importunity of a morsel or pertinacy of a draught seeing it can scarce endure that any thing should hang above over it in the throat Although in sick folks and those that have suffered hunger or want its opening doth happen with pain and great anguish because in the same persons that closure of the Orifice doth depend on an inordinacy Therefore the closure of the Pylorus is more obstinate and exact than that of the Orifice Again it is not to be doubted that the motive faculty of either part doth not obey the will and so that it is naturall or diseasie The Pylorus is said in the Schools to be subject to the retentive faculty But certainly it sheweth an absolute power when as the expulsive faculty being against it the digestive failing the attractive loathing and so others being trodden underfoot the Pylorus is oft-times stubborn as well in its closure as I have said above to happen in Fevers as in its opening as in Caeliack passions For vomiting is made while the Pylorus being shut it doth contract it self upwards not indeed by the co-wrinckling of the stomach but by a totall motion of the stomach upwards to the throat and so the Pylorus doth command vomiting and hearkeneth not unto the retentive faculty Seeing therefore the power of the Pylorus is not the Chamber-maid of other faculties nor subjected to fibers but Monarchal and so that the fibers ought to yield obedience to its very pleasure It must needs be that this power is absolutely vital and that it hath a proper motive Blas like the womb independent on the will of man And that so much the more potent a one by how much the Duumvirate of the stomach shall now come to light And although the Pylorus be wearied oft-times by external and occasional causes to wit from Medicines Poysons or Dregs yet its Blas is free unto its self which is implanted in its part or Archeus Wherein notwithstanding I admire a certain power from above like unto the influences of the Stars For the Blas of the Pylorus doth as near as may be express the Blas of a free will for truly an external inciter rushing on it it can nevertheless at pleasure oppose as to shutting or opening that as long as the Pylorus is well in health or able it may be moved for lawful ends or at leastwise those that appear so to it for the straightning or loosening of the passage Yet when a man being inordinate doth transgress against those ends the Pylorus as the Governour or orderer of digestion doth oftentimes constrain the man to expiate his ofence by punishing him But seeing there may be defects in that Blas in some sort as it were an arbitrall one not onely from occasional causes but also in its own motive mad principle so that through fury it doth preposterously open or shut it self freely like the womb Surely it is a wonder that these things with the other beginnings of healing have stood neglected by the Schools Every power and especially the motive doth easily wander abroad being stirred up as well by contingent causes as by a proper beck of madness seeing they are free and as it were independent in the errour of which motive power the Pylorus doth for the most part and easily stumble Even as the womb not being shaken from elsewhere doth rush it self headlong ascend or being furious doth writhe it self on the sides doth alienate straighten enlarge contract the throat weasand yea and the sinews readily serving the will against their office and doth now and then exhibite cruel motions scarce unlike to magical ones as the motive Blas is excentrical in stirring up divers Tragedies of Tempests And these things are diligently to be attended by Physitians that as oft as through occasion of the provoking cause the Pylorus doth wander from its aims he may straightway study a removing of the cause But if the Pylorus be exorbitant through the errour as it were the fury of its own proper Blas let him think that he must fight with excentrical powers and not with matter and least of all that evacuations must be trusted to For we may think that in a temperate state a man having eaten moderately his Pylorus is suitably shut least any thing do drop down out of his chinks and that at length digestion being finished the Pylorus doth open it self Surely neither doth this come to passe from a forreign pricking quality of the Chyle but because the Pylorus is expert of things to be done in the stomach and therefore is to be reckoned the moderator of digestion by whom indeed are the bounds of Government and the Keyes are kept For otherwise if the Pylorus be shut longer than is meer seeing that which was sufficiently digested doth not therefore cease to undergoe a further force of the digestive ferment therefore also it is cocted more than is meet Not indeed that the Chyle is therefore more excellently cocted like Glasse in the Furnace by how much the longer but through too much delay it is alienated and corrupted which afterwards must needs bring forth very many difficulties as well in the stomach as in its own neighbouring parts Notwithstanding if the Pylorus be lesse exactly shut surely the new drink cannot but be together with its former crudities carried into the Bowels about which surely since the digestion of the stomach is not employed a ferment of the Gaul being received it is changed into a strange substance and at length doth procreate divers Infirmities in the veins because the first digestion being omitted it is come to the second For so inspired tremblings and shakings of the hands beatings of the heart faintings sharp Fevers Tumors and joynt-sicknesses do break out So the tartness of Wine being not yet corrected by the first maturity of digestion being a stranger to the veins with the Aqua vitae inbred in it doth cause the proper nourishment of the veins to degenerate with it self and an unnamed and unknown guest doth bring forth unwonted and unknown infirmities Even as for the most part if the Chyle being well ripened doth slide down into the Duodenum and at the same instant new food be injected from above be sure that the Pylorus being well appointed is presently shut the former baggage being not yet plainly dismissed Therefore the detained part of the Chyle is corrupted doth wax sour more than is meet and defileth the new food with a fore-ripe ferment And the whole Chyle is made a forreigner unless that before an exact coction it be banished by the Pylorus which is by exciting divers appetites wringings and Fluxes Therefore the errour of Pylorus whether it be proper or stirred up from inordinacy doth cause many difficulties But that new food sliding in the Pylorus is presently closed it is manifest for else the new and raw food should slide forth together with the Chyle which should appear in the excrement as if it were bred from the affect of the passion
whereas in the mean time the gristles bones membranes veins sinews and bowels do not wax moyst and are melted but with a Liquor if they should undergoe an Ulcer Therefore the corruption and tempest of an Ulcer of these should be far more mild and gentle than those which do otherwise tumult in the flesh Because the diversity of a Remedy distinguisheth the end for which it is appointed and therefore a drying Medicine doth denounce a milder affect than that which moreover should also be astrictive Therefore Galen and his followers because they have been hitherto ignorant of the causes fewel Womb subject efficient of the manner of making of the seed and ferment of Ulcers they have delivered none but ridiculous Curings Remedies Maxims and Doctrine Wherefore neither is it a wonder that difficult or malignant and furious eating Ulcers are not wont to be cured by the Remedies of the Schools and the which for that cause especially have withdrawn themselves from the works of Chyrurgery with the great disgrace of Galen and his own Greeks who lived in the same Age and the Arabians their followers even as I have profesly touched in the Book of the Plague-grave For the milder Ulcers and in those whose malignity is taken away and while they hasten unto an incarnating and restoring of the hollowness left they drop down with thick matter onely and so are reckoned according to the Rules of Galen more difficult than while they flow with Liquor But Ulcers already mitigated are provoked by cleansing things So far is it that they are healed by the same Surely if things that drie up and cleanse or wipe off should satisfie all Ulcers the curing of any Ulcers whatsoever would be easie For why is the Galenical School so carefully troubled about the choosing of Medicines when as they do abundantly satisfie both betokenings with a dry Towel or linnen Cloth To wit one onely Towel dries up and together with it cleanseth likewise Let it shame them therefore and seriously shame them to diffuse such trifles out of their Chaires out of their presses and out of their mouth for Youth and Chyrurgions instead of a maxim of healing and to dismiss thereupon these men so instructed as provided with the specious Title of a Physitian and a Doctor to the death of mortals and the torture of those that trust in them Therefore it is not sufficient to have wiped away and dried up the thick or snotty and liquid matter but the hostile framer and corrupter sitting on the part is to be blotted out because he is that which doth nothing slacken or wax mild by drying and cleansing Indeed the quality of the seminal mortal poyson and the poysonous forreign Impression of the Archeal part which perverteth the good venal bloud dispensed unto it doth naturally shew a withdrawing of it self onely Therefore the poyson is a certain Ferment and Contagion implanted in the bottom the corrupter of the venal bloud and flesh Therefore the Schools may see whether a Rheume being lifted up in manner of a vapour out of the stomach into the plain of the Head be able to give a beginning and fewel to the same and whether Cauteries or fearing Medicines inflicted at pleasure are able to satisfie or be sufficient for the same accustomed Catarrhe instead of Remedies not onely those that dry up and cleanse but also instead of revulsions or repellings by reason of the continuation of co-knitting proportion application agreement yea and depending Harmony of the same Remedies in the Root Truly as many as are ignorant of the activity and variety of Ferments must needs in a blind manner try and grope at all things credulously There are indeed as many Ferments of Ulcers as there are diverse corruptions of Ulcers and distances of corruptions To which end the testimony of one bread will very much conduce because it is that which may be even the Index or Touch-stone of this disputation To wit the which hath received as many limitations or disposures in a Man a Dog a Cat a Horse a Cow a Hen a Goose a Duck a Sheep c. as their differences do issue forth Ferments of blouds and Dungs specifically yea and generically So also one onely venal bloud in the particular kinde doth support many Ulcers in the particular kinde their transchanged corruptions according to the interchangeable course of strange Ferments And although one onely Archeus be sufficient for generation yet there are divers means of life and manners of corruptions to wit as many as there are Families of corrupting things Therefore the full and exact curing of Ulcers is a taking away of their own Ferment but not a cooling refreshment of the Liver not the cleansing away of dreamed Choler or liquid corrupt matter In the next place neither are Ulcers cured by an application of abstersive or cleansing things so that by reason of their malignity their increase may desire degrees of corroding abstersives For Arsenick being fixed by Salt-peter and dulcisied or mitigated into an astringent Sulphur doth not extinguish perhaps sixty diversities of Ulcers because it gnaweth and eats up for so it should not require a dulcifying of it self with the repeated Spirit of Wine but because it hath now a mild poyson which is for killing the very workman of the Vlcer and the corrupter of venal bloud The which indeed being once wholly dead the flesh afterwards ceaseth not of its own accord to grow up from the bottom therefore the hollowness of an Vlcer doth betoken a growing up of the flesh and healing up of the Skin into a skarre to wit that it being taken away a restitution may be made And the which therefore have the relation of an effect in respect of the death of the corrupter Furthermore what Vlcers I refer unto a seminal and poysonous Ferment Paracelsus after his manner hath transferred on the minie and saltish minerals of the microcosme or little World For as Vlcers are for the most part made odious by Salt he according to his own Idiotism thought that Vlcers were to be registred in the Progeny of minerals and in the distinct Families of the same For I do not give my self to brawlings as I know that neither was I born to that end wherefore I am sorry for the vanity of the man and for his uncircumspect forgetfulness As he saith that man whom elsewhere by an Etymologie or Zodiack he boasts to be a drawn Epitome of the whole Vniverse and feigneth that he is more glorious by the dignity of that extraction than by the Image of the Creator is a most miserable monster every way formed by minerals alone He I say in another place being unmindful of these things calls the Body of man Cagastrical or badly Planet-struck throughout its whole not indeed consisting any longer of divers composures of Salts but to be proud of the structure of the one onely Salt-peter whence men are born a hard generation therefore the hatches of the Earth For
mishapen And so in the next place Diseases do vary in respect of a six-fold Digestion being hindred inverted suspended extinguished or vitiated Diseases also do vary in respect of the distribution of that which is digested For a proportioned distribution doth exercise the force of distributive Justice due to every part But if they are disproportioned now there is an infirm and necessitated distribution and that as well in respect of the natural functions which are never idle as of a continual transpiration and from thence for the sake of an uncessant necessity But that disproportion is voluntary and as it were an overflowing distribution in respect of a symptomatical expulsion by reason of a conspirable animosity of the disturbing Archeus or at length the distribution is disproportioned as it is necessitated in respect of penury or scantiness whence at length also no seldom dammage invadeth the whole Body To wit while in some part the nourishment degenerateth is ejected and so is wasted Such as is the Consumptionary spittle in Affects or Ulcers of the Lungs a Snivelly Glew in the Stone in the Gonorrhea or running of the Reines c. For seeing the part its nourishment being once defiled and degenerate is thenceforth never nourished but despiseth and thrusts that forth yet by reason of a sense of penury that ceaseth not continually with importunity to crave new nourishment from the dispensing faculty and to obtain it by its importunity that it may satisfie its thirst Therefore new nourishment is many times administred unto it and is withdrawn from its other chamber-fellows because a sufficient nourishment for all parts is wanting From thence therefore is Leanness an Atrophia a Tabes or lingring Consumption and an impoverishment of all necessary nourishment So indeed Fluxes Bloody-Fluxes Aposthems Ulcers and Purgative things do make us lean and exhaust us For the infirm parts are like the Prodigal Son because they do waste and unprofitably cast away being those which have badly spent whatsoever was distributed unto them and the other parts do lament that lavishment Things Retained that are taken into the Body offend onely in quality or quantity or indiscretion or inordinacy For if they are immoderate in quantity if frequent or too rare for numbers are in quantities also one onely error doth sometimes give a beginning unto a Disease whereas in the mean time otherwise Nature makes resistance for some good while But Poysons received Solutive Medicines and likewise altering things which are too much graduated do chiefly hurt in quality Discretion also doth offend in things assumed if they are taken rashly out of their hour and manner As if the Menstrues be provoked in a Woman with young or in a Womb that doth excessively flow For indiscretion doth every where bring forth a frequent inordinacy when as any undue thing is cast into the Body or required the scopes of Causes and betokenings of being unknown Also harmless things which are cast into the Body are vitiated onely by their delay and long continuance of detainment And they become the more hostile by how much they shall be the more familiar or the further promoted for truly by reason of a mark of resemblance sometime conceived they do the sooner ferment and more deeply and powerfully imprint their enmities And as by things Assumed things Retained are sometimes at length made inbred So by things inbreathed Diseases are oft-times made like unto those made by things Retained For some inspired things are Retained and do affect the same parts which things Retained do Otherwise they differ in their internal Root as much as breath doth from drink and as much as food from blood But before I descend unto inbred Retentions it is necessary to represent the unknown Tragedy of the chief or primary Diseases Because inbred Retents do for the most part take their beginning from primary Diseases For indeed I have already before distinguished of all Diseases that they do either affect the Archeus implanted in or inflowing into the parts Although in both cases Diseases do proceed by the forming of Idea's The which I will have to be understood of primary ones To wit out of whose bosom superfluities do arise or degenerate which give an occasion for new Idea's or onsets of Diseases For it is scarce possible that the Archeus being remarkeably smitten by a voluntary Idea of a Man or the Archeus a lot of Disaster should not arise in the inferiour family-administration of the Body from whence the Digestions themselves first of all wandering from their scope do frame the pernitious collections of Superfluities whereby the primary distemperatures of the Archeus are nourished to wit if they shall proceed from the same root That is if the root of a primary Disease shall produce its like to wit the former Idea of exorbitancy persisting or the new off-springs of Diseases are stirred up But at leastwise after either manner the aforesaid Excrements are the Products of primary or the chief Diseases But primary Diseases are either of Idea's Archeizated to wit by the proper substance of the influous Archeus issuing into the composure of the Body the which indeed he by reason of his madness wasts And such kind of Diseases are oft-times appeased by Opiates yea are also utterly rooted out Because they are for the most part the off-springs of a more sluggish turbulency The flame of the chaffe either ceasing from a voluntary motion or being silent at the consuming of the Archeus informed by the vitiated Idea But Idea's arising from the implanted afflictions of the vital Spirits whether they are the governing Spirits of the similar or organical parts they do for the most part disturb the family-administration of Life especially if the Archeus being badly disquieted in some principal bowel shall form the Idea's of his own hurt For then he brings forth most potent afflictions Yea sometimes those remaining safe for term of Life For as they are the Rulers of a greater nobleness and more eminent power So also they draw forth the more efficacious Idea's and do propagate Diseases of a prostrating nature Because the Powers themselves the In-mates of the more noble parts are defiled with the same Images as it were with Seals the which diseasie Products arising from thence the foot-step of the Seal being as it were received into themselves do afterwards linkingly expresse through the ranks of the Digestions For so the primary Diseases of the Bowels do abound neither do they hearken unto Remedies but of a more piercing wedlock yea and do bequeath their inheritances on Nephews The Arcanums of which sort I have reckoned up in the Book of Long Life to wit the which do every one of them represent the Majesty of an universal Medicine Although I will not deny but that there is that Majesty in some the more refined Simples which can heal particular primary Diseases The Galenists do laugh at the promise of a generality but every Bird doth utter his voice according to
