to enlarge the straits of his Life and to lead him on still to the ancient Age and Long Life appointed But I see them start and say that like as Cato in Affairs of State used to give Counsel unwisely though never so well as if he had been in Plato's Common-wealth and not in the Dregs of Romulus so I in matter of Diet and order of Body speak as if we lived in the former Golden Age which as Poets feign was under Saturn and not in the corruption of Jupiters Kingdom and that sith the World as it now goeth cannot be brought without a kind of Divine Power to rase out the old and make a new World and that in long time unto the first and kindly custom of Life I must if I mean to do wisely take the Men as I finde them and prove that all such weakness as is now among them may by Mans endevour and skill of Healing be upholden and led forth unto those bounds and that end of Long Life afore-set Albeit I have done as much as reasonably may be required at my hands in this place which was allotted out to shew the possibility of the Matter yet because I count it better by plainness of speech to do good which is the end of my Writing than by subtileness of Argument to obtain my purpose I will come unto you and venture upon that Point also be it never so hard and desperate hoping not that Fortune will favour bold Men but GOD good Men. Then as there are three Causes of Life and Being the Life and Soul it self and his Food the first Moisture and the frame and temper of the Body that holds them both so let us take them all in order and see how they may be preserved and kept together beginning first with the last because it is least and lightest It is enacted by the Law of Nature That no Body mixt or single shall or may live and preserve his estate and being without two helps or stayes that is Meat and Exercise each like his Kinde and of his Nature As in lone and simple or subtile Bodies for it is plain in the first row especially if they be Living as they term them though all things indeed have Life and Soul as we heard above the Hot ones crave fiery Meat and moving Exercise Moist ones as Wind and Water flowing Food and Exercise Cold and Dry things like and Earthly Sustenance and Rest for Exercise which is also like and preserves their State and Being But if all lone and simple things are within the Compass of this Law then Heaven may not be free nor exempted and they speak not altogether fondly that say the Stars feed upon the Sea and for that cause by good advice of Nature the Ocean so rightly placed under the course and walk of the Sun for although the Water be yet so far off and unlike them yet their power and strength is such as they are able by their labour easily to refine it and turn it first into Air and then into Aether a weaker like thing and their proper food That this is so the hungry Souls which are but Imps slipt off the Heavenly Body make it plain here below unto us when we see them still unwilling to tarry and unable to live amongst us without Meat as they bewray themselves by the plain expence and waste of the first moisture Nay take this one away if you will mark well and all lieth on the Ground Then there is an old coyl and fighting here below for Meat and Exercise that is for life and being which makes the cause of all action and doing rest and change and of all things and every one runneth easily and gladly to his like and if his strength be never so little greater he subdues digests and turns him into his own Nature and is strengthned by him But if he miss of his like food at hand and be much stronger he dares encounter and is able to quell unlike things also as I said of the Stars the mightiest things giving Might to all things in the World But in case the unlikes and contraries be of equal power and matches then neither devoureth and consumeth other but both are marred dulled and weakned which they call Consent and Temper and Mixture For Example Fire extreme hot and somewhat dry withall and Water very cold and somewhat wet meeting together in even powers and proportions of strength are both impaired but neither lost and destroyed But if this Water chance by the heat of Heaven to be taken in hand and turned into Aiery and fat substance though there be now two Moistures set against the drought of Fire yet because of the heat of Weather and Heaven abounding it is now become partly like to Fire and friendly or at least his weaker Foe and Enemy yielding himself for Food unto it and increasing his strength and Nature But if on the other side Air unto his exceeding Moisture matching the drought of Fire get some strength and watery coldness as appeareth in a thick and foggy weather it is able easily to overcome the Fire and eat him up Now for a mixt Body which is a consent and dulling the four first famous Enemies made and kept in tune and awe by the force and skill of an heavenly and natural Heat upon them it hath the same reason for when either for lack of Meat or driven by Violence this Heat departeth the friends begin to stir and fight for Food and Freedom until some
Quickness and stirring of the Spirits appears in Sickness Age and sound Sleep especially in Age and Sickness more cleerly than needs any light of teaching But how in Sleep when the heat of the Spirits serving Wit is either loaden with the clogging Fumes and Breaths of the Stomach or spent either with Labour or with Sweat and still beholding for Rest abates Heat as I ever said or else lent for a time unto his fellow-servants the Spirits of Life for digestion sake then the Spirits of the Brain be still and quiet and outward and inward Senses Wit and Vnderstanding all cease at once But if the Meat to omit the expence of Heat was neither much nor of an heavy and clogging kind and so neither breathing out loading stuffe nor needing forraign help to digest it then our perceiving Spirits begin to take their own and Natural Heat again unto them and to move a little before the Minde whereby she beholdeth some old shapes and shewes of things in their passing which is called Dreaming But in case they recover all that Heat they bestir themselves apace running to the out-side of the Body and bringing back new tidings to the Minde which when she perceiveth it is called Waking Then the cause of Wisdom is clear at last as we see to wit a clean and stirring Glass and of Folly when the same is foul and still If the Glasse be fouled all over it causeth natural or willing folly as in Fools Children and Drunkards but if it be but here and there besmeared and drawn as it were with dark strokes and lines of foul humors the shapes appear in the Minde even as the forms in a broken Glasse appear to the Eye by halfs and confusedly and it maketh Madness But how came the Spirits of this inward Glass so foul and slow when they are of themselves as becometh the Beams of an Heavenly Soul both very clean clear quick and lively But we need say no more but clear and foul alone when these two qualities make or mar the whole work of perceiving for if the Spirits be clear it is a sign they are in their own Nature and so hot and quick withal but if they be foul it is a token their whole condition and property of Kinde is lost and gone and so that stilness is come upon them also Neither is that aethereal thing which is called by the name of a Spirit that carrieth the Soul and all his Beams down into the Body and broketh as I said above between them foul or still of it self for Spirits are not as some Leaches think made of but fed with the breaths of our Meat but very fine cleer and lively as all Men grant of Aether How then Must it not needs follow that all the cause of fail and want in this case springeth from the Body and from that part especially where the Wits inhabit If the naked Reason brought in above will not serve to content this matter let us leade him forth clad with proof of Eye-sight and Experiences the plainest greatest most filling and satisfying Reason in the World If Man alone doth passe all other Wights in Wit for his Aiery and Fiery temper above them as we heard before then if one Man goeth before another in Wit it must needs follow from the same cause Now as Air and Fire are cleer and quick when Earth and Water are foul and slow so are the Wights where they bear the sway affected both in Wit and Body as appears in difference between the Hart and the Toad and all other wholsom and noisom Wights To go further why are the Men so gross and rude under the two Pins of the World in the frozen Countreys and so Civil and Wise in Hot as Aristotle well noteth but for that the outward Heat cleanseth as it is a cleanser and drieth and so cleareth the Bodies whereas Cold on the other side binds and thickens and so likewise by stopping the flying out of the gross foul and waterish humors and leavings makes all not onely dark and cloudy but hot and moist also as it were drunken by boiling together as e Aristotle termeth it But methinks I must favour them a little because they are our Neighbours he might have done better to have resembled those broiled People to Old Men otherwhere and the Aged Men in frozen Countreyes to the Youth in hot Soyles because the odds between the Wisdom of Age and Youth flows from the same cause of Drought and Moisture that is Clearness and Foulness of the Bodies And therefore Plato was not ill advised when he said that at such time as the Eye of the Body failed the Eye of the Understanding began to see sharply because when this waterish Instrument drieth up with the rest of the Body though it puts out the sight of Sense yet it is a Token that the light of Wit increaseth for Drought as I said breeds Clearnesse if it be not mixt with coldness for then it brings in Earthliness the most foul and sluggish Element of all And therefore those that are very old and cold are very doting and childish again But if that Drought be seasoned with Heat the more the better they make the Man very wise and full of Understanding as it hath been alwayes observed Caesar is described so but more strangely before him Alexander whose Body by his great Heat and Drought was not onely most sweet in his life-time but also able lying dead above the Ground in a hot Soil and Season without any balming alone to keep it self fresh and sweet without all taint and corruption many dayes together But I am too long Therefore Prophets are said to be wiser than Men and the Spirits wiser then they and the Stars most wise of all for the odds and degrees in the Heat Droughth and Clearness of the Bodies Now when we know the cause of this Hurt and Disease let us upply the Medicine let us clear the Ideots body In many kindes of foolishness as in Childhood Drunkenness Sleep and Doting Diseases Nature her self is this Salve to disperse in her due time and season and scour out the foul and cloggy cold and gross humors which overwhelmed the Spirits and made them unclean and quiet or at least in the ranker sort of them as in Doting Diseases she may be holpen easily and enabled by little skill to do it that we may judge if great and strong and mighty means of Art chanced once to joyn with Nature the rankest of all and deepest rooted that is Natural folly it self may be rooted out and dispatched But you may reply as some do that the rest which sprung out from outward light and hang-by causes may be cured when this being so rooted in the Nature and first mixture of the Seed a mixture as ill as a Beastly mixture can never be mended unlesse we grant that a Beast may be holpen also and put on Manly
