equall therefore also the heat should be alwayes alike but seeing the property of Light by it self is not but to enlighten but by accident by reason of its conjunction to make hot or make cold and the dayes are now and then cold and Clowdy unto us under the Summer Solstice Hence surely I ought to have borrowed other causes from the Blas of the Heaven There is a certain action indeed hitherto unknown to the Schooles which in the proper limit of government I have taught which operates on the objects subjected unto it almost like to abstracted spirits And even as the Soul moveth and altereth its own Organs or Instruments Thou mayest call it for me an influence so that a connexion of the Stars be moreover understood of stirring up the Gas beneath according to the lawes of directions given and fixed by the Almighty for otherwise seeing that a beam of Light may be hindered by a covering every Blas also of the Stars on us should cease if they should act on us onely by light and motion yea and in an over-clowdy Heaven no action on the waters or on the things sowen in the Earth should be beheld For diseased persons do perceive a proportionable resembling motion of the Moon and for this cause do they foretell Tempests to come because there are in the very seeds of things the co-bred and allied Lights of Heaven Which do suit themselves to the motion of the nearest or Neighbour-lights and so to the most universall Blas of the Stars For therefore hot-Houses being shut the same effects are felt con-centred or harmonious not indeed because they light on us from without but we carry a heaven within in our vitall beginnings and the Almighty hath sealed things soulified with that Pledge or Signet Notwithstanding that con-centring and conformity do signifie a connexion of suitableness with the more large superiour Heaven And moreover I may easily believe if Insects do utter the foreshewing signes of seasons that we also at the time of health might foreknow all things unless corruption had bespattered our whole nature in the ground and had left us naturally so much the more stupid and miserable than those small Beasts for sin hath withdrawn the Celestial familiarities of talk from us in diseased persons onely it hath left its marks of antient foretelling whereby we may know that the marks of things to come are left us from nothing but the misery of corrupted nature which else in her purity had made us true diviners of the Heaven no lesse than Adam knew the natures of living Creatures And although the Stars do foretell the effects depending on free and contingent causes yet I would not be understood that a gift is given to the Stars of bringing in the causality of future things for it is sufficient that in this thing they perform the office of a Preacher as it were meanes depending on the fore-knowledge of God for as the fore-knowledge of God doth not take away from man a liberty of willing or judging and his tie with the fore-knowledge doth not take away the infallibility of events nevertheless it least of all contains an unavoidableness much lesse doth the fore-telling of the Firmament induce any necessity of contingency or accidentall event on the wills part although it doth altogether happen in respect of events coupled to their free causes Truly I have oft admired at those that refuse a denouncing of the Stars in free causes as though they did therefore necessitate and did take away a liberty of willing when as in the mean time they do admit that divine fore-knowledge doth not cause any thing against free will but that it can denounce Seeing the reason of necessity in the fore-knowledge of mans glorification is far greater in the power of God than in the fore-shewing of the Stars it being of its own nature tyed to change by reason of the repentance and unstable or frail nature of sinners For it hath happened that sometimes the Stars have foreshewen onely threatnings whereby the antient mortalls through the terrour of punishment do return into the way as did the Ninivites In which case although the Stars do loose much of their certainty and strength yet they do not forsake a certainty of necessity as oft as the Signes do shew forth the fore-tellings of Events Wherefore I reckon with my self that the figures of things successive throughout Ages are decyphered in the Heavens as it were in Tables which figures they name the lawes of destiny and that not indeed by an Hebrew Alphabet as some of the Rabbins Dream but that Provinces Kingdoms and men have their Stars on which the Stage of things accidentally happening to their Subject appointed for every one of them in the revolutions of dayes is decyphered wherefore neither is it a wonder if evill Spirits shall know how to foretel many of these things And so much the lesse if to every one of us are designed good Spirits our keepers Even as the Mountain Garganus Kingdoms and Common-wealths have Spirits for their own Rulers and Defenders For so the fore-shewings not onely of the rising and period of Kingdoms are therein painted forth but also the races and ends of all men are historically figured out by their peculiar Star which are also typically decyphered Which knowledge indeed although it being known to Spirits naturally forbidden to man I do oftentimes read it by its true name the divining of the Heaven yet I finde it granted onely to the Servants or Prophets of God according to his good pleasure For your old men shall dream Dreams and your young men shall have Visions and shall prophesie for this which containeth all things hath the power of a voice it openeth future contingencies shewed by their Stars onely to whom and when it will On some in the mean time he bestoweth a figurative knowledge of the Stars even as to the wise men of the East but to others he giveth Dreams as to Joseph and the same wise men and that the same may be truly interpreted as to Joseph and to Daniel a man of desires Also there are some at this day as mad men and drunkards fore-telling things to come and not knowing what to whom in what manner or by what meanes or why they do presage For so according to Josephus Jesus a certain man foretold the destruction of the holy City with a continuall cry and for that cause he was beaten But the Apostles spaâ—â— from the Comforter with the Tongues of all Nations which were then under the Sun but by the Hebrews and Pagans they were accounted to be drunk with new Wine Although there was no new Wine then to be found in Palestina For they prophesying glorified the Lord Jesus for neither is it read that any was then preached unto or converted Therefore they were accounted to be drunk with new Wine but not with Wine because drunkenness by new Wine among the Gentiles did stir up those that kept
which b. also denies for their Bodies after the Resurrection Therefore it behoves that we are Born again of Water and of the holy Spirit For as from the Beginning man was created and had not proceeded from a being born of Flesh So whatsoever is afterwards born of the Flesh is Flesh But the Water the Blood and the Spirit are one and the same in Christ John 5. and these three do denote an indifferent and one only Baptism in valour or effect Wherefore the only new Birth unto Life Is by Water and the Spirit in the participation of the virginal Body of Christ alone For truly it is alike impossible for Flesh to enter into and see the Kingdom of God as for to ascend into Heaven by a Motion of ones own and that is granted to none but to the Son of the Virgin who for that end descended from Heaven who was in Heaven while the same Son spake these things to Nicodemus and the which a little while after ought moreover for the same Cause to be exalted in the Cross The same therefore which descended from Heaven that he might be incarnated of the Matter of the Virgin is he in whom the Water the Virginal Blood and the holy Spirit are one The Spirit therefore which maketh the Corrupted and Adamical Man to be renewed by Water doth so regenerate the inward man from a new Generation in the Spirit that it becomes a true Spirit to be glorified by rising again whose Voice the Sons of Adam shall hear yet shall they not know from whence it may come or whither it may go because the Spirit the Regenerater is the glorious God himself who breatheth where he will and thou now hearest his Voice by Faith and the Sacrament Thus every one who is born again of the holy Spirit is made Spirit and united to him who is not known from whence he may come or whither he may go I call these earthly things although they touch at a spiritual Generation and new Birth because they have some things like unto them in a sublunary Nature which things every one hath not indeed every where known and therefore neither doth he believe them For the Generations of Bruits do happen from a watery Liquor and a seminal Spirit Notwithstanding those things are not therefore plainly terrene or earthly and naturally intelligible by the Vulgar which the Lord speaks to Nicodemus because the reason of the Love of God is no more conceived in this New-Birth than of his infinite goodness To wit it remains unpassable why he would adopt Man for a Son and Co-heir of his Kingdom yea reduce him into a Spirit of a God-like Form who shall materially be born again of Water For that mystery of love exceedeth all the understanding of Angels Yea to believe and contemplate of the actual Person of Christ in an old Man a Woman a young Man a poor diseased Man a miserable and naked poor or little esteemed Man or Woman none can naturally understand it unless he being compelled by Faith hath subjected his understanding unto Faith So neither are we able to conceive what one thing all are made by that new Birth of Baptism in Christ without a difference of Sexes or Nations unless we are holpen by Faith At length it was not enough for the Love of Christ to be born in the form of a Servant and so to be exposed unto Scorn But moreover he ought to suffer a most sharp and most exceeding reproachful Death the which so cruel and disgraceful Death himself in the abounding goodness of his Love cals his Exaltation But he brings it into the similitude of the exaltation of the Serpent Nehushtan Not indeed because the Serpent did any more represent the form of the Son of Man than the Fork did the Cross but only the likeness of impure Man slidden into Death through the perswasion of the Serpent the likeness of whose Servant the Lord was to assume Therefore the Son of Man ought to be exalted not indeed as being unhurtful in the Fork or as it were an unsensible brazen Serpent and the which otherwise being a live one was perceivable enough to be most fit to hang up But the Son of Man must be exalted alive he being full of Love and also at length to die in that Cross that the deserved New-Birth or Regeneration might be made effectual by his Death For truly else without the Death and Exaltation of him Crucified a Participation of the new Birth by Water and the Spirit had not succeeded neither had Death Perished So that plainly from a deep mystery the similitude of the Fork Cross and Saviour was fetched for a similitude of an incarnated Servant and him compared with the brazen Serpent Neither also did Israel Worship God in the Serpent otherwise Moses by the Command of God had been the Author of Idolatry Neither therefore is a live Serpent bound to the Fork as neither likewise his dead Carcass but his brazen Image only as being uncapable of Life that by this mystery it might be manifest that the whole similitude in that the exaltation of the Fork or Pole and Cross did manifest and clearly hold forth unto us the Flesh of Sin which the Son of Man by way of similitude represented was plainly uncapable of Life and of the Kingdom of God no otherwise than as the brazen Serpent was Therefore it is simply and absolutely true That unless Man be born again of God and doth partake of the unspotted Virginity which the Lord Jesus drew in his most glorious Incarnation from the material substance of the Virgin his Mother the hope of Salvation is for ever cut off Wherefore also from thence it is manifest that from the intent of Creation nothing but a Virginal Generation was afterwards required And by consequence that a Seminal Impure Beast-like and Adamical Generation was by the Craft of the Devil drawn and exhausted from the Apple wherein the Fewel of Lust was Therefore unless the Adamical Flesh doth again die and an unspotted Virgin-Flesh be restored in us in its stead by the favour of the holy Spirit who saveth those that are to be saved freely it is certain that the first intent of our Creator should be frustrate whatsoever may be otherwise done or hoped for For in the Beginning it was sufficient to be born because also then they had been born of God But after the Fall it thenceforth behoveth the Adamical Flesh to die and perish and to be again renewed or re-born of Virgin-Flesh which the holy Spirit by Water stirs up in us while we wish or desire to be Members of that Head and Branches of that Vine We are therefore regenerated in the Lords Body by Grace unto the immortal Life of the Age to come and that we may be raised up again in the Participation of Virginity Death must interpose and whatsoever is Adamical in us be blotted out We all indeed shall rise but we shall not all be
after an Inferiour manner and a proportionable resemblance of the Tribute of Inferiour Bodies in the Superiour Do not Herbs Animals and Sick or Diseased Man fore-feel and presage of future changes of Times or Seasions Is not the more cruel Winter to be expected by how much the deeper a Frog shall scrape his Inn in the Earth for harbour against the Winter at hand For from hence arise meteorical Divinations not indeed that those happen from a fore-timely Motion of celestial Bodies and that as yet to come because then it should cause that presagious feeling in Sublunary Bodies before it be present Far be it For the Firmament doth only foreshew future Events but not Cause them But indeed all particular created things have their own Heaven within them and the Revolution of that Heaven depending on the Being of their Seed in whose Spirit because it is that which contains the Idea or Engravement of the Universe is their own Heaven and there are moreover their own Ascendents Neither is there cause to think that we hereby trample upon Astrology but we illustrate or explain it because every thing contains its own Heaven and for that Cause a conjunctive relation of the Heavens yet the Motion of the Heavens because the most known because the most common directs the Heavens of particular things I may so call them for want of a Name according to it self This indeed is the Cause of every natural Inclination and where a Creature by the perswasion of its own proper Heaven wanders from that Motion of Heaven as the most common rule Sickness and Defect is forthwith present For a Sheep without a guide wanders into uncertainty For therefore sick Persons do fore-feel the Seasons and the future Mutations of Times healthy Persons not so For if the Sea did flow and ebb through the guidance of the Celestial that is the fiery signal Moon only and not from the conduct of its own watry signal Moon Winds also if they were stirred up through the guidance of the celestial Mercury only and not from their own Chaomantical or seminally signal Star truly there could not be any provincial Winds in any Place and because there is one only Mercury and one single Moon in the Heavens a co-like Wind should blow throughout the whole World and the Sea should every where flow if not at the same time at least-wise in the same harmonious Motion which modern navigation disproves Sufficient it is therefore here to have shown by the way that there is a celestial and impulsive Nature in things themselves the which notwithstanding doth excite and govern it self according to the Harmony of a superiour tributary Motion so long as it will not be accounted refractory That the Firmament also doth not Cause future events unless remotely and that only by the first Qualities playing the part of a certain Cook but otherwise doth largely or loudly proclaim the Handy-works of God But that things themselves do contain a particular Firmament in their seminal Being by reason whereof Superiour Bodies do by the Law of Friend-ship and Self-love bear a co-resemblance with inferiour ones From all which we may now at least collect that there is a Magnetism and Influential Virtues every where implanted in and proper to things the which he who expels from Sublunary Bodies seeks a vain Evasion Thou wilt urge that we must yet come nearer to the point neither that it is yet sufficiently manifest that in Sublunary Bodies there is a Quality imitating the Heavens and such a one indeed which carries an Influx unto a far removed and absent Object the which notwithstanding is presupposed in the Armary or Weapon Salve and so that Magnetism is indeed a celestial Virtue yet in no wise to be attributed to Sublunary things and much less to the feigned Weapon Salve But what other thing is this I pray than to deny Magnetism without or besides Magnetism For if we universally call every Influence of Sublunaries on each other Magnetism and for want of a true Name do name that Occult co-suitableness whereby one absent thing acts on another absent one by way of Influence whither that be done by attracting or impulsing a Magnetism truly whosoever denies an Influential Power of Sublunaries toward each other to be by Magnetism and requires an Instance to be given him to the contrary he requires an Absurdity to wit a Magnetism without Magnetism and knows not what he may deny or what demand For truly I have alleaged Examples of the Fact in Sublunary things and brought very many and suitable Instances namely concerning the ingrafted Nose of the Saphire of Water-Pepper Asarabacca and most Herbs But ye deny I sufficiently know because ye are ignorant thereof that either those Effects do not thus happen or thou wilt affirm which thou art more ready to do that they come to pass through the assistance of the Devil It is not suitable to the custom of Naturalists to dispute from naked Authorities we must come up to Handy-blows with those that contend with us to wit unto Experience Make tryal therefore and convince us of a Lie if thou canst not at least believe us Therefore it is an Action of insolent malepartnesse for any to deny the Being of that Fact which is every where frequent because indeed he hath not searcht out the Truth thereof nor hath endeavoured so to search and much more insolent it is indifferently to ascribe that to the Devil which is every where consonant to Nature as shall be hereafter taught and that indeed for one only Fault to wit because the manner of its Operation by its Cause cannot be understood by our Censurer by a Censurer who by the sharpness of his own Understanding and the Study of Aristotles Physicks presumes that he hath on every side exactly viewed the whole Circle of Nature by a Censurer I say who although he can discern nothing of Superstition in the Ungent and nothing of unlawfulness yet by reason of the manner of its Application being Paradoxical to him he condemns and detests it as Impious and affirms that it contains I know not what diabolical Juggle in it But for what I beseech thee Indeed because the Sword or Splinter thereof besmeared with Blood is emplaistred with the Mumial and Magnetical Unguent because the Blood which is once expelled out of the Veins knowes not how to hold a correspondence with that which is as yet nourished within the Veins and because he doth not believe that the Action of the Unguent is extended unto an Object scltuated at a far distance But return to thy self because anon thou shalt both understand and believe those things unless thou art stubborn We will now for thy sake recal the Action of Magnetism in Sublunary things unto the Bar of Light For indeed I will now shew that there is without the Classis or order of things and Herbs undeservedly suspected by thee an influence of some things on each other and that it
not the causes of natural things 6. The Form is not the Act. 7. A false Maxim of Aristotle 8. He erreth in the attributes of the Form 9. He knew not the true efficient cause 10. The Father is not the efficient cause of the Son 11. There are two onely causes in Nature 12. The End hath no reason of a cause in nature 13. That the three beginnings of Bodies of Paracelsus have not the nature of causes 14. Whence the definition of any sort soever of natural things is to be required 15. The definition of a Horse 16. The division of sublnnary bodies among the Auntients is dangerous or destructive 17. The definition of Animalls Plants and Mineralls 18. The name of Subject sounds improperly in Philosophy why 't is to be called a co-worker 19. Things without life that are produced how they receive their ends 20. Why the seminal Power is attributed to the Earth 21. That there is not a conjunction of the Elements 22. The Principles of the Chymists have not the power of principiating 23. That there are two onely Principles or beginnings of Bodies to wit that from which and by which 24. What the Ferment or Leaven of things is 25. What are Ferments in their kinde 26. What is immediately in places 27. The Ferments of the Air and water 28. There is onely a speculative distinction of the Ferment and efficient cause 29. The Ferment is the original of some seeds 30. The principiating Ferment of what sort it is and where 31. Ferments are immediately in places in things themselves as if in places 32. The name of matter is speculative but that of water is practical 33. What the inward efficient cause is 34. A false Maxim of Aristotle 35. The efficient cause in natural things is explained 36. Fire is not of the number of seminal efficient causes as it hath deceived the Aristotelicks neither is the influence of the Heavens among the number of efficients 37. The diversity of the efficient and effective cause 38. The wit of Aristotle is ambitious and idle 39. A false Maxim of Aristotle 40. Aristotle was more able in the Mathematicks or learning by de monstration than in Nature 41. How great hath been the ignorance of the Schooles in natural things hitherto 42. Aristotle is in the things of natural Philosophy ridiculous and to himself contradictory I Come into a forsaken house to re-melt the dross that is to be swept out by me Most things are to be searched into and those things to be taught which are unknown those things which have been ill delivered are to be overthrown what are unclean are to be wiped off and what things are false are to be cast away but all and every thing duly to be confirmed But let it be sufficient to have forewarned thee of these things to withdraw wearisomness if happily new and Paradoxall things do more trouble than true things delight The knowledge of Nature is onely taken from that which is in act and in the thing it self for it is that which no where consisteth in feigned Meditations Indeed the whole composure of Nature is individual in very deed in act and fastned in any Body except the number of abstracted Spirits Lastly and chiefly I seriously admonish that as often as I speak of the causes of Natural things these things are not at all to be taken for the Elements or for the Heaven because they supernaturally began with the Title of Creation and to this day do also constantly remain the same which they were from the beginning Therefore I understand the causes of natural things to presuppose a Being subject to change And although the Bodies of the Elements have come under Nature yet their speculation is of another manner of unfolding and another kinde of Philosophy For they who before me have thought that to all Generations or Births of Bodies four Elementsdo co-mix have beheld the Elements after the heathenish manner have tried by their lies or devises to marry the Elements obey them Therefore every natural Body requireth no other than corporeall beginnings for the most part subject to change and succeeding course of dayes but Nature doth not consist of an undetermined hyle or matter and an impossible one neither hath it need of such a Principle as neither of privation but order and life are in the efficient cause of necessity And every thing is empty void dead and slow unless it hath been constituted or sometimes be constituted by a vitall or seminal Principle present with it And moreover those Lawes should rush down together unless there were a certain order in things which did interpose which might incline proper things to the support or necessities of the common good Aristotle hath declared four constitutive causes of things which have made also their own Authour ignorant of Nature For in the first place he confoundeth the Principle with the material cause to wit calling the first cause an undetermined or unlimited matter or a corporeal subjected heap wanting a formall limitation And then he confoundeth the other cause even the inward Essence or form of a thing with another of his Principles Next the third which is external he calleth the efficient cause and at length the fourth he nameth the end to wit unto which every thing is directed But this cause in the minde of the efficient he would have to be the first of the three former causes and so natural things not onely to be principiated or made to begin by the Being of Reason and mental but also as if they were inanimate things they did lie hid through the end in the minde of the efficient cause But if therefore he doth badly search into natural causes he hath far worse appointed a supernatural end in the minde of the first mover in the room of a natural cause or he requireth a mentall conceit of the end in things without life Truly I who have not been accustomed through the floath of consenting to serve others enterprizes without foreweighing them have very much found that the three latter causes in natural knowledge are false yea and hurtful But the first of the four I will by and by shew to be fabulous For first of all since every cause according to nature and succession of dayes is before its thing caused Surely the form of the thing composed cannot be the cause of the thing produced but rather the last perfect act of generation and the veriest essence and perfection it self of the thing generated for the attaining whereof all other things are directed Therefore I meditate the form to be rather as an effect than as a cause of the thing Yea more For the Form seeing it is the end of generation is not meerly the act of generation but of the thing generated and rather a power that may be attained in generation but the matter or subject of generation as it is in act so also its act is an inward worker or