and double Fevers Neither doth it also forbid a primary Disease to be con-folded with its own or with a secundary one bred from else where In such a manner as is a primary Fever which brings forth a Product from whence there is a resolving of the Blood into the putrifying Disease of a malignant Flux matched with a feverish Ferment At length neither is there a necessary passage of the three first Digestions unto the sixth by the fourth and fifth Because the greatest part of the venal Blood never comes unto the Heart and much less is it snatched into its left Bosom Because all particular parts are nourished no less with Venal than Arterial Blood From hence indeed it happens that the Vices of the three first Digestions do oftentimes immediately pass over into the sixth And therefore the transchanged Retents of the three first Digestions if they shall reach unto the sixth they offend not by transmission of a proper name but only by transmutation because a transmission from the third into the sixth Digestion is regular lawful and ordinary I will add concerning the Spleen If from the first Digestion a sharpness of the Chyle be immediately brought unto the Spleen A Quartane Ague is soon present to wit from a curdled Retent being there a stranger But if the sixth Digestion in the Spleen be troubled seeing it is the Couch of the first Conceptions The Excrements or things transchanged which are made of its proper nourishment are for the most part endowed with an imaginative Power such as occurs in many Simples and which is most plainly to be seen in the Spittle of a mad Dog and the which therefore I call inebriating or be-drunkening dreamifying or befooling Simples For therefore of one Wine there is a many-form condition of drunken Men That is one only Wine doth stir up diverse Madnesses For a mad Poyson halts with the similitude of Wine For a mad Poyson by reason of its excelling Power doth not follow the conditions of the Man but the very Conditions of the Man are constrained to obey the Poyson As is clearly seen in the Poyson of him that is bitten by a Mid-dog Poysons therefore which of a degenerate nourishment are bred in the sixth Digestion do follow their own Nature For by how much the nearer they shall be unto assimilating by so much the more powerfully do they infatuate For by how much the nearer the Ferment of the Bowel and an in-beaming of the implanted Spirit shall be present with it by so much also the nearer it calls unto it the Idea of a certain imaginative Power which at length it transplanteth into a venemous Poyson not indeed so destructive unto the Life as unto the Power of that Bowel But from what hath been before declared any one shall be hereafter able to erect unto himself the Stages of Diseases But it hath been sufficient for me to have shewn that every primary Disease doth objectively and subjectively fall into the Archeus and so into the Life it self whereof to wit it is immediately formed But that a secondary Disease fals objectively indeed into the Archeus but subjectively into a Matter either the solid one of the part containing or the fluide one of that contained And thus indeed to have shewn Diseases to be distributed in Nature by their Causes Roots and Essence according to their Inns I repose my Pen. Barrenness also seeing it is among Defects beside Nature hath hither extended its Treatise Wherefore Coldness Heat or moistness is not in either of the Sexes the cause of Barrenness however lowdly others may sound out this thing For truly first of all there is no dryness possible in living Creatures or the vitious moisture of the Womb is not of the complexion but a meer superfluity of Digestion or Transmission So in the next place Heat and Cold are signs of Defects in Nature but not Causes Because these Qualities do want a Seed vital Properties and potestative Conditions Therefore indeed Barrenness and Fruitfulness is in every Climate of the World Yet an Aethiopian Woman is far hotter than the most hot Woman of Muscovia But the excrementitious and superfluous Moistness of the Womb is an Effect of Diseases Yea if it shall be a companion of Barrenness yet not the containing Cause thereof For an internal Cause differs not from the Being it self So neither is the Defect of the Menstrues the cause of Barrenness if that Defect contains a denial or proceeds as an Effect of a nearer Indisposition Women of unripe Age have oft-times conceived even also before their Menstrues and those of more ripe years their Menstrues being silent Also oft-times Women affected in their Womb being trampled on by many Perplexities do succesfully conceive and accordingly bring forth In the mean time some Barren Women are in good health Also many conceive while their Menstrues is urgently present As also the Menstrues being afterwards silent hath deceived many of Conception Some Women do take notice of their Menstrues all the time of their bearing but many for some months only For indeed although Barrenness may after some sort bespeak a privative respect yet it is meerly a positive and diseasie Being for it ariseth from singular positive Defects Because by it self and in self it is a Malady of Nature Even as fruitfulness bespeaks an entire Cause For in a Man which is not Gelded not an Eunuch not hindred or disturbed not mischieved Barrenness hath scarce place For from hence an Old-man doth as yet generate Whence it follows that there is not so much perfection to be attributed as neither to be required in the Male as in the Mother But I call those hindered Males who do labour with a Gonorrhea or who have from thence retained a Vice And likewise who do labour with the notable Vice of some Bowel In a Woman the Menstrues abounding being Deficient Irregular Watery Yellow looking Blackish Slimy Stinking a Pain in her Loyns Belly Hips and movings of the Womb upwards downwards to the Sides are indeed Witnesses and Signs of the Sicknesses or Feeblenesses of the Womb and therefore also they fore-slow overflow Conception move Abortions and gushings forth of the Courses yet they do not altogether take away the hope of Conception nor are they the Disease which is called Barrenness For indeed old Women are Barren without all those For I find the one only suitable and co-equal Cause in Time and Age to be described in the holy Scriptures for a positive Being which is called Barrenness in these Words God opened the Womb of Sarah For it is the Gift of God derived into Nature whereby the Parchment or Membrane of the Womb being most exactly shut in its Foldings is opened and enlarged at the co-agreeing moment of Conjunction There is I say an attractive drawing Blas whereby for fear of a Vacuum or Emptiness an attraction of the Seeds and a suitable filling up of the opened Wrinckles follows that opening To wit the
say Plethora or the abounding of humours alone is called the shewer or betokener of bloud-letting which as it hurts for the future so hunger and the withdrawing of meat in the beginning of a sharp Disease do together with a destructive Disease easily empty out all abounding humours in the first dayes Neither that the vain device of revulsion and derivation hath greatly profited at sometimes by their own position I have demonstrated in the Treatise of Feavers But laxative Medicines since they do at leastwise wipe away very new bloud out of the Meseraiok or sucking veins and change it through the disposition of their poyson by divers waves corrupting it truly they have given hitherto none but a weak hope of healing by the event full of confusion sorrowes and uncertainty Therefore we are blinde unless with a stout heart we being at length moved with compassion do go to meet so great a slaughter of mortal men and the sighs of sick persons or phanes and of Widowes and of the dead For besides that the helps of the Schooles for the sick are so uncertain and of so little credit I intreat you let us mutually commiserate mans condition which hath committed his life and fortunes to an art filled with conjectures and uncertainty also that it hath admitted of all sorts of knaves and Harlots whereby it may without punishment exercise cruelty on our Kinsfolks When I exactly consider with my self the so great sluggishness and blindeness of Schooles and Ages I give praise to the thrice glorious God that he hath made manifest to the little ones in himself much truth which he hath hidden from Noble Persons and those in chief Seats and therefore I admiring the depth of the judgements of God do religiously adore him But Galen snatching the glory of his Predecessors into himself extended his own Art contained in a few Rules into huge Volumes It pleased him indeed that all Bodies should be framed of four Elements and from thence to snatch their wholethingliness or Essence and so that to the square of these elements he confirmed or framed four qualities and as many simple Complexions straight-way so many couples of Compound qualities and from thence also foure constitutive humours of us before dreamed of by others And then from their strife and discord joyned as well with a simple as with his own feigned humours he determined to derive almost all Diseases and the scopes or indications of healing even as health from their fit proportion also that every Disease is a meer disposition in quality wherefore that of contraries there are onely contrary Remedies With which necessity he being at length constrained distinguishing the vertues of simples word for word out of Diascorides and the Elementary Degrees he copied out their Seminal and specifical power neglecting on both sides because not knowing either By what facility of Art indeed he allured the chiefdom of healing to himself he obtained it and Posterity being allured with so great a compendium a drowsie sleep crept into the Schooles thorow the Doores of sloath for the awakening whereof I would God might take his honour and mortaâ—â— the experienced fruit which I wish by my labours Many I know well enough will prate grieving that themselves and their â—iresome readings will be diminished if I shall resign the sound truth of Medicinal Science unto the gift of the glorious God alone but shall have very little hope in the sharpness of wits But however they may gun man is a plained and naked Table and ought to get his Learning else-where and from one onely Master of whom it is said that the Scholar shall never excel that Master because there is onely one Father and one onely Master who dwelleth in the Heavens from whom is every good thing all light and clearness of understanding Truly we Christians do profess the Lord Jesus to be the onely wisdom oâ— the Father the beginning and the ending of all Essence Truth and Knowledge â— and so sâ—eing every good gift not onely of vertues but also of knowledges doth descend from the Father of Lights who could learn perfectly the skill of the Science of Medicine from the Schooles of the Heathens for the Lord not Schooles hath created a Physitian The Heathenish Schooles indeed may have an Historical knowledge the observer of things contingent or accidental of things regular and necessary which is a memâ—rative knowledge of the thing done they may also get Learning by demonstration which is the knowledge of applying things unto measure And lastly they may promise rational knowledge which is derived from either of these by the fitting of discourse and I wish they had soundly and sincerely performed what they might have done by those meanes They may I say historically have known the reflux or going back of the Starrs and Sea that the water bends to a levelled roundness and downward draw divers Sequels from thence and stablish them into maxims They have known I say the craft of composing and how to fit the necessity of Causes in some measure conjoyned by discourse But to understand and savour these things from the spring or first cause is granted to none without the special favour of Christ the Lord. Therefore the Science of healing is the last of all Sciences and chiefly hidden so that it is no wonder that its first beginnings are even at this day desired from types or figures The more diligent Heathens have as yet promised the World to continue by its own Law and things to have their Roots in the whole and in the particular kindes or Species whereby by its own proper force it was to be preserved for ever and so an independency or Deity to be in things Alas thereby from the true Phylosophy and truth of Medicine even as drunken men about wan Deities and blindnesses they have stumbled in the dark and therefore they have of necessity been ignorant of created things and the Seeds Roots and knowledge of these Therefore the knowledge of nature hath indeed been attempted by the Heathens through childish conjectures and very little ever obtained Therefore I have grieved with pity that hitherto the beginnings of natural things have not been fetched forth elsewhere the which as I have determined to discover by this my labour So I humbly intreat that God may grant that he hath not yielded me his Talent for a recompence of punishment although in this Work I could not do so much as I would For the whole faculty of natural Phylosophy is committed to man and therefore this ought to respect both his life immediately and all his defects Therefore all natural Phylosophy is limited for the use of life the finding out of causes the Disease and Remedies in which last point I finde that hitherto little pains hath been taken no hing known but much promised and very much neglected long expectations and every where errours For the knowledge of Diseases containeth the knowledge of the Causes the dependance
subdivision is many times re-shaken sub-divided by the colds through which it hath passed This Gas at least should never of its own accord return into its auntient water nor should descend unto the most cold places through which it escaped by climbing upward unless the uppermost Blas of the Stars should force its descent And so the Region of the still air is not void of successive changes but that the Rain doth not there moysten the ground nor the rage of windes serve for the commotion of the waters For since the Gas which it keepes in it self is now reduced to so great a fineness of it self and all its Atomes being as it were roasted with heats in the outward superficies of the Sulphur surely they cannot return into rain unless by a sweet winde they descend to the middle Region where they do re-take the beginnings of coagulating under the luke-warm blowing of the air For a certain alteration opposite to that place from which the Gas departed ought to reduce the Gas into water For a sweet luke-warmth in the still air maketh the Atomes of Gas being covered in their own Sulphur to divide which Sulphur a skin being as it were broken thorow or like a Glasse that is brought suddenly from luke-warmth into the cold is broken and so the Mercury of the water doth dissolve its Salt at the dissolution whereof the Sulphur it self may be melted into its former water And that kinde of inversion or turning in and out of the body of the water and that torture through the exact searching of the cold is necessary that all the power of the Ferment may be wholly taken away out of the Clouds For else much corruption and the much stink of mists would soon destroy mortalls As in Silver being melted the exceeding small atomes of Gold do slide to the bottom So do the atomes of the Gas settle and by sliding they do increase or wax bigger which otherwise being infirm by reason of the coldness of the Air are again lifted up unless a gentle or favourable luke-warmth in the coldest place did now and then hinder it For so indeed rains shoures storms so Hail Snow mist and Frost are through an alteration by accident having arisen as well from a motive as an alterative Blas in the most cold places And so Gas and Blas have divided the whole Common-wealth of a Meteor into Colonies In like manner I have learned by the examples cited that the Sun doth not heat by accident but by it self and immediately And that heat is as intimate and proper to it as its light is to it The Air hath therefore its grounds or soils no lesse than the Earth which the Adeptists do call Peroledes Therefore the invisible Gas is entertained in the various Beds or Pavements of the Air if the Water hath its depths of its Gulfs it s own Gates are in the Peroledes which skilfull men have called the Floud-gates and folding doores of Heaven For neither is Gas falling down into the place of Clouds carried out of the depth of Heaven without its directer Blas Yea it falls not down but thorow ordained Pavements and folding-doores For all the folding-doores do not promiscuously lay open to the Planets but all the Planets in particular are by their own Blas the Key-keepers of their own Perolede Which thing I submit to be examined by Astrologers that are the shewers or disclosers of Meteors and I promise that they shall finde out a rich substance For so windes do sometimes hasten perpendicularly downwards and smite the Earth but otherwise they go side-wayes out of their folding-doores they beat down Houses and Trees as also bring miserable destruction on all sorts of Shipping But the more luke-warm Air doth foreshew the Winde to come out of the depth of the Air and the Gas to bring with it the Blas of Heaven downwards Whence Gas is straight-way again resolved into a Vapour and afterwards into rain Indeed Clouds do then appear which not long before were not beheld at any corner of the World Because the invisible Gas slides downward out of the depth of the upper Air the which growes together into vapours and from thence into drops For that is the appointment of the Air that it may continually seperate the waters from the waters But seeing that one part of water is extended at least to a hundred fold of its dimension while it is made a vapour and so much the finer by how much the Gas thereof is sub-divided into the more lesse parts and since there is that order and that law of universe that all things may be carried on for the necessity of man and the preserving of the World Indeed in this respect do heavy things tend upward light things are drawn downward Hence it hath seemed to me that the Blas of the Stars is disturbed into rain and is carried into clearnesses and other seasons as oft as the pluralities of Gas it self in the still Perolede of the air do seem to threaten almost choakings and the too-much com-pressions in the air Yet I am not so carefull concerning the occasionall causes of a Meteor it is sufficient that I have known an exhalation arising from beneath to wit a vapour and Gas to be the materiall cause of every Meteor It sufficeth to have known Blas to be the effective cause by the authority of the holy Scriptures The Stars shall be to you for times or seasons dayes and years This therefore is the unrestable appointment of the water that by proceeding continually upwards and downwards it should answer no otherwise than as the windes by an inordinate and irregular motion do answer to their Blas of the Stars And so the water which existed from the beginning of the Universe is the same and not diminished and shall be so unto the end thereof But I meditate of the Peroledes or Soils of the Air to be as it were the Bottles of the Stars by which they do unfold their Blas even through their determined or limited places for the uses and interchangeable courses of times or seasons And chiefly because the upper and almost still Perolede doth contain the cause why there are windes fruits dewes and especially things pertaining to Provinces For seeing that the winde is a flowing Air and so hath an unstableness in it we must needes finde the locall cause of stability in the more quiet Perolede Therefore the folding-doores are shut or laying open in the Perolede according to the Blas of the Stars which they obey Nor is it a wonder that there are limits or invisible bounds in the air of so great power and capable to restrain a heap for the visible World doth scarce contain another Common-wealth of things and the least one of powers For who will deny that under a Rock or great Stone of Scotland scarce 12 foot broad and deep 30 there is not some division of a Perolede that in the mean time I may be