of Silver and Gold and Copper adulterando adulteria naturae as he more finely then constantly saith when he had alotted so chast Virtue before unto her But suppose this Virtue in the hard form of Metals not so apparent yet no Man shall deny the daily proof of them opened by rude Skill and set at liberty as the great use of Burnt Brasse Iron-Saffron Metal-smoke and this by Gallen's own witness and marvellous help in Surgery Nay the mighty power both within and without of Antimony which is unripe Lead and of Quick-silver very raw and running Silver so often tried before their Eyes hath so amazed and quite daunted the later Leaches though Galen himself in times past hath termed this rank Poison set straight against our Nature and the least part thereof taken inward to hurt and annoy us to the great laughter of the Countrey Wits which even with Child a dangerous time to take Physick in without any hurt at all nay with speedy and onely help use to drink it against Worms in great quantitie But Galen did but rove by guess at the matter when as in another place forgetting himself as he doth often he saith he never had tried her force neither within nor without the Body But if these Stones Juices and Metals were by greater Skill more finely drest and freely set at liberty as they be by the German what wonders were they like to work in the Art of Healing Neither let us think as Galen and his band thinks of all things that those great and rare Mineral virtues could issue out and come from the gross and foul Body but from an Heavenly gift of a mighty Soul which cannot be kept in awe and held so straâ— with those Earthly bonds as it shall not be able in somâ— sort to stir and break through and shew his force and power Wherefore to return to my purpose If Nature hath bestowed upon these three sorts and suits of Minerals so large Gifts and Virtues what hath she given to Gold the end and perfection of them all which hath passed in that travel through the midst of them all so receiving and holding the Virtues of them all with advantage What say the Leaches to this matter They are loth to say any thing albeit their deeds speak enough when they lay raw Gold to the out-side of the Head to heal his Ache right e against the Heart to comfort his sadness and trembling and when in such sort they apply it to such purposes Again why do they boil it in their d Cullises mix it with their Pills and Electuaries bid the Lepers swallow it c. Do they not seem to smell his great and matchless power against Diseases and marvellous comfort and wholsomness unto our Nature but that like rude and unskilful Cooks they know not how to dress it But if they knew the Skill they should see it rise in Power and Virtue according to his degrees in Freedom and when it came to the top which I call the Sonne of Gold to prove Almighty I mean within our compass for consider Gold is now good and friendly above all unto us for his exceeding store of comfortable Heat of Heaven shining through the mist of a most fine and temperate Body Then what would it be if those properties of Body were by great mingling and breaking of the Stuffe refined and raised in their kind an hundred degrees at least which our Art professeth and those lively and piercing heaps of comfortable Spirits freed and set at liberty and all these seated upon a most mighty Body subduing all things Is there any thing in the World to be compared unto the marvellous Work which he would make in our Body Could any of these very violent and mortal Poisons which I brought in above so easily and roundly destroy as this would help and save us But to come to the Point If that our Old Fine Close and Aethereal Oil which they call a Fifth Nature was able alone for the Reasons set down in their places to breed and beget all those blessed bodily gifts and properties that is Lastingnesse Health Youth and the two springs of Wisdom and Virtue Clearnesse and Temperatenesse How much more shall this Sonne of Gold the Medicine and Stone of HERMES and his Off-spring be sufficient and furnished for it For first when his Soul and Heat of Heaven is much more great and mighty and his Body a more fine and fast Oil that is a more like and lasting Food of Life it both upholdeth and strengtheneth Life and Natural Heat the better and so proves the better cause of Long Life and Youth Then being more temperate and that quality carried upon a finer and tougher that is a stronger Body it is able with more ease and speed to subdue his and our Enemies the distempered Diseases and to cleanse and clear fashion and bring into good order and temper the whole frame of our Body and so procure Health Wisdom and Virtue in better sort and in more full and heaped measure for you must not think that a Fifth Nature of Wine or such like which I brought in heretofore and which many Men do make for their Bodies is so good by twenty degrees as the PHILOSOPHERS STONE I mean the same measure of both when besides that it is not so temperate and near unto Heaven though the name be never so near for it wanteth twenty parts of the Soul and as much of that fine Stuffe closely and finely tied up together and therefore one part thereof will last longer and spread further with all his Virtues and so do more good in our Bodies then twenty times as much of the former Deliver to minde what I say it is worthy marking I shall not need to stand to shew you the Reasons why and manner how this great Medicine of HERMES shall be able to get and purchase these our Blisses of Mind and Body because it is already done at large elsewhere and it may suffice in this place to win by force of Reason which hath been done as much as needs that this Medicine is much better and more able than an Aether Heaven or Fifth Nature Then these Men may see I mean Paracelse and such as know whereof they speak let the rest go how rash and unadvised they prove themselves when they are content to let in the name of Poison into this happy Medicine and to avow that it worketh all those wonders in our Bodies by that way of curing which I shewed by stronger like â—oisons for then it would be at most but a general Medicine and Cure-all against Diseases and fit for Health alone but no blessed way to Long-life Youth Wisdom and Virtue which grant as well as the other both he and all the rest do give unto him for it might not be taken and used in a sound Body no more then a purging Medicine except
worthy Master Plato If that were the best Life or the Life of GOD why did GOD make the World He lived so before if that had been the best Life But because He was Good He would have other enjoy his Goodness and therefore he was busie in Making and is yet in Ruling the World And yet indeed it is no Business as we reckon it that is no Care and Trouble but an outward Deed and Action clean contrary to the inward Deed of a musing Minde onely shooting at his own good Estate which is Wisdome and Knowledge But if he deny all this as it is like he will because to encrease the heap of sin he grants no Beginning then what can be greater evidence than his own Writings one quite thwarting another as cross as may be for in his seventh Book of State he comes again and saith that Every man hath so much BLISSE as he hath Wisdome and Virtue even by the witness of GOD himself who is therefore happy and not for outward Goods What can be more divinely spoken and more cross to that former foul and godless Opinion Nay see the force of Truth he yields again according to his heavenly Master That to forestall the Place from the worser sort good Men ought to take Office upon them and to manage Affairs of State Yea and further If they refuse which if they be Wise they will quoth Zeno that they may be rightly compelled Then if his Wiseman hath Virtue in possession as no doubt he hath he must as we see by his own confession use it And the same reason is of GOD Himself in this great City of the World But Plato by name thinks these two so nearly tied and of kin together as he dare openly deny his Happiness to that Common-wealth where they be dis-linked and stand asunder Then we see that in the judgement of these two great Philosophers where they be best advised and in deed and truth the Divine Pattern of BLISSE which we ought to strive unto is no more nor no less than that worthy couple of Wisdome and Virtue knit together in that band of Fellowship which may never be parted and set asunder But you may say We have reared our BLISSE aloft and made it a fair and goodly Work but more fit for the dwelling of those single and clean Mindes or Spirits above which they call Messengers or Angels than for us Men so buried here below in these earthly Bodies as we be scarce able to look up unto it And therefore Aristotle both in his Book of Manners and of State with good advice often receiveth in enough of bodily and outward Goods to help this matter though not as any other cause of BLISSE than the Instrument is of Musick and so Plato we see nameth his Servants and Helpers Indeed I grant that this full and high pitch of Happiness I mean that measure above set is free and easie to free and lively Spirits but to us impossible without other outward means and helps which nevertheless shall not be counted as any part of the frame of BLISSE needful to make up the whole but as it were loose and hang-by steps and stairs leading up unto it Then if these be so needful as they be it were as much need to lay them down and in just account which those Philosophers do not lest if there be too few our Happiness should halt if again too many the idle parts might in time infect and marre the rest As we may fear of Plato his first three Delights although they be not hurtful of themselves Without more words the just sum is this To obtain so much Happiness as our Nature is able to take and hold the Body had need be first willing and obedient and then store of outward needful things to be at hand and ready These every Man knoweth But for the Body that is obedient when it is long-liv'd healthful young clear and temperate when all these helps flock together we may be happy if we will if any want we shall never do what we can as we shall hear hereafter Then let us marshal at last these things in Order and comparing BLISSE to a Family make that loving Couple Wisdome and Virtue as Man and Wife and Heads of the Houshold the five Properties of the Body like Children and Riches as Servants These again if the chief of the Houshold will suffer them to Marry will beget other two Bond-children to beautifie the same house Honour and Pleasure But the wise and good Housholder will in no wise suffer it lest his Houshold be troubled with more than may be ruled And although true and right Honour and Pleasure will perforce follow yet he shall not regard them but be minded towards them as those grave Men were towards Hellen and often use their saying Although they be such kinde ones yet let them go CHAP. II. Reproof of the common and lighter sort of Arguments cast against the Way to Bliss NOw that we know what is BLISSE and HAPPINESSE we may when we will go into the Way and shew how all Men may be Blessed wherein I am quite bereaved of an helps from the Grecians as men ever apter to speak and think well than to do and perform any thing though constancy and agreement in their Sayings would have left BLISSE as well as other good things in the power and reach of all Men And I must fly for aid into Aegypt a People so far passing all other Nations as it is better and nearer to GOD to work and do great wondrous things than to behold and look upon them For it is delivered to ancient and true Record that one HERMES a King and Law-giver of that Country a Man of rare and divine gifts in Knowledge above all that ever were found out a Medicine able to bring all men to that BLISSE aforesaid and left it behinde him in writing to his People and that it was after him a long time by the wiser sort closely wrought and used until at last it crept abroad and stole into Arabia when she flourished in Arms and Learning and there got the Name which it now commonly keepeth of the PHILOSOPHERS STONE And that from thence in the same secret and disguised manner for it is the wont thereof as becomes so deep a Secret it hath travelled and spred it self over all Nations now and then opening and discovering it self to a few of the better and wiser Company Then this is THE WAY TO BLISSE which I mean to take And withall to prove it no pleasant Dream and happy Tale if it were true as the common Proverb goeth of it but as it is in Nature an heroical and almost divine deed scarce to be reached or matched with any words so I vow it a true and certain Story a thing often done and again to be done as often I am unfit I grant and unable to bear so great a
