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by its importunity that it may satisfie its thirst Therefore new nourishment is many times administred unto it and is withdrawn from its other chamber-fellows because a sufficient nourishment for all parts is wanting From thence therefore is Leanness an Atrophia a Tabes or lingring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
digestion which thing if it be rightly considered it will now plainly appear that a Cautery is not to be imprinted for the purging out of a malignant humour neither that a bad or evil humour doth exist but only for the diminishing of the abundance of Blood and so from a beholding of an exesse of a good humor only Whence it follows that it is not convenient for Young Folks not for those that are become lean again not for such as are brought low by any disease as neither for those that live orderly and least of all for religious abstashing Persons But they have not yet distinguished whether corrupt pus in an issue be only of the venal Blood or of one of the four feigned humours or indeed of a co-mixture of the four If the first should be true then the Pus should not be from an ill humour but from the best of the four humours and so an Issue shall be made void and the best Pus or the effect of an Issue shall be worst of all feeing it was not but the corruptive of the best of all But if they had rather devise to wit that the Blood is not at first evil but becomes evil while it is seperated from its other fellows At leastwise the three remaining ones shall in that severing be as yet more bad than the bloud and upon every event an Issue shall not be made but for an evil end that it might corrupt the good and guiltless Blood But if they will have the corrupt Pus to be made of the four humours being co-mixt then a Cautery errs in its end seeing a Cautery prevails not to purge out hurtful humours but to corrupt the good ones which are by nature not erring sent daily unto it self for Nourishment In the next place a Cautery shall not be to be reckoned as a preventing of a Catarrh or else the matter of a Catarrhe should not be a vapour nor also Phlegm but venal Blood it self which the Issue in it self corrupteth For corrupt pus is not made of Phlegm but only of venal Blood as hath been sufficiently instructed in the Schools Therefore by the essence of corrupt pus being well searched into in its matter efficient cause the ends of Cauteries the purgings out of Catarrhs and evil humours do cease For indeed any sumptom of wounds being taken away in Cauteries and a supposed health it must needs be that a loosing or seuering of that which held together doth produce snotty matter in the Issue and that that doth not flow from elsewhere but that it is generated in the part it self Also the Archeus daily dispenseth so much of the venal Blood to the parts proportionally as they have need of for their own nourishment Therefore the Pus or corrupt matter is venal Blood vitiated in that part wherein the Wound is and an effect of digestion vitiated in the same place Therefore to have vitiated the entireness continuation or holding together and digestion of the parts next to have converted the venal Blood into corrupt Snotty matter is reputed the very same thing in the Schools as to have gone to prevent Catarrhs or Rheums or thorow the hole of a Cautery to have extracted from the Head from whence they originally fetch all Rheums an excrementous humor which otherwise had threatned to fall down on a noble part whether in the mean time there be an agreement between the Head and the Wounded part or not for it is all one so the Skin be deteined Wounded whether that excrementous humour be Blood or be made snotty pus or liquid Sanies is all one so by the thred-bare words of Catarrhe prevention derivation revulsion and an Issue the world be circumvented For I behold a small Infant of a Year old now breeding Teeth and to suffer a Fever froath of the Mouth and Spittle without ceasing And aâ—â—ength that there are wringings of the Bowels and Stools of Yellow-Green-coloured excrements At least that Tooth is a part of the Head wherefore the Flux shall be a Rheum of the Head But what consent is there of a Tooth about to break forth or a swollen Gum with a Bowel Or what power thereof is there of begetting or sending away that Catarrhe out of the Stomack of a little Infant unto his Head And from thence into the Ileos By what right shall a vapour dropped or stilled out of the Stomack be made Cankered Choler in the Head Hath perhaps the shop of Choler now wandred from the beginning of Life unto the Head Could a Cautery if an Infant were for undergoing it suck unto it a leeky Flux into it self And by a few small drops of corrupt matter recompence or Ballance the leeky Choler of some pounds Why doth the Stomack of a small Infant frame a Catarrhe by reason of the pain of his Tooth Why is it sent into a Bowell and not unto the paining Tooth Doth not the reader yet see that a Flux is not a Rheum But that the Archeus wheresoever yee will have it being enraged is ready in the Bowels to transchange the nourishable juyce into excrements which by the Schools are reckoned Choler Phlegme c. If therefore the Flux be not a Rheume and the Archeus being wroth can transchange any thing into a troublesom Liquor if the Gum be but afflicted shall not he be able on every side to unload himself by the appointed emunctories And not to wait for the Skin to be opened by a Caustick Alass hath cruel dullness caused the Schools to be cruel towards their mortal kinsfolks For neither do they consider that in Women and those that are somewhat fat or gross there is in the fleshly membrane about the ordinary places of a Cautery a meer grease to the thickness of two fingers at least for which persons notwithstanding the more frequent Cauteries and those the more profitable ones are perswaded wherefore also the bottom of the Issue shall scarce be in the middle of the grease therefore there is not a passage whereby the evil banished feigned humour of a Rheume may rush down out of the Brain or between the Scull and Skin thorow the middle of the fat But what is that solitary humour in the next place which for its offence being banished from the sending part descending thorow the Substance of the grease unmixed doth degenerate into corrupt Pus If it be an exhalation of vapours out of the Stomack why shall it not be more frequent to younger and hot Stomacks than to weak old and cold ones In what sort shall that water that droppeth out of a vapour put on the form of Snotty matter How shall it hasten thorow the Brain Coats and Scull to find a hole made by a Cautery that it may flow down thither only and be purged Why doth not the vapour fly first an hundred times into the Air before it reach to the place appointed it by the alluring Cautery How shall the Water which climbeth
ceaseth from a sumptomatical motion toward the Pleura as long as shee remains enfeebled And therefore the Pleurisie not increasing for a while nature as it were repenting of the rumor and storm thinks of a ripening of the corrupt Pus that is to be framed of the out-hunted blood All which things would more successfully follow the blood being retained wherein the life that is the strength dwells because the life is nature which is the alone Physitianess of Diseases and she failing the Physitian takes away his shoulders Therefore the Schools have not hitherto taken heed unto the impulsive cause which pours forth the blood out of the veins into undue places beyond bound and measure and which furiously plucks away the Pleura from the Ribs and prepares a wound and hollowness Which causes being co-knit together are iddeed before the effect yet do they so persevere in the same effect that they are materially and efficiently the very effects themselves Unto which effect indeed slow and impotent is the race of false and salt Phlegm out of the head and the dreamed rheumy defluxions through channels or continuations of passages not existing But Paracilsus meditating of this pulling away of the Pleura and being willing to square a cause thereunto hath brought in other follies that he may defend his own mad laws of a little world in us For he feigneth anew and Ogertine salt else never named by him however variously he itcheth in himself concerning salts in Ulcers and Apostemes even to the fetching off of the skin And first of all he teacheth that this Ogertine salt is of the property of Arsenical Sulphurs in the mean time he is silent concerning its mines veins property history etymology and reason of its etymology because it was dreamed by him But at leastwise he had acted nothing more cleerly herein seeing he dawbs no less with the same elay than that wherewith the Schools are defiled For truly none hath hitherto declared why the Pleura departs from the Ribs whereunto it is adjoyned by a continued thred of fibers to wit whether it be pulled away of its own free accord or indeed by another tearer they are content as satisfied in the doubt if they shall say it is rent from the Ribs by the weight of a down-rouling Catarrh in the resolving nevertheless of which doubt as of the root the whole cure and prevention of a Pleurisie doth consist For the root of every Disease is worthy of the dumb silence of the Schools to wit I shall shew in a peculiar treatise that the very essence of any kind of Diseases whatsoever hath been hitherto unknown in the Schools it hath seemed to suffice them if they have applyed their doctrine unto without unto artificials unto the latter sumptoms unto the consequent fruits or products as though the stage of causes and essential roots were ridiculous and in vain Paracelsus also if he reckoned to confirm any solid thing toward a Disease of so great moment and to add his doctrine thereto if he determined not to derive his Ogertine salt it self from a power unto act out of the blood at leastwise that unwonted unnamed and unknown salt ought to have brought a necessity of its invention and of its generation that at least some place might be afforded for prevention For this the pretended title of the Monarch of secrets doth require But all things have remained neglected because the chiefdome of healing hath stood founded upon empty stubble I promise therefore that whatsoever hath been built thereon shall fall to the ground For whether a fire the searcher out of truth be built or next whether the voluntary corruption of dayes shall consume the stubble at leastwise I know that at length that building will fall to the ground But I in a Pleurisie consider the first inward moover or spur and afterwards the tearer of the Pleura And both those being one and the same efficient cause of it I call the Pleurisie it self But the venal blood flowing thither and that which is poured out thither and the aposteme sprung from thence I consider as the product to which end I will bring common experience for an example Let a Thorn be thrust into any part of the Body the which pain instantly succeedeth from the pain there is presently a Pulse from the Pulse an afflux of vendl blood whence ariseth a swelling a fever an Aposteme c. the Thorn therefore mooves the other things after it Therefore the Metaphorical Thorn of the Pleurisie and by speaking properly the Pleurisie it self is a forreign sharpness conceived in the Archeus the which if it chaseth or layes aside into the blood of the hollow vein surely that is expelled unto the vein Azugos yea or into the very flesh near the Ribs from whence ariseth an Aposteme as the product of the Pleurisie In the next place as an Aposteme which is bred from a Thorn fastened in the finger a not but rashly cured by cutting of a vein but it promiseth a cure by reason of the plucking out of the Thorn only so it happens in the Pleurisie For as sharpness in the stomack is an acceptable and ordinary savour so out of the stomack all sharpness is besides nature and hostile which hath been hitherto unknown in the Schools For so from a sharpness are wringings of the bowels there is a strangury in the Urine a corroding in Ulcers in the skin a scab in the joynts the Gowt c. And the which if thou wilt experience to thy hand mingle some drops at least of sharpish Wine with the Urine that hath been newly pissed out without pain and cast it in with a Syringe Thou shalt experience against thy will that I teach the Truth In the humor Latex also of which afterwards in its own place it raiseth up a bastard Pleurisie the which they altogether through the same carelessness of narrowly searching as in other Diseases do call a windy one but if the Archeus hath laid up a gentle sharpness into the lap of the venal blood unhappily applied to it it as despised is presently hunted out and cast out of the veins and brings forth an Aposteme in whatsoever place that shall happen but if that doth happen to be the deeper or lavisher in the veins a certain pestilent affect ariseth The which I prove for the venal bloud or flesh do never wax soure or sharp without an actual obtaining of putrefaction the which I have els-where on purpose proved by the fleshes of Beasts which do most swiftly Putrifie under the Dogstar therefore yielding soure Broath for the bloud waxing soure is contrary to the nature of the Veins and to the disposition of the whole flesh as long as it liveth presently coagulated For the venal bloud in a dead-Carcasse is preserved by the Vein a good while from coagulating out of which if it shall fall it waxeth presently clotty which is more largely declared els-where Hence it follows that of an