Degrees of Simples he hath not attempted it by the discretion of his Tongue and so he divined that more of the fire had concurred to a mixture where he found the more sharpness and bitterness Which thing the Schooles even till now hold as authenticall although Opium being bitter hinders it although Flammula or Scarrewort the Glasse being close shut layeth aside its tartness as also Water-Pepper and the like And what things are moyst do burn or sting but dried things do binde Neither shall the Galenists easily finde out a way whereby they may bring fire for water-Pepper under dirt For it hath been unknown in the Schooles that all properties not onely those which they call occult or hidden but also that any other properties do flow out of the lap of seeds and all those which it pleaseth the Schooles themselves also to call formall ones Surely I do experience four Elementary qualities to be as in the outward bark of things the second qualities to be more dangerous or destructive but the most inward ones to be immediately pressed in the Archeus Yet all of them to be from the bosom of the seede and forms But no quality to come forth from the first matter as neither from the Wedlock of the Elements because they are both feigned Mothers But because the water which is brought into a vapour by cold is of another condition than a vapour raised by heat therefore by the Licence of a Paradox for want of a name I have called that vapour Gas being not far severed from the Chaos of the â—â—untients In the mean time it is sufficient for me to know that Gas is a far more subtile or fine thing than a vapour mist or distilled Oylinesses although as yet it be many times thicker than Air. But Gas it self materially taken is water as yet masked with the Ferment of composed Bodies Moreover Paracelsus was altogether earnest in seperating four Elements out of Earth Water Air and Fire and so from his very own Elements which seperation notwithstanding he denieth to be from the three first things possible as if those three first things were more simple and before the Elements Being unmindefull of the Doctrine many times repeated by him To wit that every kinde of Body doth consist onely of three principles but not of Elements because Elements were not bodies but places and empty wombs of bodies or principles void of all body For although the Elements are among us commonly not believed to be undefiled yet Paracelsus calls them so the which he teacheth are by art to be seperated from pollutions But this description receiveth the air in one Glasse common water in another but the Earth either of the Garden or the Field in a third and at length the flame of the fire in a fourth But he shuts the Vessels with Hermes's Seal by melting of the neck And the water for a moneth continually to boyl in its Vessel As though that thing could possibly be done and the Glasse not the sooner leap asunder especially because he commands the water to be shut up without air unto the highest brim of the Vessel and the Glasse to be melted to wit with the water Lastly he conceives a flame in the Glasse and in the very moment wherein it ceaseth it is no more fire but an aiery smoak nor is the fire a substance Last of all nor can the fire be detained within the compass of the Vessel In another place he denieth any Element of fire besides the Heaven but now he calls the fire the Gas of the thing burnt up And he exalts these his trifles for causes of great moment the which notwithstanding he dared not to name Because the doubtful man hath exposed his Dreams to the World in hope of deserving thereby the name of the Monarch of Secrets CHAP. XIII The Gas of the Water 1. The Gas of the water differs from a Vapour 2. A Demonstration from Creation 3. That the Air in Genesis is signified by the Heaven 4. That in the Firmament is the operative Principle of dividing of the Waters 5. The seperating Powers of Waters in the air 6. A History of a Vapour 7. Gas differs from the exhalation of the auntients 8. A supposition of Principles 9. The manner of making in a Vapour 10. The Gas of the Water 11. An example in Gold 12. The Gas of the Water is shewne to the young beginner 13. The incrusting of the Water 14. The heat of the Alps is great yet not to be felt 15. That Gold is not the absence or privation of heat 16. Why Gas is an invisible thing 17. Why the Stars do twinckle 18. Why the Heaven is of an Azure colour 19. The Air knowes not the motion of snatching 20. Above all Clouds the Air is not voyd of all motion 21. What quietness there may be in that place 22. Gas is the Mother of a Meteor 23. Gas and Blas do constitute the whole re-publick of a Meteor 24. The Sun is hot by it self 25. The soils of the Air are the folding doores of Heaven 26. Why some are side-windes but others perpendicular or down-right ones 27. From whence the Blas of the air is originally stirred up 28. Two Causes of every Meteor 29. The water is in the same manner that it was from the beginning 30. From whence there is a stability in the quiet Perolede or Soil of the Air. 31. Peroledes are proved 32. A solving of an objection 33. The water is frozen of it self occasionally but not effectively by cold 34. Why Ice is lighter than water 35. The proportion of lightness in Ice by Handicraft-operation 36. The constancy and simplicity of the water 37. That all Beings do after some sort feel or perceive 38. A Vapour doth sooner return into water than into Gas 39. The changing into a Vapour in respect of the air the seperater is oblique or crooked 40. The air is dry and cold by it self 41. In an elementated Body there is not a simple and an every way sameliness of kinde 42. The rarefying of the Sulphur of water gives smoothness to Ice but not the immixing of a strange air 43. In the Patient or sufferer re-acting differs from resistance 44. It is proved by 17 Reasons that air is never transchanged into water nor this into that GAS and Blas are indeed new names brought in by me because the knowledge of them hath been unknown to the Antients notwithstanding Gas and Blas do obtain a necessary place among natural Beginnings Therefore this Paradox is the more largely to be explained And first after what sort Gas may be made of water and how different a manner it is from that wherein heat doth elevate water into a Vapour And likewise we must know after what sort these things do happen by the dissection of the water I will therefore repeat That the thrice glorious God in the beginning created the Heaven and the Earth and the great deep of waters But the
great deep began from the hollowness of the Heaven and was bounded upon the Globe of the Earth Nothing is there read of the creating of the air which notwithstanding is a Body and created into an Element not indeed after the six dayes Creation that it might fill up the place where the air now is Therefore the Heaven designeth or signifieth the Air and the matter of the Heavens is otherwise hitherto unknown And then the Eternall created the Firmament that it might seperate the waters which ought to remain under it from those that were to remain above it But the Firmament was not as it were the floud-gate or as it were an idle partition of the waters but rather the operative Principle of that seperation Even as the Sun is not the middle partition between the day and the night although it was made to seperate the day from the night but the Sun is the maker of the day it self Therefore the Heaven or Air was appointed the seperater of the waters to endure as long as the very World it self For which cause it hath obtained two notable powers To wit exceeding coldness and dryness proportioned thereunto It hath indeed great lights in it which are rowled about in it and the which however they may mitigate its in-born cold yet the air ceaseth not from that office of a seperater And in what part that kinde of seperation ought to happen which is neere to us there are no lights at all yea nor also far aloft But by how much the neerer that air toucheth at the Chambers of the blessed it abounds with many lights Thus is the air it self disposed But now I will set upon the History of an exhalation which contains a vapour and also a Gas and so we must examine the thing contained in the air For neither is Gas a dry and Oily Body which the Antients have called an exhalation but it containeth moreover another watery body also besides Vapours from whence the body manner and progress of Meteors will be known I consider the body of the water to contain in it an Elementary and native Mercury liquid and most simple next an un-savoury and alike simple Salt Both which do embrace within them a uniform homogeneall simple and unseperable Sulphur These things I suppose even as Astronomers do their excentrices that I may go to meet the weakness of our understanding Therefore the Salt of water as it is moved and waxeth hot from the least lukewarmness being impatient of heat straight-way climbes on high as it were to the place of rest and refreshment with a proportionable part of its own Mercury And for that cause the Sulphur also being unseperable from both ought to accompany them The three things being thus conjoyned are the vapour which being brought into the luke-warm air for the same Reasons hasteneth to ascend untill it hath touched the places of its refreshment provided by the Creator Whither the vapour being now brought the heat which troubled it being presently laid down the Salt as it were repenting of its flight could wish that it might again receive a resolving in its Mercury and return into its former state of water But the lofty and troublesome cold of the place hinders it By occasion whereof the Mercury of the water is so frozen or congealed that it is unfit for the resolving of its Salt Wherefore that vapour is presently changed into a Gas and Gas hanging in doubt in a shape wanders up and down So that unless the cold did dry up the Sulphur of the water in a bark or shell and in this respect divide it every vapour and Cloud even as in our glassen Vessels as being heavier than the air should by and by rush downwards Hence we see that vapours having slidden down a little beyond their bound even as straightway after great colds when as the South winde blowes on it at unawares the Mercury of the water being unfrozen that the Salt is at length easily resolved within its Mercury For the importunities of cold and heat do command the Beginnings of the water to be turned inward or outward For so the lesser rains and the dew do fall down in the least Atomes as it were descending and resolved vapours Therefore there is not a new and substantiall generation while of water a vapour is lifted up since it is onely an extenuating by reason of a turning of its parts outward As neither also whiles the Mercury of the water doth resolve the Salt which it again shuts up within it self and is changed into rain Which is nothing but the resolving of the former Atomes of the water and a co-uniting them into greater drops For a changing of the essence doth not interpose where there is onely a locall dividing and turning of parts outward For example yellow and malleable gold doth not change its essence while being dissolved by Aqua Regis it hath the colour of Iron rust nor while it waxeth black in Chrysulca and is beaten into the smallest powder Moreover that thou mayest know Gas in the first place meditate the air to be the seperater next to be simple in its Root so likewise to be simply cold and dry Since therefore heat and cold are more active than moysture and dryness therefore the moysture of the Mercury doth first suffer by the coldness of the air and seeing that the Mercury and Salt of the water are more cold than its Sulphur therefore they are more speedily affected and first of all indeed the Mercury because it is the coldest of the two Companions But since every thing desireth to remain in rest without the change of successive alterations and since the Elements also ought to remain without destruction therefore the Mercury and Salt of the water do hasten to preserve themselves from the coldness of the air And so they co-thicken arm and incrust themselves in Ice that they may the more resist in soundness which otherwise being changed into Gas are lifted up for it is alwayes a property of the air to seperate the waters from the waters or else they stop or hinder that changing and flight But if indeed the water being stirred or disturbed is not made Ice then the cold and dryth of the air do lay hold on the three first things of the water so as the Mercury of the water is made uncapable of resolving the salt in its moysture And so the Salt doth under the cold after a sort wax clotty in the Mercury and Sulphur So as that the Sulphur being more dry than the other two doth also more easily suffer than its fellowes and more from the dryth of the air than from its coldness Wherefore the Sulphur is enlarged into the smallest parts and the Mercuries and Salts of all which parts being made clotty they thrust their Sulphur outward that it might suffer from the dryness of the air Wherefore seeing the Sulphur is equall to either of them both the other two must needes
fortune come suddenly unlooked for Famagusta had been destroyed Therefore let the Reader know that the Eastern Marriners were wont on the day that they do observe such Windes to take a great Knife wherewith they make the Sign of the Cross in the Air and do utter these words In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word and suddenly all the Whirle-winde and tempest seperates it self and ceaseth For I have seen this experiment twice And on the second time while I returned out of Cyprus into Italy For neither do I finde any thing of Superstition therein but that the Knife must have a black handle And so I can determine of nothing certainly Thus far he A wonder at least That this divelish tempest should cease and the Devill spare the whole City perhaps for the sin of one sinner Moreover about Blas this is as yet considerable If in the great heat of Summer thou holdest a burning Candle about the hole of a Window there is no foot-step for the most part of mooved Air to be perceived but throughout the whole winter however small the hole be a troublesome Winde breatheth and that continually But since there is not a greater quantity of air let us now take the air for its Magnall or sheath being constrained by reason of cold than of that which is rarefied by reason of heat there seemes not to be a stronger reason of this than of that to stir up the Winde Therefore there is a twofold Motive locall Blas in the Air one indeed which stirs up the Windes and so includes a violence or swiftness from a native power or motion But the other which followes as for an alterative Blas for co-thickning or rarefying in the air But since this is almost universall by reason of Summer and Winter it also sends forth a certain slow flowing of the Air. And although cold may equally condense the Magnall and the Air be in this respect unmoved by reason of an alterative and violent windy Blas yet seeing in the opposite Coast of the Sphere the Magnall or sheath in the Air is generally made thin onely by reason of heat the Air in the Northern Coast must needes partly go back be knit together and so occupie the lesse room and partly be gently driven forward by the rarefying and rarefied Magnall of the Air that co-toucheth with it from the other half of the Orbe And this is the cause of the Question proposed to wit of the slow and uncessant flowing in the Winter Air which we do experience through a Chap be it never so small also the Winde ceasing But not so in the Summer-time For the Magnall being once made thin through heat the air stands unmooved amongst us CHAP. XV. A Vacuum or emptiness of Nature 1. The true definition of the Winde 2. The undistinct sincerity of former ages 3. Whither the Authours invention tendeth 4. An examining of the Air by an Engine like to a Hand-Gun 5. A Vacuum or emptiness in the Air is proved 6. A Vacuum is easier believed than a piercing of bodies 7. A Handicraft Demonstration by fire in behalf of a Vacuum and five remarkable things of it 8. A Handicraft operation concerning a sulphurated Torch or Candle 9. Subsequent Collections from both the Handicraft Operations 10. Pores of the Air are demonstrated 11. Opposite suspitions are taken away 12. Inward heat and inward fire being shut up together in a Glasse how they act diversly into the Air. 13. That it acts more strongly by the pressing together of its smoak than by the enlarging of heat 14. Of what sort the sense or feeling of the Air is 15. A new end of the Air. 16. That the fire lives not by the air but onely is choaked through penurie 17. Vacuities or emptinesses in the air are needfull 18. That every thing hath hated pressing together made by its guest by the lawes of self-love 19. A Vacuum being an impossible thing with Aristotle hath now become a requisite thing in nature 20. That there is given in the Vacuum of the air a middle thing between a body and an accident and so a neutrality 21. What the great Magnall may be 22. How the Blas of the Stars is communicated without Species or particular kindes 23. The tristes of the Aristotelicks concerning the Winde 24. A ridiculous multitude and plenty of exhalations according to Aristotle 25. The Opinion of Galen touching the Windes is hissed out 26. The Opinion of Galen concerning Quicksilver badly from Diascorides and worse copied out 27. The nature of rarefied air for the confirming of a Vacuum 28. While the air is commonly thought to be made thin it is indeed pressed together by reason of the extension of of its Magnall or Sheath 29. The body of the air hath its just extension under cold 30. Why in a hotter Climate the favours of the Heaven are the greater 31. The Magnall is proved to be increased and diminished but not the air to be properly rarefied or condensed IN the beginning of the Blas of a Meteor I have defined the Winde by a true definition that is by its constitutive Causes Seeing that a thing without or besides the containing of its Causes is nothing and every thing produced doth naturally shew an originall and essentiall respect unto its own producer which is inward to it Therefore a naturall Winde is a flowing Air mooved by the Blas of the Stars And that for distinction from a prodigious or monstrous Winde raised up by the malice of evill spirits Hypocrates calls the Winde a Blast and saying that all Diseases are from blasts he reckoueth up his To Enormon or forcible blast among the chief or first causes of Diseases For such was the plainness and candour or simplicity of former times wherein because they being more blessed there was not yet such knowledge nor cruelty nor frequency of Diseases For all things were not granted to Hypocrates For it hath well pleased the Almighty since Hypocrates to have also created his Physitians He made known indeed to Hypocrates that there is in us a Spirit stirring up all things by its Blas which Spirit he afterwards by a microcosmicall analogie or the proportion of a little World compared to the blasts of the World and restrained into the order of a blast whether they were partakers of life or indeed did contain the causes of death and destruction Lastly he left it undecided whether they being stirred up from the Heaven they should shew the suitable proportions of the Heavenly Circle or at length were stirred up by a sublunary law For the race or descent of the vitall Spirits had not yet been plainly made known For none had hitherto learned by experience that the matter of Gas was water and so it had not been as yet known that the windes of the World did wholly differ from the vitall Spirit From the knowledge of the windes handed forth by me in the
signes times or seasons dayes and years Moreover I know that in the Sea and deep Lakes there is their motive force whereby they suffer a raging heat without windes whereby I say our Ocean is rowled six houres and else-where six constant months with one onely flowing Lastly I know that the Earth is at rest nor that it hath a motive force actively proper to it self Therefore I believe that the Earth doth quake and fear as oft as the Angel of the Lord doth smite it Behold a great Earth-quake was made for the Angel of the Lord descended from Heaven Mat. 28. The word For among the Hebrewes doth contain a cause as if he should say Because For this is the onely cause of an Earth-quake whereby all things do without resistance equally tremble together as it were a light Reed In the Revelations the third part of Mortalls Trees and Fishes perished at the very time wherein the Angel powred forth his Viall For abstracted spirits do work by the divine Power and nothing can resist them Evill spirits also as oft as it is granted them to act by a free power they act without the resistance of bodies or a re-acting of resistance For matter is the Client of or dependant on another Monarchy and it cannot re-act into a spirit which it by no meanes toucheth and with no object affecteth Even as the Angel useth the powred out liquor of the Viall unto the aforesaid slaughter so for the Earth-quake he for the most part makes use of a note or voice For a wandering note was heard in the Air no otherwise than as the creaking of Wheeles driven thereupon as it were a tempestuous murmuring sound succeeded yet without Winde and at that very time the whole tract of so great Provinces trembled at once with a huge horrour Which same note accompanied the trembling of the Earth at every of the three repeated turns The same thing almost happens in Lightning Truly the Lightning burns and causeth melting but surely it smiteth not According to that saying The voice of Thunder shall strike the Earth because it smiteth For Silk-worms die Milk is curdled Ale or Beer waxeth sowre a slain Oxe hanging up retains flaggie flesh unfit to take Salt and that onely by the Thunder-stroak the Lightning doing no hurt there Therefore let the voice of Thunder and the voice of the Earth-quake be the note or tone of ministring spirits But the Stars do not stir up a motive and alterative force of the Air or Water through a note but do act onely by an Aspect which they call an Influence And it hath its action and direction in a moment even as light sight c. For otherwise there should be need of many years before the audible Species or resemblances that are to be heard should come down from Saturn to the places of a Meteor And then a note or sound although it be great yet it faileth by degrees in the way But that the Earth doth tremble with a Tempest of Windes or that the Tempest doth sometimes run successively thorow Villages Cities and as it were thorow street by street in its wheeling about That is wholly by accident and according to the will of him who shaketh the Earth for a monstrous sign Likewise that else-where it doth oft-times tremble in quick Belgium very seldom that changeth not the moving cause For it stands in the free will of him who encloseth the Universe in his Fist who can shake the Earth at his pleasure and alone do marvellous things At the beholding of whom the Earth shall at sometime smoak and the Mountains being melted shall go to ruine But that in another place gapings chaps after an Earth-quake have sometimes appeared and a filthy poyson and fumes of arsenicall bodies have breathed forth that is joyned onely to its naturall causes Nor are they the effects of an Earth-quake but by accident but not the causes But this blindness of causes of the Earth-quake hath been invented the Devill being the Authour whereby mortall men might set apart all fear of the power and so might prevent if not wholly neglect the ends which God hath appointed to himself for the serious reverencing of the power of his Majesty that they being mind-full of the faults of their fore-led life might repent Deh qual possente man conforzze ignote Il terreno a crollar si spesso riede Non e chiuso vapor como altro crede Ne sognato stridente il suol percuote Certo la terra si rissente scuote Perche del peâ—cator sa aggrava il piede Et i nostri corpi impatiente chiede Per riemper se sue spelonche â—uote E linquaggio del ciel che l'huom riprende Il turbo il tuono il fulmine il baleno Hor parla anco la terra in note horrende Perche l'huom ch' esser vuol tutto terreno Ne del cielo il parlar straniero intende I l parlar della terra intenda al meno Behold with what a mighty yet unknown A force the Earthy Body makes a noyse And with so thick a rushing gives a groan 'T is not a vapour hot shut up they 'r toyes Even as some believe which beats the ground Or thumps its entrails with a whistling sound Truly the Earth it selfe doth feele and quake Because the sinners foot doth load its back And our impatient mortall bodies fall In to fill up its own deep Vaults withall The Language of the Heaven which reproves Man is the Whirle-winde Thunder Lightning flash And sp'ritous howling in the Air Ecchoes Now speaks the earth more-o're with horride lash Of signall tokens ' cause since man which would Be wholly earthly doth not understand The Linguo strange of Heaven yet may or should At least the Earth it 's Language apprehend These things nothing hindering there hath not been one wanting who said that from a most deep well of the Castle of Lovaine he by a sure presage foretold an Earth-quake was shortly to be because the water of the same Well three dayes before sent forth the stinking savour of Brimstone and that its contagion yellowness together with the turbulency of the water did bewray it But let that good man know that that Well is one hundred and fifteen foot in depth because they go up to the Castle from the Street that is next unto it by ninety three steps And so that Well in one part is not deeper than its Neighbouring Wells although in the other part where it is co-touching with the Hill of the Castle it is deep as I have said But seeing that a vein of Sulphur is not hidden in the Hill the water could not breath Sulphur which was not there But if it cast the smell of Sulphur a sign might precede God admonishing but it had not Sulphur which neither is in that place nor was enflamed therefore neither could it cause an Earthquake unto all Belgium or the Low Countries Therefore there is no naturall reason why the water
in that Well should be more troubled by Sulphur than in its neighbour-wells wherein no such thing was seen Lastly we must know that an Earth-quake is not made by the long preparation of causes from three dayes before Because then the Earth could not be lifted up in one manner at once Yea if any exhalation of Sulphur had now three dayes before fore-timely made a passage for it self at that very time it had now found a passage for it self and had sooner breathed forth that way thorow that Well before it had lifted up so great an heap on every side yea a passage being found it had made the water by its blast and boyling up to sound in the boyling and much more prosperously in the streetes that were so much lower and the exhalation had broken forth in the more neighbouring places and had burst in sunder the Hill it self more easily by rising into an heap but the Earth had not trembled Therefore I reject the example of the deed as long as the reasons opposed by me against it from its impossibility are not overthrown Therefore the Earth trembleth not because it feeleth or feareth after the manner of a living Creature but it denounceth unto us something like it and doth as it were speak unto us accusing of the stroak of the Angel or the hand of an angry God But the Earth is smitten and trembleth by the Command of God pointing out that sin hath ascended up to Heaven crying out for vengeance before his Throne Indeed the smiting doth presuppose indignation and indignation a heaped up measure of sin But the end of an Earth-quake is that the sinner may amend himself and that the righteous man may as well beware that he doth not sin as of the threatned punishment of sin Therefore an Earth-quake doth alway threaten punishments But all particular offences have chastisements suitable to themselves For Luxury and uncleanness have Plagues and Diseases for purging sacrifices and punishments But Adulteries pay their punishments by Diseases imprisonment disgraces poverties also barrenness of off-spring untimely death or the like According to that saying He that someth in the flesh shall reap in corruption But pride of life is punished by poverties barrennesses wars destructions sudden death a miserable losse of friends c. At length covetousness payes its punishments by deceits thefts juggles discommodities of some member c. But if two or three sins do abound at once among a people then punishments are also co-mingled to wit in-clemencies tyrannies breakings of a Vow or Oath juggles or deceits extorsions plagues barrennesses wars c. But if sins are conjoyned in Powers or Princes as well of the Church as in Secular ones Judges The Prophesies are full that for the injustice of the same Kingdoms are translated from Nation to Nation Which things if they happen with the rise of Arch Heresies scandalls and subversions of Altars and especially where the Poor suffer together with them it is a signe that these evills do proceed from filthinesses in-clemencies ambition covetousness breakings of a Vow and drunkennesses or gluttonies For the Prophesies do abound with threatnings that Jerusalem shall be plowed as a field the City shall be made as a heap of stones that the Pestilence and Enemy shall take away all the prey and shall lead away the Chief of the Church bound the holy place shall be defiled that they may be for a derision among the Nations But if Wars do not touch Religion the sins onely of Princes and Judges are taken notice of But the Earth trembleth being smitten especially for the sins of bloud which cry out for Heaven to be a revenger Therefore after an Earth-quake punishments are to be expected which are deservedly due to excess cruelty and injustice The trembling of the Earth therefore denotes nought but the judgements of God a Revenger To wit a good thing from an evill cause as it containeth an inflicting of punishment on the impenitent Therefore from the Lords Resurrection the Earth trembled signifying the desolation of the City and of the Jewish Monarchy which the Gospel together with the teares of the Lord foretold and which Josephus hath written down at large For no calamities are without the Lords permission nothing without its cause neither doth grief or misery spring out of the ground Job 5. Isai 45. Neither do calamities at any time happen unto us by chance It was the most rare or un-couth wickedness of men that slew the guiltless Son of God for his benefits wherefore a most rare kinde of purging of the offence ought also to rain upon that Nation which had been educated with so great favour to the killing of the men and lasting destruction of the Common-wealth As was fore-seen by Daniel Isaiah and Psal 10. But when an Earth-quake runs as it were thorow street by street a tumult of a City against a City is signified and the streetes to be desolate or forsaken For a friend saw this Chapter it being as yet in Writing he presently perceived that a naturall cause was wanting and he consented but he was angry because I had deciphered the manner and that the Earth should be smitten not indeed with a Staffe but by a note or voice and he laughed at the conjecture Why hath not God he said done those things by Gun-powder by Winde an exhalation and a vapour wherefore hath not he said it or spoken it and the Earth was moved with God there are a thousand wayes neither is it certain what mean he hath used First of all if I have given a reason why the Earth trembling doth necessarily chap by the example of a Bell which trembles after the stroak certainly he ought not to be angry with me For neither intended I that he that exceedes every manner doth tie up himself to manner and meanes But in-as-much as that friend doth inter-ject naturall meanes as are the winde a vapour an exhalation Gun-powder laid under the Low-Countries These things were already sufficiently refuted in my Writings as to be possible in nature wherefore they are again unseasonably alleadged as if God should have need of those meanes Because when God makes use of meanes in working miraculously he also often-times useth naturall things but he doth not then make use of things which are reckoned as fellow-causes For those meanes rather are and do contain mysteries than the vigour of any causality Therefore I have drawn my conjecture of the smiting voice or tone not that I am a conscious or a fellow-knower of or a searcher into divine Counsel out of that word The Voice of Thunder shall strike the Earth Moses smote the waters of Aegypt and they were turned into bloud and the Frogs over-covered the Land of Aegypt he smote the Sea with his Rod and the waters stood still he smote the Rock and it brought forth a Fountain Elisha commanded the King to smite the Earth and was wroth with him because he had not smitten it