Burthen but that the great desire I have both to defend the Truth from slander and to do good to them that love it makes it light and easie And again this hope upholds me That if I chance to stumble or faint at any time they will as gently and willingly lend their hand to stay me or at the least bear with the fall and misfortune Then for the common and viler Sort which either for lack of good Nature or want of good Manners use to wrangle about Words or twitch at Things I care not And because I know them not I will pass by them as unknown men for neither was Hercules able as they say to match with many-headed Hydra nor yet with the awk and crooked Crab. Then to turn my Speech which way were it best to set forward Not right and streight to the matter No Because there is such crying out against the Possibility of the good Works which our Medicine promiseth And that awk fore-judgement of the Matter hath been the chief cause which hath hitherto buried this Divine Art from the sight of good and learned Men I take it the best way of delivery before I come to the point it self to fetch about a little and shew the possibility of these effects and the way to work them by other and weaker means as well as by HERMES his Medicine For although it be not so Natural in marching forward to move the left and weak part yet I ween it right Artificial and then it shall agree with that good order of Art first of all to put by a few of the light things laid against this blessed Science Because albeit they be gathered but by guess besides all grounds and rules of certainty yet they have so wholly possessed the common people yea and some of the better and wiser sort likewise that without any further search or hearing of the Matter they have streightway cast it off for false and condemned it for as when sleep hath once taken the Fort of the Body the Senses yield and can do nothing so if wrong belief once get possession of the Soul Reason is laid to rest and cannot move again before that must be loosened and put to flight and scattered First say they sith there be seen in all places and times so many hundreds with great Pains Heed and Cunning to study this Art and to put the Receipts in practise sure if they were true and faultless as others are some should appear to hit the Mark and to gather the fruit of their Travel and not to live as they all do of all men most miserable Or at least because it is so ancient an Art it would have been recorded in some publick or private Writing besides their own which be it bound with never so deep Oaths as it is yet is it unsufficient proof and witness in their own case These be the most saleable Reasons and best approved among the People wherewith they use to batter this exchanging Science But mark how light and weak they be and easie to be wiped away for how could the Acts and Deeds of these Philosophers come into the Writings and Records of Men to begin there with them whose Fame nay whose Company they have ever shunned And when their own Records if they chanced to like of leaving any were not sown abroad and published to the World as is the use of Worldlings but left like precious Heirlooms unto some Friend of secret trust which was counted as a Son adopted upon Condition to keep it still within the House and Stock of HERMES from the Eyes and Hands of the World and Strangers running evermore like the wise Stars a contrary race unto the World that no marvel though they be both in like sort crossed by the World and mis-called Wanderers or Planets when in deed and truth they go better Now when they deem credit to be denied to the Mens own Report and Witness it is a sign that either their own Report and Witness is of light and little weight whereby they judge of others or else that their Thoughts are vain and phantastical puft up I mean with that new kinde of Self-love and overweening Wisdom to set up themselves and pull down Authorities of which sort it falls out most commonly in proof that while they strive to avoid the Lake of Superstition they run headlong unawares down the Rock of Impiety for if such a wilde breach and entry may be suffered to be made into the Credit and Authority of Writers which are the life of Antiquity and light of Memory great darkness and confusion will soon come in and overcast the World yea and so far forth at length as nought shall be believed and judged true that is not seen that even they which dwell in the main Land shall not grant a Sea A thing not onely fond and childish among all Men but also ill be to me if I speak not as I think wicked and godless amongst us Christians whose whole Religion as S. Augustine saith stands upon that ground Wherefore if we must needs believe Recorders of Acts and Stories yea though they be sometimes lewd men foolish and unlearned as if they were as whole and harmless as Xenocrates but especially although they had great cause to lie and to speak more or less than the truth who can in any common Reason refuse the solemn Oathes of so many good wise and learned Men for he that is Good for the love of Virtue it self he that is Wise to avoid the shame of Lying will speak the Truth What should I say of the learned Men whose whole care and practise drift and study is nothing else but to finde and set down the Truth But all is well and clear of all suspicion if it may be thought these Oathes and Protestations to have sprung from themselves of meer good will and desire to perswade the lovers of Wisdome and Virtue and not wrung out by fear of flattery Which may be easily judged in such Men as were all either Kings that needed not or Diogenists that cared not as it is clear in all their Eyes that are conversant in these kinde of Studies Wherefore such men as are so bold without sure ground of Reason to deny and deny still all that comes are in my Opinion greatly to be looked into for although they like Xerxes pull not down Religion with hands openly yet they are of another sort as dangerous that undermine it closely with wrong Opinions If our Men avowed such plain untruths as might be reproved by common sense and daily experience as when Anaxagor as said Snow was black and Xenophanes the Moon inhabited and full of Hills and Cities and Nicetes of old with some of late that the Earth the onely unmoveable thing in the world onely moved and such like ugly and mis-shapen Lies wherewith Greece over-swarmed then you had reason to use them with ill
Entry once made in their Hearts the great and marvellous Truth of this famous STONE may the more easily come in and take possession But in such variety of hard and slippery Matter whence were it best to set out which Way first to take Were it not meet the means and helps unto BLISSE should be first rid and cleared before we come to BLISSE it self and among them to give Long Life the foremost place if not for his worthiness yet for his behoof and necessity being needful in all Common-wealths and private persons first to seek to live before to live well though that unto this end Then let us see what is Long Life and how all Men may reach unto it But why do we make such great haste we had need be slow and advised in so great a Matter and to look before we venture upon so long a Way and of so many dayes Journey that we be well provided and furnished of all things wherein I hope if I have not of my own or if after the thrifty manner when I am well stored my self yet I borrow to prevent lending although I take upon trust so much as shall serve this turn it shall be no stain to my Credit but rather deemed a safe and wary way to cut off occasion of Robbery both at home and abroad especially if I take it up of such Men as are most famous and best beloved These should be my Friends of Aegypt and Arabia though we have their secret help now and then the best able indeed and the nearest unto me if they were so well known and beloved in the World But because they be not I will fly to the other side of Greece and to the most renowned there and best liked Hippocrates Plato and Aristotle whom I doubt not to finde very free and willing in this Matter Let us then awake our old Studies out of sleep and hye us to them what need many words after Greeting and the Matter broken they make me this Answer joyntly together GOD because he was good did not grieve to have others enjoy his Goodness that is to be and to be well meaning to make a World though Aristotle withdraw his hand herein full of all kinde of everlasting and changeable things first made all and blended them in one whole confused Mass and Lump together born up by his own weight bending round upon it self Then seeing it lay still and that nought could beget and work upon it self he sorted out and sundred away round about a fine and lively piece which they call Heaven for the Male Mover and Workman leaving still the rest as gross and deadly fit for the Female to receive the Working and Fashioning which we term the four Beginnings or Elements Earth Water Air and Fire and thereof springs the Love which we see get between them and the great desire to be joyned again and coupled together Then that there might be no number and confusion of Workmen and doing Causes but all to flow from one Head as he is One he drew all force of Working and virtue of Begetting into one narrow round Compass which we call the Sun from thence he sent out spred and bestowed all about the World both above and below which again meeting together made one general Light Heat Nature Life and Soul of the World Cause of all things And because it becomed the Might Wisdome and Pleasure of such a Builder to make and rule the infinite Variety of Changes here below and not evermore one self-same thing he commanded that One Light in many to run his eternal and stintless Race to and fro this way and that way that by their variable presence absence and meeting they might fitly work the continual change of flitting Creatures This Soul which Plato calls the Ever-moving Mover quite contrary to Aristotles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which he himself construes an Immoveable Mover that we may marvel how Tully could translate it so as to make it all one with Plato unless Lucians gallows mis-led him which is found in some Copies that he might be an Eternal Mover is in Nature and Being a most subtile and small Beam or spark of heavenly Fire in property and quality for his Cleanness Light and Fineness Hot and for his Moistness withall Temperate as appears to him that bendeth his Minde upon it If you doubt of his Moistness think nothing made without Mingling which is by drawing in and breaking small together the whole stuff when a dry heat draws out and scattereth the fine from the great and thereby wasteth and narroweth all things making nothing As for Example Dung hatcheth an Egge and quickneth any thing apt to receive Life when warm Ashes will never do it What need we more Imagine an heavenly Flame by a good burning Water which flaming upon your Hand or a dry Cloth heateth them both gently without hurt or perishment And yet this Sunny Beam is not moist of it self and before it is tempered with the moisture of the Moon his Wife to make it apt for Generation Thence HERMES calls the Sun and Moon the Father and Mother of all things Now the stuff and Female to be fit to suffer Working must be first open that is Soft and Moist and then not one nor yet many like things lest in both these cases they should stand still the same and not when they be stirred by the Workman rise and strive and bruise and break one another fitly by continual change until they come at last unto a consent rest and stay And that upon small occasion the same consent might jarre again and come to change the wished end and purpose of the work And therefore GOD cast in at first the known four fighting enemies yet in the soft and open Stuff there are but two of them Earth and Water in one mixture seen and extant at the beginning before the painful Soul draws and works out the rest Fire out of Earth and out of Water that breath-like and windy thing called Air. So that if there were much Earth little Water and great Heat to mingle them Fire will shew it self and bear the sway If but small Heat upon the same measure of Earth and Water Earth will rule the rest If on that other side upon small store of Earth and much Water but a small Heat of working the thing will fall out to be raw and waterish If upon the same quantity a stronger Heat it ariseth an Ayery which is termed a fat and oily Body Wherefore when the Soul comes down upon the Stuff clothed with a fine windy coat of the cleanest Air next unto Heaven called Aether without the brokage of which Mean the two Extremes and unacquainted Strangers would never bargain and agree together by his moist milde heat it moves it and alters it very diversly making many fuits and kindes of