thirst remaining safe For that thirst doth proceed as a forraign excrement doth cause the nourishable juice of the stomack to melt For truly while I describe my feelings or perceivances I am not so much besides my self as that I shall deny the excess of an external heat to burn and cause a wound or ulcer or that cold excelling doth mortifie as if it did burn But in the Dream proposed I onely perceived them as they are serviceable to the speculation of healing Therefore the examples of excessive heat and cold are like a sword but not to be referred among the occasional and internal causes of diseases to be considered by a Physitian If indeed according to the speculations of Medicine health is expected by the removal of those wherefore the speculation of external and antecedent Causes is not curative but onely now and then significative and directive For a wound being once inflicted although the sword be taken away the wound is not healed neither is the fire to be taken from the hearth although it hath at sometime burnt or scorched some-body in the same place For truly the causes of Diseases are inward as they are connexed occasions therefore the consideration and removal of those is truly medicinal But the Schools when they saw the fire to burn its objects likewise also cold to mortifie and destroy and so the body of man by those external qualities excelling to be diversly disturbed they for that cause thought that Effects which should have heat adjoyned unto them were raised up by fire and in this respect that in Feavers two Elements did strive in us whereof the Water should alwaies obtain the former part of the victory but the Fire the latter part thereof to wit that the Fire did cause Erisipelas's the Prune or burning coal the accute or Persian fire the burning Feaver c. That it did likewise harden by drying or exsiccation of Schirrus's Stones Bones and Knots They have also decreed Remedies beseeming such rules by contrarieties not knowing after what sort the spirit of life may stir up heats and colds without fire or icy cold because neither from the Elements of our body or from feigned humours But they have on both sides neglected the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or violent assailant of Hippocrates Even as I have sometime by one example of a thorn thrust into the finger demonstrated wherein the Heat Pain Inflamation Feaver do not efficiently proceed from the fire of the thorn but because the sensitive Spirit doth grievously bear the forreign thorn So indeed heat and cold are accidents impertinent to the nature of a Feaver even as in the Liver are felt its heats because in the same place there are its thorns and the heat is not the cause but the effect of the thorn And therefore the alterations which do happen in the vital Family-admistration and do cease in dead carcases do not depend on the fire or icyness of the body or humours but on the Beginnings of life Yea if the Schools had touched at the matter as it is they had found that natural artificial Baths c. do not dry and burn us up but rather moisten us unless their heats are inordinate and of daily continuance yea neither then indeed otherwise than because more is consumed than is received doth the body accidentally wither At length I presently after the first qualities perceived the theevish adulteries of Merchants wherewith they load defile estrange and substitutively dissemble foreign Medicines or Drugs who have no need of my Doctrine because they are such as are not moved with the fear of Hell I presently after perceived two distinct Savours at least of things if not sometimes three or four one to wit whereby things are sharp bitter salt c. but the other which is called specifical being appropriated to the seed The first therefore I perceived to be the dignities and offices of Salts not indeed of Salts separated from the three first things or as they say drawn from corporeal Beginnings but of Salts glistening in their composed body But the other of the savours I perceived to be the seminal nature of Odours performing or at least unfolding the office of Forms in concrete bodies for Salts as being most sensible do first offer themselves to the taste whereunto therefore Hippocrates hath attributed the knowledges of diseases to wit bitter salt sharp and brackish pointing forth diseases But heats and colds he rather understood to be subsequent affects or passions than diseases But I do ascribe their judgement to the taste by reason of the aforesaid tastable qualities wherein for the most part a more profound power or faculty sits and containing the seminal and efficient cause But not that therefore the judgement concerning diseases doth belong to the tongue and the pallate but I name it the taste by reason of the tastable qualities Otherwise it is the feeling wherewithal the Instruments are strongly endowed whose sensitive force by an approximation of touching makes the signs of friendship or enmity about the hidden thing perceiveable After this manner therefore I perceived that it is the offices of the salts exceeding in force which do unfold the vertues of the subordinate forms of their concrete body and carry them unto the Archeus as it were their object whereon they act Therefore I perceived that Cures as well by Mediciues as by Nature are made by an appeasing of the disturbed Archeus and the removal of the seminal and diseasie character produced by the Archeus This indeed I have perceived to be the nearest safest and highest or chiefest curing But that which succeedeth by the help of secrets is busied about the taking away of the product And therefore I have perceived that Arcanum's do operate as Salts Indeed such cures do happen by removing of that which is hurtfull and by adding that which is defectuous for else those things which do hinder increases or appropriations have rather a regard unto prevention than unto curing it self but hurtfull things are taken away by resolving cleansing exhaling or expelling which properties are agreeable unto Salts But the removals of that which is hurtfull are not duly wrought by poisonous melting and putrifactive things as neither by the withdrawings of the venal blood and life But the adding of that which is deficient I have perceived not to be done by a proper means and therefore that we go back or decline by little and little through great want of the Tree of Life the which be it spoken of the vital faculties but not of the want of the venal blood which is restored by the kitchins But I have perceived that Nature doth voluntarily rise again and repair some of her defects if she shall be made to sit up after her prostrating To which end also balsamical and tinging things do help I perceived also that in the stomack is bred a soure salt partly volatile and partly fixed But that both are afterwards changed by their
Heavens And a man by a voluntary Blas and likewise the Archeus by an ideal and seminal Blas stirs up divers alterations But a seminal Agent being inordinate doth through a strange Blas bring forth a Monster which is properly a Disease For although a Disease according to its causes be natural yet in respect of us it ceaseth not to be against nature as well in as much as it began from a forreign Blas as that it carrieth a hostile Blas and raiseth it up from it self And therefore neither doth this Monster generate a Young like it self unless it by serments doth transfer its own seminal contagion and so causeth Diseases in others by accident But as to that which belongs to the efficient cause of Diseases There is in an abortive Birth a certain efficient cause bred within as is a Cataract in the eye the stone in man a Feverish matter the which although it be called by the Schools the efficient immediate and containing cause of a Disease yet it is only the occasional cause of Diseases and external in respect of the life wherein every Disease alway is And therefore neither can such a visible matter not only obtain the reason of a true efficient but neither also can it be of the intrinsecal matter of a Disease it self to be any part thereof It remains therefore the conciting and occasional cause of Diseases Because the efficient and seminal matter if it ought immediately to reach and pierce the vital faculties and so also the life even as also in a point it is altogether necessary that it doth contain a resembling mark of life Even so that also that thing is perpetual in seminal Diseases that a Disease as it is never in a dead carcass so it cannot but be in a living Body Furthermore of efficient causes there is a certain one which is and remaineth external As a sword having obtained an impulsive force maketh a Disease in the divided matter which is called a wound After the like manner is the fretting of the bladder which is made by the Stone For although some external efficients have their own seminal Beginnings whereof they are generated as the Stone yet in respect of the Disease which they produce they want Seeds and therefore are they external and forreign to the Disease it self But internal occasionals have a Seed whereby they nourish the Disease stirred up by them and are also oft-times shut up or finished in their being made As is manifest in a Fever an Imposthume c. In the next place there are occasional efficients which do defile by a continual and fermental propagation As Ulcers the Jaundice c. And there are internal occasionals which do now and then sleep a long time As in the Falling-sickness Gout Madness Asthma Fevers c. Of internal occasional causes also some do uncessantly labour that they may estrange the matter of our Body from the Communion of life Whereto if a Ferment shall come which thing Hippocrates in Diseases calls divine co-meltings of the Body are made But in a Fever the efficient occasional matter according to its double property doth stir up the Archeus unto a propulsion or driving out for the consuming of it self Wherefore neither doth it leave any other product behind it unless a new Idea shall from the Archeus being provoked spring forth by accident In like manner as the Dropsie followeth Fevers c. But let pains drowsinesses watchings weaknessses c. be symptoms and dispositions so also a strange seminal efficient doth beget the Stone and there ceaseth although it thenceforth stirs up troubles every moment and new motions But the product of the Stone are excoriations or gratings off of the skin and new Diseases which are Monsters unlike their Parent For in speaking properly the generation of the Stone is not a Disease and much more the Stone it self which in it self is a natural composition but in respect of us diseasie Wherefore also in the Chamber-pot or Urinal and without the life it is generated by its own causes of putrifaction or stonifying And so it is a monstrous and irregular Disease because it is that which is bred in us by accident and without the life In the next place as soon as the effect or product in its being made hath lost its occasional efficient that product is no longer the very connexion of both causes or the former Disease but it hath its own causes more latter than the connexion of the first causes For so an Imposthume hath brought forth an Ulcer but this weeps a poysonsom liquor this in the next place doth oft-times excoriate changeth the former Ulcer or raiseth up a new one But it nothing pertains unto the causing Ulcer whether its liquor doth afterwards ulcerate or not because there is not in it an effective intention to produce an Ulcer by the liquor Because the corrupt Sanies or liquor it self is the product of the Ulcer causing it which received its effective and seminal intention in its own essence but not for the propagation of a new Ulcer which is therefore unto it by accident The Stone also is the product of its constituting causes which it encloseth and terminates in it self Because the causes thereof being brought unto the end of their effecting do cease in the product and are shut up as if they were buried Although that Stone be an occasional means whereunto the generation of a new Stone happens by growing In the mean time it is to the Stone by accident if it produce other Diseases more cruel than it self yea than death it self But in the Dropsie the efficient Archeus of the Reins in the conception of an Idea begotten by his own perturbation closeth up the Kidneys and a Dropsie is made Yet the former efficient doth not cease even unto the strangling of the person In that Dropsie being caused and the water being produced and dismissed there is not a further intention to produce any other thing After another manner oft-times the product of a Disease seeing it is an in-bred Monster it hath an occasional propagative faculty from the property of the efficient Archeus not enclosed or bound up in the product but free in the Organs of life Whence indeed other products do now and then successively spring forth At least-wise the lavishments of the faculties and life ought not so much to be accounted the products of Diseases as their ordained fruits and symptoms and the periods of these Neither in the mean time is that a Disease by a less priviledge which is produced by a diseasie ferment than was the Disease the Parent of that Product Neither indeed doth it more sluggishly corrupt some vital thing or part by strange efficients being received than that in the primary efficient of whose action the Disease it self is But the Schools do suppose a contrariety of the Disease with health with life and again with the Remedy it self Therefore unto one term they apply many contrary