be expected from elsewhere For he is the Prince of life and death the Alpha and Omega of all things He giveth and taketh away Victories Wars Famine and Pestilences also second partaking causes also free mediating con-causes and occasionall ones accompanying them over all which notwithstanding God is sits as chief as the totall immediate and independent cause Therefore the Firmament is a preacher of all these Works for neither doth God more erre in these free contingent things than in animall accustomed and necessary things if the Firmament was made by God the Mover and knower of all things to foreshew The Land of Libyssa shall over-cover the dead Carcase of Hannibal as Appian relates it to have been foretold by an Oracle of the evill spirit Hannibal hoped he saith that he should therefore die in Lybia or Africa who died in Bythinia near the River Libyssus For the Devil cannot foreknow the lots or events of future Wars which are in the hand of the God of Armies and as yet in the future will or judgement of man unless he shall first read them decyphered in a fore-telling Star Which Picture of the Stars while they no where finde mentioned but cannot deny but that the Devill declares things to come they have meditated of a privy shift and do say that the knowledges of future things are nearly related to Angels and so are co-natural to them but that they differ according to the Quires or Regions from whence they were expelled so that they which fell down from the highest Hierarchy of the Angels should have a much more clear understanding of future things which understanding because it was naturall God had not took away from an evill Spirit For neither is it more naturall to the Devil to have known the enlightnings concerning future things than to have known the natures and names of living Creatures not seen before like Adam But I conceive with Dionysius that the inferior Angels are enlightned by the superior but this light continually to beam forth from the wisdom of the Father and never to have been natural to Angels but to be a free and beatifical gift Next that every good gift doth descend from the Father of Lights that the gift of the Counsels of God and of his future works is not to be searched out by Creatures by their gifts of nature else the naturall knowledge of evill spirits should be almost infinite if it should include in it self the fortunes of mortall men to come distinguished in their second causes yea if an evill spirit otherwise had had this natural participation of divine counsel he had not been ignorant of future effects which he himself as the fire-brand of all evills was to raise up and suffer and so he could scarce have sinned Therefore it is more safe to believe contingent or accidentall things to be painted out by the Stars not indeed all but perhaps those of one age and likewise the Tragedy of every man to be deciphered in his own Star the Picture whereof ceaseth with the closure of his life They will say Hannibal took poyson Satan perswading him But this he did not certainly know as neither could he foretell it if man hath free will and therefore neither did he know that Hannibal would certainly obey his perswasions neither doth Hannibal die by the foolish perswasion of Satan which could not be knit to its causes depending on the divine will For neither doth he die by the poyson but first he is a run-away from many adverse battels But the Lord the onely God of Armies hath Victories in his own hand neither is the evill spirit chief in Battels Therefore to have foreknown the issue of Wars is the same as of free contingencies For truly Victory doth for the most part arise occasionally from a contingent thing not premeditated of therefore I conclude that the infernal enemy doth read the Pictures of the Stars whereby the Firmament is said to foretel the Handy works of the Lord. But thou wilt say whence do the Heavens make Predictions which no mortall men have known and the which to be known by the evill spirit is wickedness In the first place it should be sufficient that the fore-tellings of future things do chiefly declare the glory of God and the infiniteness of his wisdom and fore-knowledge to wit that it may not remain unsignified And then The Lord hath not done a word which he doth not signifie to his servants the Prophets Lastly if the number of mortall men be scarce the hundreth of Angels that are good Spirits it sufficeth that these at least do read the foretokens of future things and therefore do they praise the Lord anew Lucifer indeed hath waxed proud by the much knowledge of things both of those that do exist and of things afterwards to be and it was naturall to him the which he breaths in without grace But it doth not therefore follow that he hath known all mortall men to come and their fortunes vices defects sins grace and whatsoever things should be hereafter like to a second cause as neither the secret mysteries of God that are revealed in succession of dayes and added to a connexion of causes But whether Plagues do arise and rage or Tyrannies Wars destructions tumults or the beginnings of arch-Hereticks the Lord permitting them at leastwise those things shall be as well connexed to their own necessary and second causes although arbitrall and occasionall ones as otherwise Meteors are to theirs For neither is the office of foreshewing the Handy works of the Lord to be restrained to the changes of the Air alone but absolutely unto all the works of the Lords hands Because if the Stars can be preachers of the threatning effects of the wrath of God which without second causes should be committed to the smiting Angel why shall they not also in like manner shew the works of the Lord deputed or reckoned to second and free causes For truly what things soever God foreknoweth he can also if he will shew them by his Instruments but those proper Instruments of God are the Firmament and the Lights thereof as the Scripture witnesseth Yea truly I have been bold to attribute more Authority to the Heaven than what hath wont to be given unto it by the holy Scriptures To wit that the Stars are to us for foreshewing Signes Seasons or changes of the Air lastly for dayes and years wherefore the Text takes away all power of causes besides in the abovesaid revolutions of seasons dayes and years Neither do they act I say but by a motive and alterative Blas But the Stars are said to act by motion and light onely but motion in the Schooles is said to act onely by reason of the divers Aspects of Light for that the motion of the Heavens even the swiftest as well as those remote from us should produce as well heat as motion is a devise or fiction For truly the daily motion of the Heavens is almost
chief over the Blas of the Elements But that the fixed Stars do contain particular Tragedies And therefore when besides the wont of nature there shall be signes in the Sun and Moon they do signifie the monstrous signes of a future ruine of the Universe But such blockishness hath more and more grown on the common sort that they think every one must be believed in his art in this indeed rightly That the Astronomer hath learned to measure the motions and distances of the Stars But we must not therefore believe him as a Prophet of the Stars unless he shall also bring very authentick or warrantable marks whereby he may be believed as did Aholiab and Bezaleel Therefore as to the vitall inclination I do praise the Proverb Strong men are created by strong and good seeds or Parents Moreover so far as concerneth the inclination of Fortunes That in its very Etymology hath exceeded the Catalogue of inclinations Therefore I think that all the fortunes of all as well those prosperous as adverse do concern a divine disposing but not an inclination much lesse to depend on the Stars although they are fore-signified in the Firmament For truly this fore-signifying also doth plainly shew that those do depend immediately on the will of the signifyer For our lots or conditions are in thy hands O Lord Therefore I believe that all the lots of all are good in themselves and to be fully in the hand of the Lord. I believe moreover that by how much the more remote any one is from this opinion by so much he is nearer to Heathenisme Indeed the Heathenish Schooles did see that living Creatures had suitable inclinations according to their kinde yet being amazed at the plurality of morall inclinations in one onely humane kinde expressing all the inclinations of all Beasts and therefore not knowing in what cause they might settle so great a number of inclinations the evill spirit perswading them they by their Sooth-sayers of the Heaven confusedly fled to the uncertain and momentary coupling and estranging of the Stars Never searching into the cause why mankinde is capable of many bestiall inclinations For they neglected to consider that bruit Beasts should have their specificall inclinations from the Being of the seed not the signe of the Horoscope to be due to bruit Beasts That man likewise had his inclinations like bruit Beasts wherefore in like manner Nativities are not to be searched into for the inclinations of men For neither do they naturally happen to man from any other place than from a part of his body which wholly whatsoever it is it oweth to the seminall Being no otherwise than the bodies of bruit Beasts do For truly the Soul is immortall wholly simple and uniform and seeing it is immortall it cannot have its inclination from the frail and sliding motion of the Stars but onely it hearkeneth to the nature corrupted by sin in Adam and his Posterity Wherefore in a late or young Nephew do oft-times the manners behaviours and inclinations of his Grandfather not before seen by him rise again Indeed the Schooles also are content that these should be given to the Being of the seed and not to the Stars But being â—ulled asleep through a custom of assenting and by the importunities of Astrologers they have neglected thorowly to weigh that the aforesaid inclinations of the Grandfather are of no other dignity with nor seperated from the company of the other inclinations and therefore that they are tyed by the same Law to the being of the seed I know not how deservedly they do as yet teach to this day that a man is so subjected to the Stars that he is continually tempted by them to wit that the morall inclinations of vices and goodnesses are to be drawn from the houre of ones Nativity But surely God hath appointed man in the hand of his own will For the sensitive Soul the vicaresse of the minde doth surely rejoyce in a greater liberty than the souls of bruit Beasts by reason of the Seals ministred to it by the minde But the souls of bruit Beasts live contented with the inclinations of their own particular kinde under a small latitude but mans sensitive soul is enlarged to all inclinations for as a humane young as soon as it begins to be nourished in its own square or quarter is not a plant of any kinde even as neither a bruit of any kinde while the sensitive soul floweth together with the rational So the sensitive humane soul being not tied to a brutall kinde doth wander through all the latitude of brutall inclinations and easily hearkeneth to the strange inclinations of the immortall minde brought into it at its own pleasure for the minde sliding into corrupted nature doth easily fall into the motions and enticements hereof and being alwayes shaken out of its place by an unbridled appetite doth serve as a Lackey or Chamber-maid to disturbance which hath driven it from its place Whence there is a strange inclination By the frequent use or desire whereof there is a strong custom which at length doth imprison the minde It likewise appeares that a morall inclination is in the innermost properties of the sensitive soul dispositively sliding out of the Being of the seed And that the Stars have obtained over us no power of causing except by the Blas of Meteors But although the inclination of calling or a morall one may change the vitall inclination as when a pruner of Trees becomes gowty a brawler is wounded or slain so a Gilder miserably trembleth a digger of Mineralls and likewise a Chymist perisheth by an Asthma or stoppage of breathing yet those things come to passe occasionally onely neither do they bring with them any right to the Astrologer Cease therefore for shame hereafter to believe that the Stars were created to tempt incline destroy make happy infuse Sciences or to prevail by an acquired right or authority for thus is the power of desert or punishment taken away also a way is opened to Athersme and the fatalities or destinies of appointments Therefore a wise man shall rule over the Stars not indeed that he can hinder change suspend and pervert the courses or lights of the Stars as neither the successive changes of times or seasons dayes and years following from thence Therefore it followes that a wise man shall not rule over the effects which are coupled to the revolutions of the Stars as causes neither shall he rule over the Stars as signes to wit that he is able to change them at his pleasure but he onely foreseeing that the seven wandring Stars are about to stir up a motive or alterative Blas whence barrennesses colds heats dearnesses of Victuall or the like do necessarily follow he shall be able to provide himself with necessaries and so by meeting the discommodities bred by the Flux of the Stars he shall from consequence in some sort rule over them An Astrologer with this authority not exceeding the bounds of a
the art and knowledge unutterably Therefore although the seed doth contain the Image of the Begetter an Archeus proper to it self with all things requisite to generation yet unless the essential Being of a form did depend originally wholly exemplarily perfectively issuingly and immediately on God nature could never work any thing to attain a form because it should plainly want an active power if it should be deprived of that relative respect Therefore in the first place the Heaven or Stars in no manner of understanding by motion light influence concurrence co-operation or coupling do efficiently and immediately produce the essential forms of things which indeed are onely alone to us for signes seasons dayes and years and whose offices none may compell into new services Jeremy according to the wayes of the Gentiles do ye not learn and be not afraid of the Signes of Heaven which the Nations fear If not of the Signes much lesse of the Stars because they have not the reason of causes but as they are for seasons dayes and years Neither can a Christian without wickedness give them other offices For there is according to Gregory a power conferred on the Earth of budding from it self even as also I esteem it wickedness to attribute the power of increasing and multiplying to living Creatures as to the Heaven But the Schooles do easily go back from the Heaven to dispositive accidents But I on the contrary state it for a position That accidents neither by themselves nor as they are the Instruments of forms do produce the forms of substances Neither that they do produce any other form of one substance Seeing the form of the thing generating is locally without the seed 2. The Earth also although it hath received a power of budding and the seeds of fructifying without the intervening of the seed of Heaven or any other cause yet it is not the productive or effective cause of forms 3. I suppose therefore that God is the true perfect and actually all the essence of all things 4. But the essence which things have belongs to the Being or the Creature it self but is not God 5. For although a Being hath its essence from God dependently for a Pledge Gift League or Talent yet it is proper to the them by Creation 6. But it agreeth to a Being with its essence that it doth and operateth something for the propagation of it self according to the blessing increase and multiply Hence indeed it hath the place of a second cause 7. Therefore God concurreth to the generation of a Being as the Universal Independent totall essential and efficiently efficient cause but a created Being concurreth as the dependent partial particular and dispositively efficient cause But what the Creature can contribute to the producing of a form Mark That since Beings have nothing from themselves for generating but do possess all things from a borrowing and freely they do confess for that very cause that God worketh all things mediately and immediately but that a living Creature doth not generate a living Creature but the seed well disposed to a living Creature Therefore it doth not generate the form thereof But the seed is as it were the disposing Master-Workman as to the form of a living Creature but not as the maker of the form indeed it borroweth the Archeus from the thing generating not the form yea nor the light of life wherein the form shineth Therefore in the beginning of generation the Archeus is not as yet lightsome but it is an Air into which the form life or sensitive soul of the generater hath a little twinckled untill it had sufficiently imprinted some shadowie Seal of its brightness Which Air being greedy of the splendor felt in the generater once and shadowily conceived in it self intends by every way possible for it to organize the body or fit it with Instruments for the receiving of that light and of the actions depending on that light which way therefore it breathing in desire enfiames it self more and more this thing in a metaphoricall figure is for nature through a desire of self-love to pray seek and knock and runs most perfectly that it may receive that light form or life which at length it obtains not else-where than from him who is the way the truth and vitall light or light of life Whither therefore when the Archeus hath come nor in the mean time can proceed any further and is stayed at length it receives forms from the hand of the Father of Lights after that it hath fully performed its offices Christian Philosophy dictates these things thus which in living Creatures and Plants is made easie to be understood But in Stones Mineralls and Metalls and so in fruits of the water that are without life the same things are fuitably to be interpreted For although this Family doth not propagate by virtue of a seed neither doth send forth its posterity out of it self a Being is not therefore wanting in it which may thorowly bring it unto the appointed bounds of maturity For indeed since nothing doth any where dispose or move it self unless it be a seed it must needes be that whatsoever is generated that hath a disposer within who sits in a soft watery salt clayie c. Air Not indeed that it floweth here or wandereth thorow that masse even as it doth in bruit Beasts or that therefore it dwelleth in a perpetual juyce but the Air is incorporated throughout the whole Body nor varying from the disposition of the fruit produced yea in the number or rank of Mineralls that disposer is almost vitall and sensitive Because Chymicall Adeptists do with one voyce deliver that if the seed of the Stone which maketh Gold being once kept warm in their Egg be afterwards in the least cooled or chilled its conception and progress to a stone would be afterwards desperate which thing seeing it is like to Birds Eggs it also therefore cannot subsist without a sensitive life Truly it is to be wondered at that the Schooles do acknowledge all second matter to flow from a certain universal matter yet that they do not admit immediately to derive every life or all forms from the primitive life and first act of all things To wit to derive all the perfection of things from the universal and super-essential essence of perfection yea rather that they at this day do deride Plato with his principle of the Gods and Avicenna with his Cholcodea Panto-Morphe or goddess of Cholchis that gives a form to all things who nevertheless have far neerer saluted the truth in this thing than Christians who maintain that the very lives substantial forms and essential thinglinesses of things are produced by the aspiration or influence of the Heavens by the endeavour of accidents and the favour of material dispositions I set forth the blindness of the most rare men made under or in a time of light For they think the fire to be a substance and the light to be an accident
the sick doth thereby feel himself well Lastly In the Third place That they do not draw out the Disease by Sweat Vomit or Stool but do unsensibly resolve in whatsoever part the Disease is entertained Nature being busied about the rest I have perceived also That such Laxatives do not electively bring forth Humours which are in themselves feigned but seeing we are nourished by none but one onely juyce the blood therefore also we intend the driving forth not of the blood but of Diseasie excrements do resolve whatsoever forreign thing is implanted within the Inne of Life but not vital things unless they are taken in an undiscreet dose or frequency Otherwise they onely have respect to excrements Nature affording her aid within to this end And chiefly seeing they are from God as well by Creation as the endowment of knowledge they have received the ends of their Ordination onely for a good purpose Therefore I perceived that Paracelsus had erred who teacheth That Laxatives do not otherwise operate but as the Laxative Medicine by calcination and a supervening moisture should be resolved together with the Humours like Calx vive For first of all he that proclaimed War against the Humorists now again acknowledgeth Humours Then also his assertion is wholly ridicvlous Yet the lesse if either Laxatives should be taken being first calcined or might have been calcined within or the ejections should ascend onely unto a treble of the things taken For what of calcination have the leaves of Sena in them Doth not Asarum by boyling cease from making Laxative And thus far is ignorant of a Calx I have furthermore perceived That Chymistry doth give more powerful and absolute operations and that there are those things prepared by the same which before were not For neither was the Oyle of Tiles or Bricks formerly in the Oyle of Olives as neither the spirit of Salt in Salt or of Vitriol in Vitriol c. For by the fire they assume an Acrimony as Honey Sugar Manna Dew Earth c. Other things do thereupon lay aside their corrosion as the juyce of Citron Scarrewort Frogwort Water-Pepper c. They erre therefore who do equally judge of the Spirits by the concrete Body For truly although Spices and sweet smelling things do persist in distilling yet the seminal virtues of the concrete Body do for the most part perish through the fire and are made another thing For some things their volatile parts being separated do become an Alcali or fixed Salt a Calx Ashes and Glass which things were not before in the composed Body For I perceived that there was nothing in the concrete Body which did not issue from its seed For the Fire seeing it is the death of things if it doth not totally destroy the seeds of things yet at leastwise it notably transchangeth them Therefore in one thing a preparation doth transchange the whole matter as in Magisteries but elsewhere by reason of a sequestration of some things it onely changeth sharpeneth destroyeth or consumeth the things which are left Thirdly In the next place by things adjoyned now and then the things themselves together with their adjuncts are diversly transchanged by the Fire and become neutral as Glass which is no more Ashes and Sand. Often times also without the fire adjuncts do pierce the root of the mixture and that especially a ferment coming between and then a neutral concrete Body is constituted For so of Rie-bread and Honey Ants are bred of Honey and Dew Eeles of Basil and the hoary putrifaction of a Stone Scorpions of a Calf being strangled and Dew Bees But those things which are mixed by fusion onely do oft-times suffer themselves to be reduced into their former Being For so although Glass be no longer Sand yet from thence by Art yea and through the oldness of putrifaction by continuance the same Sand is found because it is as yet alwayes materially in it not thorowly changed because without a ferment I perceived therefore that many volatile things being joyned to volatile things by reason of a mutual action with each other are transchanged into a certain third thing In the next place that volatile things are fixed by fixt things and in this respect do pass over into a new Being after another manner fixed things being joyned with fixed things do remain in their antient Being I perceived also that Mineral Remedies being changed into the nature of Salt I do not understand those which are seasoned by an adjoyned Salt do carry with them their seeds yet exalted into a degree These things Paracelsus hath sufficiently taught concerning Hematine or sanguine glassie Mettals wherein although the whole Mettal be resolved into a strange disposition which is that of a Magistery yet because the running Mercury is straitway drawn out from thence whatsoever hath truly assumed the nature of a resolvable Salt is not the Mercury or inward and immutable kernel of the Mettal but onely the Sulphur thereof Wherefore those Hematines or Magisteries do perfect admirable operations in the Remedial part of Medicine I perceived therefore that the Hematines of Sol and Lune or of Gold and Silver although from the purity of their Balsame they might comfort yet that they did contain some strange thing in them in respect of us I perceived I say That the crudity of Saturn or Lead was solvable through the fatnesse of fixed Salts to be sometimes destroyed piece meal by the Fire alone and so that the parts of the composed Body were divided and the crude Argent-vive permitted to run the fugitive Sulphur overcoming in the Saturn doth draw unto a volatilized fixed one unseparably joyned And the which the sublimation of the Saturn doth chiefly dispatch In the expression whereof there is no difference of colour or substance between that which is elevated with that which resideth Whence also the causes of Heat Fusion and Softness deeply or inwardly residing after the calcinements and reducements doth not refute the Fusion and wonted Softness without the Fire There is the same cause of the sweetness of Saturn For the most sharp calcined things if as in Lead they are tempered by a concourse of Vitriolated things they are dulcified or sweetned with the properties of Sal Armoniack resolved and of Tartar being putrified The Symbols or resembling Marks of all which things in all their examinations especially in distilling separating of Lead into Salt fugitive sulphurous coloured fat parts with the sharpness of Roch-Alume are discerned by a quick-sighted and industrious Chymist not without great delight I perceived I say That there are Planetary virtues in Mettals if they are reduced into the nature of a Salt or Sulphur yet that ought to be done without the remainder of every adjunct wherein not every Boaster could go to Corinth For after that I knew how to unloose bodies by things agreeable to their radical Principles then at first I began with a comfortable weariness to deride my blockish credulities whereby I in times