nameless Matter forty days together and although this answereth not the Question yet it sheweth the truth of the former holy Story for if he in so foul and gross a Diet as the common Diet is could so long want it why not those Men for ever in so clean and fine a Diet almost empty and void of all Leavings for the grosser sort which make up this foul and shameless one were left before as you heard and the finer in that passage from the Stomach through the former Guts were drawn all away to the Liver as the like is ever in us and voided other wayes To close up all Mecaenas Augustus his Minion slept not one wink for his three last years space together as Pliny reporteth And thus we see these strange things fall out in proof But how I cannot stand to shew first Nature suffers them then Use and Custom another Nature brings them in that we may well believe the like in this matter of Meat we have in hand for as the Bear according to the guise of many Beasts that lurk in Winter fasteth forty dayes so Cardan tells of a Scottish young Man in the Popes Court at Rome that by use brought himself to Fast thirty dayes together which by use might have been three Hundred three Thousand as well if he had ordered himself thereafter by slow and creeping Custom and by such Means as I set down before So we see I say great worldly Wonders prove plain and easie Truths in the sight of Wisdome and that by the means aforesaid where are moe than one if this like them not they may take another it is possible for all Men by Kinde and Custom to keep their Health for ever Let us come to the next point that it is as well to be recovered if it were lost and that all Diseases may be cured This is a point much harder than the first even so beset and stopt with all kindes of Letts and Incumbrances that a Man can scarce tell which way to set a Foot forwards First appears Aesculapius Hippocrates and Plato the chief among the Grecians bearing in hand sundry Diseases of both kindes both came by descent and gotten by purchase hopeless and past recovery and giving over the Men that owe them for troublesome to themselves and to the Common-wealth Then you may see Galen and his soft and fine Company with him and those with a long train of Caters and Cooks after them loaden with all kinde of dainty Drugs stand forth and cry They have these many Ages devoured heaps of Books and took endless pains in sâ—arching out the Natures of single Medicines and making Mixtures of the same and yet could hardly cure some Agues and other less Diseases But for the four Stagers to wit the Gout Leprosie Dropsie and Falling-sickness they could never heal them and have for Oracles set them down incurable What were best to be done in this matter What shall we set against the weight of so many great Mens Authorities Marry put them in Ballance as we have done hitherto and weigh them with Truth and Reason But where shall we finde it say they As it is every where as Democritus said drowned in the Deep so in this Matter it is scattered all about and largely spred withall for there be three things and every one full of under-branches belonging to this Art and way of Healing The first is knowledge of the Diseases the second is the Remedies against them and the third of the appliance of Remedies All which should be traversed in this Discourse But it shall not need I hope nay we must take heed how we enter into so large and long a Race in so short and narrow a compass of time appointed Especially being never run before by any of our worthy Ancestors the wise Aegyptians whose steps we strive to follow for when they have once hit the Mark they shoot at and gotten the great and general MEDICINE curing with ease all Diseases they think it straight enough and an empty and needless labour as it is indeed to trouble themselves and their Children with large Rules about innumerable signs and causes of Infinite Diseases and about such other small particulars in appliance Neither would I have you set Paracelsus and his heirs upon me and say they have taken great and goodly pains in this field you will then force me to speak my Fantasie Though this Man to let his Scholars go as too young yet by great Light of Wit wherewith he flowed and by long proling about both with Eyes Ears and Hands in the Mysteries of Aegypt saw and performed many of their Deep Secrets yea and found out some of his own worthy praise albeit I think a number feigned yet his new Art and Rules of Healing are not good in mine Opinion for First against the Example of his Ancestors from whom he had received all things and then in spight and disgrace of Galen for mis-calling his Country-men as you have heard but chiefly carried away with a mad and raging desire of Fame and Honour he took in hand a Man unfit to do it to pull down and rase the old Work of Physick and to set up that strange and famous New one Then see how it is performed He sets down some false Rules some waste and idle and some wanting and all unconstant disordered and unlearned Where he doth well as he doth sometimes he doth no more than was done before him and brings in the same things disguised with new odde cross and unheard-of Names such as may move Wonder at the first but when they be scanned laughter as Tully saith of the Stoicks like device in Philosophy And that I do not slander them for this is no Cause I could easily prove if this place would admit such a Volume Wherefore let us follow the true and right Aegyptians and leave Paracelse in this ill Matter or light one if it were good and spend all our care and thought about that which is all good Medicines and Remedies against Diseases with which old Wives in the Country and simple Men on our side I mean simple in respect of the Graecian Subtilties about Nothing have healed most nay even all Diseases and with which indeed the German let us give him his due praise hath utterly slain the Graecian Physick and herein done much for Mankinde by descrying and dispatching our close and secret Enemy which under colour of friendship and fighting against our Enemies hath this long time betraid us and done us much mischief which thing one of their best Captains and Pillars of their State Fernel by name after he had been a while in Aegypt began to smell at last and to repent him of all his former pains which we know were great bestowed in that kinde of Healing saying it to be but Words and the whole force and weight of this Art to lean upon the Knowledge of the virtues of
Medicines secretly hid and couched in the midst and Oyl of Bodies to be fetcht out and gotten by skilfull means of Alchimy even of that Art I say which is so much condemned of his Fellows and Companions To this Harbour also the best of his Fellows before and since him have fled and do daily fly apace from the toil and trouble of their fruitless and barren dead Sea Then let us shift our Sails and fly as far and further too I hope if Tide and Wind and all which we have at will fail not But first let us describe that Haven of Medicine and see what Marks it hath and how it differs from other Creeks adjoyning lest at our Journeys end we miss with more shame and grief and suffer shipwreck A Medicine is that which kills the force of that which hurts us and this it doth many wayes and yet all to one end which is the End of all doing and working as I said before for his Food and Sustenance then let us come again and sort our Speeches A Medicine heals us and kills our Enemy either by dulling or consuming it for when it meets with the contrary of even strength as when Oyl and Poison c. joyn then in Fight they neither eat up nor destroy each other but both are dulled and weakned and make one blockish thing which Nature casteth out for an unlike and unkindly dead thing which they call a Leaving or Excrement But in case it be of more strength and power than our Enemy then it quite destroys devours and turns him into his own Nature And this Consumer is either like the thing that hurts us In which sore even as every Herb of sundry qualities draws and feeds upon his own Juyce in a Garden so one Poison doth cure another and all purging and drawing things do heal us and all Fernel's hid and divine Properties work by plain reason Or else it is unlike and contrary after which manner As dry Sticks and Towe and Vinegar quench wilde Fires or other fat Fires before Water whose fatness feeds it for the stronger contrary quality quelling and eating up the weaker so doth any cold and dry thing as Bole Armin Terra Lemnia c. cure a rotten Poison and so are a great number of Cures done which onely course in word the Graecian Physick taketh though not in deed for we heard even now of two oother wayes of Healing which they themselves and other Folk did take unawares though Paracelse found out the name belike of late but he strayeth as much as they on that other side when he thinks all Cures thereby performed Now when the consuming Medicines have done their duties Nature expels them for Poison and unlike strange things according to the Graecian Rules because all their Medicines were by their own confessions such But if they had either Thought of the dulling Nourisher which as I told you takes the nature of Leaving or had known our Mens wholsome Medicines they would have made another reckoning But let them go and let us set out in time towards the Haven of Health If the Art of Healing be nothing else but the matching of hurtful things and their stronger Enemies but equality will sometimes serve the turn or Likes together and the world be full of both these kindes of Creatures following the nature of their Parents the four Beginnings which are as we see some like and some contrary one to another Then sure our All-healing Art is not impossible and wanteth nought but a Man well skilled in the Nature of things a Philosopher by name for I need not put in a Physician also to know that other part the causes of Diseases which must be matched because as Paracelse well saith in that he that knoweth the causes of Changes and Chances in the great World may soon espy them in the little But our nought-healing Leaches will step in and say Diseases are some so great and in all so many Mans wit so weak and shallow and the Medicine so hid and drown'd in the deep of Nature that it