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
by a small Remedy they would be willing to learn how to help so cruel a Malady Divines indeed and Lawyers have handled their own Examinations but the Schooles of Medicine I accuse of neglect For I judge that to be done because the evil Spirit is the Prince of this World who therefore hath every where obtained his Patrons in the Chaires Courts and Pallaces whereby himself sits as it were President And the whole World is in very deed placed in Malignity For some of these being the more inclinable unto Athiesme do deny Devils Juggles like as also Enchantments and they affirm that they cannot be induced to believe the contrary unless they shall see them Whence at length they deride among themselves the Immortality of the mind and the Fear of God as Politick Inventions for the restraining of the common People And then others according to the Decree of the Holy Scriptures do indeed believe Devils and Infernal Guardians to be Yet that they are not Cacogeneal or of an evil property or nature to Humane society but rather fellowly and near friends And so they esteem bewitching Juggles for deceitful Fables melancholly Trifles and old Wives Dreams There are also Lastly others among the Learned who being admonished by the Authority of the Holy Scriptures of the Works of the Devil also of the Enchantments of Witches or Sorceresses do admit of them indeed Yet they esteem them to be meer Arts nor to be condemned by any other Title but that they are throughly taught by Satan and are onely Instituted for evil And these are the most audacious in all wickedness and at this day cloak Faith with Hypocrisie I therefore since the dayes of Plato do behold three Patrons of Witches to have now constantly flourished among Athiests And I guess that so cursed an Infection hath not hitherto persisted but by the same president In the mean time no Physitians that I know of except one only Karichterus hath handled this matter Who indeed hath proposed the manner of making and some remedies of curing but not a little suspected of vain superstition Neither also hath he touched at the Theory because he seemed to have been ignorant thereof Physitians in the mean time being greatly afraid least they should be accounted guilty of a Magical Crime while they should by a strong fortune be reckoned to have conferred a help which they know not on their Neighbour under so great straits of miseries Yet that privy shift hath been commonly perswaded by the subtilty of Satan that they might seem to have neglected the searching out of a remedy for the assurance of their own fame and conscience But they passing by their languishing Neighbour as the unbelieving Scribes and Pharisees do forsake them in their greatest desolations For none is otherwise reputed to have carefully heeded the Disease or to have known the structure of the same for which he describeth a remedy And none is believed to have given poyson to drink who enquireth into the Causes and discerns the remedies And least of all is he judged to have inflicted a wound who being sent for hath set to his helping hand compassionately and freely As neither is he a Thief who discovers the dens and counsels of Thieves Far therefore by that privy shift that it should be accounted for aâ— infamous thing to have known the means progress ends and cure of or medicine against enchantments seeing these things ought to be known and had from elsewhere than from the Teacher the Devil For seeing the Devil is restrained within the Court of Nature we are not to despaire but that the most bountiful Jesus hath substituted remedies for so cruel maladies unto his own Glory who hath never been wanting to his own Goodness Glory and Wisdom A good Man therefore proceeds in a strait way neither doth he look behind him nor careth he what the World doth judge of him to wit most of whose judgements are foolish and false For it is sufficient for a good Man that the hinderer or destroyer of a Malady is voide of crime Therefore according to my capacity I will shew how far the Devil is concerned in the actions of Sorcerers or Witches And the which as to a fundamental concernment I will rehearse by eight Positions 1. That every vital Form is a vital Light of its own Body 2. That although the Forms of inanimate things do differ from Souls in the degree and disposition of that Light At leastwise they all do agree in something which is essentially lightsome 3. That by reason of their Light they immediately touch and pierce each other And so Forms being connexed do operate on or into each other even as one Light doth divide another in the midst for the Sun-beams being collected by a Glass into the Crest for although they shall co-unite into a point yet they again proceeding from thence those which were in the Glass on its right side even unto the Crest do afterwards pass thorow it being rebounded in the Glass unto its left side yet they keep the identity or sameliness of the former Light undefiled as neither therefore by reason of the penetration made in the Crest do they labour with contagion The which I have elsewhere mechanically demonstrated by a Figure 4. That therefore formal Lights which are diverse in the general or particular kinde do immediately pierce and communicatively operate without wearisomenesse on each other like Light 5. That all the forms of Bodies are true Lights yet not substantiall ones although Entitated or made Beings for the reasons elsewhere alleadged concerning neutral Creatures But the mind of Man alone is a Formal Immortal and Un-obliteral substance In this respect also it operates with a superiority toucheth at and pierceth every other form inferiour unto it as elsewhere concerning the searching out of sciences by that title especially recieved into Faith and Nature because it is the true Image of God and the Kingdome of God inhabits therein And who therefore hath put all things under its feet 6. That therefore the evil Spirit hath not a power from his Creation of reaching any Form that in it he can perfect his own will by the absolute command of his Beck For he is a Spirit abstracted from a corporeal Being and bound and forthwith after Sin a most miserable Scoffer or Mocker 7. But only a local motive power of Bodies hath remained unto him and the motion whereof doth turn to the hurt of Mortals For neither can he beat down one only window of himself without the help of the liberty of his Clients 8. For neither doth he move the Elements by touching seeing that he wanteth extream parts whereby he may touch Bodies not indeed those which he taketh to him whereby he may lay hold of or move any thing but by his Beck only he moveth with a beholdable Aspect such as is that of the Stars on Meteours by Idea's or of our will on its own Organs Which mutual power
speedy adhering of Smoaks in our Pipes But they having gotten possession within they will not refuse it by Vegetables For they will scarce receive a healing Medicine unless by Secrets of the same Monarchy Wherefore I have not found any help from the Manna of a Nettle and likewise from Semper-vive boyled in the beestings or first-stroakings of Milk c. The which I with the leave of Paracelsus do thus maintain and they who shall be willing to make tryal I trust will subscribe with me CHAP. LXXXVI Things Suscepted or Undergone THe fourth kind of things Received I call things Suscepted such as are Wounds made by a Point or a Cut or Stroak by Darting Beating Casting Renting Biting Bruising Congealing Scorching or Burning or Straining Likewise breaking of a Bone Displacing Binding close Pressing together and in brief whatsoever things are immediately subjected unto the Chyrurgion For truly Ulcers which are bred not by a Wound rashly cured seeing they are nourished by an internal Principle they singularly have respect unto a Physitian And by so much the more evidently because any kind of Ulcers and how malignant soever are perfectly cured by Arcanums taken in at the mouth Therefore Arcanums being obtained the Chyrurgion being in penury will at sometime be idle who is to be occupied in manual labour only about things Suscepted or undergone But because the fulness of dayes hath not yet brought Arcanums into use hence there is a Liberty for Chyrurgions to invade the Physitian In the mean time I stay not in the difference between Diseases of the similar and organical members which is so greatly enlarged in the Schooles Because I measure a Disease by its Archeal and immediate Causes but not by the hurtings of the Functions Especially because all parts how organical soever do not depart from their homogeniety or sameliness of kind For neither do I judge it to be of concernment whether many Offices do concurre in one part or whether there be a particular defect of particular Offices Because the eye being thrust out a Disease doth not succeed but a Death of the power of Seeing And therefore an incarnating being introduced over it causeth an healing of the Wound but doth not restore the Death Neither likewise do I clash with my self although I have elsewhere said that all Diseases do arise and are nourished from seminal Beginnings But I will teach in this place that Wounds undergone by a Sword do operate in entering after the manner of artificial things Because the Diseases of things Suscepted are not so long as they are in their being made but after their being undergone For things suscepted have that thing peculiar unto them that by themselves they rather introduce Death than a Disease For it is by accident that a Wound doth cut asunder the fleshy part or the Heart it self or an Artery And therefore a Wound in its beginning doth threaten Death on the part whereon it is inflicted and Susceptions do alwayes savour of the nature of artificial things For Susceptions have first of all deceived the Schooles For they have argued after this manner A Sword woundeth that which is continual or holding together being divided is wounded But dividing is nothing but a relation of terms and yet a Wound is a Disease Therefore every Disease consisteth onely in a relation or at least-wise in a disposition or effect of that relation Which is to say That a Disease is either a Being of Reason or a Non-Being such as is the relation of Terms or that a real Being doth arise from the Being of Reason But I who do not destinguish Internal connexed Causes from the thing it self do call Poysons Foods a Sword c. Occasions I call a Wound an absolute or sore threatned Death of that which is continual But when they have brought their force into the Archeus so that this shall be wroth through things applyed unto himself I referre that which is imprinted by things Suscepted among Primary Diseases For as soon as a Sword hath divided that which held together the action of a violent occasional Cause being darted into the Archeus is present and this Archeus soon begins his tempests that is Diseases CHAP. LXXXVII Things Retained in the Body THe Treatise of things Received being finished I now proceed unto things Retained But in things Retained let it be sufficient once and seriously to have admonished of this That although they are onely the occasional Causes of Diseases yet I have been willing to distinguish of Diseases according to the things Retained that I might Retain the antient names of Diseases But that the Chapter whose Title is That the Knowledge of a Disease in its universality hath remained unknown hitherto is sufficient for a fore-caution of those things which are to be spoken of things Retained Whither I refer the Reader For truly all particular things which are Retained do stir up their own Invasions on the Archeus and from thence also the differences of Diseases But those are things Retained which are either taken into the Body from without or are bred as domestical things within by an internal inordinacy For seminal things whether they shall be forreign or homebred do on both sides stir up a memorable effect of their disorder on the Archeus Which thing is easie to be seen even in a simple Lacryma or Tear of the Eye Because it is that which by a healthy motion of the Spirit is wholly discussed or blown away without feeling or trouble The Spirit of the Eye being badly disposed it is wholly thickened waxeth clotty or is changed into a gnawing Liquor In the next place things Retained do not onely vary in their unlikeness of Form but also are changed by reason of the dispositions of the Body For the Body as it is more or lesse transpirable doth vary Diseases For some things retained are discussed neither do they leave behind them the Root of stirring up a Relapse Sometimes also they are forgetful of this bounty they leave an occasional matter and herewith oftentimes fermental adulterous impressions as off-springs which do stir up new Heirs or Products from themselves in the Archeus Because the inward pores also do sweat as the whole Body is transpirable and as liquid things are derived into a strange harvest The which because they are brought out of their own cottages they are therefore soon spoiled of their common Life are most speedily coagulated as I have said concerning the Tear of the Eye or do remain resolved into a liquid Poyson For so the matter of Coughs the Dropsie Pose Flux Pissing-Evil Apostems and Ulcers are bred For the retained curdlings of some things do stick the more stubbornly fast are slowly or never resolved or they do of their own accord think of a dissolving and melting or they leave an impressional symptome in the Archeus introduced for a perpetual remembrance of relapses For so the seeds of Diseases being ready to depart elsewhere do depart awry or