the Eyes which might be fitly accused Wherefore this dissection being compared with the dreaming Vision of the Tertian Ague from the eating of too much Salmon I presently perceived why they were both at once recalled to mind while I was about to write the present Chapter to wit that through the opportunity of them both being remembred I might the more strongly insist about the true thingliness or essence of Diseases con-centred in the bosome of the vital spirit but that the dregginesses which the Schooles have reputed for the immediate and containing causes of Diseases are nothing but the external occasional Causes how intimately soever they should be admitted within the veines themselves CHAP. LXII A Disease is an unknown Guest 1. A Narration of things hitherto done 2. The Object and Intent of the Author 3. That the Art of the Medicine of the Pagans was an invention of the evil Spirit 4. A Prayer for his Persecutors 5. The Author searcheth out or espieth from his Persecutions that the evil Spirit was the Inventor of the Doctrine of the Pagans 6. The Labours of the Schooles from hence are vain 7. The Authors Anguishes 8. A Prologue of the thingliness of a Disease 9. The most immediate containing and essential Causes of Diseases 10. The necessity of a seminal Idea is collected 11. How far this Doctrine departeth from the Schooles 12. The true causes of things and of Diseases 13. The Schooles their ancient definition of a Disease 14. The first Contradiction of the Schooles 15. Another Stumbling 16. A Third 17. The Author teacheth in his Treatise of the Elements that there are not mixt Bodies as neither humors in Nature whence the whole foundation of the Medicine of the Schooles goes to ruine 18. A Fourth Stumbling 19. A Fifth 20. A Sixth 21. A Seventh 22. Against the distemperature of Elementary qualities in us 23. An Eighth staggering 24. A Ninth 25. A Tenth 26. An Eleventh 27. The Error of the Schooles is discovered 28. A Twelfth stumbling 29. An absurd consequence according to the position of the Schooles 30. The uncertainty of a predicament for Diseases 31. Arguments on the opposite part and against a feigned disposition 32. Tee true efficient Cause of diseases 33. The occasional matter 34. Wherein the whole thingliness or essence of a Disease may be scituated 35. Whence the Schooles have been seduced 36. Two false Maxims of the Schooles 37. Another delusion of the Schooles 38. What natural generation is 39. The Schooles deceived by Aristotle 40. Some ignorances arisen from hence 41. A Disease consisteth of matter and an efficient cause 42. Whatsoever is generated that is made by seminal Ideas 43. All the predicaments are in every Disease 44. The stip of Heathenisme in healing 45. That the definition of a Disease hath been hitherto unknown 46. A Disease is not a Being of the first Constitution yet hath it entred into the account of Nature 47. Wherein Diseases are distinguished from other created things 48. The Error of the Schooles from the subject of Inhaesion of Diseases and very many Absurdities issuing from thence 49. That those Absurdities are not to be connived at by Christians 50. A stubborn ignorance 51. Hunger is not a Disease 52. The Schooles depart from their own Hippocrates 53. Some neglects of the Schooles 54. The rashness of the Schooles 55. That the hurt of action is not to be regarded for the essence of a Disease 65. Whence that fiction sprang 57. The consequent upon a confounding of the cause with the symptome 58. A removal of the Cause doth not of necessity respect a withdrawing of the occasional matter 59. The Schooles being deluded by artificial things delude their young beginners by artificial things 60. How the Seed may differ from its constituted Body 61. A Thirteenth stumbling 62. Some knowledges chiefly true in the Author 63. What a kind of production of a Disease is made by a Blas 64. The efficient Cause in a Disease 65. A Disease pierceth the Life with a formal Light in a point 66. Some differences of efficient Causes 67. An example in the Stone 68. The Stone is not properly a Disease 69. While the Effect hath concluded the occasional efficient there is not the former Disease 70. The products of Diseases neglected by the Schooles are touched at 71. The Error of the Schooles about the Objects of Contrarieties in Diseases 72. Some Arguments against the Schooles that it may jerk them 73. The Products of Diseases Secondary Diseases together with a destinction of Symptomes and Fruits are resumed 47. Weakness or Feebleness what it is 75. An improper division of Diseases by the Organical parts 76. Whence there is a divers action of diverse things 77. From the handy-craft operation of the Fire of Pepper an Escarrhotick and Caustick are Thirteen Conclusions Paradoxes to the Schooles and diverse things are illustrated worthy to be noted 78. The Fire is but little profitable unto the Speculation of Curing 79. Some notable things concerning our heat 80. A various Classis or Order of the Occasions of Diseases 81. Hippocrates is explained with a connivance 82. That which Nature doth once despise that she never afterwards receiveth into favour 83. A Disease is of the matter of the Archeus 84. An explaining of Products 85. Our Nature is ruled by an erring Understanding after that it is corrupted 86. The Schooles again deluded by artificial things 87. To Produce differs from to Generate 88. The Schooles have onely thought of taking away the occasional cause 89. In us there is a Nature standing sitting and lying 90. A decree of Hippocrates is explained with the moderation of that age 91. Anatomy is frequent to excuse excuses in sins 92. The sloathful negligence of the Schooles 93. After what manner death and a disease have become the Beings of Nature since the creation and have received second Causes their producers 94. Two Objections of the Schooles refuted 95. A Guess or Presage from the unseparable goodness THe integrity of Nature being already at first constituted to wit between the Matter the Archeus and the Life or forme of a vital Light with the seminal and vital beginnings the ferments also the authors of transmutations being newly discovered also the elements qualities complexions and miscellanies of these their fights strife and cursary victories being rejected likewise humours and defluxing Catarrhes being banished out of Nature Lastly Flatus's Tartars and the three Principles of the Chymists being banished out of the exercises of Diseases it now remained that the defects and interchangable courses of Nature themselves should be intimately or pithily considered Wherefore before that I make a more profound entrance I have undertaken to prove That Diseases have not onely been unknown in the Schooles in the particular and therefore that their Cure hath radically layn hid but moreover That the very Essence of a Disease hath been hidden in the general Truly it is matter of grief that it hath been so ingeniously elabourated
Heavens And a man by a voluntary Blas and likewise the Archeus by an ideal and seminal Blas stirs up divers alterations But a seminal Agent being inordinate doth through a strange Blas bring forth a Monster which is properly a Disease For although a Disease according to its causes be natural yet in respect of us it ceaseth not to be against nature as well in as much as it began from a forreign Blas as that it carrieth a hostile Blas and raiseth it up from it self And therefore neither doth this Monster generate a Young like it self unless it by serments doth transfer its own seminal contagion and so causeth Diseases in others by accident But as to that which belongs to the efficient cause of Diseases There is in an abortive Birth a certain efficient cause bred within as is a Cataract in the eye the stone in man a Feverish matter the which although it be called by the Schools the efficient immediate and containing cause of a Disease yet it is only the occasional cause of Diseases and external in respect of the life wherein every Disease alway is And therefore neither can such a visible matter not only obtain the reason of a true efficient but neither also can it be of the intrinsecal matter of a Disease it self to be any part thereof It remains therefore the conciting and occasional cause of Diseases Because the efficient and seminal matter if it ought immediately to reach and pierce the vital faculties and so also the life even as also in a point it is altogether necessary that it doth contain a resembling mark of life Even so that also that thing is perpetual in seminal Diseases that a Disease as it is never in a dead carcass so it cannot but be in a living Body Furthermore of efficient causes there is a certain one which is and remaineth external As a sword having obtained an impulsive force maketh a Disease in the divided matter which is called a wound After the like manner is the fretting of the bladder which is made by the Stone For although some external efficients have their own seminal Beginnings whereof they are generated as the Stone yet in respect of the Disease which they produce they want Seeds and therefore are they external and forreign to the Disease it self But internal occasionals have a Seed whereby they nourish the Disease stirred up by them and are also oft-times shut up or finished in their being made As is manifest in a Fever an Imposthume c. In the next place there are occasional efficients which do defile by a continual and fermental propagation As Ulcers the Jaundice c. And there are internal occasionals which do now and then sleep a long time As in the Falling-sickness Gout Madness Asthma Fevers c. Of internal occasional causes also some do uncessantly labour that they may estrange the matter of our Body from the Communion of life Whereto if a Ferment shall come which thing Hippocrates in Diseases calls divine co-meltings of the Body are made But in a Fever the efficient occasional matter according to its double property doth stir up the Archeus unto a propulsion or driving out for the consuming of it self Wherefore neither doth it leave any other product behind it unless a new Idea shall from the Archeus being provoked spring forth by accident In like manner as the Dropsie followeth Fevers c. But let pains drowsinesses watchings weaknessses c. be symptoms and dispositions so also a strange seminal efficient doth beget the Stone and there ceaseth although it thenceforth stirs up troubles every moment and new motions But the product of the Stone are excoriations or gratings off of the skin and new Diseases which are Monsters unlike their Parent For in speaking properly the generation of the Stone is not a Disease and much more the Stone it self which in it self is a natural composition but in respect of us diseasie Wherefore also in the Chamber-pot or Urinal and without the life it is generated by its own causes of putrifaction or stonifying And so it is a monstrous and irregular Disease because it is that which is bred in us by accident and without the life In the next place as soon as the effect or product in its being made hath lost its occasional efficient that product is no longer the very connexion of both causes or the former Disease but it hath its own causes more latter than the connexion of the first causes For so an Imposthume hath brought forth an Ulcer but this weeps a poysonsom liquor this in the next place doth oft-times excoriate changeth the former Ulcer or raiseth up a new one But it nothing pertains unto the causing Ulcer whether its liquor doth afterwards ulcerate or not because there is not in it an effective intention to produce an Ulcer by the liquor Because the corrupt Sanies or liquor it self is the product of the Ulcer causing it which received its effective and seminal intention in its own essence but not for the propagation of a new Ulcer which is therefore unto it by accident The Stone also is the product of its constituting causes which it encloseth and terminates in it self Because the causes thereof being brought unto the end of their effecting do cease in the product and are shut up as if they were buried Although that Stone be an occasional means whereunto the generation of a new Stone happens by growing In the mean time it is to the Stone by accident if it produce other Diseases more cruel than it self yea than death it self But in the Dropsie the efficient Archeus of the Reins in the conception of an Idea begotten by his own perturbation closeth up the Kidneys and a Dropsie is made Yet the former efficient doth not cease even unto the strangling of the person In that Dropsie being caused and the water being produced and dismissed there is not a further intention to produce any other thing After another manner oft-times the product of a Disease seeing it is an in-bred Monster it hath an occasional propagative faculty from the property of the efficient Archeus not enclosed or bound up in the product but free in the Organs of life Whence indeed other products do now and then successively spring forth At least-wise the lavishments of the faculties and life ought not so much to be accounted the products of Diseases as their ordained fruits and symptoms and the periods of these Neither in the mean time is that a Disease by a less priviledge which is produced by a diseasie ferment than was the Disease the Parent of that Product Neither indeed doth it more sluggishly corrupt some vital thing or part by strange efficients being received than that in the primary efficient of whose action the Disease it self is But the Schools do suppose a contrariety of the Disease with health with life and again with the Remedy it self Therefore unto one term they apply many contrary
Fevers For I have seen some hundreds cured of divers Diseases by some Simples hanged on the Body without any removal of the occasional matter To wit Nature being busie about the rest Thirdly the fits of Diseases are oft-times ended the occasional Cause being present and remaining but it is altogether impossible for that to be while the containing and internal matter of the Disease is present In the next place there are Diseases which have no occasional Cause whose own connexed matter is neverthelesse excussed or struck out about the time of their period even as fire out of a flint They not having I say any other occasion of them besides Ideal impressions such as is the Gout falling-Evil Madnesse Asthma c. To wit whose perfect Cure consisteth in the removal of the seminal Character and incorporeal Ferment not likewise in the sequestration of any matter For so a certain odour being drawn thorow the nostrils hath strangled many without a material vapour or moist sent unto the Paunch However therefore they may strive with me they shall discern and confess with me that hitherto none hath come unto the knowledge of Diseases and that there hath been blindness in Healing hitherto Give leave to the truth It hath therefore been sufficient for me to have demonstrated that Diseases do lead their Armie into us by unknow Seminaries and invisible Beginnings according to that antient Maxim That every direction of Sublunary things depends on an invisible World Hence it hath come to pass that although Diseases have oftentimes been silent and have wholly ceased to be under the uncertain Cures of experiments yet nothing hath been hitherto acted from a fore-knowledge of the means and ends in Diseases of nature standing or sitting Because also they do very often of their own voluntary and free accord hastily run unto the end of their race But in Diseases of nature laying along or prostrated nothing hath been heard hitherto besides the despaires of incurable Diseases and the Lamentations of miserable men What things therefore have been assayed before touching the nature of a Disease let them be Prologues unto those things which remain to be by and by spoken concerning Diseases Where I shall professly touch at or reach the causes of all Diseases in the point of Unity Here only handing forth by the way that Diseases do now issue into depraved and impure nature plainly after the same manner wherein they at first began to be framed and issue And the Schooles will not deny that that thing lay hid to the Heathens and their followers Last of all new Diseases have lately happened unto us and antient ones do hereafter scarce any longer answer unto the names and descriptions of our Ancestours Because they have put on strange signes and properties whereby they go masked and deceive Physitians under the precept of the Antients For I conjecture that from thence there will be almost the greatest destruction of Diseases and so also that from hence the mercy of God will be so much the nearer unto Mortals For it hath pleased the most High to have sent Paracelsus in the forepastage who might propose unto the World the more profound preparations of Medicines so far as it was lawful But at this day afterwards he hath vouchsafed also to open the knowledge of Diseases Wherefore I shortly expect another to come whose Schollar I am not worthy to be For neither therefore hath the most High permitted my self to hope for the coming of the same man who hath sent me before as the publisher of his Praise For truly with him every Disease shall equally find its own remedies under the Stone or Harmony of unity together with the speculative knowledge of Diseases and Remedies I intreat the thrice most great and excellent God that he would preserve the same man from the vanity of arrogancy and from sudden Death sorely threatned unto him by hateful men CHAP. LXIII The Dropsie is Unknown 1. At length the Author shewes that there is the same ignorance of the Dropsie as of other Diseases 2. The Distinctions of Names used by the Schooles 3. He must first strive with the Schooles about the difference of occasional Causes 4. The hurtful ignorance of the humour Latex 5. The Errour of the Schooles is shewit with the finger 6. A cruel Remedy 7. A ridiculous Opinion 8. Some absurd Concomitants 9. A History 10. Absurd Anatomy 11. Some remarkable Histories 12. The Root of Grasse is examined 13. A Stumbling of the Schooles that they may fall 14. The Author answers by Eighteen Arguments 15. The occasional Cause is meditated of 16. The occasional cause is proved 17. Paracelsus is taken notice of 18. A most secure Remedy of Mercury described by Paracelsus 19. Some remarkable things 20. The Dropsie is described by its Causes and by Nineteen Positions 21. An Objection of Paracelsus is refuted 22. The poysonous furie of the Archeus of the Reines 23. A Maxime is preserved 24. The carelesness of the Schooles are to be admired at 25. The Author narrowly searcheth into some hidden things 26. The examination of a thing or matter which seems repugnant unto Science Mathematical 27. The difference of the Latex from the Urine 28. The use of the Kidneys being neglected hath brought forth the ignorance of the Dropsie 29. An Explanation of a new Question 30. The furie of the Reines is the Efficient Cause of a Dropsie 31. The manner of making in a Dropsie 32. It is prooved by a voluntary Cure 33. What the abstinence from Drink in a Dropsie may effect 34. Thirst doth in no wise dry up a Dropsie 35. After what manner the abstaining from drink hath cured the Dropsie 36. All thirst ariseth from the the Reines but not from the Liver as from the slender Veines according to the Schooles 37. The ignorance of Causes hath rendred the Dropsie neglected 38. The Vanity of Hydragogals or Medicines drawing out Water 39. A Remedy of the Dropsie 40. A remarkable thing concerning Briony 41. That the government of the Reines hath hitherto remained unknown 42. A Definition of the Dropsie by its Causes and manner of making 43. An examination of the Tympany 44. A History hath proved to the Nostrils what hath been said 45. The vanity of Carminating Medicines 46. Why Paracelsus perswadeth Dungs 47. Mercury is commended 48. A Bastardly and new Dropsie 49. The preparation of Precipitate and of the Arcanal or secretous Remedies of the Dropsie 50. Universal and pacifical secrets do as yet more powerfully operate I Have made a Treatise concerning Feavers and seeing that no seldome Dropsie is the Metamorphosis of malignant Feavers it seemed meet to me to subjoyne the Treatise of the Dropsie to Feavers yet afterwards when I saw that the Dropsie was solved or loosed by the Reins or Kidnyes I doubted whether the Dropsie were rather to be considered after the Treatise of the Disease of the Stone or whether by way of example I should subjoyn it to the
free Faculty that it concludeth with the excellency of a Christian especially of a righteous Man that the Devil hath no right or authority of entring or introducing of his Means Seeing it is all one to him to have hurt by a medium or by himself There is therefore a far other Power of enchantment besides the Devil and therefore a natural and free one over a righteous Man he hath no command But if the Devil should have a free Power of enchanting it should also be alike free to him of killing by a Knife or a Hammer and so none should be free Yea if the Devil could he would not enter within the Skin of a just Man by reason of the divine presence of the Kingdom of Heaven Indeed the Devil doth behold God to be present in a just Man after another manner than any where else which is an everlasting Cause of his hatred toward us neither therefore doth he enter although he could but he goes about as a roaring Lyon Therefore a Witch doth by a natural Being imaginatively form a free natural and hurtful Idea the which Satan cannot form because the forming of Idea's requires the Image of God and a free Power and therefore Witches do operate by a natural virtue no less on the righteous and innocent than on wicked men Yea seeing enchantments do more easily infect Children than those that are of ripe years Women than stout Men A certain natural Power limited in the enchantment is signified against which an opposition is easily made by a warlicke and strong or stout mind The Devil therefore offers Filths or Poysons to his Clients that he may fermentally co-knit their Idea's formed in the imaginative faculty of these Yea he preserves that Ideal Poyson that it be not blown away by the Wind or that being over-covered in the Earth it be not destroyed by a putrifying by continuance But he locally derives that Poyson according to the object which is to be enchanted yet he is no way able to apply them or to bring them into a Man Therefore a Man also doth afterwards dismisse another exsecutive issuing and commanding Mean to enchant a Man which Mean is the Idea of a strong desire For it is a thing unseperable from a desire to be carried about desired Objects In all which the Devil being only a spectator is an assistant in its passage Because in very deed I have already demonstrated that the operative means themselves do belong to man alone For God alone is the Creatour most glorious and to be praised for ever who hath created the Universe of nothing But man as he is the Image of God doth create some Beings of Reason or non-beings in their beginning of nothing and that in the proper Endowment of an imaginative virtue the which notwithstanding are something more than meerly a privative or negative Being For first of all while those kind of conceived Idea's do at length cloath themselves with a Body in the shew of an Image framed by the imagination they are now made Beings subsisting in the middle of that garment wherein they do equally reside throughout its whole and in this respect do become seminal and operative Beings to wit by whom their very own assumed Subjects are straightway wholly directed But this Power is given only to Man Otherwise a seminal virtue for propagation is given to the Earth bruit Beasts Plants c. And likewise a Dog is able by madness to transfer his Spittle into a Poyson because it is proper or natural to his Species The which also is easie to be seen in diverse Poysons of living Creatures But to form Idea's abstracted from their Species and adjacent properties that is granted to none but Man Also by a more full looking into the matter it is seen that if in an Idea formed by the imaginative Faculty there was not the authority of a certain entity or beingness president which was not able to cloath it self or assume a Body yea neither could it be associated by the imaginative Faculty to the Body of the Archeus For truly that which is in it self meerly nothing doth effect nothing hath also negatively a right unto nothing And therefore the conception should perish presently after the conceit neither should it cause an Idea yea if it should be a meer nothing it should presently also wander into nothing But seeing the plantasie doth proceed from a conception unto a formed Idea or Image and from hence unto a seminal Being it follows that the conceit is made this some thing in the imaginative faculty That is that the imaginative faculty doth create a certain seminal Being which is a Beginning dispositive unto the formality of a Being in Power Even as out of a Steel and Flint a spark doth arise from whence there is a flame very greatly operative So the imaginative Faculty doth co-rub it self on an Object by a conception from whence there is an Idea And therefore the act of imagination is not so of nothing that it hath not some foundation in it approaching unto a principiating realty For the imaginative Power hath for this end either Images proper unto it self conformed with the Soul as many do believe or at least-wise Images sometimes present being stirred up by the Memory and re-called again by remembring But I consider of these things not that Essaies or flourishes of Idea's do fore-exist in us before that which is Imaginatively conceived that they may be the conceived Images of a proper name but that they are made by a co-touching of the imagining Power in act that is by the Image of that which formeth and of the Object imagined And therefore the Soul doth nakedly form an Image out of its own Bosom the which unless it do presently bind up in the Archeus it also perisheth and for that very cause becomes barren Neither doth that hinder that in Fevers or Diseasie watchings we do against our will experience the shadows of Images To wit the which foolish shadows of Images do walk up and down without a connexion and discourse before the imaginative Faculty But whatsoever imagined thing doth voluntarily walk up and down yea and bring labours or troubles we being averse thereunto and unwilling thereof that very thing must needs fore-exist as it were shadows laid up before an imaginative force be reflexed upon them But those kind of Idea's are sometimes confusedly imprinted they running back out of the storehouse of the Memory but not that they had fore-existed before every act of imagining And likewise neither doth it prove that because the aforesaid shadows of Idea's are confused oftentimes ridiculous and false therefore neither ever before conceived by a sound imaginative Power For truly Images or Likenesses being once naturally determined and seriously constituted a second third and further Image is brought in upon it and they do fold up and pierce each other whence there is a confusion Otherwise the following Image doth by course destroy the