is not possible to finde them all or if they were found to apply them with such discretion as Nature might abide those poisoned frayes and battels within her And again that admit all this untrue yet there be some Diseases sent from Witch-craft and Sorcery and other means which have their Cause and so their Cure without the compass of Nature to let pass our tickle standing daily and hourly so beset with Destinies that a man can warrant nothing I marry Destinies are too deep and bottomless to return straight Homer-like upon them and therefore it were best indeed to let them go and the applying of the Medicines with them the rather because the other the former I mean is so slight a matter to a discreet and well-ordered Leach such a one as is pointed out by their old and famous Leader Hippocrates who both in this and all other duties of his Art hath made such speed and so far passed all his Fellows as none since which is a good time could ever overtake him no nor yet come so near as to keep the sight of him whom they had in chase and followed Then for those unsearchable and supernatural Causes as they call them if they flow from unclean and wicked Spirits as some think they are not the Stuff of the thing that hurts us though they sometimes dwell in and possess the Body but windy movers workers and disturbers of the peace and good order of our Bodies much like unto those fierce and sudden changes of Weather proceeding from the Stars and working the like effect in Mens Bodies so that sith the nearest Cause is Natural let the rest be what it will and the Cure be done by Natural Means as we see it sometimes amongst us And therefore Paracelse who puts the fault in the Faith of the wicked Witch a thing as far above Nature yet holds it curable with a natural Medicine which they call a Quintessence Although I am not unwitting that sometimes his Sickness is such he bids us withstand it with another as strong a Belief set against it But for my part I cannot reach it with my Conceit let deeper Heads think upon it How those Beliefs and Imaginations and other parts and powers of the Soul or Minde of Man can so fly out of their own Kingdom and reign over a forreign Body when we know the whole Soul and Minde so fast bound in durance and so like to be until it be the pleasure of the great Magistrate who hath committed them to let them loose at once and set them out at full liberty let old Wives buz of Hermotimus and such like Tales what they will But if those Diseases spring as some of Learning hold and with Reason from neither of both those two Roots named but from a foul and venomous Breath sent forth from a Poisoned temper of the Witches
and cherish the Life within and you may help and amend Nature and make any Plant flourish and bear in Winter How is that But an easie matter plant it in a Stove and cover the Root with Horse-dung and the rest with Chaff and you shall see the proof if not the profit worth your cost and travel The same is seen in Beasts But let us leave the middle that we come not to the end too late Then why are Children and old Folk less active fruitful and beautiful than the younger sort but for want of heat for let the Sun the first day as Galen saith or before the Birth as I shewed be greatest in store bulk and quantity because it waxeth and waneth still with his food our first Moistner and this from thence decayeth daily yet this quality strength and activity which maketh him worthy the name of Heat is then little as drowned with over-much forreign and strange wetness like as we see in a green Faggot and unable to work his will and shew himself either to knit the Sinews for Strength or concoct the Blood for Seed and Colour before that forreign moisture be spent and gone which is not in long time Now for old Folks what is so clear as this that by reason of the daily decay of the food of Life the fainting heat le ts the strong knot of Strength and Lustiness slack and loose again and the good concoction and colour of Blood which before made Seed and Beauty to decline and grow to waterishness In the same case are sick Men and Women for the same cause And albeit Women have their Seed yet it is not hot and quickning Seed but a dead Stuff onely fit to receive Life and Fashion And admit they be more fair and smooth than Men which are hotter it comes by chance because the foul Leavings the blemish of Beauty by the force of manly heat are driven outwards when the slackness of the heat of Women suffers them to remain within and turn into Menstrues a thing more grievous and noisom in truth than Beauty is delightsome And thereof Aristotle very well calls her a Weak Man which our Tongue more fitly calls a Wombed-man and he makes the Male in all kindes to be that which is able to concoct the Blood and that which is not the Female Then if it be cleared of all doubt that the chief strength of heat is the cause of the flower of Age and Youth and nothing else in the World Let us take and stick to that matter and see how that may be maintained first and then restored I will not urge the way of upholding heat in Plants abovesaid nor yet the witness of the German who hath found out means for the same both in Plants and Wights as he teacheth in his High Opinions Nor yet make Account of those Examples which by course of Nature good Order of Life have done well and drawn near to this matter as of Lucia the Player who pronounced upon the Stage at Rome an hundred years together nor of Cornelia who bare Saturnine the Consul after sixty two years nor yet of King Massâ—nissa who about Ninety got a Childe and ever tâ—avelled both in Frost and Snow bare-headed nor of such other like notably marked with long continued Life and Lustiness I will come to the point at once Pliny such an Autbor reporteth that the whole Nation of India liveth long free from all Diseases well-nigh and grief of Body not once touched with ache of Head Teeth or Eyes nor troubled with spitting all the great Companions as we see of Age that we may gather by likely guess when they know not the Companions the thing it self is unknown to them But what needs any guessing when the same Man sor certain and in plain Terms assureth That in that part of India where the Sun being right over their heads casteth no shadow the Men are five Cubits and two handfuls high and live an hundred and thirty years never waxing Old and being when they Die as in their middle Age and chief Strength and Lustiness what needed more words If this Report be true as we may not easily doubt of such an Author then sure this matter is not impossible as they would have it but all Men if they lived in such an Air and took so good a race of Life as I described I must still fly to that succour might preserve their Youth and never was Old until the term and stint of Life appointed Or if this kinde of teaching be now somewhat stale and bare with wearing yet perhaps some other means may be found for the matter in the Store-house of Skill and Cunning. Let us see much more briefly than we have done before because this part is already well-nigh dispatched so straight is the link of all these helps that one can scarce be loosened without the rest and all must go together Then what means may we finde what preserveth this natural and heavenly Heat of ours the common use taketh hot Meats and Drinks and thinks that these preserveth Heat and Nature as simply as if a Man should put Lime to the Root of a Tree which he loved for as this hastneth the Fruit with Heat but kills the Stock with Drought and soaking up the lively juyce and moisture so in them their hot Meats out of kinde laid to the Root of Life quicken and stir up the Spirits the fruit of Life for a season but withall under-hand drink up and waste the first Moisture that is the whole Stock of Nature and so by softning thus the hardness of Age as if it were Iron in the Fire they make it seem for a time Youthful and Lively yet it is but a vain and empty shew and shadow and as Iron when it comes out of the Fire is the harder for it so they make their Age more unwieldy and draw it on the faster by that means And that is the very cause together with Care and Pleasure why Princes and Nobles by drying up their Bodies in that sort live not so long for the most part nor in so good Health as other Folk and depart especially at such times if the Report be true as those bushed Stars called Comets appear Because whether it be a stedfast Star or an Elemental Flame I am not to dispute such Questions here it is never seen but in very fine and dry Weather which consumes dry Bodies and sends them packing and besides though it be besides my purpose turns good humours into scum called Choler cause of Broil and Sedition and so making as we see the Bush-starr a plain sign of both these matters but causes of neither What then preserveth Heat Learned Men have brought in certain fine fat and aiery Meats as Butter Oyl and Honey and commended them for very great helps and means to preserve Life and Youth for both are done by one way and under one but
especially one of them that is Honey have they lifted up above the rest for this the Bee that little cold and bloodless Beast by reason it is both made of and fed with the same liveth so long above that kinde of parted Wights even eight years as they report and because Manna that famous Nourisher unto Man is nothing else but Honey a Dew concocted in Hot Countreys by the heat of Heaven in stead of the Bee and for such like Causes too long to be told in so short a race of Speech as I have throughout appointed But these Men are wide as well though not so far as the former for if you remember well when we spake of things that preserved Life which is nothing else but Heat there were found onely two belonging to that use like Meat and Exercise and that to let pass Exercise although the finer Breaths of the outward Air or of Meat may serve to feed the Aethereal Spirit which carrieth Life yet our heavenly Heat must have finer food an Aethereal Body which is ready and at hand no where in Nature save in our first Moisture of our Body Then this fat and aiery Meat of theirs may help to lengthen Life Youth indeed but not directly by feeding Life maintaining the first Moisture but by another by-way procuring Health Soundness for Sickness and Disease bring Age and Death apace And this is because for their great cleanness whereunto they be wrought by Nature and Art together they neither breed as other Meats doe many any drossy Disease nor stop the Lives and heats free course and passage Sith then there is nothing in the world within the compasse of reach able to maintain and nourish Heat but it must needs faint and wane daily with our first Moysture How falls it out say you that those Indians so kept their Youth without waxing Old as we heard out of Pliny I cannot tell unlesse the Sunne for that great and familiar acquaintance sake hath favoured and blessed them above all People and brought down Aether and given them to nourish them for their Soyle and Meat because it lyeth right under the Suns walk and travel is not through extreme heat uninhabitable as in times past some fondly supposed but of all other the best and most temperate by reason that extreme Heat of Heaven is most equally answered and justly tempered with Cold and Moisture of the Ground proportionable which thing they knew not because their Eyes were set too high to see the lower cause and course of Nature most plain and certain For GOD when he meant to make our changeable World here below by a wonderfull fore-sighted Wisdome stinted the Sun within the known bounds the North and South turns which they call Tropicks lest if he had run round about he should have worn and wasted it every where alike and made it smooth and even in all places and so all either dry Ground or a standing Poole both unfit for the