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
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
to be after some sort like them the which transchangeth almost an infinite quantity of impure Mettal into the best Gold and by uniting it to it self doth defend it from cankering rust rottenness and Death and makes it to be as it were Immortal against all the torture of the Fire and Art and translates it into the virgin-Purity of Gold only it requires Heat The Soul therefore and Body are thus regenerated by Baptisme and the communion of the unspotted Body of the Lord so that a just heat of Devotion of the Faithful shall be present Let the Divine pardon me if I as being beyond my Last have spoken of Life eternal by way of a Parenthesis For I willingly confess that a regenerated Body is not belonging to my Employment I treat only of prolonging the Life of the World This only I have said that Baptisme doth bring with it a real Effect of Purity perceivable by Sense and that the holy-sacred Communion of the Eucharist hath something like it in earthly things whereby we may the more easily believe Regeneration CHAP. CXI The Occasions of Death I Have compared the Fire and Light unto Life because it bears something before it which seemeth to be vital For vital Forms are either the Lives or Lights of things Therefore there shall likewise be as many occasions of Death as there are withdrawings of Light First therefore the Light is blown out and likewise the Flame perisheth by pressing together which they call through defect of Air. But I have demonstrated that that happens through want of a new Magnal but not that the Fire is nourished by Air So also by the constriction of a strange Smoak So indeed in Vaults and Burrows Lamps are extinguished but the Light is blown out by the Wind or another Flame For oftentimes Candles are extinguished by a filthy or deformed Flame being stirred up by the Powder of Rosin or Gun-powder Lastly Fires die through want of Nourishment Death in like manner doth many wayes rush on us For either a live Body is suddenly dashed together or sore shaken by weight Also a speedy pouring forth of Blood from a large Wound pours forth the Life and blows out the Light of Life So an inordinate Prodigality of corrupt Matter Water or Wind being abundantly made likewise Baths Hunger loosening Medicines introduce an untimely Death Also by the pressing together of the Breath in Burrows of the Asthma of a Cord of drowning of Smoak and by the Symptoms of the Womb likewise by the Resolutions and Palseys of the Sinews subjected to breathing In like manner by Burnings Destructions Coalifyings Gangrenes and Congelations of Cold. Also by Poysons Alculies gnawing Things Escharrers Putrifiers or Things that trample upon us by a fermental Contagion Likewise by retained Excrements Obstructions and the denied Commerces of Parts Likewise through Defect of some certain Digestion an Atrophia and Consumptions of a Part or of the whole Body Also by over-pourings of the Blood within the Skull Breast bottom of the Belly by corrupt mattery Impostumes Pleurisies affects of the Lungs c. Likewise by displacings of the turning Joynts Contractures of the Parts apppointed for expurging of Filths At length by reason of a Feeble Decrepit and woren-out Death of the Seeds and Powers And also by reason of the more grievous Passions of the Mind and Enchantments Death therefore doth so many manner of wayes steal away Mortals whose Life notwithstanding is alwayes simple and single For therefore there is a diverse and differing Consideration of Life and Death for a Sword takes away Life Yet there is far different Speculation of preserving Life than of healing of Diseases by the removals and hinderances of the Cause For truly Causes are partly external as a Wound the Plague Scorching c. the healing whereof therefore doth not depend on the removal of their Causes For neither therefore is the Fire which had burned any one to be extinguished from the Hearth that he may be cured even as neither is the Sword to be broken that the Wound may be healed up But for the preservation of Long Life the contemplations and removals of external Causes do no less occur or come to hand than those of a vital Fewel For indeed although no Infirmities should molest yet Death should not for that Cause cease dayly to strew a way for its entrance For although health hath respect to Life as its Foundation yet Life doth not include health For a Blind Lame Gowty Person c. doth no less live than a Healthy or Sound Person What if Life ends through a Disease that is forreign and by accident unto the Life as a Sword contains Death but not but by Application Otherwise Death doth by it self respect Life but diseasifying Causes become Mortal only by accident or by their Application unto the Spirit of Life For from hence it is that the Impediments of Long Life are seriously to be heeded and diverted if we expect length of Life From the Beginning therefore the meditation of Life consisteth not without but in the Life it self To wit after what manner Life may be preserved in the Body For the sensitive Soul now forthwith after Sin as I have said drew the whole property of Life unto it self and became the bond of Life with the Body But seeing that very Soul is in it self Mortal it must needs be first of all that all the vital Powers co-aeval or of a like Age with the Life should be slideable and mortal From hence at length Death For a long continuance of Life therefore first a curing of Diseases is required as well of those which touch at the Life of the whole Body as those which have regard unto the Dammages or preservation of a Part and Functions and which in this respect do lay in wait for the Life For truly seeing there is a single conspiracy of the Members certain principal Powers cannot chuse but at length go to decay also the subordinate ones being only diminished Wherein I disagree from Paracelsus because he thought that every Disease was of necessity to be taken away by a Medicine for long Life Because that good Man was no less ignorant of a Medicine for Long Life and the use thereof than of the very Essence and Properties of Long Life And therefore his Arcanums do very much conduce into a healthy or sound Life or unto a removal of Impurities yet they do not any thing directly and primarily tend to long Life as unto their ultimate end Because that as the Life So the Tree of Life chiefly concerns the preservation and renewing or making young again of the vital Faculties implanted in the Arts. In this therefore the Arcanums or Secrets which are for the taking away of Superfluities differ from the Tree of Life That those indeed do cure Diseases even those which our parent Nature doth by her self never Cure To wit the Leprosie Stone Palsy Consumption of the Lungs Dropsie c. but
denyers should seem greater than that of the Affirmers Dost thou perhaps maintain it to be diabolical because it cannot be understood by thee that a natural Reason thereof doth subsist I will not believe that thou couldst utter so idle a Sentence from thine own Infirmity of its Virtue For thou knowest that the weaknesse of Understanding is our Vice not that of things Make hast therefore From whence knowest thou that God hath not directed such a magnetical Virtue unto the use or benefit of the Wounded Shew thy Evidences hath God chosen thee to be the Secretary of his Counsel Surely however thou mayest variously wander or waver at length thou shalt find that the Cure is accounted diabolical among you Divines for no other Reason but because your Slenderness and Calling doth not comprehend it What wonder is it if no Divine hath smelt out these things For after that the Priest and the Levite had passed on to Jericho a Samaritan being a Lay Man succeeded who took away all right from the Priests of enquiring into the Causes of Things Therefore Nature from thenceforth called not Divines for to be her Interpreters but desired Physitians only for her Sons and indeed such only who being instructed by the Art of the Fire doe examine the Properties of things by separating the impediments of their lurking Powers to wit their Crudity Poysonousnesses and Dregs that is the Thistles and Thorns every where implanted into Virgin-Nature from the Curse For seeing Nature doth dayly Distil Sublime Calcine Ferment Dissolve Coagulate Fix c. Certainly we also who are the only faithful Interpreters of Nature do by the same helps draw forth the Properties of things from Darkness into Light But that the Divine may judge of that which is a Juggle from that which is Natural he must needs first borrow the Definition from us to wit least the Cobler shamefully slip beyond his Last Let the Divine enquire concerning God but the Naturalist concerning Nature Certainly much was the Goodness of the Creator every where extended who made all created things for the use of ungrateful Man Neither hath he admited any of the Theologists or Divines as an Assistant in Counsel how many and how great Virtues he should endow things withal I know not surely in the mean time how he can be excused from the Sin of Pride who because he perceiveth not the Natural Cause as it were measuring all the Works of God by the sharpness of his own Wit doth therefore boldly deny God to have given such Virtue to Things as though Man a Worm were a full Partaker of God and his Counsel He esteems of the Minds of all Men by his own who thinks that cannot be done which he cannot Understand Truly unto me it seems no way a Wonder if God had given unto things besides a Body a Virtue co-like to the Load-stone and that to be unfolded by the name of Magnetism or Attraction alone Ought it not to be sufficient for the affirming of Magnetism that one only single natural Example be alleaged I shall anon declare it by more and that such as fit the purpose of that Stone according to the square whereof other Endowments also variously distributed in the Creatures may be understood Because therefore the thing is a new Paradox and unknown to thee shall it for that Cause ought also to be Satanical Far be it from thee to think so unworthily of the divine Majesty of the Creator Neither certainly ought we to flatter the Devil by conferring that Honour upon him For what doth at any time more sweetly affect him than if the Glory of Gods Work be so ascribed to him as though himself had been the Author of the same Ye grant that material Nature doth dayly draw down Forms by its Magnetism from the Superior Orbs and much desire the favour of the celestial Bodies and that the Heavens do in exchange invisibly allure something from the inferiour Bodies that there may be a free and mutual passage and an harmonious concord of the Members with the whole Universe Magnetism therefore because it is every where vigorous contains nothing of Novelty in it but the Name neither is it Paradoxical but to those who deride all things and banish into the Dominion of Satan whatsoever they do not understand Truly that knowledge doth never spring up to him that seeks Wisdom as a Derider But I pray what hath the Weapon Salve of Superstition in it Whether because it is composed of the Moss Blood Mummie and Fat of Man but the Physitian