Ointment is called Sympathetical another Magnetical 3. What Mummy is 4. Phylosophy is immediately reproved by Reasons onely 5. The difference of Law and Phylosophy 6. From an ignorance of the Cause Magnatism is accounted a Devil 7. Who may be the Interpreters of Nature 8. Why Alchymists onely can Interpret Nature 9. He is proud who from an ignorance of the Cause believes a thing to be of the Devil 10. Who are the Devils flatterers 11. Magnetism is no new Invention 12. The Armary or Weapon-unguent 13. The intent aim remedies or ingredients and manner in the Ointment are good 14. Why the Unguent is not unlawful 15. Why it is not Superstitious 16. What Superstition is 17. Why the manner of the Unguent being unknown to the censurer can nothing disprove it 18. What Magnetism is 19. Some Effects of the Load-stone 20. The Magnetical Cure of incurable Diseases is perfect 21. Milk being burned dries up the Dugs 22. Vitriol dies through Magnetism or Attraction 23. Mummy operates from Italy even to Bruxels 24. The Carline Thistle under the shade draws wonderfully 25. Likewise the same Disease in number changeth its Subjects 26. That from Magnetism Flowers are followers of the Sun 27. Mummies which are Philtrous or pertaining to Love how they are attractive 28. That the Arcanum or secret of the Blood is the Load-stone of Alchymists 29. Herbs why and after what sort they are Attractive 30. Asarabacca and the Elder are Magnetical 31. An implicite compact or covenant is the Anchor of the Ignorant 32. Sympathy presupposeth a sense or feeling 33. The Mummy of a Dead Brother being long since impressed on a seat is as yet attractive 43. The Saphire is an imitator of the Unguent in Magnetism 35. The Saphire by touching of one Carbuncle cures others 36. Why the Prelates of the Church wear skie-coloured Rings 37. Man hath his Load-stone 38. An Amulet for the Plague 39. It is of necessity that the same accident should pass from subject into subject 40. Magnetism is an heavenly quality 41. A Thief Robber or Murderer and an honest Man or Woman afford the same Mosse of their dead skull 42. From whence and what the seed of that Mosse is 43. The fruit of the Air. 44. That Usnea or Mosse is a fruit of Fire 45. In that Mosse also is the Back of the Load-stone the scope being changed 46. God in Miracles follows Nature 47. God approves of the Magnetism of the Unguent by Reliques 48. A supernatural Magnetism proves a natural one 49. A lock of that Mosse being incarnate in the fore-head is a defence against a sword but a Thred or rag of the stole of S. Hubbert against the tooth of a mad Dog 50. A rag being incarnate in the fore-head preserves from the biting of a mad Dog for ones whole life time an impression of blood doth the same in the Zinzilla 51. Pepper degenerates into Ivy. 52. How we must judge of Persons 53. Paracelsus the Monarch of Secrets 54. Every thing hath its own particular Heaven 55. From whence inclination is 56. From whence a Disease is Astral in us 57. Whence sick persons have a fore-feeling of the stormes of the times 58. What may cause the flowing and ebbing in the Sea 59. Whence Windes are stirred up 60. The Heaven doth not cause but pronounce things to come 61. The Being of every seed hath the firmament and virtue of its own influence 62. The Vine not the Heaven disturbs Wines 63. Antimony observes an influence 64. The Load-stone directs its self but is not drawn 65. Glass is Magnetical 66. Rosin is Magnetical 67. What Garlick acteth against the Load-stone and why the same thing also concerning Mercury 68. The virtue or power of operation on an Object at a distance is natural even in sublunary things and it is Magnetical 69. Every Creature liveth in its own mode or after its own manner 70. What the Unguent can draw from a Wound at a distance 71. Every Satanical effect is imperfect 72. Why Satan cannot co-operate with our Unguent 73. What may be called the Will and Imagination of the Flesh and of the outward Man 74. A twofold Extasie 75. The Ecstatical power of the Blood 76. Corruption makes that lurking power manifest 77. The Essences of things do not putrifie 78. The putrefaction of Alchymy to what end it is 79. The Cause of Attraction in the Unguent 80. The heart is drawn by the treasure magnetically or after the manner of a Load-stone 81. Necromancy or the Black-Art from whence it is 82. What Man is as a living Creature and what Man is as being the Image of God 83. After what manner the Eagle is allured by the Magnetisme of a dead Carcase 84. How the venal Bloud is drawn in the Unguent unto its own treasure Why Eagles are allured to a dead Carcase magnetically 85. A natural feeling or perceivance and an animal feeling do differ 86. The Effects of Witches are wicked ones 87. The power of a Witch is natural and of what sort that power may be 88. Where the Magical power in man is seated 89. Whether man bears command over all other Bodies 90. Why a man may act per nutum or by his beck or pleasure 91. What the Magical faculty may be 92. The Magical power lyes hid in man after divers manners 93. The inward man is the same with the outward fundamentally but materially diverse 94. What the vital Spirit its knowledge and gift is 95. In a Carcase which dies of its own accord there is no implanted Spirit 96. The divining of Spirits according to Physitians 97. The Soul acts in the Body onely per nutum Magically 98. The Soul acts in the Body onely by a drowsie beck but out of the Body by an excited beck The knowledge of the Apple hinders Science Magical or Wise Knowledge 99. The beginning of the Cabal is drawn from God in Dreams 100. The defect of Understanding is in the outward man 101. What Satan can do in Witches 102. What are the true works of Satan alone 103. Sin hath withdrawn the endowments of Grace and hath obscured the gifts of Nature 104. Whither the pious exercises of Catholicks tend 105. The most powerful effect of the Cabal 106. There are two subjects of any kind of things 107. Man acts as well by his Spirit as by his Body 108. What kind of ray or beam is sent from a Witch into a bruit 109. How a Witch may be bewrayed 110. How a Witch may be bound up in the heart of a Horse 111. The Intention depraves or vitiates a good Work 112. The Seminal virtue is natural Magick 113. Why blood issues out of the dead Carcase when the Murtherer is present 114. Why the Plague is frequent in Sieges 115. Works of Mercy are to be exercised at least in respect of avoiding the Plague 116. Plagues from Revenge and execration are detestable 117. Why Bodies were to be removed from the Gibbet 118. Why Excrements
forth as if also being in wrath it were disturbed or sorely disquieted by the imprinted Image of revenge for indeed there is in the Blood even after Death its Sense of the Murderer that is present and its revenge because it hath also its own phantasie Therefore not Abel himself but his innocent Blood cries notwithstanding unto Heaven for revenge For which Cause in Sieges the Plague for the most part enters as a Companion to wit because the magical Spirit of the more outward Man hath conceived in combates an imprinted Character of revenge but sometimes the Souldiers being through Poverty reduced to desperation and their Wives are almost adjoyned with them in dying and many Misfortunes are by way of Imprecation bequeathed to the more wealthy Souldiers or Officers from whence most strong Impressions are left as Posthumes or Survivers after Death on the Sidereal or Astral Spirit of the dying Man especially of a Woman with Child which Spirit presently after Death wandring about in the Air deviseth meanes or wayes of its own verge rank or order that is spiritual ones of hurting and revenging and then readily commits it self to Execution But such kind of Plagues are outragious sparing none and as it were immediately sent down from Heaven and because they being spiritual do implore help from corporeal Remedies in vain I am silent as to that For neither is it sufficiently safe to express the connexion and agreement of Mummies betwixt each other for from thence hath issued the whole Necromancy of the Antients For that reason also God in the Law forbad the Bodies of those that were hanged even of Heathens to be left on the Gibbet and the Sun should not go down upon them Thou wilt answer that the Plague of Sieges ariseth by reason of the manifold Filths of Excrements But on the contrary Curriers Tanners or Leather-dressers Emptiers of Jakes's and those who spend their time about Glew to be made by the Putrefaction of Skins are at hand for all of them so far are they from being subject to the Plague for the most part are long lived wonderful is God in the Spirit of the Microcosm Dost thou desire to know perhaps why the Blood of a Bull is Poysonous but not that of his Brother the Oxe Indeed the Bull in time of Killing murmurs against his Executioner and imprinteth on his Blood a Mark and potent Character of revenge But if it happen that in slaying of an Oxe through one stroake he hath become furious and hath the longer continued in the same Fury he leaves his Flesh but unwholesom unless first the disturbance being pacified he as idle and shut up by himself be left to return to himself by fasting The Bull therefore dies more excelling in revenge than other Animals and therefore his Fat but not his Blood unless the humane Blood in the Unguent be conquered by the forreign Tincture of the Bulls Blood is altogether necessary for the Weapon Salve if the Weapons the Authors of the Wounds shall not be besprinkled with the Blood of the Wounded And if by the besmearing of the same Weapons a perfect or safe Cure be to be expected truly the Usnea or Moss together with its fellow Ingredients are not sufficient that a Cure should be made without fresh Blood had out of the Wound for a more violent Efficacious or taurine Impression is required and an aereal Communication of the Honey of Flowers From hence therefore it is sufficiently manifest that the Efficacy of the Unguent is not to be imputed to the Concurrence of Satan who also could Cure the Wound without Honey and Bulls Blood but to the communion of natural Qualities with the derived Post-hume revenge left in the concrete or composed Body of Blood and Fat. Our Adversaries will prate rejoycing that the Power of the Magnetical Unguent could scarce have been proved but by a Witch by Satan and the spiritual Magick of the invisible World which is a suppositious or imaginary Science plainly of no weight or worth and a damnable Errour Notwithstanding not any sinister perverting of the matter in handling but the gross Ignorance of others and the miserable Condition of humane Frailty hath required that thing which more promptly inclines to Evil knowes Evil and is more readily taught by Evil than by Good But certainly whatsoever we have here alleaged concerning Satan and Witches it is not that from thence others should hope for a conformity or suitable resemblance of the Oyntment with Witches for neither are the spiritual Virtues of the Unguent and the Phantasie of the Blood stirred up by Satan as a Guider or Enforcer But this is that I aim'd at to wit that there doth inhabit in the Soul a certain Magical Virtue given her of God naturally proper and belonging unto her inasmuch as we are his Image and Engravment that in this respect also she acts after a peculiar manner that is spiritually on an Object at a distance and that much more powerfully than by any corporeal helps because seeing the Soul is the more principal part of the Body therefore the Action belonging unto her is spiritual magcial and of the greatest Validity That the Soul doth by the same Virtue which was rendred as it were drowsie through the knowledge gotten by eating of the Apple govern and stir her own Body but that the same magical Faculty being somewhat awakened is able to act also out of her Prison on another distant Object only by her Beck conveighed thereunto by Mediums for therein indeed is placed the whole Foundation of natural Magick but in no wise in Blessings Ceremonies and vain Superstitions but that all these wicked observances were brought in by him whose endeavour it hath alwayes been every where to defile all good things with his Tares But we do not tremble at the name of Magick but with the Scripture interpret it in a good-sense Yet we have granted that it may be indifferently employed to a good or evil Intent to wit by the use or abuse of that Power And so that under that Word we understand the most profound inbred knowledge of things and the most potent Power for acting being alike natural to us with Adam not exstinguished by Sin not obliterated but as it were become drowsie therefore wanting an Excitement Therefore we shew that Magnetism is exercised not indeed by Satan but by that which belongs not to Satan and therefore that this Power which is co-natural unto us hath stood abusively dedicated to Satan as if he were the Patron thereof that the Magical Power doth as it were sleep in us since Sin and therefore that it hath need of a stirrer up Whether that Exciter be the holy Spirit by Illumination as the Church mentions to have happened in the Eastern Magi or Wise Men of the East and which at this day sometimes happens in others or Satan doth also for some foregoing submissive Engagement stir up the same in Witches And in such as these the
on in opposition to the Scripture CHAP. CXIII The Tabernacle in the Sun THe Schools deny the Sun to be fervently hot For they will that they also should herein be believed without demonstration Because they think that a man is generated by a man and the Sun And therefore that it becomes Nature least if the Sun should be of a fervent heat he should consume himself his Inn and all neighbouring things into hot Embers For seeing he is of a huge bigness and also heats afar of why should he not commit a cruel outrage if he should be fervently hot in himself For how should he generate a man and also all sublunary things As if first of all the Sun being exceeding hot the substance of the Heavens should therefore be burnable And that it should not be more meet to admit the Sun to be hot without nourishment than to deny all the Senses to wit that the effect doth exist being produced by no proper Cause To deny I say heat indeed which makes hot with so great a force and at so great a distance Chiefly because according to the proportion whereby we do the more approach unto the direct beams of the Sun by so much we meet with the greater heat I believe this fear of the Schools to be vain because the Light was made by the Word which contracted the whole Light into two Globes That the Sun should be the Light of the Day and the Moon of the Night The lightsome Globe of Sun is said to exceed the Diameter of the Earth and Water 160. times Out of which Globe of the Sun the beams of Light are dispersed as well above as beneath himself on the whole Universe And they most thorowly enlighten all traseparent bodies but dark or thick bodies in their superficies onely But I have shewn that the beams of the Sun being united by a Glasse are true fire shining in its properties For whether the beams are united or not that is to the Sun by accident And therefore if the beams of Light being connexed are true fire and do burn the Sun also as the very Center of the connexed beams shall of necessity be most exceeding hot For the Fire of the Sun persisteth without nourishment by the command of God Also seeing the fire in the middle of the crest wherein the Sun-beams are united subsisteth without nourishment Kitchin fire only bears before it a Light subsisting by it self without the intervening of the Sun Yet in that thing being different from the Sun that it ought to be nourished that it may subsist But the Sun because he is of a heavenly Nature wants not food because he is void of Usuries and appointed of God that he may thus burn The Sun therefore is a most fervent fire the principal Center in Nature of created Lights Peradventure when at sometimes dayes shall be at their full and the harvest of things shall be ripe the watery vision of the Heavens the Waters I say which are above the Heavens through a divine virtue shall assume a ferment and the seed of a combâ—â—â—ble matter and it shall rain fire from Heaven and the Stars shall fall For the Sun by the command of God breaking open the floodgates and bolts of his Globe shall burn the Heavens as well those which are nigh as those which are very far of and shall consume the World into hot embers For the Heavens shall be changed shall wax old and shall at sometimes melt like wax And the Stars shall fall down on the Earth not indeed whole because they are for the most part bigger than the Globe of the Earth but the parts of the Stars that are burnt shall make an Abyss of fire upon the Center Therefore the Sun is a fire in himself and being nigh but by how much further his beams are dispersed throughout the Universe they shall give the more apt nourishing warmths unto the seeds of things because the Sun doth suggest onely a general and common Light which is fit for exciting and promoting the seeds of things and for this cause it is vital But not that it conferreth Life and that which gives Essence to the seeds of things In Caire of Aegypt Eggs are nourished by the fire of a furnace and Chickens are abundantly bred without the nourishing of any Hen yet the fire of the furnace neither gives nor hath a seminal virtue neither doth it burn the Eggs nor because it nourisheth doth it cease to be burningly hot in its Fountain So the beams of the Sun being dispersed throughout the Universe are no longer fire but a simple Light Kitchin fire therefore doth after some sort dispose it self according to an emulation of the Sun To wit it enflames burns and consumes things that are near it but from far it onely heats and at a very far distance onely shines Yea neither is it reckoned true fire unless it be hot in the highest degree unless it centrically stick fast with its connexed beams in the crest of Light But it differs in nobleness from the Light of the Sun that it is not of the first created things not of an heavenly disposition not subsisting without fewels nor therefore is it universal The Almighty therefore as he hath created the Sun a singular thing so he hath created as it were one only Sun in every species of sensitive Creatures which should suffice even unto the end of the World and should propagate them thenceforward not indeed being hot in the highest degree but that it subsisting by the poynts of dispersed beams may not cover to ascend unto further moments of degrees Therefore in the smallestminutes of specifical Lights a formal Light of species or particular kinds is restrained by a Divine virtue which hath tied up every species unto a particular moment of Lights general indeed in respect of the Sun yet made individual by the co-ordination of my Lord For the Sun of Species's shall endure for ever no otherwise than as the Species themselves shall But because it doth not subsist but in individuals therefore the sun of Species is daily slidable in individuals even at every Moment unless it be nourished as it were by a continual fewel Therefore the light of Life hath some similitude with the Sun and a part agreeable unto Kitchin fire To wit in this that our Sun ought to have vital Spirits for an uncessant Fewel and those capable of an administring to a depending Light that is to follow â—â—ot indeed that the Spirits do in themselves and of themselves heat any more than the beams of the Sun the which the light of the Sun being withdrawn do presently die from heat and light Nevertheless they bear a mutual resemblance with the Sun because they seem to propagate an enflaming and subsist centrally in the heart For when the Schools took notice that the heart did voluntarily and of it self hasten into a cold dead Carcass and that the Spirits being dissolved or spent it indeed
Tragedy of the world would again be hidden at leastwise I suppose that there will be other far more horrible Plagues than ever heretofore and against which all Antidotes will be vain For truly our Plague at this day doth not affect bruit beasts But in the last dreggishness 〈…〉 they shall destroy wild beasts also yea fishes and trees and there shall be Plagues but not an ordinary Plague otherwise this should be an uncertain sign of the future destruction For there shall be Plagues from the hand of God from the powring out of the Vials as the Revelation hath it But against those Plagues there is not to be a Buckler in Nature I promised therefore unto my self before I attempted to write these things that the Plague that was curable even unto that face of times and a true remedy thereof was to be fetched out of the Grave of Hippocrates or rather from above from the Father of Lights I will declare what I have learned for the profit of Posterity CHAP. III. The Heaven is free from as also innocent of our Contagion or Infection NOt the least comfort hath appeared unto the Soul that is earnestly desirous of knowledge or unto the miserable and forsaken sick from the writings of the Antients First of all it is of Faith that the Stars are for signs times or seasons daies and years nor that man can any way alienate the offices of the Stars or decline them unto other scopes That the Heavens are the works of the Lords hands that God created not Death and therefore that neither doth the Heaven contain Death a disease poyson discords corruptions or the effective cause of these For truly they are ordained not for the cause but for the signs of future things and only for the changing of seasons or Meteors and for the succession of daies and years The office therefore of the Heavens is not to generate evils to cause poysons to disperse or influx them to sow wars and to stir up deaths Because the heaven cannot exceed the bounds of its own appointment the heavens declare the glory of God for whose honour and the uses of ungrateful humanity it was created And therefore it rather contains in it life light joy peace and health with an orderly and continued motion no curse is read to have been communicated to the heaven after the transgression of Adam nor execration to be infused into it as neither a spot to have been sprinkled thereon The earth indeed brings forth thistles and thorns because under the Moon is the Copy-hold of the Devil and Death because of sinners the Empire of discords and interchanges The earth hath become a Step-mother unto us she is therefore the vale of miseries being great with-child of the corruption and fardle of sinners because it hath pleased God that there should be no other way unto rest but by tribulations yea it behoved Christ to suffer and so to enter into glory not indeed anothers but his own because he was willing to take on him the form of a servant I belive the Word of God but in no wise the vanities of the Sooth-sayers of Heaven and I judge that they who write that the Plague doth arise from the heaven do stumble as being hitherto deceived with the errours of the Gentiles The Heavens declare the glory of God and the Firmament sheweth the handy-works of the Lord The Heavens therefore shew a sweet or bitter thing to come but they do not cause that sweet or bitter yea neither is it lawful for us to call bitter things evils for God hath directed all things to a good end Therefore the heaven declares future things unto us but doth not cause them and the stars are only unto us for the signs of things to come and therefore there shall be signs in the Sun Moon and Stars The Stars also cause the successive alterations of seasons in the ayr waters and earth only by a native Blas From whence the changes and ripenesses as well in fruits as in the body of man especially in a sick one do consequently depend I understand also that the stars are in this respect for times or seasons unto us by their motive and alterative Blas For neither therefore are the Heavens Sorcerers or the Cocters of poysons the incensers of wars c. I knowingly consider them to be altogether as the alterers of successive interchanges in Elementary qualities as to the interchangeable courses of Stations Wherefore it happens that the sick aâ—e diversly altered in the promotion and maturity of seeds conceived in them because our vital faculties do stir up every their own Blas according to the rule or square of the most general motion of the stars not indeed as of violent leaders but of foregoing or accompanying ones For the Book of the Revelation doth not attribute even any the least punishing power unto the Heavens but the same to be distributed by God among the Angels and the which therefore are called smiting and ministring spirits performing the commands of the Judge Therefore I shall not easily believe that the Plague owes its original unto the importunate or unseasonable changes of times the which also Eudoxus according to Fernelius perceived And I cannot be induced by any reason to believe that the Heavens do give growth form figure virtues or any thing else which proceedeth from the Being of seeds For the Herb was potent in a flourishing seed even before the stars were born so that although there should be no stars yet every seed by the power of the Word is of it self naturally for producing of its own constituted body and against the will of the stars and stations of the year yea and of climates many seeds and forreign fruits are produced by Art Wherefore the Epidemicks of Hippocrates illustrated with the Commentary of Galen do also contain very many things unworthy the name of the Author not only because it attributes diseases to the stations or seasons of the year and not every one to their own seeds and divers infirmities to one root that is unto the first qualities of the ayr and so coupleth divers effects with unjust causes but because they contain very many absurdities of trifles For I am wont in this thing to compare Judiciary Astrologers unto Empericks who having gotten an oyntment powder or any other medicine extoll the same to be prevalent well nigh for all diseases and also for many other So many of those being not content with the shewing or betokening message of the Stars constrain them to be the workmen Deasters and absolute Patrons of all fortune and misfortune to be conscious or witness-bearers and the workers of life and death to come Lastly to be the Councellors and Judges of thoughts and questions asked If therefore they do not contain death wars poysons nor the Plague verily neither shall they be able to rain down such scourges upon us seeing they cannot give those things which they have not do not contain