substance But it is no wonder for truly they have not known some Creatures some whereof they have brought back into a substance to wit the fire substantiall forms c. but others they have surrendred into meer accidents as the Rainbow Light the Magnall c. The which notwithstanding I shall demonstrate in their place to be created things of a neither sort But let it be enough to have said it in this place But if the Rainbow should be immediately in the Air and not in a place it must needes be that by any little winde it should straightway flow abroad and be puft away by blowing together with a Cloud or the Air which is false in the Rainbow the which doth also remain a great while under the Windes sometimes without any presence of Clouds and yet in the same constant figure of a Bow or Semi-circle therefore the Rainbow seeing it is immediately in place it is a new figure of a coloured Light Indeed the Rainbow began supernaturally for a Sign and Mystery of the Covenant struck with Mortalls and since it hath at this day its Root in the Air without any matter yet after the manner of naturall things I do reverence its efficient cause and its presence and do ponder with my self that the Rainbow is at this day given for a Sign of the Covenant even as in times past Paracelsus supposeth the Rainbow to be the Evestrum of the Sun but the Evestrum he calls the Spirits or Ghosts of men The which from the absurdity of it self alone as sufficiently rejected I passe by For truly the Sun hath neither a Soul nor being as yet alive hath an Evestrum after its Buriall There are some who will laugh at me for these daily Miracles But certainly while I do more fully look into things I see divine goodness to be actually alwayes every where and immediately President or chief Ruler because all which things he in very deed even from end to end reacheth to strongly and disposeth of all things sweetly For in God we live are and are moved in very deed and act but not by way of proportion or similitude For truly when the Lord the Saviour said I am he to wit by whom ye are live and are moved he withdrew onely that his power whereby they were moved and straightway all the Souldiers fell on the ground And although the Instrument in nature whereby we are moved be ordinary yet there is another principall totall and independent cause of our motion and the originall thereof being a miraculous hand doth concur in every motion So also in the Rainbow the Sun and place do concur as it were second causes Yet there is another independent totall miraculous and immediate cause which hath directed the Rainbow to the glory of his own goodness and of the Covenant stricken not onely indeed with Noah and his Family but with the Sons of men his posterity even to the end of the World And so from the same originall and for the same end for which the Rainbow began it is promised to endure as long as Mortalls shall be and seeing it is a sign of the Covenant with the Sons of men but not onely with the Sons of Noah it also includes a certain Covenant or agreement Therefore there is a miraculous thing in the Rainbow that its colours are not in any body but immediately in place it self like light and that immediately from the hand of God without the concurrence of a second cause Nor is it a wonder that from the condition of the Covenant a supernaturall effect should interpose Because that in many places continuall miracles do offer themselves Therefore as the Rainbow is a sign of an everlasting Covenant and a Messenger of divine goodness so Thunder causeth an admiration and adoring of the power of God For there is nothing in the Catalogue or number of things whose rains the Almighty Creator doth not immediately rule Surely he every where inforceth his love and fear and so will have man to be ordinarily put in minde of his power According to that saying The Voyce af Thunder hath stricken the Earth For a sudden and monstrous Blas is stirred up in the Air. The Heaven is oft-times clear straightway also being without winde it is suddenly bespotted with a black Cloud For often times it thunders the Heaven being clear without any small Cloud And so Thunder doth not require a Cloud but if it doth suddenly stir up any it is made as the cracking noyse shakes the Peroledes and as Gas settles downwards into a thick Cloud being drawn together by the cold of the place Therefore the Doctrine of the Schooles is frivolous determining that an exhalation is kindled between the sheath of the Clouds that it dasheth forth Lightning and that there are so many rentings of that Cloud as there are sounds and cracking noyses For I have seen in Mountains wandring Clouds and most cold in the touching yet none of any firmness or strength that they being discontinued can utter so great a noyse or cast down Lightning of so great a power by a mooving downwards and with so violent a motion and that besides the nature of ascending fire I have seen I say Lightnings about me and have heard Thunder also under my feet Notwithstanding I have even least of all discerned those firmnesses of Clouds and trifles of Thunder I say I have seen Lightnings and Thunders diversly to play under my feet where at first there was no Cloud and a Cloud to descend as if it had been called to them by the voyce of the Thunder And so I have beheld Lightning with a magnifying of the Divine Power but not with fear although I have been twice in a house that was smitten with Thunder For I by so much the more admiring have praysed the magnificencies or great atchievements of the Lord by how much the nearer his effects were unto me I have seen also once nigh Vilvord and again at Bella in Flanders a certain black Sheath as if it were a long Horsemans Boot to fly among the Groves of Oaks or Forrests with a great cracking noyse having behinde it a flame as it were of kindled straw but great Snow succeeded it Therefore seeing Thunder hath no cause plainly naturall in the Clouds of a Meteor I believe that it hath wholly all its cause not above but besides nature and so that it is a monstrous effect For first of all we are bound to believe that the evill Spirit is the Prince of this World and that his Principality doth not shine forth amongst the faithfull unless onely in the office of a tempter For so it is said that the Adversary as a Roaring Lyon goeth about seeking whom he may devoure but that not from the office of his Principality Therefore he hath obtained the Principality of this World that he may be a certain Executer of the judgements of the chief Monarch and so that he may be the Umpire or
into the aforesaid Bladder being pressed together laying on the ground and void of every Body however most strongly it should blow yet it could not at all blow up the Bladder because the low Countries laying on it should presse it together But if indeed a fiery exhalation be sought for in the place of the Winde or Air I have already demonstrated before that fire to be impossible and the exhalation of so great an effect throughout all the low Countries to be fabulous At length that continuall Bladder so strong and capable to be hammered thin also faileth which may sustain with its back the low Countries Seas Rivers and far more For although I have granted the same it is not because I think it to be but because that Bladder being supposed so great absurdities may also follow and the Schooles at length be squeezed to an impossibility Mountains Sulphurous places and the mansions of Mines have afforded to Countrey people whence the Schooles have them the beginnings of this Dream Alass is there every where a miserable drowsiness in searching into the causes of effects The Mountain Soma or Vesuvius nigh Naples hath burned now for some Ages with Sulphur or Brimstone and fire-Stones But it hath a gap in its top large enough whereby the smoaks and flame might expire or breath out To wit perhaps to the largeness of three filed measures or Acres of Land But a Vault that was next to the flame as being now sufficiently roasted and full of chaps at length about the sixteenth day of the tenth Moneth or December of the year 1631 by one sudden fall fell down into the Gulf of the flame But it is the property as well of some Metalls as of bright shining Fire-stones while they are melting that if any thing of water shall fall in among them they all leap asunder therefore the Sulphurs with the Fire-stones being melted in the bowels of Vesuvius they did not endure the roasted fragment falling down from the Rocks without a great deluge but the flame did vomit out all of whatsoever had slidden down from above and more Neither was this sufficient But moreover some Fountains were loosed from above into the Chimney of the fire But what have the melted Sulphurs or what the raging tempests of smoakes common with an Earth-quake Do Sulphurs thus burn throughout all the low Countries For an Earth-quake had gone before at Naples and did accompany that danger of Sodom And although they shall happen together they do not therefore partake of one onely root the which do obey divers causes that Earth-quake fore-shewing a wonder did also inclose in it a monstrous token and doth alwayes inclose some such But the belching out of Metallick Veins stands by its natural causes Surely a wretched Sophistry it is to argue from not the cause as for the cause For neither are exhalations to be believed to have been enclosed in that Earth-quake a Chimney is produced having long since a way opened for exhalations I would the Schooles hath hearkened to their Pliny that oft-times at the present time or urgency of an Earth-quake Birds the winde being still being as it were sore smitten with fear do fall down out of the Air that in a quiet Haven the Oare Galleys do leap a little But what fellowship interposeth between the Air and the Sea with an exhalation shut up under the Earth For doth the Air tremble when the Earth doth Is so small a trembling of the Air sufficient to cast down Birds which fly in every winde For because the Sand of the Sea and that indeed without gaping should leap a little for the depth of half a foot ought therefore the Superficies of the deep Sea void of Winde together with Ships to tremble A Manuscript of the Curate of S. Mary beyond Dilca of Mecheline was shewen wherein he had written that in the year 1540 once every day for three dayes space the Earth trembled before that lightning inflamed its Sand-Port and also the Gun-powder contained therein whence the City by an un-thought of slaughter being almost utterly dashed in pieces went to ruine Lastly in the year 1580 the second houre after noon the fury of the Windes ceasing the City trembled two dayes before the English invaded Mecheline and took it for a prey But what have those events happening from a fatall necessity common in the joyning of causes with a dreamed exhalation under the Earth For what could a supposed exhalation portend besides or out of it self For why should it include a future signifying of a VVar-like invasion or Lightning to come and to kindle the Vessels of Gun-powder there also kept shaking the Sandy Tower and throwing down the whole City For before that the Mountain Vesuvius belched out its bowels and covered very many small Towns with a Minerall Clod and denyed hope to the Husband-man for the time to come thick darkness under the Sun went before in the Air lamentable howlings and the Earth trembled things stirring up the required devotion of the Nation Truly the Earth trembled from its own cause for a fore-knowledge of the future slaughter threatned But the slaughter it selfe followed by its naturall causes But the fore-going signes have never any thing common with the event of future fire Since therefore now it is certain that there is no place among the Pavements of the Earth nor exhalation that layes under them and if any should be under yet that it were impossible to cause an Earth-quake yet that it is an undoubted truth that the Earth doth truly and actually tremble without the dis-continuance of its pavements or through the opening of some gap I have considered that trembling to be in the Earth no otherwise than in Brasse when as the Clapper hath smote the Bell. For as long as the Bell trembles without a cleft so long it gives a Tune The Earth also while it is shaken with its Super-natural Clapper sends forth a deaf sound because its body toucheth together indeed by Sand and VVater even into its Center yet it is not holding together by a continuance of unity without intermission And it may tremble without the dis-continuance of touching together indeed by so much the more freely if the Mettall be bended without the renting asunder of that which holds together the Earth also in trembling hath its inward Clapper more famous than the voice of Thunder But because the stroak waxeth deaf in the Sand and VVater therefore it is shaken together with a certain tune or note while it trembled yet the roaring which is sometimes heard is not of the Earth but a strange one not proper to the Earth-quake but an accidentary howling of Spirits which by the Italians is called Baleno At length I weighing the cause of an Earth-quake do know that in the first place there is a motive force in the Air whereby the Air doth commit to execution the spurre conceived in the Stars For the Stars shall be to you for
Cough of old folks and the snortings of dying persons although afflicted with another vice than that of the Lungs For that is proper to the Lungs because it alwayes drinks crude or fresh Air and being neighbour to the oppressed heart doth readily restore its strength and for that cause its own strength the sooner faileth For truly I first of all dissent from the Schools because I know this kind of vice to be of the parts containing but not of the liquors contained For those contents are the certain products of a root which are begotten by the Archeus of the parts being badly seasoned And then I also differ in this that I know it to be a local evil but not bestowed or dispensed by a secondary affection of the Head For the Coughs of old age are made under a difficult hope of restoring because a very small quantity of the excrement bred in the Lungs doth reside in the utmost small branches of the Airy pipe which doth not only stop up the reeds but also through its presence disturbeth the ferment of the place and lessens it whence new excrements the wealthy houshold-stuff of Coughs are stirred up every hour Which in old age are scarce cured by means commonly known Because they are those which do not pierce unto the places affected yea neither have they obtained a strength of restoring Such excrements therefore are the local defects of the parts And every part hath its own weakness whether it be in-bred or attained with a diminishment of the growing or flourishing ferment And so also from hence all those excrements of parts do proceed I understand therefore in the first place that the repetitions of purges are vain and hurtful in these affects because they are those things which are appointed only about the products but not about the causes Then also and chiefly because such excrements do not give place by loosening Medicines However it is they do no way reach to the primitive blemish and hurtful root in us but only do meditate of latter effects but the former causes or roots they are not able to touch Adde thou that although loosening Medicines do seem sometimes to have succoured for two dayes space as the lump of the venal blood of the Mesentery being taken away a more sparing dispensation and nourishment is brought unto the Lungs and hence there is a more sparing spitting forth by reaching Yet notwithstanding laxative Medicines do oppose the general strength of the whole Body by weakening it more and more Which thing while Physitians do even see as it were thorow a sieve neither know they to have profited the sick party by a diminishing of the Body and exhausted strength they at length dismisse the weak to be handled by the rules of Diet and the only aids of a sober Kitchin only by the aid of a Cautery and repeated assistance of the more gentle laxatives they proceed medicinally that is to live miserably By which supposition in the first place they at least insinuate that the Kitchin is to be preferred before any unfaithful or distrustful Medicines of the shops and experience being made they decree that these must be abstained from as hurtful And I wish that after so many wipings away of the strength that might suffice neither that they would again any more afterwards by the same succours attempt to exhaust the hope Body veins strength and purses of the sick I would to God also they were mindful of their own Maxim wherein their chief curative indication or betokening sign is to be taken from things profitable and hurtful Which rule although it be shameful and only that of Empericks I would that at least by the same they would now skip back from their committed errors Neither that in the Cough and Consumption they would return unto Remedies which hitherto they have found to have profited none For loosening Medicines cuttings of a vein purgers by the nostrils drawers of phlegme by the mouth Ecligmaes or Lohochs the decoction of China Sarsaparilla Sassafras a Cautery in the Coronal suture or seam of the scull and other unfaithful aids of that sort would fall asleep being applied by the Physitian that they may after some sort seem not to have received their money from a free gift At least wise I would that they had learned by their practice that while they meditate of the removings revulsions derivations and preventions of latter effects that is excrements they do openly shew that the knowledge of the causes have lain hid unto them neither that they have methodically cured their sick by a taking away of the causes They had also found the respect of food to be a dainty or costly languishing weak and desperate kind of Remedy for so great an enemy now an in-mate yea and a Patron No wonder therefore that the common People heeding the vanity of these Cures have took an occasion to say that it is the best Medicine not to use Medicine For I have oftentimes bewailed with great compassion in reading thorowly of the centuries of medicinal counsels and especially while they afresh prosecute all the Diseases of Almanzor from the crown of the Head unto the soal of the foot because they narrowly searching into the catarctical or principal cause from the beginning as they think and boast they do every where accuse some natural or attained singular distemper yet under the uncertainty of a doubt whether they should appoint the same as the disease or indeed as the antecedent cause of the disease whereof they consulted But least they should erre even in any diseases they have accused heat and also cold To wit they complain almost in all cases of a coldness of the stomack alone or combined with the heat of the liver whence they many wayes divine Rheumes to arise and to have slidden down into divers parts and they prosecute as the diseases of the same not onely almost all internal ones but also even unto the defects of the skin Thus indeed do the Schooles season their young beginners theorically and practically For so Rheumes are guilty of the defects of the eyes ears jawes tongue teeth breast armes loines and legs So coughs consumptions astmaes plurisies peripneumonies apoplexies palsies sudden deaths corrupt mattery imposthumes spittings of blood have found their already supposed cause in Rheums So in the next place the Stomack casts up its vomit loatheth labours with an unconcoction the liver also and the spleen are ill at ease For an undigestible snivel having slidden down out of the head obstructions hardnesses dropsies aposthems scirrhus's fevers wringings of the bowels have taken up their room among Catarrhes their Clients Unto which Catarrhes Paracelsus although elsewhere triumphing in Tartars and his Three first Things through an invention hath notwithstanding for the most part subscribed and hath alwayes manifestly acknowledged the name of the defluxion fflussen by nodding under his Mistriss Uncertainty For the Schooles do so seriously adorn this deplorable fable of