useth these safely and to this end the Apothecary sells them without a Penalty Or perhaps because the manner of using it is new to thee unaccustomed to the Vulgar but to be admired of both shall the effect therefore be Satanical Subdue thy self and rage not thou shalt anon have better satisfaction For the manner of using it contains nothing of Evil therein First of all the Intent is good and holy and tends only unto a good End to wit to cure our languishing or woful Neighbour without Pain Danger and the Consumption of Charges Dost thou call this diabolical In the next place the Remedies themselves also are natural things whereunto that that Faculty was granted by God we shall by and by prove by Arguments I wish that thou also hadst thus confirmed to us thy negative to wit that God the chiefest Good hath not given unto the sympathetical Ungent that natural Faculty and Mumial Magnetism This magnetical Remedy can no way be rendred suspected seeing it hath no Superstitious Rites it requires no Words no Characters or Impresses no admixed Ceremonies or vain Observances it presupposeth no Houres it profanes not holy Things yea which is more it doth not so much as fore-require the Imagination Confidence or Belief nor leave to be required from the wounded Party all which Things are annexed to Superstitious Cures For that is called Superstition as oft as Men relie upon Faith or Imagination or both above any kinde of Virtue which is not such or which is not directed by the Creator to that end Therefore the magnetical Cure hath nothing of Superstition Wherefore do thou O censuring Divine that art ful of Taunting make tryal of the Oyntment at least-wise with a designe to deride Satan whereby thou mayest overthrow that implicite compact Nevertheless will thou nill thou thou shalt find plainly the same Effect as there is with us the which doth never happen to superstitious Causes Whosoever he be that thinks the magnetical Cure of Wounds is diabolical not because it consists from an unlawful End and of unlawful Means but because it proceeds after a manner unknown to him He also as convinced by the same Argument shall render the essential Causes of all the Operations of the Load-stone of which we are about to speak or shall confess that those Operations are the Juggles of Satan or at least-wise which will be more safe for him to do shall be
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
such a Balsam which not but by its own Phantasie becomes also Medicinal Magnetical and is also an attractive of all the strange quality out of the Body whose fresh Blood I say abounding with Spirit is carried unto it whether it shall be that of a Man or of any other living Creature The Phantasie therefore is a returner or reducible and Ecstatical from part of the Blood that is freshly and most newly brought unto the Unguent but the magnetical Attraction begun in the Blood is perfected by the medicinal Virtue of the Unguent But the Unguent doth not draw the infirmity of the Wound unto it self that it may be made a Pandora's Box but alters the Blood newly brought unto it in its Spirit makes it Medicinal and stirs up the Power thereof From thence it hath a certain medicinal and magnetical Virtue which returns unto its whole Body to cure its Cousin German the Spirit of the Blood throughout the whole Man To wit it sucks out the sorrowful Impression from the Wounded party and expels it being ready to perish by its medicinal Power and commands it forth which medicinal Virtue being the conqueress of the Malady is stir'd up partly in the Blood and is partly also generated in the same by the Unguent to wit by the Spirit hereof thus commanding over the Spirit of the Blood by its own Phantasie that is by its created Endowment Otherwise the Blood putrifying with its entire Faculties or Vigours under the enclosure of an Egg-shell and the Spirit thereof being now as it were freed from its Fetters through the foregoing Putrefaction drawes by the mediation of the Mummy of a Dog and really translates the Grief which sits in the Phantasie and astral Virtue of the Filths of the Sick into the Dog himself that eats it Indeed for no other Cause than because the Magnetism is not perfected without the interposing of the Balsam of the Oyntment We have also observed that if a wounded Man happen to have received many Wounds at once it is sufficient that Blood be had only out of one of his Wounds and indeed that by that one endeavour the rest of the Wounds are cured also because that Blood keeps a concordant Harmony with the Spirit of the whole and draws forth from the same the offensive quality communicated not only to the Lips of the Wound but also to the whole Man For from one Wound the whole Man is wont also to grow Feverish I have hitherto deferred to make manifest a great Mistery namely to shew to our hand that in Man there is placed an essicacy whereby he may be able only by his beck and Phantasie to act out of himself and to imprint a virtue a certain influence which afterwards perseveres or constantly subsists by it self and acts on an Object at a very far distance by which onely mystery those things which have been spoken hitherto concerning the Ideal entity conveighed in a Spiritual fewel and departing far from home for to execute its offices concerning the Magnetism of all things begotten in the Imagination of man as in that which is proper to every thing and also concerning the Magical superiority of Men over other Bodies will come to light It is a clear truth and manifest without controversie that of Steel is to be made a Needle which by the touch of a Load-stone shews the Pole or North-Star to Sailers but in vain is the Steel hammered into a Needle and placed on the Marriners Compass to point out the Pole if a due rubbing of the Loadstone upon it hath not gone before Which things seeing they are undoubtedly true it is now convenient to frame a Marriners Needle onely by a Magnetical beck On the Anvil therefore whereon the Needle is hammered out of Steel let the North Point be marked out and that in a straight Line then stand thou the Vulcan with thy back towards the North that when the Steel is drawn under the Hammer for making of the Needle thou mayest draw it towards thy self and the North. I say therefore that such a Needle so made shall without any other help observe or point out the Pole and that indeed without any wonted variation which is a great Mystery Moreover the Needle which is made upon the said Line by chance and without the knowledge or intent of the Workman is void of that quality and doth not observe the Pole From hence it consequently follows that the Imagination of the man that frames it doth as it were in that moment of the Needls Nativity when as now indeed the greatest heat or glowing of the fire hath ceased and as yet under an obscure redness of the Steel imprint this kind of Magnetical faculty and that indeed on the Steel or an appropriated subject But not that the Heaven doth then make that impression because then it also should influx it self into the Steel without the intention of the Smith which is false for if the Heaven should give forth its influence at a certain Hour and Position now might the Characteristical or Notary and Sigillary or sealing Science of the Stars triumph which we pass by But the Constellation which flowes into the Steel and perhaps every Seal or Impression flowes from the Microcosmical Heaven that is from our Olympus or the Heaven in us Therefore in vain have been those Seales which were not stamped by the Magitian exalted in his Phantasie or Imagination for inferiour Entities and Phantasies are constrained to give place to ours Whereby a wise Man shall bear rule over the Stars to the command of whom the Parent of things hath subjected whatsoever is concluded in the Circle of Heaven What things have been alledged concerning the Phantasie making this Impression on the Marriners Needle I have learned from the Testimony of many also from my own experience and shall be confirmed ten thousand times to be true by the experience of every one that is willing to make trial thereof So indeed Asarabacca and the tops of Elder hearken to the commanding Imagination of the Cropper who imprinteh on the plant but this Magnetically on the absent leaf seeing otherwise the leaf being boyled as the Needle that was re-heated in the fire and administred as a Potion the virtue of the Phantasie imprinted on it would perish if the Magnetism were not cherished from the entire plant That blood which is boyled and ready to be eaten doth as yet contain the Soul is true But that virtue consisteth not from the impression of the humane and external Phantasie but from the proper endowment of its own Phantasie After this manner also a Nail Dart or Arrow that is thrust into the heart of the Horse withholds the Spirit of the Witch and conjoynes it with the Mumial Spirit of the Horse whereby they may be roasted together that by that torment as by a sting the Witch her self may be bewrayed and that at length she that is offensive to God destructive to mortal men may by the
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
Diuretical Medicines the Appointments as well as the choyce whereof they have scarce been heretofore known 1. For truly some do sharpen or exasperate the urine with a Corrosive poyson as Cantharides 2. Others provoke and leave a tartnesse in the urine and stir up the strangury such as are new Ales. 3. There are some which render the urine abstersive or of a cleansing faculty as sharpish Fountaines the vitriol of Mars the stone of Crabs and likewise Herbs which in many places rejoyce in the Etymologie of Diureticks And they all of them contain a volatile Alcali or Lixivial salt or at leastwise attain that Alcali in time of their digestion For for this cause prouokers of urine do for the most part conduce unto a vulnerary drink Because that in every Wound a Tartnesse or Acidity the Betokener and Companion of all putrefaction in the flesh doth arise the which Alcalies do easily sup up into themselves and consume Wherefore there was a Country man who healed wounded persons with the Lixiviuns of Teile-tree So the stone of Crabs being boyled or steeped in Wine doth notably represent the savour of a Lixivium or Lye 4. There are also some which provoke urine and stir up the expulsive faculty thereof as they do generate a putrefaction of the urine Of which sort are the Radish Asparagus c For I have seen a Lawyer who was not afflicted with the Disease of the stone but after he had returned home from a more large eating of Asparagus and afterwards that he lay along under most cruel pain not so much from stones as from most subtile sands through the returns thereof perhaps every fifteen dayes for some years From whence I learned that the errour of one evening had brought an ill habit on his Reines which could scarce be taken away for the future I also from hence knew the pronenesse of our nature which so quickly hearkens unto its own ruine and that it having once fallen or slipt aside doth Slowly and difficultly rise againe even by the Favour of medicines Lastly that such a kind of habit now for some years persevering hath neverthelesse been corrected and so that those inclinations which they call distempers converted into nature are moveable and seperable contrarie to the dispaires of the Schooles 5. There are also diureticks which refresh the urine and kidneys with a gratefull odour As Mace Nutmeg Terpentine Mastick Juniper c. As though the kidneys being comforted with their odour were made mindfull of their office 6. And then there are some also which from a Lixivial Alcali do in time of digestion passe over into a tartnesse cleansing the passages of the urine like sope do stir up the expurging faculty and do cut the filths grown thereunto of which sort are those medicines which are collected from the shells and stones and ashes of appropriated things and the which alone seem to be worthy of the name of stone-breakes especially if they are drawn up unto a degree of volatility 7. In the next place there is a sort of Diureticks which being taken in a smal quantity do powre forth plenty of urine out of the whole body as Palmer wormes the species's of Brookelime and likewise the juice of Sea shell-fishes black and long and whatsoever things do conteine a volatile nitre and which do by property rowse up the sleepy reines 8. There is also another sort which by way of sticking comforts the reines being profitable for the allaying of their paine Such as is in Saffron Rhubarb and Cassia being inverted that is being first deprived of their solutive virtue 9. The spirit of Sea salt is not only a provoker of urine and doth not also only asswage the strangury in those in whose bladder the stone is rowled but besides it diminisheth the stones of the kidneys if it be distilled with the utmost heate or fire of a Reverbery Therefore it is not sufficient to say that Diureticks do create urine but moreover it must also be