do not cause nor generate For a messenger the Preacher of Wars is not the General or cause of these For if Trigantius the Jesuite tell truth the Plague is unaccustomed unto the most wide and whole Empire of the Chinois and never there seen over which notwithstanding the same Saturn and the same Mars bears rule and that alike powerfully as over us Again if in some Lands the Plague rageth at a certain term of time and returns at fore known stations wherein notwithstanding the Plague in times past was a very great stranger surely it should follow either that those Provinces do not lay under the influences of the Stars or not under the same influences as in times past or that those Plagues are adulterous ones or at leastwise as I deem that they do not proceed from the heaven to wit since there are no consultations of Stars in the same place which do yearly observe set daies of their assemblies For what if the plague in one City destroy the greatest part of mortals truly all providence of the Magistrate shall be in vain if the Neighbouring places that are scituated under the same Meridian or corner of the heaven cannot be preserved untouched And seeing the influx and in-beaming of the stars is most universal how mad soever others may be yet it is not to be believed that plagues can have an influence from the stars of heaven unto designed places Cities and Villages For if the Plague it self should be a pestilent influx of the stars or a Gas sent down from above unto us or a meer naked quality descending through the ayr which comes unto us without that body it shall also be either conceived in the stars or generated in the ayr Neighbouring on us If the first of these it should of necessity be that all the corners of the world should be infected at once unless we suppose a Pipe or Trunk to be directed in the ayr and thorow the ayr from the heaven even unto us and that an unmoved one by which also and not otherwise the pestiferous ayr bringing down the smoakinesses and defilements of the stars is conveyed unto us For since the distance of the stars from the earth is of many thousands of Diameters of the earth it is not to be thought that any smoakiness of a star can reach safe unto this Center and lesse unto some Province thereof but that it can infect the whole compass of the Earth and Sea with a universal gore at once it supplying the space and room of one the least Center or Point Therefore if the Earth be like unto the least point hitherto have those things respect which I have elsewhere spoken concerning the Region of the ayr through which neither winds nor dew or rain do ever run down nor Meteors do play their Tragedies And much less doth any thing flow down perpendicularly out of the depth of the heaven or if it should rain down some Decades or ten-fold numbers of the age of Nestor would not be sufficient before that it could come as a stranger unto us But if the stars do at least dismisse from them a meet and naked quality that quality shall even by so great an interval of place and entertainments degenerate and fail divers times and through the journeying of some yeares and so before it can come unto us it shall have nothing of its former likeness neither could such a quality coming unto us from far infect a certain place unless it be brought by an Angel as it were in a box but if by an Angel now the natural question ceaseth and we vainly make the heavens to be the bringers of the Plague and Sorcerers if an Angel himself be the Plague-carrier who otherwise can bring far more readily the pestilent poyson nigh the earth or into us than that he should bring that with him from the pure and guiltlesse heavens In the next place a pestiferous quality sliding down from heaven if it shall not descend at once in the enclosed air it shall either pass from subject into subject which the Peripateticks and modern Schools refuse or through a thousand shapes of it self and those so often degenerated shall come down from its original unto us as wholly a stranger and so the poyson of the heavens shall be frustrated But if it be supposed to be generated in the Clouds nigh the earth therefore the heaven being free and guiltless is falsly accused For truly I have shewn elsewhere that the heavens do operate only by a motive local Blas and an alterative one of heat and cold but in no wise by poysons because they are those thigns which are only formal properties of sublunary bodies and the fermental ones of some seed I grant indeed willingly that a fiery weapon is now and then seen a fiery weapon to have fallen out of the ayr being darted unto some certain place and that the plague hath sometimes followed thereupon But that prodigy in the first place slideth not out of the deep bosom of the heaven but out of a more nigh Cloud Perhaps Satan the companion of Thunder le ts fly such a weapon where he knows the plague to be sorely threatned from whence he of old snatcht the honours of God unto himself but that weapon is not therefore the cause of the plague otherwise surely at every plague a weapon should from a like necessity be darted forth especially because it is the property of fire to consume the plague and poysons but not to generate them Therefore fire doth never naturally signifie the plague whose destruction it containeth and therefore such a fiery weapon is a most rare monstrous sign sent down by spirits for terrour unto him who shall rest back that weapon for the amendment of his life and truly it is impertinent to our purpose and an exceeding frivolous thing if from thence we note the heaven to be the bringer of the plague For any monstrous signs are uncertain and unfit for the foundation of medicine But if an age or length of time should thrust this pestilent ware into our bosome for so it hath been believed hitherto and they have badly deceived our Gentile Schools with an Epidemical name to what end are there so many writers or what means have been hitherto devised against those importunate influences of the stars For who hath hitherto hindred the marrow from increasing in the bones after the manner of the Menstrues therefore they have falsly accused the heaven Let it seem sufficient for the Schools to have made the heaven the Author of the plague and to have buried their own knowledge under the silence of despair only from the perswasion of ignorance and terrour of fear Therefore the accusing of the heaven doth every where involve a manifest and necessary ignorance But at length after that they have contracted all the strength of their Studies they perswade that places are to be avoided wherein the Plague-stroaks are vigorous that meats full
of good juice must be used that a good fire must be made and that any kind of filths must be avoided and that Triacle must often be used whereinto when enough simples have not yet been cast every one may heapingly add new Genturies or Hundreds at pleasure thereunto and so that is reckoned the most excellent Antidote which containeth the collected heap of a thousand simples and they hope that one of a thousand may perhaps help at leastwise that it will not hurt For those are Magistral Antidotes or medicines against the poyson so that if in the mean time the matter shall the less luckily succeed according to desire at leastwise he who hath compiled so many the most select simples together and those commended by Renowned Authors is free from blame they being badly mindful of their own lyes prescribe also grateful suffumigations of vinegar and Odours of Spices as if such feeble remedies could prevail against their own principles that is against poysons diffused from the heaven throughout the whole air For if by reason of those odours either the beard or nail of the hand or lastly the marrow ceaseth to grow it might infuse some confidence of hope that the pestilent seed might be overcome by the wan remedy Therefore if there were any causative reason of the plague in the heavens that by a stronger right should belong unto man over the heavens if a wise man shall have dominion over the stars but not the stars over a wise man For a wise man is able in some respect to change the significations of the stars although not the motion of the stars But that thing is as greatly impertinent in this place as is the false accusation of the heavens For truly if the stars should causatively work their own effect on us verily a wise man might be able to mitigate it and Physitians do by their accusing of the heaven falsly endeavour to excuse themselves for an impossibility There is not I say any action of the stars on us besides that of a Meteor for Astrologers feign many things which they have known to be false yea and impossible the which in the speculations of the Planets are on either side easie to be seen notwithstanding neither Nature nor therefore medicine to admit of the rule of falshood as neither of the suppositions of Science Mathematical Therefore lastly if a popular plague should slide out of the heaven it should of necessity be that the heaven should resist and hinder also according to the same root and not as to the latter product and so the whole Art of Healing should prescribe nothing but altogether vain remedies for the prevention of the plague But the Schools commit not themselves unto so great wickedness and they more willingly rush unto impossibilities that they may make a Buckler for their own ignorance and may send any ignorant drinkers and Cup-shot tormentors of mortals against the plague At leastwise it is manifest from hence that they do not hitherto assault the causes of the plague before but behind and that they have had respect only unto the effects thereof and so that whatsoever hath been spoken concerning its prevention hath in it the meer deceivings of their Neighbours For they imitate the Countryman endeavouring to exhaust a Brook where it hastens into the Sea nigh the shoar but not by stopping up the Fountain Therefore either they do not believe the plague to arise from the heaven or their remedies are full of despair and deceit Furthermore if the heaven as it were an angry Parent as it pleased Paracelsus to dream takes notice of our crimes and is defiled with our impieties and therefore as a Revenger wounds us with its darts and so miserably kills us Certainly it shall either be some Deaster or sensitive living creature which arrogating the office of God unto it self and envying the office of the smiting Angels teacheth us that envy is a Celestial thing as also the revenge of the creature on man But why doth it note our crimes if in taking notice thereof it be defiled and how shall it be defiled if sin be a meer non-being how shall that Archer perceive a meer non-being how shall it judge of the departure of mans will from God for if it be angry with us and inflamed for revenge by reason of that nothing how shall it not rather be angry with us when it shall perceive that we imitate its own actions and do stop or prevent them to wit while the heaven being appeased we form the plague in us by our own terrours and it should far more harshly bear it that man against the will of the heaven should heal the plague that he overcomes his own wounds and prevents or hinders its offices in despite of the heaven Again if the Plague could by an orderly motion of the stars be declaratively and as it were yearly foretold even as I have already before declared the informations of others concerning Aegypt but our offences want a set orderly day number and measure For sins depend on the heart of man and a free will therefore that cause is not beseeming for its effect and a sign thereof But Divines deny the future effects of free-will to be fore-known by the stars and so neither that knowledge nor understanding dwells in the heavens and inanimate bodies Therefore neither indeed do they denounce the plague wars c. to come from sins fore-known unto them Be it sufficient that the plague is denounced not as for an inciting cause but because it hath so pleased the Eternal That every guilty person may examine himself and amend neither is there need of feigning belyed naughtinesses and ill wills to be in Saturn or Mars if our sins are the effectual cause of contagion and so Astrologers and medicinal Diviners contradict themselves For neither otherwise should it be of necessity to feign an Executioner to be angry with the guilty person although he kills the same I pray why shall our iniquities rather provoke Saturn and Mars than the Moon which is neerer by some thousand miles Why should Saturn who is most remote be a more potent Revenger of our crimes than the Moon For if any star were pestilential certainly it should chiefly be that which bears rule over the night rest and reducement into the first matter In the next place if the plague doth invade us as a punishment or be sent by Angels his messengers the movers of the Orbs Surely none shall be natural and the prescriptions and rules of the Schools as well for prevention as for curing shall voluntarily acquiesce The heaven therefore is a presager of fore-shewing a thing to come and it affords signs of the plague which God reveals to his own But the heaven is not the effective principle of a present plague as neither the fore-knower thereof For truly otherwise as well the heaven as the directive Angelical intelligency should erre as oft as it should punish a
guiltless child with the plague for a sinner neither should the habitations of the godly be ever subject to the plague and God should appoint an unjust Deputy which should cruelly kill the good with the plague which should not lay hold on the wicked He should kill the good I say for sins that entred not into their thoughts or at leastwise from hence it is manifest that the plague hath its own cause in nature At length if the plague were the off-spring of Coelestial light surely that should alwayes rise up in an instant seeing the aspects of the stars are by the minutes of a moment Wherefore the plague before that its poyson being bred from elsewhere it could come down unto us it should first be dispersed with the wind should be well washed with the first be-sprinkling of rain and be appeasingly allayed with the colds of the night and Clouds before it should descend unto us and also those Cities should be punished which had least offended and then that also in Paracelsus is ridiculous that the Arching plague and noter of our crimes should inhabit in the Sun wherein God hath placed his own Tabernacle as it were an angry and revenging parent by reason of the contagion of impurity received Yet that Saturn and Mars he being unconstant so saith in another place were the revengers of crimes Therefore after what manner soever it be taken providence suffers the injury of the punishing heaven and God blasphemy and so a deceit of Paganisme is included whether they shall say that the pestilent poyson is stamped by the stars or sent from them for the revenge of crimes or also that it is framed by the natural course of the stars through yearly elementary qualities or extraordinary or indirect and monstrous ones directed by Satan They on both sides dash themselves on the Atheisme of Pagans For neither hath the evil Spirit that power on us which the Gentiles suppose neither is there any other Guardian read to be in a plague sent from God beside Angels of light and so it is to have departed from the truth of the holy Scriptures to have attributed a power of generating the plague unto the stars or the devil especially where the dispute concerning a natural plague and not that sent from the hand of God comes in place and where it is to be enquired concerning remedies causes and obstacles or preventions For first of all oft-times the plague begins from one only individual to wit from a guitless child and so the heavens had for a purging satisfaction of this child smitten the whole Family Town and at length the Province to wit the innocent for the wicked after the manner of an Apothecary that Substitutes quid pro quo that is any thing instead of any thing Again while the plague creeps by its contagion from one unto another at leastwise the poyson shall be no longer handed forth by the heaven or a wound inflicted by the heaven in the second third and tenth person as if the whole anger or revenge of the heaven were stirred up through the fault of the first guiltless person Again the plague that is conceived only from the terrour of one that is fearful since in the most special kind for no other actually existeth in individuals it differs not from any other which should be sent from heaven through the poyson of the stars Therefore neither shall there be any natural plague at all from the heaven if it be conceived from elsewhere by the naked image of terrour nor that its original stands in need of the heaven For after another manner one individual is not constituted by parents differing in the whole predicament For if the most High created the Physitian and medicine from the earth and the plague be formed by the stars I at least fear least all future medicine should be unfit for so great a poyson But at leastwise the Lord could not erre in that he sent medicine from the earth and not from the heaven And moreover the Books of the Kings and Revelation attribute the plague to holy Angels which is the mark-pledge of Divine Revenge neither is it lawful to go back unto the evil spirits and stars as the beginnings of pestilent poysons In the next place Paracelsus writeth that the plague is beamed forth from the heaven as it were from an Archer only into three places to wit behind the ears under the arm-pits and into the groyns Wherefore the plague arisen in other members shall either not be the plague or of another kind and of unlike causes than that which should be the wound of the heaven is or next the heaven hath erred in its darting or at leastwise Paracelsus hath rashly erred through boldness Therefore if other Forreign causes do frame the plague without the help of the heavens it must needs be that these are deprived of their possession and estimation and that the heaven ought hereafter to attempt the controversie by way of Petition If in the next place the plague be a wound therefore it is from external things suscepted or undergone not a Fever or disease consisting of an appointed seed and by consequence whatsoever of Diaphoretick or transpirative medicines they have decreed for a succour of the plague let it be false and deceitful and Incarnative and Vulnerary medicines shall be more fit and a Diaphoretick for prevention is most exceeding vain that any one may not be wounded by the Coelestial Archer For there should be but a sluggish Buckler of a sudoriferous medicine against an arrow so poysonsom being darted so powerfully from so far in a straight line and with so great leisure and being most securely led the weapon proceeding through so many thousand miles of Stages For it became Paracelsus to have known that the Carbuncle Glandules or Kernels Buboes and bladdery swellings behind the ears are not indeed the Pest it self yea neither that they are any way wounds but signs the product and effects of the Pest For because that also some signates of the Plague are frequently not seen but after death Wherefore that heavenly Slinger should as oft as he wounded send in not the plague but the effect of the plague and he had come too late as to inflict the plague or wound on those parts in him who had already before died by the plague For a certain one being continually provoked to vomit with headach dies under continual faintings within seven hours from the invasion of the sickness But presently about the time of death he is tinged above the Navil even unto the throat-bones with a frequent mark or black print of the stroak For curiosity sake since an Anatomist was wanting I dissected him and found the mouth of his stomach now cauterized with a black Escharre Lastly the black marks or tokens are not wounds even as neither are the Glandules little bladders Buboes c. Therefore at least the heaven doth not wound in the plague the which if
they are opened thou Paracelsus callest Ulcers and distinguishest against wound and thy own self Too fabulously therefore is the heaven defiled with out corruption and is a revenger of these injuries even as also a Notary and wounder of our crimes That was an invention of Heathenism in times past that it might blasphemously extol the heavens and starry Gods into a worship Four Elements also are blasphemously and foolishly brought in by Paracelsus who was wont to laugh at the Relolleous quality of them especially because in the original of our medicine a Quaternary or four-fold number of Elements is taken away as well in the nature of the Universe as in the constitution of mixt bodies For how ignorantly is a Quaternary of Elements suited with the aforesaid Ternary of emunctory places For Paracelsus having obtained Arcanums plainly heroical for the supplanting of diseases and being destitute of medicinal Science descending from the Father of Lights and of his own accord assuming to himself the Title of the Monarch of secrets and from this boldness invading the principality of healing treated of the Plague as it were of an enemy unknown unto him Therefore he ascribeth the Plague sometimes to the heaven at another time to the Sun and sometimes to the elements alone and oft times to Pythonisses or women of a prophecying spirit witches and to spirits as well those infernal as elementary Deasters being for the most part forgetful of the doctrine of his own Paramire where he proposeth plagues of the being of nature of the being of poyson as if any Plague could exist void of poyson or as if some poyson were not natural of the being of the Stars as though the Stars were above nature or without it of the being of witches these he attributes unto Incubi or devils in mens shapes hobgoblins sylphs c. he distinguisheth them also against the being of the Stars least peradventure witches may be the wise men which are said to bear rule over the Stars and of a God-like being and he there forgat his own and an imaginative being the remembrance whereof notwithstanding he ought to have had before the rest unlesse he had rather that an imaginative being cannot cause disease or that it is no where vigorous but in the possession of Witches And moreover as I judge a plague sent from the hand of God to despise the remedies of nature so also if there were any proper unto devils or witches which is not a thing to be believed yet at least it should in no wise owe its original unto the heaven For otherwise if there were a witch Plague it would be far more cruel than accustomed ones are by reason of an external poyson being adjoyned and a readinesse of its acting speedied and enlarged through the wrath of the evil spirit P. Boucher a Minorite Frier in his oriental or Eastern pilgrimages tels as an eye-witnesse That although Egypt be otherwise exceeding subject to the Plague yet that every year before the inundation of Nile a singular dew falls down which they call Elthalim at the coming whereof as many as lay sick of the Plague are readily and universally cured and are preserved as healthy there from by the same dew For if this be true neither hath it been sufficiently searched into by Prince Radzvil yet not any thing can be drawn from thence whereby we may know that the Plague is naturally caused by the heaven since from thence at least it follows that some meteors are healthy but others hurtful to some which none hath hitherto denied For although the Sun the day before the inundation of Nile returns every year almost unto the same place yet the same stars do not return as companions together with him And then that dew is not the off-spring of the heavens or stars nor of a meteorical Blas of the heaven but the day before the inundation of Nile the more high land of Aethiopia being more hot and southern was long since overflown which sends forth a great vapour from it filled with Nitre for the whole water of Nilus is nitrous which vapour is not only resolved into a dew the dew elsewhere weepes Honies Tereniabin or the fatnesse oftwood hony found in good quantity in the summer months with a manna-ie Being and Laudanum being as it were gummy things and among us the May dew daily abounds with a sugary salt and accompanies Nile running but it well washeth the whole aire of Aegypt even by moistening it and refresheth the bodies of the sick not much otherwise than as a shower doth the earth after long driths At leastwise I being admonished by the holy scriptures despise the sooth-sayers of heaven Therefore if the heaven be the cause of a destroying or devouring Plague it ought likewise to be the cause of every other Plague Because the same Being in the Species obtaines the same constitutive causes from which the Species it self recieveth its identity or samelinesse Therefore I constantly deny that a pestilent poyson is bred by the heaven or dismissed from the stars but all Plagues which are not singularly sent from God for a scourge are either endemical ones or proper to a Country or framed by a certain terrour But those which are borrowed as being drawn in from contagion do follow their own seed and ferment But an endemical Plague although it be drawn in from without occasionally yet it is not to be reckoned for the plague unlesse the terrour of our Archeus do first frame a poysonous Idea of sore fear conceived from the endemical Being even as shall by and by be manifested I deny moreover that any Plague is endemical For although the aire may myire the bodies of many unto diverse confusions of putrefaction yet it is in no wise the original cause of a Postilential poyson For as all putrefaction differs from the Plague so in like manner also the poyson of the Plague differs from any corruption that is the daughter of a thereor The which unlesse it be rightly and perfectly known the nature of the Plague also shall not be able to be any way understood and much lesse a radical healing of the same promoted For a conclusion of this Chapter I will adde an argument which is drawn from the bank of rivers For I have seen those who that they might avoyd houses infected with the Plague departed from Antwerp others who fled from the Smalpocks through which two years before they as yet carried about with them a face he potted with the scats thereof which were smitten in the river Scalds it self with the diseases which they presumed they had avoyded and had withdrawn themselves as healthy I remember also that a certain girle was cured by me of the Leprousy at Vilvord who when shew is now accounted to have been whole for the space of seven weeks and returned to Antwerp she presently felt in the River it self the Leprousie to bud again upon her throughout her whole body Who at
is not more hurtful then the Plague yet they beware of and defend themselves from wild beasts England also hath hitherto wanted the proper name of the Pâ—st and the which from times past it nameth Plaga the Plague or stroake As to what pertains to the causes thereof the Greeks first and afterwards the Arabians and whosoever have dedicated themselves to either of these two do collect the Pest or Plague into two causes The first whereof they name Catarctical or fore-going causes but the latter connexed conjoyned containing and immediately accompanying ones and indeed when they saw the body of man by its individuals and places of its habitations to differ in great variety they devised a universal cause for the plague to wit they being seduced by Astrologers blamed the heaven that by its hurtful light and motion it be sprinkles the air with a cruel gore the poyson whereof they have therefore named an Epidemical or universal one and alâ—â—hugh they saw diseases infamous in contagion to arise through occasion of Pools or Lakes Caves poysonous soils Minerals Filths Mountains the natural moistnesses of the earth of a valley or sink or privy from whence divers puâ—refactions sprang yet they never esteemed the disposition of these diseases â—â— be the Pestilence but by a separated name they called them Endemical ones which distinction presently laid every doubt asleep and they themselvâ— have snorted in this deep sleep being glad that they had banished their own ignorance unto the heavens for a universal â—ault and they thought themselves secure not any thing distrusting that the heaven could vindicate it self from blame but them of ignorance They likewise separated the dead and those that were about to die in detesting their obediences that it might not be heard of neither that they might accuse the carelesness and ignorance of Physitians Especially when as the chief Physitian always runs away forsaking his own sick Patient iâ— his despairing of life Wherefore they call the Diviners of the stars together for their aid that seeing the world defends the errours of these men they may defame the heaven with a conjoyned accusation of a fault that it defiles the air and water with the consumptive poyson of an abstracted light But Paracelsus being much more bold than his Predecessors would have the heaven to be really infected with our contagion to note our sins with a pen of iron and unwillingly to receive them therefore to be a revenger and to stir up deaths But that the Plague is a meer wound that it is darted from heaven that the stars by wounding and in running do us hurt and that these wounds are made only in three places and not in more as not knowing that these are our emunctory places to wit behind the ears under the arm-pits and in the groyn In another place also he appoints not three buâ— four plagues according to the number of the Elements that every one of them are to be vanquished by a four-fold and much different remedy But elsewhere he also deviseth a fifth plague being sent into us by Gnomes Sylphs Nymphs Satyrs Hobgoblins Gyants or Faunes because perhaps he supposed these to be a fifth Element Moreover he being entreated by the City of Stertzing for a choice Antidote against the poyson of the Pest forsaking his former staâ—ry and Elementated remedies in the end wholly trusted to a drink of Triacle Myrrhe Butter but root Terra Sigillata Sperma ceti the herb Asclepias Pimpernell Valerian and Camphor with the best Aqua vitae to wit through inconsiderateness he as unmindful being snatcht away into a hundred confusions of simples by him many times and seriously detested but a little before In the next place neither do those things agree together that he elsewhere hath often not any thing distinguished the Element of fire from the heaven and nevertheless that he hath delivered four plagues distinct in their original cause and remedies the which he had dedicated unto one heaven which in another place he would have to be the only Author of the Pestilence He willeth also that Christal Aâ—â—es and likewise Gemms are bred in the air and do fall down from heaven the which he as unmindful of himself nameth the fâ—â—its of the water as willing Christal to be nothing but meer ice constrained by cold At length the Pest seeing it is a malady of the heaven and of the fourth degree yet he saith that the tincture of Gemms is the best solidative medicine of that wound and so also that a remedy of the second degree should cure the plague of the fourth degree I also pity the vain â—iresomeness about remedies which among a thousand Alchymists scarce one prepares For it is a frivolous thing to compose so many books and at length to have run back unto remedies which are scarce to be gotten in a popular disease and every where obvious For it is a frivolous thing in a wandring plague to nourish a whole Country with the fleshes of the Stork which flies away about Autumn or with a Lyons Tongue hung on the body For all such things discover ignorant boasting but not a common charity in so miserable a grief For neither hath Hippocrates chased away the plague out of Greece by such remedies For otherwise the poor man if the plague should be put to flight by precious remedies and victuals should with the despairing of his life the unequality of Fortune much bewailing and just grief ponder God to be a respecter of persons and remedies to be denied unto him I therefore shall never believe that God in Nature was less careful in curing the poor man than the rich For the history of Lazarus and the rich Glutton doth wonderfully comfort the poor Lastly Paracelsus hath set forth books of a plague generated by Pythonesses and Hobgoblins By Hobgoblins I say Satyrs c. which he denieth to bâ— evil spirits which he maketh coequal unto Witches in generating of the plague Yet hath he neglected to add remedies for such a pestilence as though the title of the Monarch of Secrets being presumptuous on himself it had been sufficient for him not to have â—rod in the footsteps of those that went before him and to have stirred up very much smoak and little fire and to have exposed the memory of himself â—nto laughter For his books of the Plague of Tartars of Minerals c. do contain much of prattle but little of trusty aid CHAP. VI. The Pest divided THe Paramire of Paracelsus is totally employed in perswading that every disease without exception and by name the Pestilence is in its whole species five-fold to wit being distinct in its causes original properties and remedies But the first kind he calls a Natural Being originally proceeding from elementated fruits and this plague he hath described in his books of the plague and pestilentialness wherein he is there his own Interpreter But since it is manifest that the fruits which the Schools have believed to