of a Disease and its immediate Essence may be manifest First indeed I have taught elsewhere that there is a certain unbridled imaginative force of the first motions not reduced into the power of the will being infolded in the Spleen And that the Almighty hath entertained a faculty of so great moment even in meer Membranes and almost un-bloody purses so that as well the Orifice of the Stomack as the womb it self may be of right and desert equalized to the heart To wit by reason of a notable Crasis or constitution of acting and likewise obedience performed unto it by the other Bowels From the prerogative of which power the spleen is scituated almost in the middle place between them both yet it is inclined a little more demissly or downwards because it hath undertaken the place of an entire root For it toucheth at the Stomack with its largeness in respect whereof a Duumvirate subsisteth But it reacheth the Womb with its other extream or end to wit being by its Ligaments annexed to the Loins And then I have said that although at first that which is imagined is nothing but a meer Being of Reason yet it doth not remain such for truly the Phantasie is a sealifying virtue and in this respect is called imaginative because it formeth the Images or likenesses or Idea's of things conceived and doth characterize them in its own vital spirit And therefore that Idea is made a spiritual or seminal and powerful Being to perform things of great moment which thing it helpeth to have shewn by the example of a woman with child For a woman with child if by her imaginative virtue she with great desire hath conceived a cherry she imprinteth the Idea thereof on the young even as of the plague elsewhere an Idea I say which is seminal sealing and of its own accord un-obliterable Because the Idea whereof waxeth green becomes yellow and lookes red every Year in the flesh at the same Stations of the Year wherein these Cherries do otherwise give the tokens of their successive change in the tree But why the Idea of a Cherry or Mouse is imprinted not on the mother but on the young and doth now presently wander from the imagining woman into another subject the which also hath oft-times began to live in its own quarter the cause is an uncessant nor that a feigned affection of the Mother whereby she naturally watcheth more for her Young than for her self Therefore the inward natural and unexcuseable carefulness of the Mother laying as it were continually on the Young directs the Idea bred from passions by one beam unto her Young And because the hand is the principal Instrument of activities therefore the carefulness descending unto the hand as it were for the defence of her Young receiveth the conceived Idea and proceedeth with it further on her Young But seeing Idea's are certain seminal Lights therefore they mutually pierce each other without the adultery of Union Therefore the conceived Idea of the Cherry through a supervening or sudden coming Idea of the Mothers care is directed unto the part of the Young where the hand hath touched the Body of the Mother For indeed there is alwaies a certain care for the end whereunto the hand doth operate The Hand therefore as the executive instrument of the Will deciphers the Idea of the Cherry conceived on that patt whereto the Mother hath moved her hand Whence it is even in the enterance manifest after what manner a cogitation which is a meer non-being may be made a real and qualified Being And then it is from hence manifest that the Spirit is primarily seasoned or besmeared with that Image and being once seasoned with some one kind of Idea it afterwards becomes unfit for the execution of other offices because the Idea being once conceived it is a Seal onely to perform things determined Therefore that Character of the seminal Image being once imprinted in some part of the Archeus causeth that it is thenceforth uncapable of other Offices For by reason of the skiey or airy simplicity of that Spirit the Idea's do so marry themselves unto it that the matter and its efficient Cause are not for the future separated from each other as long as there shall be an Identity or Sameliness of the supposed Character seeing the Idea it self is the seed in that Spirit which therefore cannot be spoiled of that Idea without its own dissolution For neither doth it just so happen to the Archeus as to Mettals which by melting return into their former State and do loose onely the labour of the Artificer It is alike as while a Woman with Child is affrighted by a Duck or a Drake For at that very moment the imaginative faculty imprints the Idea of the Being whereby she is affrighted on the Spirit So that that Idea is there made seminal and so indeed it doth not onely destroy the Embryo now formed but transformeth this Embryo into a Duck or a Drake Whence likewise is manifest not onely the Power and Authority of the imaginative but also that Idea hath drawn from the imagination a figurative Faculty and hath a seminal and figurative Power yea and a Power of Metamorphizing or Transforming And it follows from what hath been said before that a man of much imagination is of necessity also weakened in his Strength Because he is no otherways wearied than he who hath spent the day in tiresome Labour and should wholly fail aswell in Mind as Body unless he were refreshed with an acceptable Discourse a sociable Walking a pleasant Conversation and the more pure Wine According to that saying Wine moderately taken sharpens the Wit Neither is that moderateness to be delivered by ounces under the harsh Crisis of the Physitian while as by the Wise Man it is left free to every one according to his capacity Wine he saith was made for Mirth but not for Drunkennesse Sorrowful persons therefore being wearied exhausted and oppressed must be succoured with Wine even unto a chearfulness Therefore Idea's as it were formal Lights do pierce each other and imprint their own Images on that part of the Archeus whose Image and Seed they are Therefore the Idea's of inclinations do first pierce the Idea of the fructifying seed to wit for Manners Sciences Affections Diseases and Defects For therefore the Idea's of Women great with Child are easily co-knit unto constituting Idea's the which as they do oft-times corrupt manners otherwise good yea and also sometimes beget foolish ones so also they do not seldom amend other manners from the Womb Else for the most part Valiant Men are begotten by Valiant and Good Men For a Child by a rigid or tender Education begins to decline from his native Inclinations Then at length when he is endowed with some kind of Discretion by Exercises and Companies he falls into diverse Idea's of Affections the which he is constrained for the most part to obey for Life because they are implanted from
proper unto no nourishment which was unto that Apple so that it not only begat Seed in our first Parents a few hours after but also Dispositions to obtain by request a sensitive Soul from the Creator And that which otherwise happens in the Young in set Terms of Dayes and is perfected by certain degrees of Digestions that was presently compleated in the very vital Archeus of our first Parents And the Text doth insinuate that peculiar thing to be in the Apple because In the same day wherein he should eate of the Apple he should die the Death Because the Apple although it should anticipate or forestal the term of Dayes yet it should require a certaine term of Motion that after it should be turned into vital Blood it should also be endowed with a sensitive Soul For they who in the very point of Creation were formed into a Man and a Woman and not into Children in a short space also grew old or decayed on the same day into the maturity of Seeds and every necessity of Death and properties of second Causes For in a straight way all this falls perpendicularly or point blank on the post of the foundation of my Position on which the giddy or unconstant businesse of our Mortality is whirled about even unto this Day But at least-wise seeing Eve was made of the Rib of the Man that very thing doth insinuate a mark of Chastity and forbidden Copulation of the Flesh Because it is that which besides Whoredom contained Incest which thing was not hid from Adam Of which notwithstanding the Almighty after the fall of sin seemed to dispense withal granting Matrimony Therefore through occasion hereof it remaines diligently to search into whether the Act of Lust were compleated in Paradise Many will have Paradise to be free from filthiness because the Text saith Chap. 4. But Adam knew Eve his Wife who conceived and brought forth Cain saying I have possessed a Man by God But let these men pardon me For the contrary appeareth from the very Text. First of all The Text cited doth convince of nothing but that the ravishment of true Virginity because it is bloody doth not admit of Conception as a Companion And therefore Cain was not Conceived at the first turn but out of Paradise For otherwise 1. On the same day ye shall dye the death according to the truth of the Position denoteth that in the same place the filthiness was committed 2. The Woman is not called the Wife of Adam before the Fall as she is immediately after But the name of a Wife is not given not indeed unto Matrimony confirmed but onely unto it being finished 3. It was said onely to the Man Thou mayest not eat of this Tree Therefore it is read concerning the banishment of the Man to be made in the singular number Not indeed but that both Sexes sinned but because the Man had singularly deserved to be banished for his Whoredom 4. Therefore it is said Lest he stretch forth his hand unto the Tree of Life do eat of it and live for ever But it is not said least the Husband and Wife do eat 5. Adam at the first sight of the Beasts knew their Essences and Properties and also put right Names upon them But the Woman being seen he at first called her Wo-man because she was taken from Man But after the Fall he called her Hevah or The Mother of all living Because he at the first sight of her as yet knew not neither as yet had she that property from the Man and she learned it because she put it not on and stirred it not up but by sin For why had he changed the Essential Name of the Woman if she had not also changed her whole Nature 6. And next He with-drew her unto the Shrubs rather to commit his filthiness than for a cover of his shame For truly he might have covered his shame with Fig-leaves and have neglected his hiding through the Shrubs if he had not also had the signes of chastity corrupted 7. For truly if my Position be true That Death was caused onely through the Luxury of the Flesh His banishment followed not but after the act of filthiness 8. For he who but presently before knew not that he was naked After what manner did he presently know his Wife to be the Mother of all living unless he had committed something And Lastly The Text which saith unto the Serpent I will put enmities between the Seed of the Woman and thy Seed doth clearly denote that the Woman that before wanted Seed and altogether all the tickling thereof had now Seed However it is at least-wise I cannot but remarkeably admire the excellency of the Text which hath no where made even any deaf mention of the Concupiscence of the flesh but it every where covers the fowlness of the Flesh with the greatest silence by the obtained knowledge of the shame and involves an induced necessity of Death and a necessary requirance of Regeneration in the highest Mystery Determining that at length the fullness of dayes being compleated evil shall be spread out of the North over all the Inhabitants of the Earth The which I will by and by manifest Finally Nature being now degenerate it hath pleased the Almighty to raise up the Fall of Adam by Regeneration or a being born again And although he hath not restored unto us the antient clearness of Understanding and exquisite speculative knowledge of the Mind yet hath he raised up our dignity far higher For truly the Understanding being reduced by Grace into the obedience of Faith proceedeth in a humble resignation unto the victorious reward of Love whereby we are supported and constrained And the least abiding of that Love is far more glorious than the whole unoccupied life of Adam in Paradise For before the Fall Faith was unknown the race of Virtues especially also the superexcellency of Divine Love and they lived onely in the happiness of the purity of Innocency And therefore God by the permission of his fore-knowledge and ordination hath bound the unequality of blessednesse issuing or springing up from the new Birth with a certain excellency of Riches Because the Tribulations of his Life are not worthy to be compared unto the great or vast things which the goodness of God hath prepared for us that are renewed For I had rather know those things which God hath revealed by his onely begotten Son the Saviour of the World than to have known the faculties of Living Creatures and Herbs with a clear Understanding It being abundantly sufficient for me to have an Humanity in God whereby he hath adopted us for the Sons of God and made us far more like himself than Adam was in his greatest felicity CHAP. XCIII The Position is Demonstrated 1. A first Prooof of the Position 2. A second 3. The Divine manner of generating cannot be conceived by man 4. A conjecture from a like thing 5. A Repetition of Demonstrations 6.
proper unto him from a Curse but from his being made creeping and that thing was sufficiently manifest to Adam For herein the Curse seized not so much on the Serpent as on the evil Spirit because the lying Impostor had hid himself in the most vile of creeping things on whose head therefore and not on the head of any creeping thing the Woman trod upon But because all Bruits which do generate by a long continued copulation were in times past reckoned impure and also forbidden from Man's use in Kitchins among which creeping Animals are not in the last place c. It containeth and likewise confirmeth the mystery of our Position To wit That the impurity of our Nature draws its rise from the Concupiscence of the Flesh And therefore the copulation in Beasts seemeth to be taken notice of in Beasts by God which was distinct and defiled with impurity In the next place also in the Law a Menstruous Woman and the person touching her were accounted to bring an impurity on every thing The which otherwise being now turned into a second and natural Cause ought to be plainly guiltless unlesse the Menstrues should by a Natural course derive it self from the same Causes from whence Death happened unto us And therefore also for this Cause it being plainly impure in the Law was reckoned a horrid thing with God But for that Woman alone doth suffer Menstrues before Bruits surely it doth not attest any Prerogative of our kind but rather every way a defect to wit that it is reckoned for a punishment of frustrated Chastity and referred into second Causes plainly from a notable Mystery of our Position neither doth it hinder these things that chast Virgins obey the Menstrues and that she is Monstrous who an opportunity being given is not Menstruous because Adamical Generation its self is constrained to carry no less the importunities of its own Nature than Death it self Yea seeing Chastity doth not excuse a Virgin from the Menstrues it is for a token that the Menstrues is not from a Curse nor from the punishment of Sin but altogether from Natural Causes no otherwise than as Death it self began from second Causes inserted in the disswaded Apple although hitherto unknown nor thorowly weighed The Menstrues therefore onely in Woman alone but not in Bruits doth accuse that the Transgression of the despised fatherly Admonition happened in the very privy parts therefore branded as it were with an unclean bloody Seal for a perpetual sign The which surely should not have place if a Sexual Copulation for the Propagation of man had not inverted the intention of the Creator rather than in Bruit-Beasts In this place a Paradox and impertinent consideration doth occur being interlaced as it were by a Parenthesis that Adam seeing he was created in the possession of Immortality God intended not that Man should be an Animal or Sensitive creature nor should be born conceive or live as an Animal for truly he was created into a living Soul and that he might be the immediate Image of God Therefore he as far differed from the Nature of an Animal as an Immortal being from a Mortal and as a God-like Creature from a Bruit The which is indeed more than in the whole Predicament And it is exceedingly to be admired and deservedly unworthy to be endured that the Schools of Christ do believe and confess these things and yet that even until now they draw the Essence of a Man Essentially from an Animal Nature because although Man afterwards procured Death unto himself and therefore may seem to be made nearer unto the Nature of Animal Creatures yet it stood not in his Power to be able to pervert the Species of the Divine Image Even as neither was the Evil Spirit of a Spirit made an Animal although he became nearer unto an Animal by hatred and brutal vices Therefore Man remained in his own Species wherein he was created For as oft as man is called an Animal or Sensitive living Creature and is in earnest thought to be such so many times the Text is falsified which saith But also the Serpent was more crafty than all the living Creatures of the Earth which the Lord God had made Because he speaks of the Natural craftiness of that Creeping Creature Again if the Position be true Man was not directed into the Propagation of Seed or Flesh neither therefore did he Aspire into a Sensitive Soul And therefore the Sensitive Soul of Adamical Generation is not of a brutal Species because it was raised up by a Seed which wanted the Original Ordination and Limitation of any Species And so that as the Sensitive Soul in Man arose besides the intent of the Creator and Nature So it is of no brutal Species neither can it subsist unless it be continually tyed to the Mind from whence it is supported in its Life Wherefore while Man is of no Brutal Species he cannot be an Animal in respect of his Mind and much less in respect of his Soul which is of no Species For a woman great with Child while by reason of sudden fear she changeth the Humane Young into a certain Bruit the mind indeed doth not wander into a brutal Soul but the mind departs and a Sensitive Soul begged of the Creator is substituted in its stead And seeing that it is promoted onely by the Idea of the Woman great with Child without an Original appointment therefore such kind of generated Creatures do most speedily die And the off-springs of Adam had likewise presently perished unless God had granted Matrimony unto him Wherefore in the Birth of Cain she truly said I possesse a Man from the Lord. Far be it therefore to have placed Man among Sensitive living Creatures Truly we must indulge Pagans who know not that thing but not equally Christians who too much adore Paganish Doctrine At least wise the Schools confesse that there is an ordinary Progress of Nature from not a sensible Creature into a sensible Animal but that the Life and Sense of Men is immediately iufsed by the hand of the Almighty They confesse in the next place that the Conditions of being living and feeling or perceiving in Man differ in their whole Condition from an Animal Nature because it follows the Faculty of the rational Form or Immortal mind But they shamefully believe that a Man aswel of the first Constitution as being now Divinely Regenerated by the Sacraments is an Essential Animal Fie let it shame man not to know that the Evil Spirit and whole Nature also are not able by any means or any way to change the Essence given unto him from the foreknowledge of the Creator but that he should continually remain such as he was created although in the mean time he hath cloathed himself with strange properties as Natural unto him from the vice of his own will For as it wants not an absurdity to reckonman glorified among Animals because he is not without a sense or feeling So
something concerning the first Intent of God in Man At length in the last place the Sophistical Atheists do oppose themselves by the Text of Genesis That God overthrew the World by a Deluge Because the Sons of God had chosen and taken Wives of the Daughters of Men which were fair and because these had generated Gyants being strong and famous Men in their Age And that thing is there reckoned for much Wickedness the which notwithstanding literally is seen to be none in the Words of the Text after that Matrimony was now established and lawful Yea especially because Concubine-ship was a good while after dissembled in the Law the which by reason of that Impurity especially they named the Mosaical Law but not the Law of God For truly the Text doth not mention the Sin of David but in the Death of Uriah the Adultery of Bathsheba and the proud numbring of the People Wherefore they are wont to refer this Text of Genesis unto the religious Sons of God and the free Daughters of Men. But it hath seemed a vain thing to me to have fled unto a single Life and monastick Vows and Evangelical Counsels while as a plurality of men was required from the Command Increase ye and be ye Multiplyed and Replenish the Earth which Words indeed did excuse Concubine-ship Then in the next place seeing Virgins are far more prone unto a single Life Bashfulness likewise unto Chastity and Monastick Vows than Men The Floud had rather happened from the Sex being inverted or turned on the opposite Part and it hath been Written because the Daughters of God had taken the Sons of Men for their Husbands And moreover neither can there be any thought or project of keeping Chastity probably taught which had then separated the Sons of God from Virgins nor any Apostasie in those Ages which had provoked the Indignation of God unto Floud Yet if that be so the which I can in no wise through a Dream perswade my self of at least-wise it is from thence proved in behalf of my Position that Chastity alone doth distinguish the Sons of God from the Daughters of Men and that therefore the deflowring of Virginity hath procreated Original Sin But seeing that before the Floud there was no promise of a single Life or Chastity and that a Monastick or Monkish Life came not as yet into their Mind so long as Multiplying stood in a Command and Blessing I have conjectured under a humble censure of the Church that the Sons of God were the Posterity and begotten of a Man and a Woman having the true Image of God but that the Daughters of Men were Daughters procreated by the Sons of Adam and Nymphs the Satanical-birth whereof God alwayes very much abhorred But there was an incredible Multitude of these in the Desart one whereof was sent unto B. Anthony Also in the Dayes of Constantine a live Satyr was carried about to be shewn and afterwards was shewn being seasoned with Salt So once there were also diverse Monsters drawn out from the Ocean which spake were instructed in divers Arts and therefore rational they also lived among our Country-men Indeed rational living Creatures were conceived as well in the Waters as in Wildernesses from a detestable Copulation Seeing therefore the first Monsters had begotten Off-springs by the Sons of Adam of the Female Sex they distinguished the Sons of Adam by the name of the Sons of God and these kind of Monsters they name the Daughters of men And these Nymphs Heathenism thence-forward after