determined whether they act that from an excitement of the attractive faculty whether by a dissolving of the urine whether by an exaâ—perating thereof whether by a speedying of putrefaction or lastly from any other title neither is it sufficient for whey of milk to conteine some thing of a nitrous matter in it but also it hath some certaine remainder of its former blood from whence it is cadaverous or stinking and so keeps the tenour of Asparagus For truly many things do by comforting of the reines provoke urine and other things overspread the urine with a gratefull odour and others are the more troublesome through a sharpnesse as also those things which hasten a stinking ferment of the urine the which are hurtfull unto the diseased with the stone in their whole root and therefore with the great errour of Physitians is Asparagus boyled almost in any Apozemes whatsoever Moreover I was at sometime afraid of an ordinary laying down on one side because the upper kidney would be stopped up by the incumbent weight of the bowels and the urine standing like a poole therein would become sandy if it should dayly be there shut up for many houres Especially because the upper kidney is distant from the Vena Cava or hollow veine at least ten fingers in breadth and because the bladder is of a middle scituation between both kidneys Therefore I perswaded my self that the upper kidney could not unloade it self upwards into the bladder But afterwards I knew this my fear to be vaine and that nothing was beneath in respect of the Archeus neither was it sufficient to have speculatively searched thereinto Therefore there was fitly one made known unto me who had never layen on his left side from a boy Also that he being now an old man had not yet suffered the disease of the stone I observed also another who had never slept but on his loynes and right side yet he became stony in his left and declining kidney I repeat hear that the clear and distilled liquour of my own urine carried its own earth up with it through the Alembick which it conformed and affixed to the sides of the vessel into a true Duelech and that that hardening was made by the Spirit of the urine which coagulates any thing and many things after a diverse manner For it condensed the spirit of wine into a volatile lump But if it findes a fixed object of the nature of a Salt it is turned into a Salt even as it happens unto spirit of wine from the salt of Tartar or while the spirit of fountaine salt being drunk up by salt its kinseman is made salt But if the spirit of urine find a fixed earth which it may gnaw seeing it wants a coagulable object it is imbibed by the earth and subdued hereby and it being otherwise the Authour of coagulation is there coagulated passively But where the spirit of urine findes a volatile object that is not coagulated yet coagulable because of an earthly
106. A paradox is prooved against the Schooles 107. Sensible agents act on the sense only occasionally whether they are medicines or not fire excepted 108. An application of virtues by what meanes it may be made 109. Sensation consists in the vitall judgment and so also in that of the Soul 110. Some consequences for the demonstrations of things before passed 111. From whence the faculties of medicines have been estranged in the Schooles 112. How differently the fire can act 113. The unconsiderate rashnesse of the Schooles 114. Some sequels drawn from the foregoing particulars 115. The differences of paines 116. A convulsion is the companion of paine 117. The paine of the disease of the stone 118. The blockish opinion of the Schooles concerning the convulsion or Cramp 119. It s falshood is manifested 120. Errours meeting us 121. Some negligencies of Galen 122. Galen looseth the name of a Physitian from the censure of his own mouth 123. Galen hath taught only childish devises 124. Arguments on the contrary 125. The errour of the Schooles concerning the Convulsion is concluded 126. Ridiculous similitudes made use of by the Schooles 127. Some remarkable things 128. After what manner the Convulsion is made 129. A twofold motion of the muscles is proved 130. The Convulsion is not properly an affect of the head 131. Example of parts convulsed 132. A sight of a colicall contraction in a child 133. An Artery from whence it waxeth hard 134. Divers contractures 135. That the causes of the Cramp have layen hid 136. The neglects of the Schooles 137. The degrees of paines THe pain of the Stone in the kidneys being one of the chief and most troublesome of paines is very great and cruel For the Schooles are at rest in accusing the cause of so great a pain to be a fretting or grating made by the Sand or Stone But I have perswaded my self that there was nothing at all of satisfaction from that answer And therefore I have made a further search Because some one very small Stone sliding out of the kidney doth at the first turnes cause more cruel pain than any the more big one afterwards the which notwithstanding is undoubtedly more than by its freting to wrest or wring to excoriate or pluck of the skin of and extend the urine-pipe For truly in persons grown to ripe years the spermatick parts of the first constitution do no longer dayly grow and so neither is their Ureter enlarged afterwards by the descending of the stones In the next place the slender sand hath been oftentimes very troublesome through its paine and hath cast down the howling man on his bed before it proceeded out of the kidney and the which therefore was never as yet injurious by its rubbing on it or grating of it neither also is it sufficient to have spoken of fretting or grating for the proper and total cause of so bitter a paine For the Ureter throughout its whole passage hath not the commerce of a sinew implanted in it the which therefore ought even to want sense or feeling and by consequence also pain For truly the Schooles define pain to be a sorrowfull sensation made by a hurtfull thing rushing on the part If therefore the slender and un-savoury sand be voide of all tartnesse and fretting or grating or the smal clot is not guiltlesse because neither without pain certainly to have toucht upon the causes and race of sense and pain together wit hs it circumstances shall not be disagreeable to the treatise of the disease of the Stone First therefore and in the entrance of sense the Touching of pain comes to be considered For therefore the Schooles teach that the Braine is the first and principal organ of all the senses and of all motions and by consequence also of pain and unsensibility To wit the which should discerne the objects of the senses by the animal spirits being on every side dismissed from it self into all the propagations or Sprouts of the sinewes and therefore as into the patrons of all sensations so also as into the interposing messengers and discerners thereof They presume to themselves that they have spoken some great matter in this thing I will speak more distinctly And moreover I shall say nothing or at least wise I will declare a matter which is of no worth For indeed the Schooles confesse that the Braine doth in it self feel nothing or scarce any thing and that therein it is like the first universal Mover which the moderns alio Catholiques do with Aristotle command that he ought to be unmoveable if he ought to move all other things as if the unutterable first mover cannot move himself or that he ought to be unmoved and wholly unmoveable yea that he acts and perfecteth by his own touch of local motion all things in a moment who in very deed moveth not any thing but by an absolute and most abstracted beck of Omnipotency and let this be an absurdity of the Schooles by good men accounted for blasphemy by a Parenthesis here noted by the way Notwithstanding the Brain is not the primary or adequate Organ of sense and motion seeing that in it self it is unmoved and deprived of sense For the Schooles beholding that a turning joynt of the back being displaced for that very cause whatsoever was subjected to the Nerves and Sinewes beneath that turning joynt was also without sense and motion therefore they straightway determined the Brain it self and the marrow of the Thorne of the Back the Vicaresse hereof to be the adequate or fuitable Organ or Instrument of sense and motion But other Writers being willing to give a nearer attention since they acknowledged and confessed the substance of the Brain to be deprived of touching nor to be voluntarily moved but that the twofold membrane or filme endowed with the name of Menynx was of a most acute touching although unmoved They decreed that every sinew how slender soever was over-covered with such a double membrane and did borrow it from both the Menynx's of the Brain that this very membrane of the sinewes was to wit consequently formed under the one onely endeavour of Formation and labour of the seed of Fabrication Even so that also these would have it That every Nerve should draw its own feeling from the little filme that covered it which did not any way answer from its substance unto the marrowie substance of the Brain Perhaps they took notice that in the stomach and womb so great and so excellent vertue were inmates in the naked membranes thereof and therefore that neither was it a wonder that something very like unto those had happened unto the filmes of the Brain from a prerogative of the same Right I have altogether proceeded something otherwise for the searching out of sense and pain and the Organ objects and causes of motion and feeling I considered first that while a wound is as yet fresh it scarce paineth but anon while the lips of the Wound do
swell and rage with heat that the wound causeth a sharp pain And again while its lips grow flaggy and do pitch or settle that though the wound be also open yet it is almost without pain From whence I collected That the solution or loosing of the con-tinual or that which held together causeth pain indeed in the time of its making but that in its being made if that which is inconvenient shall not have access to it the thing solved doth scarce pain the party Therefore I supposed with my self that the solution doth not pain as it is a separation of the con-tinual and much lesse doth the heat cause pain which arose in the wound the third day after whose property indeed it is onely to heat but not to cause pain But if any external or forreign heat being extended into a degree doth burn it causeth pain indeed but not as heat but as it is that which stirs up and at least which nourisheth the solution of the Con-tinual And besides the indispositions of Acrimony or sharpnesse and as proceeding from another Root which vitiates our Family administration Truly because a body or solid part doth not feel of it self Because it is rather a dead Carkase Sensation or the act of feeling therefore hath regard indeed unto the Life alone And since the Schooles knew that the Brain had none or atleastwise scarce an obscure Sensation They therefore had rather believe the sinew to be the primary subject of sence motion and pain To wit that the Brain was indeed the Fountainous Beginning of sense and motion yet they made the Nerve the immediate subject of pain and sense But notwithstanding they would have motion although something a more material thing to depend on a deeper arbitration of the Will and to be subjected thereunto To wit so as that the Will is the Commandative principle of motion but the sinew to be the derivative Organ of the command of the Will And lastly the muscle to be the executive Instrument of the Will But they understand Sensation in the sinew as in its subject to be made through the mediation of the animal spirit which they call Animal being drawn indeed from the Arteries but re-cocted in the Brain for its own uses They therefore acknowledged that the Nerve is by it self indeed without feeling even as the Brain and other solid members are wherefore they will have the animal Spirits to be the primitive Feelers and effective Movers of Sense and Motion it self With whom I do not as yet agree as neither in this That the sinew is the Organ and chief Subject of all Sensation For who knows not that in a healthy person every part of his skin is sensible yet that it carries not a sinew under it For I do not grant that a sensible object being conceived in the parts without a Nerve the Spirit doth by a Retrograde motion run back into the sinew that it may communicate that sensible Conception unto the Brain as unto the original of the Senses that by returning from thence a sense of pain or well-pleasing may then at length be effected in the part that is hurt or touched on For the Urine-pipe causeth exceeding pain in the Borders without the implanting of any sinew So also hollow Ulcers are oftentimes filled with sensitive flesh neither yet do Nerves grow anew therein seeing the parts of the first Constitution being once taken away do not grow again as neither are those parts which are of the first Constitution being consumed by rottennesse any