variety of Change which he meant to see play before him But now he is so curbed and restrained within those bounds aforesaid he can wear the Ground no farther then his force can reach nor any otherwise than as his Force serveth So that the Earth must needs be most worn and lowest where it lyeth within the compasse of his Walk and so rise by little and little on both sides without the Turnes untill it come to the top and highest pitch where it is furthest off that is under the Pins which they call Poles of the World Then here for the Coldnesse the Earth is fit to thicken the Ayre and breed Water and for the bent and falling to send it down to the widest and lowest part where by the great strength of Heat it is drawn upon heaps and in great plenty and for this cause and the length of the Night it cannot scatter abroad and vanish away to nought but thickens apace and fals again abundantly raining three or foure times a day whereby we may judge that this middle girdle where our Indians inhabit cannot be so broyled and unsufferable as some have avowed but in all reason very milde and temperate and think that as the Sun meant to favour all parts as much as may be so chiefly and above all that as Reason yea and Necessity bound him with which he is best acquainted And as this is certain by report of all Authors in all other things yea and in Men touching all other Gifts and Blessings so we may guesse this one which we have in hand was not skipt and left out in so large a Charter But for all this and in good sadnesse we have but argued hitherto it is not good to seek dispence against the Law of Nature and it were better to discredit Pliny the Reporter though he be never so good an Author than Nature her self the Author of all things For this Story is set against the whole course and drift of Nature whose Works as they be not woven and made up at once so they decay and wear away by little and little And therefore admit these men of India by speciall Licence from above doe bear their Age fresh and young a long time in respect of other Nations yet we must in no wise think this is for Ever and untill Death as Pliny saith for then they should not dye and depart as other Men doe naturally which is when Age creeping on and changing by little and little is at last made ripe and falling but rather by some sudden force be taken and as it were delivered by and by to the hands of I know not what Hang-man amongst the Destinies to be cut off and put to death by Violence But what Force can that be Nay I assure you farther that if the stock of Sicknesse and Disease were away as saith he it is almost they might live for ever another breach of the never-broken Laws of Kinde Wherefore let this Story goe and us hold this rule of certain that by reason there is no other Food for naturall Heat open in Kinde but our fitst Moisture which because for want of supply it likewise wasteth daily Youth must needs by Nature fail away and cannot last for ever And yet we must also to come to the purpose remember how it was full often above proved that such a supply of due food of Life were to be made by Skill and fetched out of the bottome of Naturall things by the Divine Art of HERMES Wherefore to avoid the jarre and ill sound of our often beating upon one thing our Cure-all and Heaven above declared is it that feeds our hearts that holdeth and perserveth Youth This is it I say that doth the deed for many causes set down before I will send them that cannot come hither along the right way back again to take all before them But there is another thing Motion I mean that helps to bear up the state of Life
steps of Kinde and her most strange and unwonted changes but also set and venture upon the like by Skill yea and to pass further if any Reason will carry them and so at length they come I know not how nor whether by guess or knowledge to this Rule and certain Ground that it was possible for any Man put out by forcible and violent Death by natural means to Rise and quicken again and so to be renewed and as it were by a new Birth restored But what be their new and marvellous means which way is this incredible course performed After they saw not onely some parts of other Wights as the Tails of Lizards the Eyes of Snakes and Swallows but also the whole Bodies of cold and bloodless ones clean rased and destroyed naturally to spring afresh and to be restored As a Snake cut in pieces and rotted in Dung to quicken and every piece to prove a whole Snake again and such like they began to reach by device and practise at some further matters and to slay some hot and bloody Wights that spring not out of nothing but are bred by force of Seed and conjunction of Male and Female and by the like kindly corruption to raise them up again and renew them as a Bird burnt alive in a close Glass and so rotted and then inclosed in a shell to hatch it under a Hen and restore the same And other such strange proofs they ceased not to make until at last they durst be bold to think that any Wight even a Man and all might by the same course wax young and be born again still and live for ever This is the second way of waxing Young again and as great an Extreme as that other and as far from my meaning Though there be divers Reports and Stories flown abroad of Men that took the same race in themselves and others and found both good and bad success according as a Man that favours it will think as the Work was tended by them which were put in trust Medea sped well say they in proof upon Jasons father and made him Young again as Tully saith recoquendo But HERMES and the Poet Virgil and that Spanish Earl failed upon themselves as some hold but as others hold they had good luck and came to their purpose What should a Man say to this matter Albeit I do not chuse this kinde of Renewing yet I will not condemn it without cause and judge it for kinde impossible for I see no Reason but that the Story of the Snake may be full easily true because it is bred by it self and of more unfit Stuff in the same manner And for the rest all is one to Nature if the Stuff and Place be meet and currant having that her general Seed of begetting which I said was all one in all things in her bosom ever ready and thereby making yet as we heard before all seeded Plants without seed somewhere yea and perfect Wights both Water and Land ones And at first when the Stuff and Womb and her own Heat and all served very fitly having wrought Man and all so But now why is Seed given unto things Because Nature for want of the former helps as they could not last for ever is not able in all places to work the raw stuff of the beginnings so far to such perfection unless she finde both the stuff well drest and half made to her hand and an hot Womb like an artificial Fornace to help and set her forward Well then for this our matter and manner of restoring Man let us call it to the account of Reason and consider what is that Seed that makes Man and the place where he is made What is all the work Is it any thing else but a part of Man except his Minde rotted in a continual even gentle moist and wightly Heat Is it not like that the whole Body rotted in like manner and in a Womb agreeable shall swim out at last quicken and arise the same thing I cannot tell I will neither avow nor disavow the matter Nature is deep and wonderful in her Deeds if they be searched and unwound to the bottom I cannot tell I say Nature may suffer this but not Religion And yet it is a dangerous trial as our Men and the Poet found it by some Mens sayings They might more safely have made a proof upon a piece of themselves which we call Seed ordered by that skilful kinde of Recoction which hath been found true as some Report and I think it certain or perhaps more kindly and throughly but sure more civilly and religiously in the due place appointed for this is also a kinde of renewing of himself and waxing Young again when his Childe is as Aristotle saith well another Himself onely severed and set apart from himself But neither is this third kinde enough for us we must have the whole and unparted Man restored Then the fourth Kinde is it I mean which is indeed a Mean between all the rest especially between that empty Word and dangerous Deed aforesaid performing more than the one in the outside and less within than the other for this way doth not onely by a better race of refreshing it with Heat and Moisture renew the Skin but the Hair Nails and Teeth also though these by the same way of putting off the old ones But for the inward chief and needful parts hewn out of the Seed at first by the Natural Workman it shall neither make nor marre any onely change and alter purge and place them all in their former State and Soundness Youth and Lustiness Then let us see how we may be renewed and wax Young again in that order beginning first with those idle and needless things I cannot call them Parts of the Body which after we were made up and finished grew and sprung out from the Leavings of our Meat and Nourishment the Teeth Nails and Hair As for the Skin it is a part of the Seed or the Crust that overcast the thing when it was fully baked Then as these keep no certain course and order of Kinde in coming for to omit Hair that comes and goes upon every light Occasion some are born without Nails some with Teeth when others again have none before they wax old and such like disorders so no doubt by Skill they may come and go again without any hurt or great change to the Body Pliny tells of one whose Teeth came again after he was an hundred years old and upwards and I know not well whether the Souldiers in Germanicus his Host that by drinking of a Spring by the River Rhyne had their Teeth shaken out and loose had them come again or no But this is certain that there be Waters in the World which by a special quality make those Beasts that drink thereof cast their Hair Horns and Hoofs and so renew them What need many more words This part is
sent into the Body to work Long-life Health and Lustiness did not onely strike and kill and put out of Being all foul and gross distempers his own and our enemies but also cherish nourish and feed our Bodies and bring it towards our own Nature even as far as we would by disposing of the quantity you may easily conceive the plain and certain way of this great exchange when you know his most clean fine clear bright and lightsome Nature Now we have dispatched the first part of BLISSE let us go to the second and because we have not done it before though we talked much thereof we will now begin to bound the Matter and make Virtue as Aristotle and Truth teacheth us A mean in our outward deeds and dealings with other Men or A Reason in Manners and Conditions as Plato termeth it all is one The cause of Virtue is likewise set out in the beginning to wit A temperate Body but I left the Proof unto this place which is all the hardness in this cure of Lewdness for if it be once known that Temperateness is the cause of Virtue we shall easily by that temperate Medicine so notable in the speech going before purchase and procure the same And why that is so it hath been so often worn before that we may quite cast it off and leave it being enough in this place to prove that a temperate state of Body is the cause and way to Virtue But first let us see whether all Manners flow from the Body or not and then from what State and Condition of the Body Among them that have searched the Reason and Nature of things the cause of Manners is laid upon the Disposition either of Stars or of Mens Bodies or of their Wills thus or thus framed either by the bent of Nature or by use of Custome Let us scan the matter and yet briefly They cannot flow from the Will of the Mind of Man lest all Men should perforce be good against our daily proof and experience because the Minde of it self as coming from