be of mixed Elements are of water alone even as I have elsewhere clearly demonstrated concerning the rise of medicine of necessity also the doctrine of the Elements at least for the Pest now falls to the ground and then another predicament of diseases he calls an Astral or Starry Being as it were raining down from the starry heaven and in many books of the Pest he prosecutes only this kind of Being others being omitted and so seeing he elsewhere confounds the heaven and the fruits of the heavens with the Element of fire an Astral plague shall also again be co-incident with a Natural and Elemental fiery one and then a third most general kind of diseases he calls the Being of poyson as if there should elsewhere be a certain plague void of a poyson and as though a plague could have its poyson without above or besides a Natural Being Thus therefore he distinguisheth as being fore-stalled by an Idiotism the stars against the Being of Nature But at least as if a natural and Astral plague were not of a poysonsom nature At length the fourth kind of diseases he calls a Spirital Being to wit the evil spirit co-operating together with his bondslaves Hitherto also he refers the execrations and desperations of men But first of all he omits his Faunes Hobgoblins Nymphs Satyrs c. unless happily he will have these to be the companions of Cacodemons at leastwise he neglects the chief hinge to wit his own phantasie when as terrour or affrighting fear alone generates no seldome plague And moreover he supposeth a spirital external Being to be the essential cause of the Pest to wit whereby the species are only to be divided and so he distinguisheth of two effects diuers in kind only by external occasional and accidental causes For it is certain whether the Witch as a Sorceress should connex a pestiferous contagion unto any one or that be done by any other means and by a proper vice of nature at leastwise the plague issuing from thence is on both sides one and the same Last of all he calls the fifth kind of diseases a God-like Being or that of the faithful stupidly enough in not distinguishing God from diseases themselves even as otherwise it is a free thing in no wise to have separated Nature from her own effect But he hath no where made mention even in his largest writings of a Deal or God-like plague But as to what belongs to my self I do nor adnit of an Astral Being although Paracelsus hath made that common not only to one of the five but being unconstant to himself unto all pestilences universally I likewise in the next place confound the Being of poyson with the Being of Nature For if it doth not contain a poyson neither also for that cause the plague But since the Pest hath a separated birth and progress distinct from other diseases being not a little tyed up unto imaginations and terrours In this respect I make every plague to be spiritual not indeed therefore to be of a Witch but to be tributary and meerly natural to the disturbances of the Archeâ—s But if indeed the Cacodemon or evil spirit co-laboureth for the destruction of man it shall indeed be the more fiercely transplanted and wax cruel yet there is not although his Paramire thinks otherwise need of superstition for this thing nor is that plague devious from that of nature because a spirital Being doth evidently whether he will or no always war under Nature Therefore I acknowledge two only plagues different in kind to wit one which is sent immediately from the hand of the Almighty by the smiting Angel for the execution of the hidden judgement of his own Deity For this although I acknowledge it to be a pestilence yet I wholly commit the same unto my Lord and say with a resigned mind Let thy will be done O Lord For truly neither do I wish for a remedy but according to thy own good pleasure Finally therefore I will every where touch only at the pestilence of Nature as a Phylosopher and I call that the other plague CHAP. VII The conjoyned cause of the Antients IN diseases universally and without exception I at sometime in discoursing of a disease in general have acknowledged no efficient and external cause besides an occasional one only Now moreover I have shewn that I have justly denied to give the heaven passage unto the plague although in the mean time the Blas of a Meteor may be able to dispose the suffering subject unto a more ready impression of receiving Therefore I will first apply my self unto the connexed causes of the Pest which we read to be referred by the Antients into the corruption of humours and inflammation of heat and therefore their preservatives written down are supposed to be adjudged only by way of resisting the putrefaction of humours But the Schools have not yet exâ—lained what that vitiated humour enflamed with heat may be or with what name to be endowed which may be the fire-brand of the plague in the veins bowels or habit of the body and they have not yet known that in Aegypt a destructive plague is rather extinguished than incensed by great heats Even as among us that the â—eâ—tilence is for the most part rather in Autumn than in Summer For sometimes the Schools run back unto Eâ—demicks as well those domestical as forraign the which are believed to incite and heap up putrefaction after any manner whatsoever In the next place for preservatives they scrape together any simples although hot ones so they are but commended by the faith of Heâ—barists But the doubâ—ing of the Schools as also the unprosperous uncertainty of remedies is every where covered with the ridiculous event of divers complexions the whiâ—h surely hath been hitherto a common and thred-bare aptness or fitness for excusing their excuses in death and at length through the great fear of Doctors of the plague the distrust of the Schools is discovered to be beyond the Laws and promises of books at leastwise they asswage the unlucky obediences of the sick by one only saying It so stood in the Destiniâ—â— Therefore that they must patiently bear it because that or the other miserable man was referred into the Catalogue of those that were to die In the mean time the work of the plague is cruel but more cruel is he who brags of help and brings it not The progress of the plague is swift by reason of so great sluggishness of Physitians The venom in the plague at leastwise is not quieted at one only moment neither doth that admit of peace which despiseth Trâ—ce If therefore there were any humours corrupted in the Pest in thâ—â—r being made through putrefaction seeing they cannot return and be reduced into their antient bâ—iâ—htness of integrity and the first and chiefest natural betokening of diseases in the Schools is most speedily to pluck up the hurtful humour and that all succours are vain but those which do
memory and understanding For how readily doth the contagion of an Hypochondriacal excrement under the Midriff alienate the mind and seduce it with sorrow horrour fury madnesse feverish dotages and the differences of a Lethargye while as they estrange us according to the Image bred in their owne Feâ—ment For how terrible a poyson of terrour is at one onely moment imprinted by a stroak of Thunder on a Beast which it hath smitten so that with the eating of his flesh the Plague is swallowed Which thing at least is for a sign that a Thunderbolt is darted from a monstrous sign full of terrour to wit from whence the Archeus being extinguished in a moment in discovering the Image of his Terrour perisheth almost in a moment For sleep yea a deep drâ—wsie evil is oftentimes in a man where there is a great disturbance of the Pest in his Archeus Oft-times on the other hand the Archeus lives free and safe from perturbations when as the man is in a miâ—erable conflict with his owne disturbances In Wars and out of Wars there are now more cruel Plagues than in Ages past Because Wars are more cruel in dreadful fear and have more of great dread and lesse of angers when man being moved against man with the violence of Wrath studyed Revenge Neither is it a Wonder therefore that the drinking of ones own Urine should restrain the Plague before the accesse thereof not as an An tidote but because it contained a hope and perswasion before it was taken For I remember that in the Year 1635. while the French men besieged our Neighbour City Lovain a very great Plague â—rom thence soon after invaded the fearfull Bruxellians and the poor Women who were terrified with fear and the which being dispersed into all the Villages brought every where a great destruction For a co-participation of life in meats also causeth that they are soon made vital and they presently snatch hold of our Archeus being otherwise lyable to indignation fury and a manifold misery or dammage of Symptomes so in Magnum oportet a necessity and transplantation of much contagion is inclosed in us But if the properties of the middle life of things eaten ought after some sort to remain in the blood and for that cause also the fleshes of the Eaters do vary their savour according to the diversity of the meats it must needs be that we are affected by those things which leave their mark of resemblance in us Indeed savours the witnesses of properties have stricken a covenant as well with the external as internal fellowships of putrefactions which therefore are easily made the partakers of injuries in us For the middle life of mears remaineth in our fleshes hence it is that Fish-devouring Nations and Carthusians are not troubled with flyes of wormes For fleshes that are not well preserved from the co-resemblance of the middle life residing in us do easily stamp any putrefaction on us From whence also formal corruptions do arise in us from an unthought of Beginning And then fleshes and fishes although they are seasonably killed yet they conteined in them the purulent matters of diseases wherewith when we are â—ed especially if they have before contracted a burntish odour we readily yield unto the fellowships of their symbolizing mark and they presently stir up in us adustodours and mumial putrefactions by continuance in us For neither do Oxen or Sheep eat men nor contract our Plague into themselves but we â—at Oxen and draw a brutal Pest like as also our own Because the pestilences of many bruit Beasts do play their part in man alone Wherefore neither are meats noâ— being rightly concocted guiltlesse while they scorn at the Ferment of the stomach because they easily passe over into the forreign colonies and various corruptions of their own conâ—agion Truly this successive alteration of new calamities in the Plague shall at sometime be a future betokening cause of the last times At leastwise the Ferments of poyâ—ons and venomes have never been throughly weighed in the Schooles But the action of these hath therefore been supposed to be equivocal or of doubtful interpretation and prepared by an impression of the Heaven For alwayes when as they slide into Ignorance they implore the too far distant aid of the deaf Heavens and blame guiltlesse Saturn For they call that an equivocal action while the Agent doth not generate its like As happens in Celestial Impressions and Meteours But how improperly they have recourse unto the Heavens and their equivocal actions for poysons every one shall easily know who hath beheld poysons as Agents meerly natural and domestical they being not onely alterative after the manner of Meteours but transchanging and spermatical or seedy ones For what can be more like to a seminal generation than if the slender poyson of a Scorpion kills the whole man and propagates the property of its own seed into the whole body For neither do Ferments any where operate Equivocally or doubly but plainly Univocally or singly Because if the Pest should bud forth by an equivocal action verily it should not be contagious seeing it should not produce its like Therefore it is manifest that the diligent search of Ferments being neglected in the commerce whereof notwithstanding every transmutation of things to be generated is enrowled Poysons have been hitherto unknown as well in their making as in their Being and operation Especially because the property of a poyson is by the destruct on of the Archeus of man to imprint its own seminal Image in the room of the other Wherefore also the Organ of this poyson is the Ferment it self But uâ—derstand thou this thing concerning poysons which attempt a transmutation by way of a seminal Image but not of meer Corrosives because they are those which do not fermentally corrupt the Archeus or his Image but they stir up the same Archeus into fury who afterwards destroyes his own matter or Inne under the alteration or destruction whereof the Archeus himself also gives place together with the integrity and retainment of his Image For the greatnesse vehemency strength and swiftnesse oâ— poysons have deceived the Schools who the consideration of ferments being neglected have passed by the one only dispositive instrument of generations which goes before the introducement of a seminal Image For the Schools are wont to measure the works of nature according to the square of artificial things and so if at any time there â—ere any thing which would not seem to them to square with this measure they by a verbal excuse have had recourse unto the heavens and hidden causes that they might cover their sluggishnesse and ignorances with an impossibility of sifting it out CHAP. XIII The form and matter of the Pest. SInce a disease ought to perfect its own title and misfortune in us as it were in its own mansion and its own proper essential causes do remain in its product it must needs be as long as any thing wanders in
the air water or earth that that can neither be a disease in it self nor the containing cause thereof Yea whatsoever is marked with the name of antecedent causes is nothing but the occasional cause causing nothing by it self but by accident nor any thing without an appropriation received in us Wherefore they neither betoken nor desire nor prescribe a cure but only a caution or flight The occasions therefore of the Plague are to be considered as the occasions of diseases being sometime entertained do passe into the order of causes First of all therefore I have already sufficiently taught that the Pest is not sent down from the Heavens And seeing every effect is the fruit or product of its own and not of anothers tree therefore every cause produceth its own and not anothers effect therefore the Pest hath a specifical proper and not a forreign cause For neither may we distinguish of Plagues by their accidents concomitants or signates because they are those which flow immediately from the diversity of subjects because they diversly vary after the manner and nature of the receiver according to the custom of the Beings of nature Wherefore also the Pest consisting of matter form essence a seed and properties requires also to have its own and one onely species seeing the very essence it self of things or defects is most near to individuals But if it either happen from without or be generated within that is all one seeing from thence the Plague is now constituted Again if it do the more swiftly or slowly defile its issue be the more violent and speedy do invade diverse parts or diversly disquiet the body yet that doth not therefore change the species of the poyson For they are only the signs of quantiry co-mixture of a ferment appropriation and incidency on the parts receiving Otherwise the internal and formal poyson of the Pest and that which conteins the thingliness thereof is 〈◊〉 â—ys singular in every individual Because the essence or Being of things consisteth in the simplicity of their own species as there is the same essence of fire on both sides whether it be great or little whether quiet or driven with the bellows or lastly whether the flame shall be red yellow green or sky-coloured Therefore the remote crude and first occasional matter of the pestilence is an air putrified through continuance or rather a hoary putrified Gas which putrefaction of the air according to the experience of the fire which Adeptists promise hath not as yet the 8200. part of its own seminal body The which thou shalt the more easily comprehend if thou considerest a hoary putrified vessel and hogs-head of wine now exhausted without any weight of it self to corrupt new and old wines infused in the hogs-head For I have treated in my discourses of natural Phylosophy concerning the nature of a ferment putrifying by contmuance and after what sort vegetables do arise from an incorporeal and putrified seed that from hence the progeny of the Pest may be the more distinctly made manifest Moreover I have shewn that the earth is the mother of putrefaction through continuance that we may know that popular Plagues do draw their first occasional matter from an earthquake and from the consequences of camps and siedges For therefore as much as the earth differs from the heaven so much also is the occasional matter of the Pâ—st remote from the Heaven But I call this first matter that incorporeal hoary puâ—rified poyson existing in the Gas of the earth And so I substitute this poyson as theremoâ—e matter under another more near poyson which disposeth the matter of the Archeus whereby he may the more easily assent and conceive in himself a pestilent terrour that at length a formal pestilential essence may suddenly come upon the previous dispositions hereof But besides if I must duely Phylosophize concerning the infections of the Air I ought of necessity to repeate the Anatomy thereof from the fore assayed doctrine of the elements in my treatise of natural of Phylosophy The air therefore in it self is one of the first-born elements being transparent and void as well of lightnesse as weight unchangeable and perpetual being endowed with natural cold unlesse it be hindered by the strength of scituations and things co mixed with it but being every where filled with pores and for this cause suffering an extension or pressing together of it self The porosities whereof are either filled with vapours and forreign exhalations or remayning in their integrity they plainly gape being void of a body the which I have elsewhere demonstrated in the treatise of a necessary Vacuum For in very deed if the air were without pores that are empty of every body vapours could not be lifted up without a penetration of bodies But since a most manifest enlargement and com-pression of the air is granted as I have elsewhere fully demonstrated an emptinesse also is of necessity granted For such porosities in the air are as it were wombs wherein the vapours the fruits of the water are again resolved into the last simplicity of waters from whence they proceeded and are spoyled of any signatures of their former seeds whatsoever But those effluxes in the air are forreign â—y accident and various according to the disposition of the concrete body from whence they exhaled First of all they are the vapours of pure and simple water and then of the waters of the salt sea which season the rain with their vaporous brine and for that cause preserâ—e it from corruption For otherwise by reason of the societies of diverse exhalations being admixed with it rain waters would of necessity putrifie and stink no lesse than clouds in mountains and most miâ—â—s The poysons therefore of the air being drawn in are partly entertained in manner of a vapour in its porosities and do partly defile the very body of the air without a corporeal mixture even as glasse conceiveth odours which defilement hath of right the name of an impression I have an house in a plain field being rich on its South-side in a wood of oakes but on the north it respecteth pleasant meadows moreover toward both the mansions of the Sun it hath hils that are fruitful in corn But linnen cloaths being there washed and â—â—nced in the fountain being hung up in the loft look most neatly white while the North wind blows and here and there also from east to west or on the other hand from west to east But the south-winde only blowing and the southerly windowes being opened they are notably yellow with a clayie colour For from the numerous oakes a tinging vapour is belched forth into the air and I have learned that this vapour is breathed in by us as also drunk up by the linnen And also thus from Groves of oakes after the Summer solstice an hidden vapour doth exhale which inâ—ecteth an unwonted countenance and neck with a frequent itching pustule or wheale and afterwards they becoâ—â— plainly visible in the
all other Falcons which are brought that way for three dayes after Whence thou shalt conjecture what the dead Carcasses of men as well of those that are hanged as of those that are carelessely buryed may do by their odour For a Dog eats not a Dog unless he be dried in the smoak to wit while the mummy hath lost the horror of death through the estrangement of its tast in preserving from corruption but a Wolf eats a Wolf newly killed but not a putrified Wolf Whence there is a suspition that there is something in a Wolf which is superiour to a mumial appropriation Perhaps Paracelsus supposed that that was it wherein the first act of feeling of an applyed object sitteth Peradventure also for that cause they have thought the Tongue of a Wolf hung up to be adverse to the plague And moreover the dead carkasses of souldiers are at this day to be buried deeper than in times past because the Bullet of a great Gun or Musquet makes a contusion and then it takes away some part with it wherefore it produceth an open hole and at length also it begets a poysonous impression of smoak from whence the flesh round about presently looks black with a certain Gangren and it readily receives a poyson into it if not in life as leastwise soon after death to wit while as through a speedy putrefaction of the flesh being combibed into the earth a cadaverous hoary or fermental putrefaction doth arise unto all which is joyned in the Archeus of the dying-souldier an Idea of revenge which is prone to putrefaction From thence into the air a monstrous Gas I say is pouted out into the air which smires the Archeusses of the living with terrour For it is with a dead carkass just even as with horse-dung which doth not putrifie so long as it is hot But when it grows dry and the Salt-Peter thereof hath departed from thence the dung also inclines to be transchanged into the liquor of the earth For otherwise if the dung be restrained from putrefaction through the be-sprinkling and stirring of horse-piss on it and into it it produceth much Salt-Peter For behold thou how powerful a nourishment the mushrome of one night is for indeed a Mushrome is the fruit of the juice Leffas or of plants being coagulated and near to its first Being the which I have elsewhere shewn but after it hath assumed the putrefaction of the earth through continuance how cruel a poyson for choaking doth it bring forth We must therefore have a diligent care that a fermental putrefaction doth not arise in the reliques of the last digestion For indeed the plague privily entred my own house through a Chamber-Maid she forthwith recovered Both my Eldest Sons being sore troubled in their mind shew an undaunted courage and concealed that they were vexed with a continual combat of sighing at the mouth of their stomach and when as through the wiles and framed deceits of my prevalent Enemies I was detained at my own house under prevention of an Arrest both my Sons also would not by forsaking me go into the Country and since they had observed at other times that they were refreshed by swimming in the midst of Summer they swam thrice without my knowledge whence transpiration through the poâ—es being stopped up both of them being forthwith devolved into a Fever together with a dejected appetite pain of the head and a Catochus or unsensible detainment of the Soul with a pricking of the whole body they died among the Nuns swearing that they would admit of my remedies but after that they had received my Sons they refused forraign remedies The Eldest indeed perished without any mark or signal token even after death because his skin being cooled by swimming nothing outwardly appeared But the other shewed only a small black and blew Pustule in his loyns and the loss of these my Sons I frequently behold as if it were present and thou mayest suppose that it gave a beginning unto this Treatise I leave vengeance unto my Lord whom I humbly beseech that he would spare my Enemies and bestow upon them the light of Repentance CHAP. XV. The Signs I Have hitherto written unwonted Paradoxes my understanding being without the Moon was drowned in tribulations there was a matter most full of terrour horrour and of difficulties present a great Reader uncapable of the best things a darksom brevity of beginning and a hateful novelty although a very necessary one But that which chiefly blinds us in the Pest is the want of an exquisite and unseparable sign to wit through the admonition whereof we may be able timely enough to prevent or withstand it by remedies Nevertheless whatsoever created thing is in any place it hath its own discernable signs by which it may be fitly distinguished from other things and these those which do precede the plague do accompany it or soon follow after it But those signs which go before it do make for its prevention but whatsoever signs do afterwards follow serve more for others than for the miserable sick But the accompanying signs alone do discern of the cure And moreover the signs of a plague to come are decyphered in the heavens if the Firmament sheweth the handy-works of the Lord in the earth That the signs thereof are badly referred by Astrologers unto twelve divisions of causes I have already before sufficiently manifested But Gaffarel hath lately described an Hebrew Alphabet from the scituation of the stars and authority of the Rabbins by an argument ridiculous enough whereby the Hebrews devise such wan signs as if God had now the Rabbins only as his servants unto whom he may communicate his secret counsels For Christians do not consider the shamefulness of those positions who suffer such kind of books to be printed For neither do the fixed stars change their places that they may sometime describe these and sometime other things to come the which in the first place is contrary to all Astrology Comets also the Meteors Trabes Dragons Darts and other monstrous signs of that sort being oft-times popular have foreshewn popular plagues but not by a rational discourse or Theories of the Planets and much less by the Alphabet of the Hebrews for irregular lights do not obey set rules For the Astrologers of Jerusalem although most skilful in their art yet they were altogether ignorant of the signification as also of the apparition of the star of Bethlehem For the Lord will not do a word which he will not reveal to his Servants and Prophets Amos 3. But of these things Artificers have no knowledge because new lights have been oftentimes mortal and oft-times have directly signified prosperous things For monstrous signs do in the hand of the Lord make manifest his secret judgements neither doth he manifest those but to whom he will For truly the Conjunctions Oppositions and Quadrants of the Stars likewise their Eclipses Retrogradations Banishments Combustions Receptions and other impediments are