more restored But the stupidity and unsensiblenesse of the Leprosie do fitly offer themselves in this place For truly they at all feel not a Bodkin or Needle being thrust into their flesh Must we therefore believe that Leprous persons are deprived of sinews Or that in those the Nerves cut off from the fleshy membrane That they are deprived of Animal Spirit and bereft of Life and that they are stopped even as they are said to be in those that have the Palsie Shall therefore the sinews of touching be stopped up throughout their whole Body and shall their sinews be serviceable onely for a free motion Shall I say the motive sinews be now destitute of sense alone I confesse indeed that from the formost part of the Brain there are sinews dispersed unto the eyes eares Pallat and Tongue which serve onely for feeling neither that they do decline unto the muscles which are as it were the proper Instruments of motion But none can also deny but that the sinews dedicated unto motion and the which go out through both the turning joynts do also bestow sense or feeling For what if in the Leprosie a sinew that is the effecter of motion be now moved by the Animal spirit neither yet hath the faculty of sence Why therefore in the Palsie under a hurting of the same sinew is as well motion as sense taken away but in the Leprosie is sense onely taken away First of all The Schooles hold the Leprosie to be uncurable and also a universal Cancer of the Body For while they suppose a particular Cancer to be uncurable much more a universal one Which prattle of Galen was to this purpose framed That by the impossibilities of healing he might excuse his own Ignorances and the sloathfulnesses and dis-clemency of taking paines For a Cancer in the flesh is of a most sharp pain and of a continual devouting But a Leprosie in the flesh is without pain I see not therefore after what manner the Leprosie among the Galenists shall be a Cancer In the next place Paracelsus errs who thinks the Leprosie to be deprived of all salt and for this cause that an unsensible astonishment is proper unto it As if the very sense of touching were onely in Salt For the Leprosie hath its own ulcers and according to the same Paracelsus there are as many Species of Ulcers as there are of Salts Therefore according to that his own Doctrine the Leprosie flowes from a Salt abounding Let us grant to Paracelsus yet without a diligent search of the Truth that the Excrement of the paunch in a Leprous person doth abound with small graines of Salt and that the urine of the same person doth no longer dissolve any thing of Sea-salt both whereof not withstanding are dreamed by Paracelsus Yet that would not prove that the flesh and bloud of a Leprous person do fail of their own salt And much lesse also that their flesh doth therefore fail of the sense of Touching For first This his opinion concerning the Leprosie utterly overthrowes his own Doctrine concerning the three first principles of Bodies And then even as there are of un-savoury and unsalt things manifest salts daily concocted in us from the Law of humane Digestion so although the excrements of Digestions were nothing but a meer salt yet should not the venal bloud therefore be deprived of its own salt Because it is that which borrowes not its salt and the
sometimes made in these so ready and stubborn a perseverance of affection that it presents a Spectacle of Admiration to the Beholder especially if any one doth examine the attributes of the Life and spiritual Seed For how most suddenly are Children Women and improvident people angry do weep and laugh For the sensitive Souls of those do freshly as it were immediately even adhere unto sensible things It is therefore a natural thing that the sensitive Spirit is voluntarily and easily carried into these kinds of overflowings because that Soul being easily received by its own sensual judgement slides into the voluntary passions of material Spirits and as even from a Child these same exorbitances have encreased so afterwards that Soul growes to ripeness as wrothful furious and wholly symptomatical the which otherwise would far more safely perform all things under meeknesse or mildnesse than as by reason of furies to aspire into Diseases and now and then unto its own death which is frequent and most manifest in Exorbitances of the Womb and in the Symptomes of some Wounds and of other Diseases Anger therefore and Fury in this place are not of the man but of that Sensitive Soul brought into the Life which begetteth the animosities of a natural Sensation and the which therefore doth oftentimes ascend unto a great height that it burns to an Eschar and blasts the part with a Sphacelus or mortifying Inflammation like fire Pain therefore is an undoubted Passion of the Sense of Touching wherein the sensitive Soul expresseth a displeasure with the Object according to the differences of the conceived Injury brought on the parts Furthermore Whether that Passion be the Office or Performance of a judicial power from whence the Soul is by a proper Etymology named Sensitive no otherwise than as the motive faculty moveth only by the beck of the Soul without an external or forreign Exciter Or indeed whether pain be a Passion immediately produced from a sensible paining cause the Schools might have sifted out if as great a care of diligent searching into the truth as of receiving a Salary from the sick had ever touched them But with me that thing hath long since wanted a doubt For truly Seeing the Sense of Pain is the Judgement of the Soul expressed by the act of feeling in the Sensible Faculty whereby the Soul bewails it self of the sensible hurtful and paining Object Therefore both of them being connexed together do almost every way concur and both also stand related after each its own manner unto pain For indeed the cause being a sensible injury is the motive of pain But the sensitive Soul it self gives judgement of the painful Object with a certain wrothfulnesse and impatiencie of Passion The which indeed in a wound Contusion or Bruise Extension or Straining Burning and Cold as being external Causes is altogether easie to be seen But while the motive Causes of Pain are neither applied from the aforesaid impression of external Objects or from a proper Exorbitancy within and the Sensitive Spirit is from thence made wholly sharp gnawing biting degenerate and forms the blood like it self Then indeed the Sensitive Soul in paining doth not only give a simple judgement concerning Pain But moreover she in her self being wholly disturbed brings forth from her self a newly painful product no otherwise than if that Product proceeded from an external occasional Cause And although both these do in a greater Passion and more grievous Sensation for the most part concur yet in speaking properly Pain doth more intimately respect the Censure brought from the Sensitive Soul the Patient Or Pain doth more nearly reflect it self on the property of the Soul than on the paining cause Because many are grievously wounded without manifest pain even as also a furious man shewes that he scarce feeleth Paines from hurtfull Causes Some things also do oftentimes delude the paines of Torture and Unctions do also deceive paines although the parts are beaten with injury Wherefore Sense doth more intimately and properly respect the Censure of the power of the sensitive Soul than the injury of the painfull Cause But truly I am diverted elsewhere as for the cause of the aforesaid unpainfulnesse in the Leprosie and unmoveablenesse in the Apoplexy c. The Schooles indeed contending for the Brain as the chief Organ of Sensation and pain do therefore take notice that the Brain being by its own property of passion immediately and as it were by one stroak touched doth lose even both sense and motion at once yea that it doth contract either of the sides But the manner of making they thus expresse The fourth bosom of the Brain it being a very small little bosom beginning from the Cerebellum the beginning of the Thorny marrow is stopped up by phlegme from whence ariseth an Apoplexy in an instant For Nature being unwilling or not able to draw back or reduce that phlegme once slidden down thither being diligent is at leastwise busie in laying aside that phlegme into either side of that pipe from whence consequently a Palsie of that side begins These things indeed we read concerning the Apoplexyand Palsie yet nothing of the contracture arising through the stroak of the Head Paracelsus also not being content with this drowsie Doctrine of three Diseases is also tumbled in unconstancy For sometimes he saith That the Apoplexy and Palsie following thereupon is bred for that the sensitive Spirit in the Nerves or Sinews hath from the Law of the Microcosme after the manner of sulphurous Mines contracted like Aqua vitae a flame from the fire of Aetna Through which inflammation the Sinewes and Tendons being afterwards at it were adust burnt and as it were half dead are dryed up together with the muscles and therefore they do thenceforth remain deprived of sense and motion To wit he Constitutes these two Diseases considering nothing the while of the Contracture or Convulsion from the stroak not indeed in the Case of the Brain but in the utmost Branches of the Nerves as though they were affects hastening from without to within But in another place he judgeth not a certain sulphurous or inflamed matter to be the cause of the Apoplexy but he accuseth Mercury onely to wit one of the three things which he calls His own Beginnings of Nature as being too exactly Circulated and affirmes that through its abounding subtility or finenesse it is the conteining Cause of every sudden Death Elsewhere he recals the Apoplexy unto the Stars of Heaven And in another place again being unconstant he teacheth That every Apoplexy is made of gross vapors stopping up the Arteries and restlesse beating Pipes of the Throat and that there is also an Eclipse of the Lunaries or Moon-lights of the Brain in us from a Microcosmicall necessity Therefore hath he in like manner whirl'd about the causes of the Vertigo or giddinesse of the Head unto uncertainties To wit himself being wholly Vertiginous But I have otherwise proceeded Whatsoever doth primarily feel
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
guiltless child with the plague for a sinner neither should the habitations of the godly be ever subject to the plague and God should appoint an unjust Deputy which should cruelly kill the good with the plague which should not lay hold on the wicked He should kill the good I say for sins that entred not into their thoughts or at leastwise from hence it is manifest that the plague hath its own cause in nature At length if the plague were the off-spring of Coelestial light surely that should alwayes rise up in an instant seeing the aspects of the stars are by the minutes of a moment Wherefore the plague before that its poyson being bred from elsewhere it could come down unto us it should first be dispersed with the wind should be well washed with the first be-sprinkling of rain and be appeasingly allayed with the colds of the night and Clouds before it should descend unto us and also those Cities should be punished which had least offended and then that also in Paracelsus is ridiculous that the Arching plague and noter of our crimes should inhabit in the Sun wherein God hath placed his own Tabernacle as it were an angry and revenging parent by reason of the contagion of impurity received Yet that Saturn and Mars he being unconstant so saith in another place were the revengers of crimes Therefore after what manner soever it be taken providence suffers the injury of the punishing heaven and God blasphemy and so a deceit of Paganisme is included whether they shall say that the pestilent poyson is stamped by the stars or sent from them for the revenge of crimes or also that it is framed by the natural course of the stars through yearly elementary qualities or extraordinary or indirect and monstrous ones directed by Satan They on both sides dash themselves on the Atheisme of Pagans For neither hath the evil Spirit that power on us which the Gentiles suppose neither is there any other Guardian read to be in a plague sent from God beside Angels of light and so it is to have departed from the truth of the holy Scriptures to have attributed a power of generating the plague unto the stars or the devil especially where the dispute concerning a natural plague and not that sent from the hand of God comes in place and where it is to be enquired concerning remedies causes and obstacles or preventions For first of all oft-times the plague begins from one only individual to wit from a guitless child and so the heavens had for a purging satisfaction of this child smitten the whole Family Town and at length the Province to wit the innocent for the wicked after the manner of an Apothecary that Substitutes quid pro quo that is any thing instead of any thing Again while the plague creeps