the Floud named Dryades Nereides Naides c. The which seeing they were fair to look upon and men had taken them to be their Wives God from so great a Filthiness and destruction of the humane kind which the Text cals much Wickednesse in every Season or Age abhorring them determined to wash away the World with a Deluge From that Copulation of Monsters and Nymphs they generated strong Gyants and those famous men of their Age and the which therefore Heathenism long worshipped as Gods and Heroes For otherwise there seem to be frivolous reasons of the Floud according to the Letter To wit because men were married with women and these had generated Gyants that were strong and famous men of their Age. Therefore the Text ought to contain the Indignation of God and a suitable Cause of the Floud The monstrousness is not only in the Figure and Forming of their Body even as in the beginning of Degenerations but their Deformity being by degrees withdrawn and diminished the monstrousness stood in the sensitive Soul the which an immortal Mind did not accompany however outwardly they were Animals using Reason At least-wise it is manifest from the aforesaid Text that the true Posterity of Adam were not Gyants but of the Stature of Christ the Lord and framed by the same Statuary But the Copulation of diverse Species hath alwayes been execrable in the sight of the Lord least Man should follow it by imitation The Law therefore forbad that many Seeds should not be sown in the same Field nor that Webs of Linnen and Wollen should be combined To wit it being mindful of that most Ample and much Wickedness for which God ought to destroy the World But the co-mixture of those Men before the Floud with Nymphs was so usual and ordinary and likewise the copulation of Faunes with Maids that a few only being excepted and saved into the Ark the whole Stock of Adam was defiled and therefore passed by in silent Therefore God decreed to destroy every living Creature that he might likewise extinguish the guilty rational Monster For besides a few which the Ark shut up there was not he who had not contracted a consanguinity with that devilish Progeny For the B. Prophetess Hildegard writeth for she is the Prophetess of this Book which was canonized in the Synod of Trevirum or Triers unto the Clergy of Triers For very many People arose from the Sons of Adam who had a forgetfulnesse of God so that they would not know themselves to be Men From whence they by shamefully Sinning lived according to the manners of Beasts except the Sons of God who separated themselves from those same Men and their Loves of whom Noah was born These things she who acknowledgeth the Sons of God in both Sexes and clearly approveth of my Interpretation of this Text. For Satan had tried by this Mean to overthrow Mankinde and to hinder the immortal Soul that there might not be He from whence the Son of God should be born Therefore there was need of the Floud not only for the Correction of Sins but for the Salvation of the whole humane kind For otherwise Cham had not been saved by the Ark for he was now wholly perverse from Atheism Wherefore I interpret the Text yet under the humble Censure of the Church to wit that the Sons of God who did bear the Image of God in their immortal Soul and in their Body Took the Daughters of Men which
far more hard than those and in its Mine more separated from the mouth should refuse the inbred foot-step of dryness and a conceived hardness and then that it shall give up its name for a Clientship unto those Remedies And therefore whatsoever thing resisting the second and third qualities shall not obey a Medicine that being as it were untamed with the Elke and as it were Monstrous being harder than a Club and Fatal is Assigned to the Catalogue of uncurable Diseases From whence we may understand that the whole Method of curing the Stones doth stand committed not unto a perfect but onely unto a dissembled healing For truly they have earnestly laboured hitherto in nothing but in excluding the Stone already made but they have in no wise gone to prevent it in the making as neither hath any thing been consulted of for the rooting out of the impression or ready inclination to the Stone Therefore the curing of the relapses of the threatning stones hath remained imperfect As if by reason of that other Diseases cryed Triumph because that Providence being sufficient for all ends should seem to have dealt more liberally with them but that for the one Treacherous Lurker the Stone as having Hostilely and Traiterously entred it had refused Remedies But now I will give you the Decrees of Juniours by their Ranks or Orders And first indeed it shall not be for a Vice to have declined from their appointed Rules when as even hitherto we observe their Aids to be for the most part uncertain and do experience nothing but a feeble help and seeing our purpose is concerning the Life and safety of our Neighbours For if other Arts do profit dayly there is no reason as if the Virtue of our Mind were barren in us why the Rules of Predecessours should deter us from a further search into the truth and should thrust us into despair For by the onely Decree of Aristotle That we must not dispute against him that denies Principles Phylosophy being brought into obscurity hath so remained For if we following the Flock of those that went before us not because we must go so but because it hath been so gone must not command likewise neither must we be servants to the most free gifts of judgement The Fire therefore which is the finder out of Arts doth perfectly teach those of Hermes School by Mechanical and manifest workmanships That the Original of the Stone doth not consist of the matter and efficient cause assigned For neither for that reason is it a wonder that the causes being not sufficiently known improvident and unlike counsels have been hitherto described for this grief As to what therefore concerns its material Cause that is a certain Stonifying juice for for want of a true word of expression it is so called by me so intimately besprinkled on very many Liquours that it may seem to be well nigh Natural unto the same neither is it otherwise subject unto a Divorce than for that Cause of Calaâ—â—ties that it may render us perpetually mindful of our thousand-fold frailty Therefore it is not a muckie Snivel not Phlegm In the next place we do not think that any Excrement or Putrifyable thing of ours hath suggested a matter for the Stone but it is an Excrement of things a Traytor we have called it Tartar perfecting its Tragedy within by a Hostile Coagulation the which when it is not rightly separated in the Sheaths Dedicated unto the separation of an Excrement surely it creeps inwards as being mixt with the Natural and Vital Juices But it being at length called back unto examination because it is plainly unfit and uneffectual for Assimilation and the information of the Soul it either goes forth together with the Urine as it were repenting of its conceived Treason or if it shall the more subtilly marry the Vital nourishment it more inwardly or fully enters and presently after the time of its Digestion brings forth the dissociable affects of its own Family in us and Monstrous Conditions and Ensigns plainly Tyrannical whereunto Nature being at length trodden under foot is compelled to hearken All which things shall appear even by one onely and that not a Forreign Example For it is easie to be seen that every one of us being also very well constituted or in a very good frame of Body do send forth a Healthy Yellow Coloured clear Urine void of Sediment and Muckiness the which if it doth also happen to be the longer kept even in a clear Glass yet the space of some hours afterwards being passed we from thenceforth call it a Stony Urine because on every side above and beneath throughout the whole Jurisdiction of the Urine the Urinal is infected with a thin sand adhering to its sides oh what more plainly than the Tartar of Wine hath given the name of a Coagulable otherwise a Forreign excrement in us notwithstanding neither was there therefore any presence of a more grosse visible Lee nor were there any Testimonies of heat present especially while that Sand became Conspicuous For truly the Urin had already long before waxed cold before it had consulted of Coagulating But yet there is on both sides the like Reason Essence Cause and Property of the Stone arisen in us with that which of the same Identity and material subject is Coagulated abroad in the Urine about the Urinal I will add further that some detain their Urine for honesties sake for some hours without any appearance of Sands the which Urine notwithstanding being received in a Glass hath without all doubt separated its Stone in an equal time From hence therefore at least-wise it follows that the sliminess of matter is not for the material Cause of the Stone truly it consists in the Race or off-spring of a more hidden and therefore of a deeper search in Nature than that we should think its Natural Generation to be enclosed in sliminesses and the first qualities alone For whatsoever things are made in Nature we must reckon them to be made from a necessity and Flux of a Seed The Seeds therefore of Stones do lay hidden in the Juices until at length the Flux of the Seed being ripened the last Ordination or end of the same breaks forth into Act. Therefore we have taught above that the Stone owes it Family unto nought but a Stonifiable Juice after the Similitude of Fountains in the greater world And therefore they Err who contend that a Juice doth arise in the most clear and transparent Waters being furnished with a Stonifying Power as not seeing so being ignorant that a Stone doth arise in Phlegmatick Clayinesses and Muckinesses For truly that is not to savour any thing beyond Sense nor beyond Rusticks Wherefore an Analysis or solution by the fire is to be undertaken the which indeed as it proposeth a disclosure of Bodies so a certain Conjuncture of the same before our Eyes and promiseth a Man more certainty in his Study than the vain Dreamed Doctrine which from
Desire or Love of which I here speak is not a function of the appetitive power nor the very qualitative power of desiring it self but it is a substantial part of the mind or rather the Mind it self flowing from Understanding and Will Because those three are undividably conjoyned by the Creator under Unity in as great a simplicity as may be Yet in live persons or mortal men it is separated from Understanding and Will in its Functions by reason of the condition of the Organ and Nature of the sensitive Soul For truly now we desire oftentimes those things which the Understanding judgeth not to be desirable and which the Will could wish were not desired But it must needs be that things whose operations are different or dis-joyned that the same things are dis-joyned in their root according to the manner whereby all particular things are separated In the Soul indeed onely by a relative supposionality but in the Body according to a corporeal and qualitative Nature And therefore that substantial Desire or Love is an intimate Essence of the Soul being consubstantial and co-equal in age with the same So that although in Heaven there be a full satiety of desirable things and a perpetual enjoymens thereof yet that desire in the Soul doth not therefore cease the which is a study or â—â—â—eavour of complacency Neither doth it therefore infer a passion of the Soul any more than Charity it self because they are conjoyned in their root as one and the same thing For an amarous desire ceasing of necessity either a fullness or glutting or an unsensibleness of fruition or enjoyment should presently arise which in the heavenly Wights would be a shameful thing That desire therefore of Love is the fewel of an unterminable or endless delight under which consideration the Mind resembles the Spirit the Comforter For the unutterable Creator hath placed Man in the liberty of his own Desire that he might live in the Spirit after the Image of God in a holy Desire and perfect Charity It is manifest therefore that Operations are distinct from the root of Faculties while we understand those things which we do not desire but while we desire those things which we do not plainly know and which we would not desire In the next place we will as while a man goes willingly to Punishment those things which we do not desire and desire those things which we would not as while any one commands his Leg to be cut off And likewise the Desire doth afterward some-sometimes overcome the Will or the Will doth oft-times compell the Desire and they by turns draw each other under mutual Commands but wholly in Mortals because the sensitive Soul draws the Understanding and the Body the sensitive Soul into a manifold disorder of division For so impossible things happen to be desired and things past are wished for as present For unlesse that Desire were from the root of the Mind he should not sin who should see a Woman to lust after her before the consent of a full Will Therefore very many things are desired whose Causes are not willed and many things whose Effects are refused by the Will and Judgement The Desire also doth operate in one manner and the Will in another Also in the motion of the Day or in duration the Desire doth oftentimes go before and sometimes followes the Will and one overcomes the other by course that it may restrain something that is distinct from it self And that wholly in mortal Bodies But in Eternity where Love or Amorous Desire ariseth as the substance of the Soul nothing is Desired which is not Willed and that as well in respect of Act as Substance and Essence Because by reason of the simplicity of Substance they are collected into Unity Although in the Root they have diverse Suppositions which plainly exceed the manner â—f Understanding in mortal Men. In the next place the Kingdom of God in man is unutterable that is God himself by whose perpetual splendour all things are gathered together into Truth Therefore the Primary or chief Image of God is in his immortal Soul because the very Essence whereof it self is also the veriest Image of God which Image can neither be expressed by words as neither thought by the heart in this Life because it resembles a certain similitude of God But in the husk of the Mind or in the sensitive Soul and vital Form there is the same Image re-shining yet received after the manner of an inferior nature and defiled through transgressions or Death from whence at length the Body also borroweth not indeed the Image of God but the Figure of him But the Soul is devolved into utter darkness even as it hath separated it self from the uncreated Light and from the virtue of the Image and therefore it hath by reason of appropriation so lost its native Light as if it were proper unto it as beseeming it that thenceforth it understands wills or loves nothing besides it self and for it self For the damned shall rise not changed because their Body rising again shall receive its limitations from their Soul The which seeing now it is with all depraved affections reflexed onely on it self after a corporeal manner It shall not in rising again delineate the Image of God which is as it were choaked in it in the Body but after a corporeal manner That is by way of figure Lastly It being deprived through the flood-gate of death of the helps of Imagination Memory and Free-Will It afterwards understands wills loves all things from a blind apprehension as being onely addicted to it self For it knows its Immortality but feels Damnation and complaines of it as that Injustice is done unto it Because the love of it self is onely to excuse its excuses in sins as being committed in dayes of ignorance and innocency with much frailty of Nature lyings in wait of Enemies and want of sufficient Grace As neither that an eternal punishment is deservedly due for a momentary transgression For then it begins to be mad and persists in hating of God Chiefly because it knows the unviolable arrest of its loss and an eternal impossibility of escaping It being therefore cut off in its hope passeth even from the very beginning of its entrance into the utmost desperation in a place where no piety compassion refreshment or recantation is entertained It happens also that seeing the Understanding doth naturally transform it self into the Idea of the thing understood and therefore into the similitude of evil Spirits its Objects Therefore there is alwaies a present hatred of God despair cursing damnation and the furious torments of Hell The Almighty of his goodness vouchsafe to break the snares that are extended for us in our passage Amen CHAP. CIII The Property of External Things THe spiritual beginning of Life being now finished before I descend unto corporeal and sensible Organs and other supports of Life I will propose something concerning Places First of all therefore
in the Womb It is false therefore that Nature is every where circular Because she is that which would every where give satisfaction to his ends who is cloathed by the glorious Work-man of Nature and not by Nature For neither after another manner is there a re-bent Reflexion put into the seminal erected Spirit by the Generater but it proceeds from the Finger of him who disposeth of all things sweetely from end even to end Therefore the Seed being conceived the Womb forthwith shuts its neather Gate least any forreign thing should rush into it which might disturb its Conception In the next place the Vessels of the Womb which are subject unto its command as if a Door-keeper were added are also shut above because then a new Common-wealth ariseth in the Womb as a new family-administration of a future Young and therefore also a singular Kitchin is erected in the confining Vessels Even so that the Embryo is a good while nourished and increaseth not by the venal Blood of the Liver but by pure and fined arterial Blood But presently after as soon as this Kitchin is furnished for the Embryo which is about to live in his own proper Orbe the Womb prepars venal Blood which it may hand-forth unto the Embryo and therefore whatsoever less profitable thing it meets withal it is brushed out So that in that whole Motion the Mother for the most part is ill at ease For truly seeing Filths can no longer be expurged through the emunctory of the Womb and the which neither are able to expect the Maturity of Delivery the Filths go backward into the Veins they obtain the condition of an Excrement and are thrust forth by Vomit and other Sinks That which is not equally done in Bruits seeing they want Menstrues and do not admit of an unseasonable Copulation Again the Conception of Men was not from the first intention of the Creator after the manner whereby we are conceived in Sins At length also because for Bruit-beasts pure arterial Blood was not equally required for Nourishment Therefore the teeming Woman alone shall pay for the Itch of one Copulation through a cruel expiation of many Punishments beyond Bruits The Embryo therefore or imperfect Young is at first nourished by arterial Blood prepared in the neighbour Kitchins of the Womb until that after the first fourty dayes he obtaining a living Soul lives of his own right But the preparatory Kitckin is exercised in the spleen-form Flesh whereby the secundine cleaveth to the Womb Therefore Succours for the Young are slow and oftentimes void and also those that are administred to the Mother by way of the Mouth because that before their entrance unto the Embryo all things are recocted And again in the Young it self before they can augment the same But the Infant being born before he is fit for bearing of the more hard Meats he is accustomed to the more gentle ones For so he is a good while fed with arterial Blood which leaves no Dungs be-hinde it For those things which fall from a little Infant that is born presently after his first Cry are the Reliques of the Blood of the Liver the which for the most part is not first admitted into the aforesaid Kitchins but after the third forty dayes And these indeed are the Excrements which do ripen and provoke the necessity of travail or delivery But moreover the Spirit that was once implanted in the Seed being sunk into the Seeds doth presently if not fore-know the necessities of the Body at least-wise perfectly learn them and afterwards draws unto it self a Consanguineal or nearly allyed Spirit or Nourishment by a certain Harmony of Affinity At length the Womb feeling the Maturity of the Young by co-wrinckling contracteth it self which the Antients have called Striving to expel the Young or Off-springs For I have oft-times with-held Abortion threatned and begun But sometimes I could not But I have known that I have detained it as oft as the abortion should be caused from a Symptomatical animosity without a fore-ripe expulsive Faculty to wit from the digression of the Womb And the Remedy did operate by restraining and sleepifying appeasing and pacifying the aforesaid Furies of the Womb But I could not prevent Abortion or miscarying as oft as there was a fall of the Mother from an high Place and much disturbance of Affrighting Grief Anger c. they being inordinate things And likewise if the Young had a remarkable Monstrousness which adds no slugguish Spur unto Expulsion Or if the Young die or pines away or failes through a notable Weakness And likewise if the Mother being strongly smitten with astonishment before the Young could live in its own Quarter hath with-drawn the Arterial Spirit unto her self The which if it shall straightway return from thence yet it finds the same Young as it were in a sound whereunto as unto a Plant so tender Life is scarce re-connexed By this means the semi-vital Conception is now and then wont to miscarry into a hard lump of Flesh or a foolish Branch But that thing scarce happens through a defect of the Fathers Seed because that a barren or foolish Seed is either not attracted and so neither is it conceived or if it be attracted it through a foolish Lust of the Womb soon fals out again and frustrates Conception But the Seed degenerates into a hard Lump of Flesh by reason of external Incidencies lighting upon the Seed whereby Hippocrates saith That Seeds are withdrawn whither they would not Therefore a hard Lump or Moale is made while as the Spirit is funk into the Body of the Seed and is spoiled of a humane Figure yet retaining its former growing Faculty The drowning or sinking therefore alone is able to command the Figure out of the forming Spirit if being to long sleepifyed within it becomes fast asleep But although the dreaming Vision did scarce fill up the space of halfe a quarter of an hour yet it at once represented all the successive Periods of Generation as it were in a Glass of the Thing To wit its Moments Fluxes Motions Aspects Diversities of interchanges and also its Errours stood collected into Unity But I being awaked alass how I sighed at the likeness of our modern propagation with that of Bruit-beasts And therefore Adam not undeservedly bewailed the Death of Abel for the space of an Age He grieving the while at the hateful bruitish Generation and knew not his Wife in all that time As well weighing that Nature being now defiled in its Root was to suffer original and of necessity durable Miseries CHAP. CVIII A Lunar Tribute SEing Woman onely among living Creatures the Ape perhaps excepted suffers Menstrues or monthly Issues and seemeth for this cause to have experience of the operations of the Moon-star but since the Schools do prattle of very many things concerning the Menstrues as if it were the ordinary nourishment of the Young Surely it hath behoved me to discover their boastings in the Treatise