Ferment of the Plague 11 22 There are double Ferments in nature 112 8 Ferments the causes of transmutation 207 8 The Ferment of the Stomach not from it self ibid. Ferment of thâ— Spleen turns the Spirit of wine wholly into a Salt 733 Fishes made of water proved 115 29 Fishes helpful to Chastity 667 38 Fishes why long lived 684 93 Fishes bring forth without pain 685 95 Fire no Element 48 9 50 1 134 24 138 35 It receives not its nourishment from the Air. 84 16 134 24 It generates nothing 109 34 VVhat its appointed ends are 129 26 Its divers Inclinations taught by Positions 136 31 Its being no substantial Body proved by demonstration 137 33 It is the Vulcan of Arts. 138 38 Actual fire cannot subsist in a mixt Body without consuming it 1049 18 What a Flatus is and its kind 421 34. c. Two irregular ones in us 424. 50 Whence they arise 425 61 Where made 428. 78 A Flint capable of retaining the solar light 147 95 155 35 The Bloody Flux how cured 475 29 The quality of food doth not hurt except where medicines are wanting 702 What a Fog is 68 24 VVhat a Form is and whence 130 2â—3 c. The distinction 'twixt an Essential and substantial form 130 7 133 22 143 67 A four-fold form 143 67 Fox lungs censured 260 38 Of the original of Fountains 6â—â— Fountains dispense the seeds of Minerals and Metals 690 19 Fountains not thickned by the air 691 From whence the best fountains do arise 694 Of the Keeper of Fountains ibid VVhy they are called sharp ibid VVhat the sharpness of Fountains proceeds from 695 22 Of the fountains of the Spaw 696 1 VVhat they contain 697 5 VVhy a vein of Iron is invisible in fountains 698 8. VVhy fountains are different in strength 698 14 Of the virtues of the hungry salt of the Fountains and how far they act 699. VVhom they do not hâ—lp ibid How they profit in the stone 700 12 The qualities of fountains are Relolleous and Cherionial â—01 19 Advice to those that drink of Spaw waters 702 How the waters may pass to the midriff quickly ibid How much he ought to drink and what he is to take with it 703 10 A Frog how reducible to its first matter 141 56 G. GAs what it is 69 29 71 10 106 14 VVhat it retains 109 34 Galen ignorant of the causes of Ulcers 321 25 Galen no Anatomist 423 43 303 3â— Galen never knew Rose-water Aqua vitae nor Quick-silver 10â—â— Galens errors about Ulcers 319 14 1â— Galen ignorant of the Latax 378 33 VVhat the Gaâ—l's use is in the body 427 74 The Gaul a vital Bowel 211 34 1061 It performs its digestion by a fermental Blas 214 46 The Gaul hath the nature of a Balsam 216 53 It is taken so in Scripture ibid. 1041 24 From what the Gaul receives a ferment 1048 14 The Generation of Fauns Satyrs Nymphs c. 681 81 Generation of Troâ—ts 684 91 Generation of man described 736 737 738. Ginger produceth sweat 250 â— Glas turns into water under the earth c. 116 33 151 15 The Globe is Oval 35 â—2 The best manner of drawing forth Goats blood 210 75 Its wonderful virtue ibid God made not Death 337 572 157 58 649 How it came to be 649 â— 650 651 The Essential Image of God is in the mind 718 Gold distilled over the Helm 64 6 Its ponderosity is from its seminality compressing the water 67 18 Though reduced into the form of Butter Râ—zin or vitriol yet useless 478 42 VVhat it is rendred efficacious by ibid Gold and precious stones examined 970 Purging medicines hurtful in the Goâ—errhea Of the original of the Gout 291 9 842 292 The Gout sometimes driven away by fear 293 15 Gout not from a defluxing Catarrh nor helped by Cauteries 385 23 386 1 Gout distinguished not by heat or cold but by a seminal Essence â—87 8 The original of the Gout and its progress 388 13 The Seat of the Gout 389 Of the curt with an Epitomâ— of the Gout 390 25 Caâ—teries and drying drinks â—ain in the Gout 391 32 35 The action of Government unknown produceth many errours 333 36 Grapes immediately eaten hurtful 107 16 Grass roots cannot cool the Liver 319 1 Of Gunpowder 107 21 H. HAres fat puls out a â—horn 521. 1160 Being dryed cures the bloody flux 4â—3 To what end the motion of the heart is 179 24 Herbs and â—â—rbarists why disesteemed 1â— 10 The Schoolmen's way of judging of the elementary degrees of herbs erroneous 69. 28 459 1â— Their sloath and errour in the search of their virtues 15â— 3. c. Why their preparation requirs much wariness 458. 11 1â— c. Their properties distinguishable by their specifick savour 460. 17 472 12 Their time of gathering when 460. 17 468 19 142 60 The Heaven gives neither life nor form 129 1 132 14 108â— It doth not cause diseases 1084 1086 1087 1091 What is required for healing 17â— 44 Heat not the first 〈◊〉 of life 196. 26 Heat not the proper 〈◊〉 of digesâ—ion 199. â—â—2 Heat consumes not radic at moisture â—17 Heat is not the life 718 Heat fails not for want of moisture 744 Hâ—â—â—rhoids 943 Their cure 944 From whence the pain in the head may arise 339. 1â— What ought to be minded in applying remedies to the head 276. 20 Of the effect of Remedies applied to the head 292. 12 Hellebor commended for the heal 368. 63 Also for madnesse 302. 26 The defects that manifest themselves in the head cured by stomack Remedies 302. 26 Memory placed in the head 304. 3â— A History of a woman infected with the pox 34 40 Of Count Destaires being opened 509 Of Cardinal Ferdinand 951 Of a Hydropical man 406. 33 510 520 Of a boy troubled with the Iliack passion 422 38 Of a Gas stird up by Sal Armoniack and Aqua â—ortis 426 62. Of a bursten man 428. 75 Of a noble woman strangled by affects of the womb 428. 76 Of a Sonatours wife in child birth 443. Of a merchant's ascending the high mountain of the Canaries 73. â—â— Of an earth-quake at Faâ—â—agusts 79. 13 Of thunder 91. 20 Of an earth-quakâ— 93. 3 Of predictions deciphered in the Stars 122. 27 Of the Authors Chamber-fellows walking by night 141. 53 Of Butler 563 Of several wonderful things 597 Of the Author 958 Of a man with a Quart an Ague 91â— History of Crabs 886 Of a preacher in England 846 Of a Duke being diffected 627 Of a woman whose Liver weighed 21. pounds Ibid. Of a boy that aâ—e this own dung 211. 36â— Of a Printer of Bruâ—els that lived 23. days of his own dung 212 Of a Chymist that made viâ—â—gar yearly by the odour of the vessel 217 Several Histories of the distasted 〈◊〉 228 28 History of Paracelâ—us his Birth and life 230 28 History of Groynland fishing 232 History of a speaking Satyr 683. 685 88 Of the bignesse and
for children 798 Nurses communicate their vices to children that suck them 7â—8 O. OF the insect found in the â—ake apple 1137 For obstructions  What property opening remedies must have 476 31 Fermental odours produce seminal effects 330  19 The great power of odours in healing 110 44 114 16 19 c 593 Odours of Spices refresh fainting spirits by aspect â—85 The odour of Quick-silver turns oyl of Vitriol into Alum 576 1002 Odours beget ferments 149 Odours work on the Archeus 1â—3 Putrid odours do not hurt unless married to a mumial ferment 1127 1129 Old age only from a decay of vital powers 799 800. How Opium is said to cool 471 4 Of its operation 218. 170 337 338 309 In what Opium may profit 308. 62 A true preparing of Opium of great benefit to the sick 309. 64 The drowsie evil sleep watching all made in one and the same organ 297. 3 Orifice of the stomach the centre of the body 305. â—4 Oyle easily reduâ—ible into water 408. 49 105 3 109 31 Why Chymical oyles are such weak hâ—lpers 415. 83 480 51 Reducible into volatile salts 415. 84 Their operativeness whâ—n so 480 53 By what ferment oylinesses are made volatile 423 46 Oyl though of Spices nourish not 583 Oyl olive preserves iron from rust 846 A twofold oyl separable in oyl olive 193 6 732 Oyl of Sulphur per Campanam commended for preservation of health 813 P. Palsey what it is 918 Pain where seated 895 Pain of the head from what 339 340 14 Paracelsus his doctrine of separation of Elements rejected 69 403 13 His life 230 3 His cures 802 771 The nature and use of his Arcanums 803 Their names 804 His diligent search commended 402 2 His errour about the salt in man 405 30. 413 74 His errours concerning Tartar 234 236 Paracelsus his doctrine of Tartar sum'd up 231 8 Paracelsus the Monarch of secrets 770 51 His Epitaph 771 53 His errours concerning the plague 1089 The secrets of Paracelsus takes away diseases but reach not the root of life 805 Objections against the solving of Pearls 992 971 The Milk of Pearls its efficacy 479 4â— Pepper degenerates into Iuy 770 51 What meant by a Perolede 74 24 Their division c. 75 31 Physitians reproved 7 3. 431 10. 439. 35 What his property is or ought to be 430 1. 455 26 Their success imputed to natures goodness 450 1 Their vanity as to prescriptions of diet 450 2 c. 455 26 Wherein deridable 457 1 The signs of a true Physitian 107 1076 The Author grieved that he learned Physick 1078 Plague begins always about the stomack 600 262 Of what kind the Plague is 1073 The Plague an Infant 1081 The true curing the Plague died with Hippocrates 1082 1083 How the Plague in Egypt varies every seventh year ibid. The Heavens do not produce the Plague 1084 Some Symptomes of the Plague not seen till after death 1089 Plague not Endemieal 1090 Plague not helped by Diaphoreticks 1089 A Plague sent from God despiseth the help of natural remedies 1090 1099 1133 Of a forreign new Plague 1091 Plague collected into two causes 1097 The division of the Plague 1098 1099 The conjoyned causes of the Antients ibid Putrefaction of humours not the cause of the Plague 1100 Triacle and other Antidotes that resist poyson profit little in the Plague 1101 The matter of the Plague what with its progress 1102 1132 The seat of the Plague 1103 Why the Plague is frequent in signes 783 114 1134 Excrements do not cause the Plague ibid. Sweating is profitable in the Plague 1113 1127 Things requisite for the Idea of an imagined Plague 1119 What the fear of the Plague carries with it 1120 The ferment of the Plague 1122 Plague sometime discerned by an Oâ—uor 1123 Of the form and matter of the Plague 1125 The first matter of the Plague a hoary putrified poyson existing in the Gas of the earth 1126 1127 Plague sometimes riseth from within sometimes from without 1127 1138 1140 The image of the Plague consists in an Archeal air 1128 Why the Symptomes of the Plague are different ibid. The poyson of the Plague more cruel than that of Serpents 1129 What Antidotes against the Plague serve for 1129 The matter and agent of the Plague have the same specifical Iâ—entity 1130 The Plague comunicated by an unsensible contagion 1131 The property of the Plague 1132 The signs of the Plague 1136 Doubtful signs of the Plague removed 1139 The quality of a preservative against the Plague 1141 114â— Amulets attain preheminence as well in the cure as preserving from the Plague 1142. Toad profitable against the Plague 1149 Toad a Zenexton against the Plague 1150 How he comes to cure the Plague 1152 1153 Hippocrates his manner of curing the Plague 1155 1156 Hippocrates his remedy against the Plague recovered one in six hours 1157 Several observations about the Plague 1158 Carline Tâ—â—stle profitable in the Plague 1160 Phlegm made of the Latex 1042 Phlegm not in the blood 1043 Phlegm not at all rightly distinguished by the Schools 1050 Pimples and swellings in the face their cure 252 16 Pleurisie its seat 437 25 Specificks for it 458 5 Phlebotomy hurtful in a Pleurisie 956 394 8. 396 16 Pleuriâ—ie suddenly cured by sweat 378 39 A definition of a Pleurisie according to the Schools 392 1 The Schools defects in the Pleurisie 393 Of the Original and progress of a Pleurisie 395 13 A Remedy for a Pleuriâ—ie how it ought to be gifted 396 17 Peripneumonia and Pleuriâ—ie differ neither in their occasional cause nor remedy 397 27 The Thorn in the Pleurisie chiefly to be minded 398 31 The Cure 399 32 Poisons Why the body swells when poisoned 427 72 Their great vertue when prâ—pared 465 46 What poisons chiefest for medicine when prepared 474. 28 The variety of poisons as to their preperty and operativeness 475 30 What they operate by 479 47. 158 159 1123 Of the poison of the Meazels 742 The Ferments of poisons never duly weighed by the Schools 1124 1125 The Snake a Remedy against poison 1157 Prayer of silence what it demonstrates 311 6. 313 1â— The preparation of the Praecipiolum of Paracelsus 521 Two Principles and no more 31 23 What the Principles of nature and the principles of bodies of are 44 7. 409 51 The first rise of the Doctrine of three principles 403 6 A principle of the Schools condâ—mned 45 8 152 20 Of the different properties of places 724 Measuring of pulses 178 13 16 The framer of pulses 179 23 Pulsation how made 180 28 The ends of the pulses 181 29 185 The necessity of pulses hitherto unknown 182 33 What a hâ—rdened pulse doth betoken 185 50 What the use of pulses are 187 57 Purges condemned 3 9. 961 What property they opâ—rate by 477 33 What the property of a true one is 466 50. 477. 33 525 Putrefaction promotes the odours of some things 414 18 It destroyes others 161 16 Why
so bent their Studies that what was not yet found out by the Greeks and Arabians they may find more successful elsewhere Hence indeed they have been devolved with a steep fall unto the Fictions of Tartar but surely their curiosity is to be had in great esteem although it shall not attain unto its desire For It is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth but of God alone that sheweth Mercy Therefore the Schooles donow leave their title and Market For what shall they do if the conjoyned root of Diseases and method of Curing them be not to be drawn out of the Elements Qualities Contrarieties Humours Stars Windes and Catarths But seeing other Examples of healing have possessed the more Modern followers of Paracelsus it must as yet be diligently searched into whether the Causes of Diseases have been made known to Paracelsus For when he the Lessons of the Ancients being rejected had sufficiently understood that there was nothing of a Foundation or Truth in Complexions and Humours he began by variously doubting to inquire into the most immediate Cause of Diseases and Posterity owes him Praise for it Although he hath not exactly touched at the matter that cannot be accounted a fault if the Most High the Dispenser of Gifts as yet vouchsafed not to open the Truth to Mortals in Paracelsus's days This man therefore had learned of Basilius Valentine that Water Oyle and Salt were to be separated by Distillation from most Bodies He began to call these Three Things not only the first universal beginnings of corporal beings but also he so introduced them within Diseases and the necessities of healing that he referred all Diseases immediately into some of those three things And thus he made his followers almost mad that the first hope of diligently searching into the truth being rejected they consecrated all things to the three first things Which Doctrine hath fixed its roots the faster because the three things are actually separated from most Bodies and so that they were not undemonstrable like humours arisen from feigned beginnings But surely this abuse was discovered while as these three beginnings were wrested aside unto the originals of any Diseases whatsoever For truly because many Bodies being dissolved by the fire gave from them Salt Sulphur and Liquor which they point out to be Mercury it was thought that all Diseases did owe their Birth unto those constitutive beginnings First of all Hermes before the industry of the Greeks sprang up because in his Pymander he had noted every Trine to be perfect consequently also he foresaw that in Chymical things Mettals did consist of two extreams to wit of a Body and a Soul and the which he would have cleave together not but by the baudery of a certain third thing or Spirit Afterwards Basilius Valentine a Monk of Benedict wrote more distinctly he named the Soul of a Mettal the Sulphur or Tincture but the Body the Salt and lastly the Spirit he called the Mercury Which things being thus borrowed of Basilius Theophrastus Paracelsus afterwards transferred by a wonderful diligency of search into all the Principles of Bodies he being one Age younger than Busilius The Doctrine of whom the Authors name being suppressed he snatched on himself and by a liberty of his own introduced it into the speculations of Medicine So indeed that after he had banished every Disease into the Caralogue of Tartars and had not yet satisfied his own scruple at length he adoms his Paramire of the three first beings with much boldness Indeed he forged these three things as it were the beginnings of all Bodies and declameth many things in general touching Diseases but being constrained by necessity when as he would reduce Diseases into the ranks of the three first things being pressed down under the burden he was silent Except in the Family of Ulcers where he had seemed to himself to have found salt at least wise in the other two beginnings he on both sides remained scanty and almost ridiculous For he had commanded that it should every where be believed that the four Elements were nothing but the incorporeal Wombs and asit were the Inns of Bodies but that the first beginnings did so supply the conditions or offices of Bodies that also the Elements of the world have all their substance and subsistance from those three things only Elsewhere also he being unmindful of these hath stuck wholly in the Elements and next he hath ascribed the inclinations and properties of Stars and men to the complexions of these He also hath dedicated unto all the particular Elements their own fruits and degrees of fruits but not all to one Element nor the fruits any longer proceeding from incorporeal Elements as Wombs but that these did borrow their Bodies from the material Elements themselves Lastly by the same liberty and unconstancy of a borrowed matter he hath taught that Bodies do by a resolving decay sometimes into four but sometimes into three Elements only Truly he hath so graced the Art of the Fire by bringing it into Medicine that he breaths after an eternal Name for himself and hopes that the time would come that he should sometimes wax proud with the Title of the Monarch of Secrets He foreseeing that the Doctrine of Basilius was not commonly known therefore the Name of the Author being concealed he made it his own and in this respect hath he enlarged his own Sections Wherefore his Tartar now and then losing its universal dominion in Diseases it being suppressed he makes an invasion as being constrained by the Laws of his three first things Which his three first things as presuming on increase he would at length that they should become the Mothers and Wombs even of all Diseases as well of the mind as of the Being or Body This indeed was only his own and not the Invention of Basilius and the which when he would endeavour to disperse into the ranks of Diseases by Troops he sometimes goes confusedly to work yet doth he again more oft go beyond himself being every where forgetful of his own Doctrine delivered For in his Archidoxals he hath dedicated a little Book to the separation of the Elements which are to be brought out of the flame air water and earth And thus far he hath resisted his own Doctrine concerning the three first things and concerning the Wombs of the Elements because now there should be four beginnings no longer the three first and ultimate into which at length by long labour the three first things as being after the Elements so of right no longer the first should be derived For they being also thus enriched by one number should beget far more Diseases than of late than while that pretended Monarch commanded only three to be the principles as well of Bodies as of Diseases Yea truly he accuseth as guilty only and at length one only Tartar to be the cause of almost all Diseases But elsewhere in some peculiar Treatises he calls the Heaven
the assisting and co-operating Work-man of all Diseases an angry Parent and revenger For he saith that the unknown Star Zedo is the immediate and containing cause of the Dropsie So he affirmeth that to the Consumption Gout Apoplexie c. doth belong their own peculiar yet unnamed Star and unto every Epilepsie or falling Evil it s own proper constellation But in his Paramires he affirms the three first things to be the immediate causes of all Diseases that is all things confused Let him explain and excuse him that will for I have not dedicated my life to the interpreting of others dreams Therefore have I seriously searched into Nature and the particular kindes of Diseases and it hath happened unto me no otherwise than as to all others before me until that the Doctrines of all Authors being cast off I had seriously implored the Divine Grace For then I suddenly knew that unto every Disease hath happened its own matter which may nourish a Vulcan proper to it self within the which although he doth sometimes imitate the courses of the Stars yet that the enforcing cause thereof did not depend on the Stars For all Seeds do possess as it were their own Common-wealth especially their own vital light whereby of their own proper vertue they do shew forth a proportionable resemblance of the Stars Be it a ridiculous thing that the Consumption or Dropsie although they may be stirred up more severely and mildly under diverse starry positions are caused or made by the motion and light of the Stars the which do after another manner generate by a manifest occasion through so clear a collection of filths and the which being removed Health doth also follow without leave of the Stars The exposition of which Doctrine by me thou shalt read in the Book of the Plague and elsewhere But the matters of Diseases with their seminary Vulcans from the first even unto the last I have prosecuted with all their duplicity and interchangeable courses in respect of humane life The Almighty grant that so much as he hath bestowed on me I may nakedly refer unto his Honour and the profit of my Neighbour and that he may bestow another more able than my self on the world For Paracelsus hath framed divers Books concerning long life to have chosen death for himself that he would by a Divine priviledge have comforted his own old Age by his Elixiâ— of propriety but not by Remedies prescribed by him for long life who died in the 47th year of his Age. So great boasting therefore and unconstancy of this Man have hitherto made me a little careful In the mean time many difficulties have long since held me in doubt about the three first things until that I having obtained help from God knew that Woods and Herbs were to be distilled without any Dead head For I did long ago wonder that out of the coal of Honey no ashes and by consequence neither the salt of ashes could be had Which things afterwards I willingly through an universal resolving of a Body beheld For it was sufficient for Paracelsus to have forsaken all things involved under doubting who in a slender draught had drunk down anothers Invention and had not yet converted it into nourishment and making it his own of robbery hath he striving to flie unto a Monarchy slipped out of his Nest before he had sufficient feathers For he snatching unto himself the glory of the Invention hath well pleased himself in dispersingly repeating one and the same thing often although in the mean time he made little progress in things of his own For it is a ridiculous thing and like a Fable that Sulphur should be distilled sublimed reverberated calcined resolved in us and that from hence divers Diseases should be caused only indeed by the boldness of the Man without a Pledge or Surety of greater authority than himself For he knew not nor durst to draw Diseases into an open profession or publishment he being not yet sully committed hereunto by his Inventer It is also a childish dream that salt is distilled sublimed calcined circulated and doth undergo other torments in us or that Mercury doth sustain these strict examinations in us and for every interchangeable course of variations that it doth of it self alone bring forth other Diseases pains and defects and that others again be infolded with its other two fellow beginnings or masked with divers degrees and doses They are also trifles that Mercury by reason of the highest circulation of its subtilty might be the cause of all sudden death which we have known to be constituted by its causes to cure and prevent For first of all eight ounces of venal blood are daily blown away in nourishing without a Dead head pain and defect yea without feeling while they pass thorow and whereby they pass thorow But whatsoever hath once been dedicated unto expulsion in the shew of Water Mercury or Sweat or whatsoever hath been once reckoned unfit for nourishing or the offices of nourishment being now once performed is designed for scattering or blowing away that is never afterwards distilled sublimed calcined or circulated in us For the works of Nature are too serious because they do ultimately respect God For Nature doth not play at Ball that it should again receive excrements into favour being once rent from the commerce of Life It never returns into the same point because it proceeds and never keeps Holy-day In the next place if any watry liquor be a hundred times re-distilled it shall not therefore be the sharper or subtiler but rather by degrees the Seed of its middle life being worn out it passeth more and more unto the simplicity of an Element For rain water which now falleth down from above is not more subtile or fine than that which rained in the beginning of its Creation But if any watry thing should exhale by our luke-warmth and should obtain a sharpness through dreamed returns that should not be the fault of subtilizing of Mercury but of an adjunct Surely I wonder that so great a Chymist hath not known that the venal blood is not circulated nor that it doth bear the circles of subtilizings in us and that it doth not persevere in us above one only course of the Moon and the which tribute of feeble blood a Woman doth therefore pay Because she is she which ought to abound with very much blood as well for an increase of the Young as for the sucking of Milk But that Paracelsus might the better overshadow his own Fiction he supposeth that one of the three first things being separated doth presently assume from a Microcosmical Nature an actuality in that which is casual to any and one Being of those which are infinite a thousand Seeds whereof being collected into one it did contain and therefore that by reason of a monstrous and strange Nativity a hostile thing is for that very cause in us and is made the cause of Diseases And so that there are