goodness is good and alike good in all Men as I said before And sure no Custome can alter and turn so Divine and Right a Will to lewdness but by great force of Necessity which force cannot be sent and laid upon it by the Stars for whether the Stars be Wights or no they are all as I shewed above of one good strain and quality Or if they were not or whatsoever they be either in substance or quality they cannot touch the Mind immediately but must needs be let in by the loops of the Body and so change and dispose the Body first and by means of this affect the Mind for if the Mind it self a finer thing then the Stars cannot pierce out of the Body as we heard before then much less shall they make way to get in by themselves without the helps to our Mind allotted and as these are all bodily I mean the first helps so the neerest cause of Manners must needs flow from the Body And if the inward Spirits and Wits likewise do nought without the Instruments of the Body and follow the Affection and Disposition of the same then the appetite of the unreasonable Soul common between us and Beasts upon which Aristotle and his heirs do lay the cause of Manners is dispatched also and all the whole strain must needs cleerly run from the Body But lest some All-denier come and shake these old Grounds which you saw the Philosophers lay so long ago and so this Building might fall and tumble I will shoar it up with Experience a thing most fit to fill and please the sence of them which have nothing else but sence As all Diseases so all Manners spring either from the natural and inherited or from the purchased temper of the Body To keep the first till anon This we have either from the Air and Soil where we live or from the Meat which we take The Air followeth either the place of the Sun or the Nature of the Ground But this is somewhat too hard and thorny a kind of teaching let us inlarge our selves and unfold and prove how though I shewed the manner at large before the Air and Meat alters and changeth and maketh to differ the Bodies first and so the Manners All Astronomers and Philosophers no otherwise than we see by proof hold Opinion that where the Sun is either too neer the People as right over them or too far off as under the two Pins of the World there the Bodies are big and strong and the Manners rude and fierce whereas within the two Middle and Temperate Girdles of the Earth they keep a mean and hit the midst as they say both in Body and Manners for that acquaintance with him and his fellow-wanderers To come down to the Ground for I must be short we see that a fat and and foggy Land makes the Blood and Spirits thick and gross and thereby dull and slow and so the Men fond in Wit and rude and simple faithful chast and honest and still in that strain of Manners whereas a barren and dry Ground if the Sun be temperate therewithal as at Rome and Athens maketh the same thin clear and lively subtil and deceitful Men valiant unchaste and so forth of all other properties appertaining For meet Manners in Men are like the Virtues and Properties of Plants following both the sundry tempers of the Bodies when the Soul in them and Mind in us is one in all Then as the mixtures qualities and virtues of Plants are altered up and down according to their Food and Sustenance as to omit the outward nourishment of the Ground whereby Pepper brought out of Calicut into Italy will after a few settings turn into Ivy and such like the case is plain a cunning Gardiner either by steeping the Seed or Slip or better by enclosing the Root or Stock can give to any Plant any colour taste smell or power of Healing even so the temper of Mens Bodies and Condition of their Manners change to and fro upon the same occasion To let go that hold in Physick That distempered Meats do breed the like distempers in those famous Humors which make Complexions and their Conditions why are the Tartarians so Beastly and Barbarous in Manners but because besides their Soil they eat and drink the Flesh and Blood of Horses we see the Islanders of Corsica prove as bold cruel and false as Doggs whose Flesh they feed upon A man may range far in this Field but let us draw neer home It is not without cause that Plutarch Plato and other grave and wise Philosophers give so strait charge of care and heed in the choice of Nurses Is it not like nay in their opinion certain that the Child sucks in with their Milk their outward Shape and inward Manners Why not As well as Beasts that suck of strangers out
that mighty piece of work of the World first to make his prayer how much more may we in such a world of doubts and dangers And to desire of GOD that we may prove our question not onely with sufficient evidence but with such discretion also that those Men which can use it and are worthy of it may see the truth and the rest may be blinded Then both to direct my speech which must have some ground to stand on and their steps which crave a little light to guide them I think it best to come to the entrance of this way to BLISS and to point afar off unto the end leaving the middle way unto their own Wit and Labour for I may not be their guide lest the rest should espy us and follow as fast HERMES MEDICINE and the ready way to BLISS lieth among the Metals and upon the top and highest among them even in Gold And the end of this journey where Bliss begins is the Son of him Albeit that I am not ignorant that Father HERMES and the rest of his wise Foster children hold and teach that out of any Plant Wight or Mineral may be fetched a Medicine for all Diseases of Men and Metals as good as this which we have described Neither do we as though we had drunk the water of Lethe forget the reason of it above declared Because all things are all things and the same and one thing as having all one stuff and Soul if their stuff had the like and not divers minglings And for that all things if they were wrought to the top and highest of perfection as they may be flowed alike with all the Virtues of Heaven and Earth Soul Body Life and Qualities But these wayes are long cumbersome and costly as well as the rest and I seek you know the most ready near and easie which is Gold far above all other things in the World The Reason is because Nature hath poured her self wholly upon him and enfeoffed him of far more and greater gifts both of Soul and Body then all the rest having given him not onely great store of the heat of Heaven but also the most fine temperate and lasting Body whereby but especially by Reason of his excceeding tough and lasting Body wherein he wonderfully passeth all things wee have him halfe ready drest to our hands and brought very near the journeys end quickly to be led forward and finished with little labour when as the rest are left in very hard way and finished with little labour It is strange I am perswaded that a thousand ounces of Plant or Wight as for Minerals they be much better cannot with great labour cost skilâ— and time be brought to that goodness nearness to perfection as one ounce of Gold hath already given him by Nature And I durst warrant you that out of one ounce of Gold in less then one years space with a few pounds charge may be gotten a Medicine as good as the PHILOSOPHERS STONE of a Plant or Wight that taketh a thousand ounces of stuff many hundred pounds of charge three years time and the wearing of many Mens Bodies That we may think although the wise Philosophers in Egypt saw and shewed the depth of Nature and these Works yet they were not so mad and fond as to put them in practise And therefore Geber saith It is possible out of Plants to make the Stone and yet almost impossible also because thy Life would first fail thee Wherfore we may be content also to know the Secreâ— but let us use no other way but this and so dispatch not onely Plants and Wights as foul and earthly things but also middle Minerals which are like the standing Lights of Heaven in this Comparison Nay neither hold we his fellow Plants to be his equals no though they be Quicksilver or Silver themselves the best and nearest of all the rest especially Silver the Wife of Gold but even let her pack away with the rest for as her fire above glisters and makes a fair shew until she come in presence of her Huusband as the wont of bad Women is so this our Earthly Moon be she never so bright and excellent in another Company yet in sight and regard of Gold her Husband she appears as nothing If you marvel why It is because she wanteth much in heat of Heaven temperateness and toughness of Body but in fineness an hundred fold These things are high and lofty and soare above the common sight we will fetch them down anon and make them plain and easie Then let us fall to the Matter that the Son of Gold may be found the ready way to BLISSE and the perfect Medicine both of Man and Mettals And first as it is meet let us regard our selves and cure our own Bodies before we help a Stranger There is no Gift Property or Virtue but it springeth either from the Soul or Body The best gift of the Soul is most store thereof as we shewed before And of the Body fit temperateness in the first qualities and then fineness and closeness which causeth lastingness in the second Let us see how Gold excelleth in all these virtues and overgoeth all other things first by the gift of Nature and then by a Divine Science But it were not good in such a heap of Matters to be disposed and dispatched at once to regard those that be clear and received so then let the fineness of Gold go his wayes as clear in all Mens Eyes and his temperateness which all Leaches grant and take the rest as things both more in doubt and of greater worth Those that are longest a ripening and growing to perfection are both the most tough and lasting and fullest of Heavenly Vertues whereas on the other side soon Ripe soon Rotten as they say an ill Weed grows apace and so forth The cause of this in Bodies is because the first Moisture if it be fast and close that is Fat proceedeth and spreadeth slowly and is hardly consumed and eaten up with the Fire of Life when thin and waterish Moisture both spreads apace and spends as fast And for this that Heavenly Virtue when the stuff hath long lain open under the hands of the Spirits of Heaven it must needs receive great store of them and hold them surely with his strength and toughness what Reason can shew this more plainly except you will call me to examples then bend your Ears awhile and mark the Elephant two years in making in his Mothers Womb and a long time in growing to his best estate and lustiness to reach the highest and best pitch in mortality for Man is immortal not onely by his strength and long life which you heard before but through a kind of Wit and good Conditions also drawing near to the Nature of Mankind Consider again of Mice those little Vermine how soon they be bred as sometimes the Earth creates them