Meats Yea which is more The Blood which is avoided in or presently after delivery is not Menstruous through the defect of its condition because it is not superfluous from a fore-going course of the Moon And then also because it is not heaped up fleshy not aluminous or tart not staining linnen Cloathes nor separated from the whole nor banished unto the places of the Womb for expulsion For that bloud which is plentifully voided in time and after delivery and the which being retained a doating Fever doth soon after threaten death is indeed venal blood yet not the Menstrues of the Mother For it is left by the Young who seeing from his quickening he lived in his own Orbe had a kitchin out of himself in the Vessels of the Womb. Wherefore it hath taken to it self another property than that of the Mother and than that of the Menstrues For that guest hath indeed the shape of Menstruous Blood Yet being an adoptive of another Family and become a forreigner to the Mother it is seriously to be expelled surely no otherwise than as the Secundines themselves But being omitted and left behind it is corrupted and brings on death But seeing that in a Woman great with Child there is no Menstrues at all by consequence neither is that Young nourished but with the pure arterial blood of the Mother and afterwards with pure venal blood being also first refined in its kitchins Therefore the Schools are deceived who teach That the small Pox or Measels are due almost to every mortal man by reason of the tribute of Menstruous nourishment For they observed that there was seldom any smitten twice with that Disease and perhaps seldom excused from it Wherefore they searching into the common Cause from whence the Young should be nourished in the beginning have referred the Effect on the Menstrues But in all things they without the knowledge of things have mutually subscribed to each other and have slidden into Fables and Conjectures For first of all they have not considered that it is almost impossible for any one to be made free from that Disease if all are alike indifferently nourished with Menstrues And then because they should be afflicted as it were at one certain and appointed term of the Crisis I confess indeed that the Measels do spring from a Poyson and draw a Poyson with them infect the blood with their ferment and defile others that stand by but especially Children and that the internal essence of Poysons is not demonstrable by a former Cause and therefore we measure the Property of a Poyson by the Effects even as a Tree by his Fruits 1. Therefore The Poyson of the Measels is proper onely to humane kind 2. That Nature is prone to the framing of that Poyson 3. But that it is kindled about the Stomack and so in the Center of the Body 4. That the parts being once besieged with this Poyson do most swiftly repulse that Poyson from themselves towards the superficies of the Body 5. That the shops of that Poyson after that they have once felt the tyranny thereof being afterwards thorowly instructed with a hostile averseness and horror do with great fore-caution prevent or hinder the generation thereof even from the very beginning least they should even at first unwarily fall thereinto Therefore the Poyson is made in Man but not co-bred in him from the Menstrues But of what quality that Poyson may be cannot be described by name because it hath not a proper name out of its effects It is sufficient in this place that the Menstrues cannot be drawn into a Cause for the Distempers aforesaid At first therefore The Menstrues offends in its matter by reason of its abounding alone And then it undergoes a degree that the first may be wherein that blood is superfluous from the foregoing course of the Moon But a Second degree is as soon as it is separated from the rest of blood But a Third degree is while as designed it hath resided about the Vessels of the Womb. A Fourth is that which hath stuck some good while in the same place and hath entered into the way of death At length the last degree is while as it now hath slidden forth as a dead Carcass and into the Air. Therefore the Schooles offend while as by cutting of a Vein they are busied in succouring of Virgins who in respect of their Menstrues do feel an heart-beating or trembling without distinction For although the Menstrues of the first degree appeaseth heart-beatings or pantings by a revulsive blood-letting yet in the third degree of the Menstrues I have fore-told it to our chief Physitians to be a destructive Remedy Because that the Veines of the Arme or Hams being emptied I have observed the Menstrues to be drawn backwards from the neighbouring places into the Veins And truly those Veins which do not remain emptied but which are filled again by a communion of continuation So also after great heart-beatings and pauses of intermitted pulses or after most sharp paines of the sides following from the Womb to wit by reason of an aluminous Poyson of the third degree Virgins have suddenly died by reason of Phlebotomy by me instituted at unawares In the first degree indeed the abundance of venal blood is taken away But it is the less evil although a part of the barren blood be left surviving Truly I had rather to help Nature in her sequestration and expulsion than by drawing of undistinct blood to have weakened Nature Moreover that is to be noted That although I have distinguished Diseases by the Ranks of Digestions yet I have scarce made mention of the Menstrues Because the Menstrues is neither digested nor is it a superfluity of Digestion and so is of another condition For at first it offends with a good abundance and then with a burdensom superfluity presently after it is deprived of Life and becomes a Poyson yet it cures Swine which are inclining into the Leprosie even as Horses straightway which were contracted or convulsive from unseasonable Drink if they drink up but a small quantity of Menstrues And likewise the poysonsom and true Menstrues of another Woman being administred in a few drops hath presently strangled a Woman labouring with a Flux of the Womb. But the blood which is at length avoided in plenty in Fluxes of the Womb being drunk in a few drops stayeth those Fluxes Furthermore because Woman only the Ape perhaps excepted doth suffer Menstrues and although the Menstrues do accuse of an abundance alone yet that the Cow her Dug being dried suffers not Menstrues otherwise she flowes down with very much Milk denoting that the abounding of venal blood is indeed the material Cause but not therefore the final and the which therefore I have not reduced among natural Causes For that the Almighty alone encloseth all the final Causes of all things within himself who sweetly disposeth of all things according to the unsearchable Abysse of his own Judgements
and Ligation or Binding up and both with Magnetism To wit he as in anguish undistinctly alledgeth any the more abstruse or hidden effects whatsoever whereby he being destitute of reasons might make good his own Magâ—etism I will by an Example distinguish Witchery from Sympathy and both from Magnetism A Dog hath an Antipathy for Sympathy and Antipathy are daughters of the same stock with a Hen for he preys upon this Hen and this Hen flees from the Dog but when she hath newly hatched her Chickens this Hen chaseth the Dog although a couragious one to wit the soul of the Hen by Fascination or Witchery tying up the Soul of the Dog the former Antipathy unequal defence of Weapons and unequality of Strength nothing hindring it Yet in these things Magnetism is no where seen Moreover what Examples the Physitian brings concerning Seals or Impresses Characters Gamahen or magical Images Ceremonies and for the most part vain Observances are altogether impertinent to this purpose and do rather destroy Magnetism as rendring it suspitious than build it up my Genius or Wit carries me not to determine any thing of these things And then Goclenius Errs and that indeed rashly like as also ignorantly dreaming from the Prescription of Paracelsus that the Weapon which wounded if it be involved in the Weapon Salve doth cure the Wound For the Weapon or Point of the Sword shall be in vain anointed with the Unguent by him prescribed unless it be made Bloody and the same Blood shall be first dried on the said Sword For with Paracelsus the Sympathetical Ungent is one thing in respect of the Blood fetch'd out of the Wound and the Ungent wherewith the Weapons that were tinged with no Blood ought to be Emplaistred certainly another and therefore he calls the former the Magnetick and Sympathetick Ungent but the latter the Magnetick Armary or Weapon-Ungent the which therefore receives nor that indeed in Vain Honey and Bulls Fat over and above into its Composition Last of all Goclenius that he might satisfie his own Genius hath altered the Description of Paracelsus affirming that the Usnea or Moss is to be chosen only from the Skuls of hanged Persons of which his own and false Invention he enquiring the Cause blusheth not to dream that in Strangling the vital Spirits entred into the Skull and there remain so long as until that six years from that time being accomplished the Moss shall under the open Air grow up thereon Paracelsus hath taught the express contrary and by practical Experiences it is confirmed that the Moss of the Skuls of those that have been slain or broken on a Wheel is no less commendable than that of those who were strangled with an Halter For truly the Quintessence is not extracted out of living Creatures because the principal Essence perisheth together with the inflowing Spirit and Life but only the Mumial Virtue that is the implanted and co-fermented Spirit which surviveth in Bodies slain by violence What things Goclenius hath delivered concerning Remedies for repairing of the Memory as we acknowledge them no way agreeable to the end intended so also we not any thing doubt to prove them to be impertinent flourishes There is no Question between our Divine and Physitian about the truth of the Fact for both of them grant that a cure happens to the wounded Person the controversie layes only in that that the Physitian affirms such a Cure to be natural but the Divine will have it to Satanical and that from a compact of the first Inventer of which Censure he brings not any positive reason in his Anatomy as thinking it satisfactory if he in his own judgment shall abolish it although he shall openly produce no grounds of that abolishment to wit he acquiescing in this that he hath removed the feeble Reasons of the Affirmer the which to do is a matter of no labour of no skill nor also is it a matter of any authority For to what end tends it to give judgment on the thing it self from the foolishness of the Reasons of some unskilful Brain and to declare it to be wicked if he hath not so much as dreamed of one petty Reason of his Sentence What if I who am a Laick should commend Presbitery with untrimmed Reasons and some one should reject them as unworthy ones shall the Priesthood it self therefore be to be rejected What I pray you doth the Unskilfulness or Rashness of any one touch at things themselves Surely Phylosophy submits not it self to censures unless a Considerable gravity of the Censurers well confirmed by reasons doth concur I therefore who have undertaken to prove against the Divine that this Magnetick cure is even natural First of all have supposed Goclenius worthy of excuse if he hath laboured in vain in the finding out of the immediate Cause of this unwonted effect What wonder is it when as the Divine consesseth that he is ignorant of the same and therefore conjectures Satan to be the Author thereof for such is our Infirmity that we are destitute of the knowledge of the most and most excellent things For therefore we unwillingly wrest very many things aside unto the sacred Anchour of Ignorance and refer them to the Catalogue of occult or hidden Causes For who among Divines ever knew how to demonstrate to the full the Cause of risibility or capacity of laughter or of any other formal Property to wit of heat in the Fire Is not the Fallacy of Begging of the Principle committed if thou shall say The highest degree of Heat belongs to the Fire because it is of the Nature thereof Truly the Essences of Forms because they are unknown to us from their Cause therefore also the race of formal Properties is wholly scanty and unknown and where we observe any formal Passion to lay under the Mind as if it were tired in vain presently ceaseth from a diligent search thereof and reposeth it self being contented with the name of occult Properties Go to I pray you hath the Anatomist the Censurer haply known the Cause why a Dog that rejoyceth swings his Tail But a Lyon in like manner when he is Angry A Cat also making merry in token of Favour lifts up the same What therefore if himself hath not known so much as the reason of the moving of a Tail will he wonder that Goclenius hath given an unsolid Reason of Magnetism and from the refuting of that presume that he hath more than sufficiently demonstrated the dure which belongs to Magnetisme to be Satanical Far be so great a rashness of Judgment from him Come on then why dost thou call that Cure diabolical Truly it had behoved thee to have added a reason of thy Censure unless thou expectest to have it denyed by others with the same Facility wherewith thou declarest it to be of the Devil Lawyers require only the affirmative Part to be confirmed but Phylosophers both parts least either the Ignorance or also the malepartness of the
but it puts it not on but by the Will except in Women with Child Whether therefore we call Sin a nothing or a something at least-wise there is never made a Consent to Evil without a real Procreation of this certain kind of Entity and the assuming and putting on thereof This hath been the Cause of the Fruitfulness of Seeds for the Phantasie or Imagination being much moved by Lust produceth a slender Entity the which if the Soul puts on through the Will as the action of the Mind being imprisoned in the Body doth alwayes tend downwards and outwards it disperseth this same Entity into the Liquor of the Seed which otherwise would not be but barren Which Action is made as it were by an estranging of the Mind to wit the Will through the true Magick of the more outward Man departing into a certain Ecstasie in which there is made a communicating of a certain Light of the Mind upon the Entity descending into the Body of the Seed As oft soever therefore as the Cogitation or Thought drawes the Sense and Will into a consent so often a filthy Skin is bred and put on being a bastardly Ideal Entity by which birth the Will is said to be confirmed Also that Ideal Entity whithersoever it is directed by the Will thither it goes by this meanes the Will moves sometimes the Arm sometimes the Foot c. Furthermore when the said Entity is spread upon the vital Spirit for to love help or hurt any thing it wants only a light Excitement whether made from the asistance of God of the Cabalistick Art or of Satan that indeed the small Portion of the Spirit which hath now put on that Entity departs far off and perform its Office enjoyned it by the Will So the Male layes aside his Seed out of himself which through the Entity which it hath drawn is very fruitful and performes its Office without the Trunck of its own Body Truly Bodies scarce make up a moyity or halfe part of the World But Spirits even by themselves have or possess their moyity and indeed the whole World Therefore in this whole Context or Composure of our Discourse I call Spirits the Patrons of Magnetism not those which are sent down from Heaven and much less is our Speech of infernal ones but of those which are made in Man himself for as Fire is struck out of a Flint so from the Will of Man some small Portion of the inflowing vital Spirit is extracted and that very thing or portion assumes an Ideal Entity as it were its Form and Compleating Which Perfection being obtained the Spirit which before was purer than the Aetheâ—eal Air is subâ—ilized or rarified like Light and assumes a middle Condition between Bodies and not Bodies But it is sent thither whither the Will directs it or at least whither the inbred infallible Knowledge of the Spirits sends the same according to the scopes of things to be done The Ideal Entity therefore being now readily prepared for its journey becomes after some sort a Light and as if it were no longer a Body is tied up to no commands of Places Times or Dimensions neither is that Entity a Devil nor any Effect thereof nor any Conspiracy of his but it is a certain spiritual Action thereof plainly natural and proper unto us He who well receiveth this Wisdom shall easily understand that the Material World is on all sides governed and restrained by the Immaterial and Invisible But that all other created Corporeal Beings are put under the Feet of Men for indeed this is the Cause why also the Mummy Fat Mosse and Blood of Man to wit the Phantasie existing in them in the Unguent overswayes the Blood of a Dog of a Horse c. being conveighed by a Stick into the Box of the Unguent There hath not been yet said enough concerning the Magnetism of the Unguent I will therefore resume what I spake of before namely that the Magnetisms of the Load-stone and of inanimate things are made by a natural Sensation or Feeling which is the Author of all Sympathy is a certain Truth For if the Load-stone directs it self to the Pole it ought of necessity to have known the fame if it be not to commit an Errour in its Direction And how I pray shall it have that Knowledge if it be not sensible where it is Likewise if it self to Iron placed aloof off the Pole being neglected it must needs have first been sensible of the Iron Therefore one single Load-stone hath diverse Senses and Images Neither also-shall it be sufficient that it hath Sense unless we add the Spurs of Friendship and Self-love and so that it is endowed with a certain natural Phantasie and by reason of the Impression whereof all Magnetisms are forged For it is directed by another manner of Phantasie toward the Iron than toward the Polo â—or then its Virtue is dispersed only through a neighbouring Space It s Phantasie is changed when it restraines the abortive Young Catarrhs or Rheumes or the Bowel in a Rupture Also by another Phantasie doth the Load-stone draw any thing out of Glasse throughly boyled or melted by Fire for a very small Fragmen thereof being cast into a Mass or good quantity of Glaâ—s while it is in boyling of Green or Yellow makes it White For although the Load-stone it self be filled with a red Colour and be consumed by the Fire that dissolves the Glass Yet in the mean timâ— while it hath Life it aâ—â—racteth and consumeth the tinged Liquor out of the Fiery Glass and so its attraction is not only to Iron but moreover unto that aiery Part which would with difficulty depart out of the Glass and for this Cause it is of common use with Glass-makeâ—s The Phantasie of Amber drawes Chaffs and Moates by an attraction indeed slow enough but yet with a sufficient perfect Signature of attraction for it being married to our Mummy is also stronger than our attractive Faculty drawes in opposition thereunto and becomes a Zenexton or preservatory Amulâ—t against pestilential Contagions But Amber being mixed with Gumms its imagination being now transplanted draws the Poyson and Bullet out of a Wound indeed its pleasure and desire of drawing being on both sides varied But what Wonder shall it be unless with those who being ignorant of all things do also admire all things that inanimate things are strong in Phantasie When as he who is wholly the Life creates all things and hath therefore promised that nothing is to be expected as dead out of his Hand Also no one thing at all shall come to our view wherein himself also may not clarely appear as present The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole Globe of the Earth Yea this Expression That he containeth or comprehendeth all things carries the force of the World Do we not believe that there was much Knowledge in the Apple and that through the eating thereof our first Parents both are it up and together
enumeration of Causes surely through miserable stupidities they brought Catarrhs or Rheumes so ridiculous a thing into the Bladder But others while they durst not implore vain Accusations on the healthy Brain and are in great doubt corrupt matter they denounce the Ulcers of the Reines to be the Fountaines of so great a Glut. So that without a foregoing Aposteme that mucky snivel doth oft-times divide the half part with the urine in the Urinal yet thy suppose that from the Kidney being without pain so much snotty pus doth daily showre down First of all I have taken notice that many have been cured at the Spaw whom the shamefull debates of Physitians about the purulent Ulcer Comsumption of the Kidneys and Catarrhs had banished thither to dye Who when as they had beyond the hope of those Physitians returned sound they boasted that those sick were cured by them from the profitable Councell of Travelling thither But why hath my urine that was healthy applyed a sand unto the Urinal in the cold but not being detained so long within in heat I have said That urine was from an inbred Balsame alike easily preserved both from stonifying and from putrifying And then that the Urinal was a vessel fit for affixing of that sand but not the Bladder And lastly that the earth is volatilized by putrefaction It is also a doubt why of Twins that are nourished by the same milk the one of them onely is sometimes diseased with the stone In which doubt the Schooles Women Idiots and rustical persons think that by one alike Answer they have sufficiently satisfied themselves if they have named the cause thereof an evil distemper or inclination of indisposition and have alleadged humours Which inclination Astrologers although they distinguish not in the Conception or Quickning yet they put a difference betwixt it in the birth and in this respect they confound Twins into divers Conditions But at leastwise the Etymologie of an inclination unto the stone doth even in the entrance render Paracelsus suspected concerning his Tartar Yea and thus far Galen's own Schooles have have forsaken him without light Who being contented with an unequal distemperature in Seminal although Homogeneal Constituters yet so it were now turned into nature he thinks that he hath abundantly satisfied the question and he prosecutes it with desperation that for this Cause that unequal distemperature is unseparable from him that is born He takes away indeed the common name of Inclination but the former if not more gross Darknesses remain While as he resolves a Controversie by a Controversie and with desperation cuts off the endeavour of enquiring It is certain in the mean time that the duplicity of the question is not to be drawn but from a disorder of the matter The which seeing it is not found under so simple an Homogeniety of the seed it must of necessity be limited in the Magnum Oportet or necessary remainder of the middle Life of the place or Climate of the Womb. For the sides of Women do so differ that we are every one of us as it were a pair of men distinguished side-wayes and our other inward Bowels do border side-wayes upon the Womb. For from the first Constituting parts there are indeed hereditary defilements drawn which are equally distempered on the whole Conception if they were derived from the Parent the Begetter but those blemishes which are found in the place are adjacent unto those places and invade us as more immediate unto us A Wonder it is to consider How easily our most tender Beginnings do hearken unto forreign impressions and how easily things once received do wax ripe and finally how stubbornly they persevere Also those Seminaries of Diseases which are soon gotten by a proper errour of Living how friendlily they are entertained in and do bear sway over the same powers wherein and over which the hereditaries of Diseases are entertained and bear Rule And by so much the more powerfully they enter and are the more insolently imprinted or stamped on us by how much their wedlock doth defile the Archeus in us being as yet the more young For as long as we receive an increase the seeds of Diseases although they are drawn in in manner of an Odour they are also incorporated in our radical Beginnings and in some one such Beginning do the stony perfect acts of seeds wax ripe with us The which also even by the Odour being drawn in the Ferments of the seeds have more largely constituted elsewhere For from an entire nature every man ought to be healthy and of one inclination but that by reason of the properties of the middle Life nourishments perturbations and Climates disorders had crept into the Sons of Adam But those disorders which do privily enter with the Mothers blood and Nurses milk do as Houshold Thieves possesse the Treasures of Life neither do they easily depart but under the aydes of Renovation But I coming nearer to the Knot do say That in the Kidney there is a dungy ferment being a putrefactive of the urine the which wandring and the mark of its going astray being once imprinted the urine doth from thenceforth proceede by a voluntary flux and by degrees tendeth unto the utmost putrefaction of it self under which lurketh a power of making the earth volatile Since therefore there is in the Kidney this power of fermenting The question Why one of the Twins hath his Kidneys the more strong in a dungy Ferment is resolved by the Chapter of the unequal strength of the parts To wit so as the stomach of one hath an aversness and another more strong stomach not so For so the Kidney that is the more rich in a putrifying Ferment is more prone to the framing of the stone The Begetter also if in time of generating he hath his Bladder filled with urine is wont to raise up an off-spring subject to the calamity of Duelech Because the fermental putrefaction of his urine being the longer detained doth fermentally increase it self in the neighbouring seed sliding thorow Galen indeed erres by so much the more ridiculously as that he will have something of urine to be naturally in every seed and to be alwayes added thereto by reason of the tickling As being ignorant To wit that not so much as a forreign hair is mixed with the Beginnings of Generation without a total destruction thereof But how the afore-tasted particulars do serve our intention take notice That an unequal strength of the parts is as it were necessary to the most intimate nature For neither shalt thou draw a thred of Homogeneal Gold which may not be sooner broken in one part of it than another And so that it is weaker than it self Disorder unlikenesse or inequality and diversity of kind are onely from the innermost essence of things although unto their essences they are altogether Forreigners For from hence it is That Twins which sprang from one onely and a single seed cannot escape an Heterogeniety or diversity of
the last sink of the urine it is also more and more burdened with its own uriny ferment and Duelech receives an increase almost at every moment and is by degrees confirmed into bigger grains For I did argue if a vein even after death preserves the blood from curdling contrary to corruption it should not be unmeet for a certain preservation from a stonie coagulation likewise to exist in the wombs or veins of the urine but that this preservation is very strongly trampled upon by a vitious ferment of the neighboring-kidney The which when it hath once seriously happened so as that the veins have but a little departed from their native goodness it befalls these as to any kind of impure vessels and those molested with a neighbouring stinking or strong smelling ferment whereunto something of the residing impure contagion doth stubbornly adheres for such is the continued succession of relapses in those that have the stone in the reins that all the dreggy filth adhering unto them is not fully wiped off and that there is the same neighbour character of the bad disposition which forged the former calamities After the same manner whereby a hen carries mature eggs and those less mature and others like grains in her loynes which are the pledges of a birth successively to follow for some moneths This indeed hath been the necessity whereby those that have the stone in the Reins do for the most part obey the importunities of a Meteour do also presage future tempests and the pains of these do ascend from the loynes into the back Because while somewhat more of those filths is now affixed to those veins or wombs they are grieved and contracted at least on that side whereon they are molested or on both fides throughout their loynes in a like manner Under which contracture and wrinkled frizling of the veins a pricking lancing and as it were renting pain ariseth And the more gross atomes which were collected in the sucking veins fall down in that frizling unto the kidneys a lump in the mean time remaining for a pledge being as it were the seminary or seed-plot of the next fit even untill the mature ripeness of its age In which painful convulsion of the veins the liquor latex doth at length speedily run from far out of the veins unto the kidneys for help or is drawn thither and being obedient flowes thereunto from whence there is a disturbed urine But what that latex is which seeing it is not urine yet it is mixed herewith hath been largely enough declared by me in its own Treatise But after that the small pieces of sand and stones are cast forth and the pain ceaseth because the contracture of the veins ceaseth That cruel pain therefore of the diseased with the stone of the kidney ariseth from the contracture or drawing together of the veins but not from the passage of the Bolus or sand For oft-times a great stone is afterwards less painful which at first being but of a small bigness was exceeding painful not indeed that the Ureter is become larger than it self was even as the Schools otherwise think but the convulsion was greater while the malady was unaccustomed For otherwise if the Urine-pipe should undergo so great a largenesse they contradict themselves while Diuretick Medicines forbid the straightness of the Vessels And then I have further considered that about the beginning the urine is voyded clear watery and abundantly For since the urine is tinged by the dross or liquid dung but since that dross is not drawn forth but nigh the end of the Gut Ileos and night to the fewel of the Ferment of the dung From thence it comes to pass that that dross is not allured from so far a distance under the confusion of the fit at hand for that the Family-administration of that Kitchin is confusedly troubled and interrupted Because the stomach together with the whole Abdomen or neather-belly is disturbed and in a guess or fear fore-feeles the storme at hand no lesse than it co-suffers with the same and undergoes it being present For it seems to fore-feel the sand not yet seen but surely it is then present in its own womb and while it is fore-felt from that very time the beginning of that contracture is present The Archeus therefore being willing to wash off the enemy and excuse the fit at hand calls to him from on every side all the Latex and sends it down to rince the Kidneys Therefore the veines are contracted in the stony Reines and the Bowels consent and therefore by reason of their consent they dissemble the pain of the Colick For which cause the pain of the stone in the Kidney is not yet sufficiently distinguished by the Schooles Neither is it a wonder that at the convulsion of the veines the Bowels themselves are also convulsed or pull'd together seeing contractures of the Joynts by reason of the near affinity of consent do follow as well the cruel paines of the Colick as those of the stone in the Kidneys Far therefore do the Schooles wander from the Truth as that the dross is drawn or sent for the framing of the stone but rather the tincture thereof comes upon the urine by accident while the Spirit the Coagulater uncloathes his power on the volatile earth Because other things being agreeable the stone that is tinged is alwayes more brickle than pale ones And that thing clearly argues that the tincture of the urine if it could would totally hinder the composition of Duelech And therefore those that have the Jaundice although they are otherwise subject to the stone yet in time of the Jaundise they are scarce seen to be stony For therefore in time of the generation of the affect of the stone the urine at the first conception of sands waxeth yellow and looks pale about the beginning of the fit Because then it is as yet Latex and not yet meet urine Therefore I have certainly known that if all the sand which is voyded should be made onely in the bosome of the Kidney the pain would be greater while it is voyded than while the sand doth not yet appear The which notwithstanding contradicteth experience Moreover because the sand being once bred the urine is troubled more than it was wont and becomes thicker seeing otherwise a troubled confusion perswades that it containes more of a pouderish matter for in a more gross consistence there is more pouder than in that urine which is at first clear and watery That plainly convinceth that the womb of the affect of the stone is already filled up neither that it can entertain that more gross balast Therefore the variety of the Womb being unknown hath neglected not onely the curing of the stone in the Reines but hath also introduced interchangeable alterations of its causes and curing Indeed it is one thing for the sand floating from the Kidney to be thrust down by a succeeding drop of the urine and a far different thing to shake
to be from the errour of a convulsive Retraction and not rather from that of both the supposed causes To wit as well through a stoppage of the netve from Phlegm filling it as they say as by a pressing together of the dryed sinew and as if so great a sudden drying up thereof were credible or possible to be in a live body Yea after what manner doth a nerve being now once withered suppose thou by too much insolency as they say of laxative Hellebour presently again admit of a restauration of its own radical moisture being dryed up Why hath it been necessary to feign and admit of a filling or emptying of a sinew if a poysonous quality can afford the Convulsion without either of them The received opinion therefore of the Schooles concerning the causes of the Convulsion or Cramp registred to be from the emptinesse and fulnesse of the sinewes is ridiculous For although they with Galen acknowledge also a third Cause which is that of a malignant quality Neverthelesse they stick as convicted in the two former Causes For they err in the Matter Object Efficient and manner of making That is in the whole As if a small Nerve being extended unto a Muscle which oft-times scarce equalizeth the grossenesse of a threefold thred being moistened more than is meet and dryeâ— than is fit to be should be made by so much shorter than it self by how much a muscle drawes the members together perhaps to to the length of a span Yea as though as well the be dashing of an hostile Humour as the emptying of a Nerve should cause the paines of a Convulsion They bring hither the ridiculous Example of dryed Clay when as in live Bodies drynesses are impossible and they also afford impossible Restaurations While as notwithstanding those Cramps do oft-times cease of their own accord The Schooles have thought that those feigned Moistnesses and Drynesses of a little sinew which could scarce effect the latitude of a straw do contract the Muscle even into the Convulsion of a foot-length Neither likewise is that Example of value That the string of a Lute being wet with the Rain of Heaven leaps assunder as broken in regard that it is cut short by the imbibed Liquor For first of all it might have been extended longer by twofold than the feigned extension thereof in its breadth had shortened the same The Schooles do not take notice that a moist membrane is brickle as also a dry one and therefore also that Lute-strings are kept fat in oyl lest they should become wet or wax dry Away with their examples which have no place in a live body For in a living body the sinews cannot be so dryed that their witheredness can cause any abbreviation 2. They being once dryed can never afterwards receive a moistening any more than drie old age it self 3. They deny a Convulsion arisen from a laxatâ—ve medicine to be made by a poyson For if they should acknowledge a poyson to be in a solutive medicine they should cut off their own purse A Convulsion therefore arising from a solutive Medicine as from only an emptying but not from a poysonous Medicine should be indeed from an emptiness or dryness of the sinews But a Convulsion or Cramp arisen from a loosening Medicine is oft-times restored Therefore it is not bred from a dryness of the sinews 4. Every lean old person should be drawn back by a perpetual and universal Convulsion 5. Seeing a sinew is not the executive member of motion therefore the shortening of at sinew proves not a Convulsion of the joynts as though an arm or leg ought to follow upon the cutting short of a sinew 6. Seeing that a nerve being moistened so that it were made by so much the shorter by how much through a forreign humour being imbibed it should be extended on its breadth such a humour should be plainly contrary to nature it should effect a Palsey rather then a Convulsion But a Palsey is Diametrically opposite to a Convulsion it self as well in Sense as in Motion 7. How could a stroak of the Scull presently at one moment dry up the sinews of one side but by moistening the other sinews opposite unto them forthwith enlarge them on their breadth that they may cause the Convulsion and Palsey at once And seeing as well Emptying as Filling are feigned for the cause of the Convulsion the stroak of the Scul ought to produce the Cramp on both sides 8. It is no wonder therefore that so unsuccesful remedies have been applied to the Convulsion if the Universities are hitherto ignorant of all the Requisites of Diseases For they ought to have known that every Convulsion is a vital Blas of the Muscles stirred up from the in bred Archeus The occasion whereof is a certain Malignant matter rushing on the Archeus as laying in wait for the life of the Muscles What if Hippocrates hath referred the cause of a Convulsion unto emptiness and fulness he hath had respect unto the occasions of the foregoing life To wit that there was a frequent Convulsion to riotous persons and likewise through much emptying of the Veins And Galen not apprehending the mind of the old man hath waxed lean at the humoural filling and emptying of the sinews by a succeeding and that his own device Such old wives fictions therefore which have been perswaded by the Schools unto credulous youth being despised I say that there is in the Muscles a twofold motion to wit one as it is the Organ of a voluntary motion and another as being proper to it self whereby although it draw back it self towards its head yet it nothing hinders but that the spirit implanted in those motive parts doth retract or draw back and move those parts even as was already said before concerning the â—od For neither is it repugnant to nature for the parts to leap a little by a local motion of their own the soul being absent to wit for the parts which are moveable by another Commander to be furiously contracted through a sorrowful sensation seeing that another conspicuous motion is singularly wanting to the Muscles whereby it may denote the hurt brought on them besides that whereby it executes the voluntary motion of the Soul And moreover it is altogether natural to all the members and proper to the common endeavour of the parts for those to be drawn together by reason of the sorrowfull sense of an injury brought on them which place the Schooles have left untouched Wherefore I have accounted it an erroneous thing to believe with the Schooles That the Convulsion is an affection of the Head For now they depart herein from their own Positions whereby they suppose the Cramp to be from filling or emptying or from a poysonous quality of the Nerves unlesse they had rather the Case being now altered that the Convulsion should arise from the filling or emptying of the Head But the Cramp is an accident of the sensitive Spirit Which thing first