stuffe he will turn in trial things unlike and contrary as well though not so easily as like and friendly And for the proof of stonyjuyces turning all sorts of things even Mettals themselves into stone as hath been found by the stamp remaining of Antâ—mony and Coppress turned into Lead and Copper of the ripening of the Mineral Mines of Lead and Gold eatinâ— Durg and Urine and such like exchanges set down before I am led to think that a very lusty and strong Medicine would be able to change â—ther things as well as Mâ—ttals especially minerals into goâ—d some of our mâ—n sa no because there wants in the rest the ground of Quicksilver the knot of friendship and unity I grant it very hard in respect of the right way and yet I hold it possible And thus you have seen the ability of Hermes Medicine to turn base Mettals into Gold by three sundry wayes First as he is sown and riseth again to be made a Medicine which I call begetting And then by changing the little food that is given him into his own Nature to make him wax and grow in heap and bigness which I terme nourishment And Lastly by changing the great store of stuffe wherewith we match him half way in the middle nature of Gold which is the best change and drift of our purpose And this I may do well to call Mâ—xtion though Ficine and Fennel name it Begetting also as it is a kinde indeed But because it goeth not the kindely way let it go and us keep our Order CHAP. III. That the Phylosophers Stone will turn base Mettals with as much advantage as we will BUt how shall our Son of Gold be able to subdue and turn so much of base Mettals with so little charge and travel and so great return and gain as we have promised It is for three causes First for the fitness and readiness of the stuffe to be changed and then for the great store and strength of the changing workman to send away the lightest still first and foremost And lastly for his encrease in store and quantity which may be made either by sowing or nourishing the Son of Gold without end and number for sowing first There be sundry sorts of sowing and making this our Medicine One is an excellent way but a bare and naked and lone way because if Gold can be made open and fit to be wrought as behoves a seed within himself and the less contagion there is of unclean stuffe the more excellent and mighty will he rise again This way by deep and painful Wits hath been sometimes taken but very seldom because it is very hard long and irksome and therefore we will leave it also but chiefly because it crosseth my purpose abovesaid for if he be sowen alone he cannot rise encreased whereas we desire to augment his heap and quantity Then there are two kindes of Grounds and yet both one kinde which we may put unto him to corrupt him easily and raise him again with encrease in quantity One nearer his Nature then another one better then another so much is enough for that Now for the store of ground fit to be laid about him there is a choice better or worse also But that is no great matter so you keep the measure and discretion which a common Seeds-man can keep neither to overlay and drown him nor to leave him dry and barren Then to our purpose Cast with your self what encrease in store one grain of Corn will yield within a few times sowing When I had a little leasure I did once cast what one grain by the encrease of fifty which happens often would arise to in seven times sowing and I wearied my self in an endless matter A greater Summe then any Man would think I have forgotten it cast you that have leasure Now a Grain I mean an Ounce of our Seed though it riseth not with such advantage for if it were so sown it would be quite drowned or at least not worth the tarrying yet it rewards it another way with speed in working for albeit the first time be much alike about fourty weeks or such a matter yet the second is run much sooner both because now he is softer then the first seed and easier to be loosened and also mightier and more able to turn the work over so that if we keep our selves within the Number of ten as some do set the bounds yet I think the midst between duplum and decuplum a notable mean although that be as it happeneth yet by this great haste and speed we may quickly overtake Infinity But if you think this to be too slow a course let us run to the next encrease by Nourishment whose great speed and readiness will easily supply all and fill the biggest desire in the world After the Son of Gold hath been once sowen and raised again he is now able to work mightily and not before and to turn a hundred parts of his due meat into a third middle thing Gold his fathers nature this we will shew hereafter Then if he be able to turn a hundred times as much half way he can sure turn as easily and quickly one part that is no more then himself quite through into his own self same Nature especially if that Food be Silver or Gold which is best of all to that purpose then is he twice as big and as strong as he was before able to devour as much more and all this as much again and so for ever for his strength shall never be abated when after his feeding he is left the same still even as one Candle lights another still or more strangely though not so largely like unto the Load-stone which as Plato reporteth after it hath drawn one Ring of Iron it giveth this power to draw another and this to the next until you make a long row and link of Rings close and fast one hanging upon another Then sith we may so soon heap up so great a quantity of this Golden Medicine it may chance we should not need any great help of the readiness of the stuffe and strength of the Workman And if but ten parts of the Gold might be made at once between a week workman and a sturdy stuffe yet perhaps it would serve the turn to raise the Sum appointed But suppose it cometh short ten parts of the way yet if through the means of the nearness of the stuffe and force of the doer one part may come to turn a hundred then we shall supply and overtake all the want and hinderance let us see And first again of the stuffe because it is the shorter and easier matter a thing is fit and eath to be changed when it is like to the nature of the workman and near the wayes end The strait affinity and nearness of the Mettals one to another we have opened above when we found them all
and search all about and so scour and cleanse a great Mass of foul Mettals how many times more then a weak and gross Mineral binder fasten and bend your Mindes upon it we see how a weak waterish and earthly Breath in a narrow place within a Cloud the Gramide or Gunne all is but Thunder because he is so suddenly turned into a larger Element and lacketh room bestirs himself and worketh marvellous deeds what may we think then of the heaps of those fat vapours of Heaven and of that most strong golden body closely couched up together in a little room when they be in a narrow Vessel drawn out and spread abroad at large by a mighty fire and thereby still pricked and egged forward for as long as the fire holdeth they cannot be still nor draw in themselves again What thing in the sturdiest Mettal can be able to withstand them How easily shall they cast down all that comes in their way break and bruise all to powder May we not all say plainly that which the Poet by borrowed speech avoweth That Gold loveth to go through the midst of the Guard yea and pâ—ss through the Rocks being more mighty than the stroak of Lightning It is so fit as if it had been made for the matter I have heard that the extreme cold weather in Lappia and Finland which lie under the pinny Girdle of the World pierceth frezeth and cracketh the Rocks yea and mettalline Vessels Again that the poisoned Cockatrice by his violent Cold and dry Breath doth the same on the Rocks where he treadeth Then what may we judge of the force of our fiery Medicine upon the Mettals by these comparisons How fiercely and quickly were it like to divide breâ—k them having an extreme fire the greatest spoiler of all things to over-match the cold dry quality a much stronger Body then those vapors which carried thâ—se former qualities and both these sent with far greater speed and swiftness as appears in the difference of the Movers Lift up your Ears and mark what I say A deaf Judge had not need hear these Matters who hath not seen how Quicksilver enters cuts and rents the Mettals though many doubt and differ about the cause thereof Cardan thinks that like as we said of the cold Weather in those frozen Countries so this marvellous cold Mettalline water entring the Mettals freezeth their Moysture within them and makes them crack and fall assunder and therefore Gold soonest of all other because his moisture is finest even as sodden-water for his fineness freezeth sooner then cold Surely very wittily Paracelse deems this done by the Spiritual subtilty of the Body even as the understanding Spirits of the Air and the lively Spirits of Heaven use to pierce through stone walls and Rocks by the same strength without the force of qualities But I think it is rather for his stronger like Nature seeking to devour them else he would pierce you hand and leather and such like easie things which he leaveth untouched as unlike and strangers As for the qualities of Quicksilver it is a question what they are and which excelleth some judge her very Cold some again marvellous hot as Paracelse for one some most moist other dry But as she hath them all apparantly so I deem her Temperate like him that hath sprung from her and is most like unto her Gold I mean though perhaps the qualities be not all in her as in him so equally ballanced But let the Cause be what it will I love not to settle upon uncertain matters the great Spirit of Mettals after she is first wrought into Gold and then into his Son our Medcine shall be in any reason both for Soul Body an hundred times stronger and more able to do it Nay Antimony and Lead are much grosser then Quicksilver and yet we see how they rend and tear and consume base Mettals even to nothing But what say we to Plants there is as great difference in sharpness and ability to pierce and enter between them and minerals as is between a Thorn and a Needle and yet you hear above the gentle Plant of the Vine and the milde Dew of Heaven yielded stuff to an eating water able within three or four distillings to devour and dissolve mettals Then what shall not onely other sharp mineral eaters but this our almighty Golden medicine shew upon them which besides that wonderful passing sharp and piercing Body hath the great help which they want of that Heavenly fire and of his swiftness stirred up by a mighty Mover These things are enough to suffice any reasonable man if they will not stop their ears against the sound of Reason touching the power might and strength of our Medicine What is then behinde Yes many I heard them whisper that albeit this Stone of ours hath such thundring power yet it may not force to our purpose consuming all the Mettal as the guise and forcible use of so fierce things is without regard or choice of any part or portion But it is not alwayes I hope the guise of violent things I need not go far There is a natural stone in Asia which by a mighty and strong property ueth in forty dayes space to consume and make away all the flesh and bones of a dead mans body saving the Teeth which he leaveth ever safe and whole and therefore they called it in times past 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Flesh-eater and made Tombs thereof for dead and Boots for Gowty men I could cloy a world of Readers with like examples if I might be suffered But weigh this one and our artificial Stone together why may not it as well have his choice and save a part in this great waste and spoiling They know not why And how then there are many deep hidden and causeless properties in the bosom of kinde and nature which no mans wit is able to reach and see into the World is full of them when Art is open and all his wayes known Indeed the World is full of late of such causeless and blinde Phylosophers which like as the Poet when they stick a little call upon Jove by many names to help to shore up the fall of a verse or stop a gap in the number so they when their eyes are dazled upon the view of a deep matter fly to Nature as fast and to her hid and unsearchable Secrâ—â—s to cover the shame of Ignorance as though GOD moved all with his finger as they say without any â—ween means or instâ—uments There is nothing done without a middle cause fore running if it were known as I think it is to some though never so dark and hid from others and therefore to come to the purpose as the reason of the natural eating Stone was clear to Agricola though unknown to Pliny and many moe the Reporters and found to be for the loose and light temperature of his Body apt