and receives an image or Idea of indignation the which is clearly expressed in a woman great with Child fearing or desiring any thing while she conveighs the seal of the thing desired on her young and whatsoever of the Archeus is defiled by that forreign Idea this ought to have been rooted out by the fit so that that is the cause of wearisomness in Fevers because the spirit being marked with a forreign likeness or hateful image as unapt for the performance of the wonted Offices of its government totally vanisheth For so those that profoundly contemplate are tired with much weariness For the Archeus if he hath an image brought into him is unfit for governing of the body For therefore persons void of care the more healthy more strong ones and those of a longer life do slowly wax grey The endeavour therefore of a Physitian is not to direct unto the effect or unto the alterations naturally received in the Archeus For as I have said in Diseases all things depend on the occasional cause implanted into the field of Life because Diseases have not in them an essential root of permanency and stability as other Beings have which consist and subsist by their own seeds Because in very deed all do immediatly consist in the life therefore in a dead Carcase there is no disease and therefore all the destruction and cessation of these depends on the removal of the occasional cause The Scope therefore of healing cannot turn it self unto the cooling of heat or to the' stupefying of alterative motions as neither unto the expectation of Concomitant accidents and produced effects For the Physitian shall labour in vain shall loose his labour time and occasions as long as he shall not be intent on the withdrawing of the occasional cause yea by how much the more he shall do that by so much the more delightfully and acceptably there will be help In all Fevers there is one only inflaming or indignation of the Archeus whence also they agree in the Essence and name of a Fever being distinguished only by their occasional cause Indeed the Matter and Inne distinguisheth Fevers yea it is of no great moment with a good Physitian to have curiously searched into the diversities of Fevers according to the properties of the matter and places since it is neither granted him to have prevented them neither can it be said to a remedy Go thou unto such a vein or unto that place For it is sufficient to have known what things I have already before in general concluded And let the whole study of a Physitian be to have found out remedies with whom all Fevers are of the same value and weight as I shall presently declare CHAP. XIV A perfect Curing of all Fevers 1. The property of the occasional cause 2. Why it becomes not putrified 3. Vomitory and laxative Medicines cure only by accident 4. The Schools why they have not had meet remedies 5. None cured of Fevers by the Physitians 6. The Authors excuse 7. Of what sort the Remedy of a Fever is 8. The successfulness and unadvisedness of Paracelsus are noted 9. The Description of an Vniversal Remedy 10. A Remedy purging Fevers and the sick but not the healthy is described 11. The most rare property of the Liquor Alkahest 12. Particular Remedies of Fevers THerefore it is now manifest and be it sufficient that the occasional matter of a Fever is to be vanquished and that that matter if it be not food corrupted as in a Diary at least that it is an excrement not indeed a putrified one unless in malignat Fevers wherein putrefaction is as yet in its making but a strange forreign one not vital being deteined against nature and so brought into anothers harvest And by this title altogether hostile to the Archeus For if it were putrified it should not be tough neither should it adhere as stubborn for by putrefaction the stedfast Fibers decay and so neither should it afford daily Fevers but it should presently make to putrifie and mortifie the vessel containing it together with it self whence death would be necessitated The occasional matter of Fevers therefore is detained besides the desires of nature in undue places wherein there is not any sink of the body therefore vomitory and laxative remedies if ever they have performed any profitable thing another prone neighbouring matter is thrust out together with it for otherwise the occasional matter of Fevers doth ordinarily reside in the hollow of the stomack or bowels because they are sinks and places appropriated for expulsion unless perhaps in a Diary Fever the disease called Choler the Flux bloody Flux and other Fevers of these pipes stirred up from a matter adhering unto them For I speak especially of the primary or chief Fevers First of all the Schools could not seek meet remedies for Fevers they being seasoned with First of all the Schools could not seek meet remedies for Fevers they being seasoned with bad and false Principles But they not seeking after remedies neither also could they find them Therefore Physitians being hitherto destitute of a true remedy have endeavoured to cure Fevers going into a Circle But if any have been cured under them that hath been by accident Let them give God thanks who hath bestowed strength on the sick whereby they have tesisted the Fever and their succours Physitians therefore instead of curing Fevers have neglected them by exhaustings of the strength and blood Far be envy from what is spoken for not boasting or the vain desire of a little glory I call God the Judge to witness but mans necessity and the compassion of Mortals hath constrained me to write and make manifest these things I have bestowed my Talent let him believe me and follow me that will It shall no longer lay upon me if Mortals being rash of belief perish by Fevers Indeed the occasional cause of Fevers is cut off by one only hook That remedy is sudoriferous or a causer of sweat which cuts extenuates dissolves melts shaves off and also cleanseth away the occasional cause in whatsoever place it at length shall exist And it is a Universal Medicine of Fevers Diaphoretical or transpirative indeed causing the aforesaid effects unsensibly and without sweat For indeed Paracelsus although he had Arcanum's or Secret Medicines whereby at one only draught he alike successively cured the Quartane Ague and all Fevers yet the knowledge of their causes was not granted unto him He being contented to have introduced into us all the particular Creatures of the Microcosm and so under a rashness of belief to have applied the Species Numbers and Properties of all Simples and Stars unto the Medicinal Art and that not indeed by similitudes but he would have them to be so precisely known by a simple identity under the penalty of convicted Idiotism Therefore I distinguish not a Fever if there be the greatest goodness of a remedy For that remedy is the Diaphoretick Precipitate of Paracelsus
or the violence of nature have nothing profited For sleep brings labour in a Fever but not in healthy persons because sleep ariseth from the stomack but not from the Liver the which more largely elsewhere But the original vice of a Fever and its occasional matter is of that which is changed and therefore also the changing action of the thing changing and of those nourishments changed is manifestly felt about the stomack And therefore the solemn definition of the Schools is ruinous which decreeth a Fever to be first kindled and begun from the heart But the occasional matter of Fevers is changed nourishment immediately to be assimilated that perhaps will be admitted for the stomack but it will not be alike easie to conceive the dross or liquid dung to be retrograde or to go back from the Mesentery But surely although that thing doth regularly offer it self in healthy persons yet not in Fevers whereunto therefore any exorbitancy is singular and proper For so the liquid dung passeth from the womb of the urine and seats of the stone through an undirect departure unto the Pleura unto the veins of the stomack and vessels of the gut Duodenum Of which deviation there is no reason but the very liberty of the confusion of the Archeus In the nex place I will rehearse it neither doth a Fever it self alwayes flow from and is directed by a former occasional cause For truly the Archeus himself although he be not solicited by an external error yet from the offence of his own incontinency he now and then of his own accord taketh to him furies and is luxurious through a proper insolency of liberty For he tumulteth and from a light errour frameth the Idea's of his own indignation no otherwise then he is oft-times stirred up from a ridiculous cause And the which is less wonder in the universal Archeus if he stumble seeing he only is chief for the governing of so divers functions of faculties For because the Center of the malady hath placed the place of its exercise about the stomack vain are the emptyings of the veins and theevings of the strength For truly the blood is void of fault The which I have above sufficiently demonstrated And it is alike ridiculous to be willing to strengthen or comfort by Alkermes Gems and Pearls beaten I say to be willing to corroborate where the enemy bears rule within and drives the life it self head-long into all disorder and confusion of dissolution For the Enemy who was able to prostrate the health being entire and strength being strong will despise whatsoever shall be objected for comfort while himself is present In vain therefore do they intend the helping of Symptomes if a conquering Medicine be not present and the which may restrain the confusion of the vital Archeus The which indeed is the essential and principal Effectresse of cures And it is matter of grief to intend the corroborating of the faculties with one hand which the other hand dejecteth by solutive Medicines and blood-letting A plausible remedy therefore is measured from the effect if it appeaseth the tumult of the Archeus and extinguisheth the Idea of the Fever For the place of the Fever being pacified or the prison opened the Archeus who before beat down all things because confused being now quiet expels the enemy and the occasional matters the prison being opened do suddenly flow forth And that thing we contemplate of in a most difficult and desperate case For truly the contagion of the Pox or fowl disease being taken away the bonie and hard bunches vanish away of their own accord Elsewhere also desperate Imposthumes happen oft-times from the guidance of nature alone so unwonted declinings dissolvings resolvings and departures are acknowledged even by the Humourists And therefore I hope they will be the more readily inclining about the voluntary expulsion of the occasional matter of a Fever At leastwise that help is not to be sought from solutive medicines as neither from the theevish remedies of the vital faculties Surely the fury of the Archeus being first appeased which forms feverish Ideas what and what sort of things ought to be are easily afterwards sequestred And that thing the sick do easily bear and they find themselves the better thereby as they are eased of a loading weight and the confusion of perturbations sprung up in them Therefore the knowledge of the essential thingliness of a Fever banisheth the hope which Physitians move from the cutting of a vein solutive medicines Scarrification and Cantharides to wit by reason of one fault lest they should seem to have made their Visits in vain and to ask a reward from deceit But seeing that the Fever being well nigh overcome the Archeus composeth himself to tranquillity or rest as by Crises's Sweats or by bleeding at the nose or also by the Hemethoides or Piles as it were the remaining wresiling of furies he hath oft-times brought quietness and health That indeed hath deceived Physitians and they have placed all their hope in the Horsleech and Blood-letting neither have they considered that a meet remedy being administred presently even the most swollen veins of the fundament do disperse without the effusion of blood neither that they do hinder the attainment or preservation of health which otherwise should be impossible if the blood of the Hemethoides were infamous with so foul a Character as it is decyphered to be The choice therefore of Remedies in Fevers is to be drawn from Secrets whereof as there is a famous variety so also a hidden or unknown preparation For the chief are those which pacifie the tumult stirred up in the life Those which follow are such as overcome the poyson of a Fever But those are more famous which contain both together Lastly There are some which are serviceable expulsively to wit by a plausible cleansing and resolving Wherein the liberality of the Almighty is wonderful which hath directed crude Simples for Fevers and the which being moderately prepared do mow down a Fever like a Sithe Surely I should rejoyce to make these manifest but events experienced by my hurt have affrighted me from it For about the end of the last past age I had begun to cure by the distillation of Sulphur and Vitriol I also told what those unaccustomed and unknown Remedies were But at first Physitians shewed their Glove corroded and resolved by the aforesaid Remedies that they might affright the sick that his stomack could not endure the same But when as afterwards the false paint of the Physitians their dispraising nothing hindering they saw those that were cured by me to be in good health they bad some things to be distilled by my fugitive servants which they had seen and learned Hence indeed Chymical Medicines passed over into the hands of Merchants and Apothecaries Neither indeed should I envy it but that all things would be set to sale as adulterated as long as Gain and Covetousness shall prevail Surely it is to
grieved Wherefore sympathy and antipathy are observed to be even in stones but in the Load-stone most manifestly the which notwithstanding cannot consist without a sense or feeling But wheresoever that sense is although it be dull it happens also that some shew of imagination agreeable to its subject doth accompany it For otherwise it is altogether impossible for any thing to love desire attract and apply that which is consonant to it self or to shun any thing adverse to it self unless a certain sense knowledge desire of and averâ—eness from the object are reciprocally present All which things do enclose in them an obscure act of feeling imagination and certain image of choice For else by what means shall a thing be moved or altered at the presence of its object unlesse it feel or percieve that very object to be present with it self If it perceive how shall it be altered except under a conception of the passion felt by it self And unlesse that felt conception doth include some certain imagination in it self Take notice Reader that in this corner all the abstruse knowledge of occult or hidden properties layeth which the Schools have banished from their diligent search they desisting from whence they were to begin according to that Maxim A Phylosopher must begin where nature ends I have therefore deliberated more exactly to demonstrate that in inanimate things â—here inhabiteth a kind of sense phantasie yea and of choice yet in a proportionable respect according to the capacity and degree of every one I do not in the mean time make mention of Zoophytes or Plant-Animals which remote absence of proving might unto many seem to be ridiculous But our paradox will offend none who moderatly understands it First of all it is not to be doubted but that some flowers do accompany the Sun as well in cleer days in those wherein the Sun doth not shine as in nights themselves they attesting that they have a motion sense and love of the Sun because without which it is impossible for them to accompany the hidden Sun For even as late in the evening they loose the Sun in the West the which while he hastens towards the East doth not operate amongst us who abide in the shadow of the earth yet in the mean time whether the night be hot be cold be cleer or rainy the flowers notwithstanding do not cease equally to bend themselves towards the east Which thing first of all poynts out that there is in them a knowledge of the rising and circuite of the Sun in what part he is to set and in what to rise cal thou it the instinct of nature or as it listeth thee For names will not change the matter the matter it self is of a deed done but the deed hath its cause in the flower But that these things do thus happen in plants vegetatively enlivened it is the lesse wonder But that they have place also in Minerals I thus prove There is almost nothing made in nature without a proper motion and nothing is moved voluntarily or by it self but by reason of the property put into it by the Creator which property the Antients name a proper love and for this cause they will have self-love to be the first born daughter of nature given unto it and bred in it for its own preservation And when this is present there is of necessity also a Sympathy and Antipathy in respect of the diversity of objects For so the feathers of other birds are said to undergo rottennesse by the feathers or wings of an Eagle and cloath made of the wools of sheep that died of their own accord is soon of its own accord in the holes which are beaten thorow it resolved as it were with rottennesse in what places the threds of the dead wool run down So a drum made of a sheep and asses skin is dumb if a neighbouring drum made of the hide of a wolf be beaten The skin of a Gulo it is a most devouring creature in Swethland stirs up in a man however sober he be and not a hunter the ordinary sleeps from hunting and eating if the party sleeping be covered with the same But what are these things to minerals Truly I proceed from the vegetable kingdom through dead things by degrees unto stones whereunto the holy Scriptures attribute great virtue For indeed stones could neither move nor alter if they had not an act of feeling of their own object For neither could red Coral wax pale if being born about it shall touch the flesh of a menstruous woman unlesse it self felt the defects thereof For the Load-stone bewrays it self as the most manifest of stones which by a proper local motion inclines it self to the North as if it were vital But not that it is drawn by the north Because if a Load-stone be placed toward the north in a woodden box in the averse part of it upon the face of a standing pool of water the box with the other and opposite corner of the stone speedily as may be rowls it self to the North Therefore if that should be done by a drawing of the north and not by a voluntary impulsive motion of the Load-stone it self the box should in like manner presently also by the same attraction yield it self unto the north bank The which notwithstanding comes not to passe but the box together with its stone remains unmoved after that the stone together with the box hath retorted it self on the requisite side and by a requisite motion It is clear therefore that the Load-stone doth of its own free accord rowl it self to the North From whence afterwards it followes that there is in it a sense knowledge and desire unto the north and also the beginning of a conformable motion Furthermore if any one doth hold a polished piece of steel nighâ— the aforesaid box toward the South-side the Load-stone then forthwith neglects the north and turns it self to the steel so that the box not only turns it self to the steel but that it wholly also swims toward the north whence also it is plain to be seen that the Load-stone is carried with a stronger appetite to the iron than to the North and that the steel hath lesse of a successive alteration in it than the North Consequently also it is manifest that it is strong in a manifest choice of objects Some have moved a frivolous doubt about this matter To wit whether the Load stone draws the iron or indeed the iron drawes the Load-stone it self As not knowing that there is a mutual attraction on both sides which comes not by little and little by reason of much familiarity neither doth it keep respects not observe the ends of its own gain fruition circumstances or consequence Neither is that drawing subject to a flatterer oâ— defamer out it is a gift originally inbred by nature in the Archeusses on either part and marked with a proprietary character by him who made all things so that indeed if