by its contagion from one unto another at leastwise the poyson shall be no longer handed forth by the heaven or a wound inflicted by the heaven in the second third and tenth person as if the whole anger or revenge of the heaven were stirred up through the fault of the first guiltless person Again the plague that is conceived only from the terrour of one that is fearful since in the most special kind for no other actually existeth in individuals it differs not from any other which should be sent from heaven through the poyson of the stars Therefore neither shall there be any natural plague at all from the heaven if it be conceived from elsewhere by the naked image of terrour nor that its original stands in need of the heaven For after another manner one individual is not constituted by parents differing in the whole predicament For if the most High created the Physitian and medicine from the earth and the plague be formed by the stars I at least fear least all future medicine should be unfit for so great a poyson But at leastwise the Lord could not erre in that he sent medicine from the earth and not from the heaven And moreover the Books of the Kings and Revelation attribute the plague to holy Angels which is the mark-pledge of Divine Revenge neither is it lawful to go back unto the evil spirits and stars as the beginnings of pestilent poysons In the next place Paracelsus writeth that the plague is beamed forth from the heaven as it were from an Archer only into three places to wit behind the ears under the arm-pits and into the groyns Wherefore the plague arisen in other members shall either not be the plague or of another kind and of unlike causes than that which should be the wound of the heaven is or next the heaven hath erred in its darting or at leastwise Paracelsus hath rashly erred through boldness Therefore if other Forreign causes do frame the plague without the help of the heavens it must needs be that these are deprived of their possession and estimation and that the heaven ought hereafter to attempt the controversie by way of Petition If in the next place the plague be a wound therefore it is from external things suscepted or undergone not a Fever or disease consisting of an appointed seed and by consequence whatsoever of Diaphoretick or transpirative medicines they have decreed for a succour of the plague let it be false and deceitful and Incarnative and Vulnerary medicines shall be more fit and a Diaphoretick for prevention is most exceeding vain that any one may not be wounded by the Coelestial Archer For there should be but a sluggish Buckler of a sudoriferous medicine against an arrow so poysonsom being darted so powerfully from so far in a straight line and with so great leisure and being most securely led the weapon proceeding through so many thousand miles of Stages For it became Paracelsus to have known that the Carbuncle Glandules or Kernels Buboes and bladdery swellings behind the ears are not indeed the Pest it self yea neither that they are any way wounds but signs the product and effects of the Pest For because that also some signates of the Plague are frequently not seen but after death Wherefore that heavenly Slinger should as oft as he wounded send in not the plague but the effect of the plague and he had come too late as to inflict the plague or wound on those parts in him who had already before died by the plague For a certain one being continually provoked to vomit with headach dies under continual faintings within seven hours from the invasion of the sickness But presently about the time of death he is tinged above the Navil even unto the throat-bones with a frequent mark or black print of the stroak For curiosity sake since an Anatomist was wanting I dissected him and found the mouth of his stomach now cauterized with a black Escharre Lastly the black marks or tokens are not wounds even as neither are the Glandules little bladders Buboes c. Therefore at least the heaven doth not wound in the plague the which if
Bowels after the manner of Stars For although the Stars do borrow their light from the Sun yet there is in every one of them his own peculiar property and strength of acting which is far most evident in the Moon about the ebbings flowings and overflowings of the Sea Be it therefore that the arteries of the Spleen do supply the place of the Sun yet the Spleen it self hath obtained a double and native dignity peculiar to it self although the Family-service of the Heart rejoyceth in the preparing of vital blood and spirit Therefore the Spleen is the seat of the Archeus the which seeing he is the immediate Instrument of the sensitive soul doth determine or limit or dispose of the vital actions of the soul residing in the stomach For the sensitive soul doth scarce meditate of any thing without the help of the Archeus because it rejoyceth not being abstracted as doth the minde the which in its ebbing or going back by an extasie doth sometimes and without the props of the Archeus and corporal Air intellectually contemplate of many and great things Also in exorbitances of the Archeus an aversion confusion exorbitancy and indignation is administred And the sensitive soul it self being as it were the husk of the minde doth alwayes will it nill it make use of the Archeus Hence indeed all foolish madnesses some whereof onely have been made known are called praecordial or Midriffe ones and are ascribed to the place about the short Ribs the which notwithstanding do spring from the same seat and the same fountain of the soul as it were by the hurting of one onely point Also Remedies do scarce materially go without the hedges or bounds of the stomach And therefore they are rare which are brought thorow unto the spleen which thing in the difficulties of a Quartane Ague is plain enough to be seen For the immortal minde is read to be inspired into Adam by omnipotency and that without the Wedlock of the sensitive soul And that breath of life he calls a substance And therefore that is not found to be breathed into bruit Beasts Therefore the minde was first of all immediately tied to the Archeus as to its own Organ or Instrument the which therefore it could at its pleasure daily substitute a-new out of the meats being sufficiently and alwayes and perpetually alike strong And from thence to awaken the immortal life worthy of or meet for it self For truly the immortal minde being every where present did perform all the offices of life immediately by the Archeus and the which therefore doth borrow his own liveliness from the minde who also is therefore after some sort superiour to mortal things and seemed to be the foster-Child of a more excellent Monarchy than of a sublunary one These things were so before the fall of Adam But seeing that in the same day of their transgression they were made guilty of death a soul subject to death came unto them the Vicaresse and Companion of the minde To wit unto whom the minde it self straightway transferred the dispositions of the government of the Body For at first there was an immediate Wed-lock of the immortal minde with the Archeus Presently after the fall and the stirring up of the sensitive soul the minde withdrew it â—â—lf like a Kernel into the center of the sensitive soul whereto it was tied by the bond of life The minde is not nourished by foods it could chuse meats for its own Archeus and prepare them for him who now is constrained with an unwearied study to watch for his own support of nourishment And that by degrees he lesse and lesse fitly prepares and applies to himself by reason of the defective duration and power of the sensitive soul Thus therefore I ought to speak concerning the seat of the minde of the material occasion of mortality and the necessities of Diseases and distemper For truly what things are here required in the Treatise of the entrance of death into humane nature is demonstrated at large with an explication of that Text From the North shall evill be stretched out over all the Inhabitants of the Earth Therefore for a Summary The central place of the Soul is the Orifice or upper mouth of the stomach no otherwise than as the Root of Vegetables is the vital place of the same The minde sitteth in the sensitive soul whereto it was consequently bound after the fall But the Brain is the executive member of the canceipts of the soul as it sits chief over the sinews and muscles in respect of motion but in respect of sense or feeling it possesseth in it self the faculties of memory will and Imagination Therefore the stomach failing or being defective there are palenesses tremblings drith's Consumptions of the flesh and strength wringings of the Belly or Guts the Asthma or stoppage of breathing Jaundises Palsies Convulsions giddinesses of the Head Apoplexies c. For the most famous Physitians do wonder that oft-times extream defects are overcome not otherwise than by remedies pertaining to the stomach and that the evil of the stomach doth bring forth Diseases far distant from it self And the more modern Physitians are amazed that vulnerary potions should succesfully cure wounds of the joynts And that according to Paracelsus the Cancer Wolf the eating inflamed Ulcer are cured by a Drink Therefore the errour of those that cure the more outward parts that are ill-affected as if they were fundamental ones and they who do translate all healing about the head it being hurt by the lower parts proceedeth from hence by reason of the ignorance of the seat of the Soul life and government CHAP. XXXVIII From the Seat of the Soul unto Diseases 1. A greater sense is proved to be in the mouth of the Stomach than in the eye or fingers 2. The Schools do every where being unconstrained consent to the Paradox concerning the seat of the Soul although they do openly dissent therefrom 3. The wayling of those that are exorbitant through much leachery 4. The life of the stomach is chief over the other digestions 5. The Ferment that is a friend to the stomach is afterwards an enemy to all the particular shops of digestions 6. Divers Diseases are stirred up by the Ferment of the stomach being transplanted 7. The snare of Gatarrhs 8. The foundation of Diseases 9. The joynt-sickness proves that thing 10. Very many Diseases do flow centrally from the stomach which are feared and healed by the Head 11. Of what sort the co-mixture of the Character of some Diseases may be 12. How Medicines applied to or bound about the Head do operate 13. It is proved that the seat of the Soul is not in the heart it self 14. Remarkable things about the Character of Diseases 15. Why the effects of fear do vary their own effects 16. The same thing is considered for a poysonous occasional cause 17. They are appropriated to the vital light 18. An objection 19. The intent of the Author 20.
A most notable decree or opinion about the Direction Power Progress c. of Remedies 21. The healing of a remote wound and the notable force of Alcalies restraining remote sharpnesses from the stomach 22. The Schools are deceived about the Remedies of wounds 23. A lixivial Salt doth potentially lay hid in Herbs and performeth other things which the Alcali of things calcined do not so easily do 24. Whence the diversity in the Remedy of a wound and Vlcer is 25. The diuretical or Vrine-provoking virtue in a vulnerary potential Alcali is examined THE mouth of the stomach doth very often not endure the hand laid on it although on both sides supported by the Ribs for a sure token that it doth there undergo a most acute and precise sense or feeling which otherwise did seem to be required rather in the tops of the fingers for the distinguishing of things to be felt But that it cannot suffer the hand laying upon it by howsoever acceptable a Luke-warmth obvious nor burthening it with its weight that very thing bewrayeth that the life the fountain of all sensibleness is there which notwithstanding as it doth primarily accuse it self to be thus affected So also it makes it plain that it is the sensitive soul principally obvious to hurtful things being involved in the immortal minde But loe I look back to the Schools who being uncompelled do confess the tenderness or the too much acute exact and precise feeling of the Orifice of the stomach to cause almost all swooning of the minde And these things they so say neither in the mean time do they reflect themselves on their own Maxims stablished concerning the heart neither do they consider that that sharp sense thus named by them doth argue nothing else besides a vital aptness but not that more or more open or manifest sinews have happened to one part more than to another In the mean time they have not once considered that the life or soul is entertained in that seat they being unwilling to have the soul beheld in a Sack or Membrane and they had rather believe it to be laid up in the bellowes of the eares of the heart or in the idle or slow Brain For although they delivered their hands bound while they marked or perceived that there are virtues in the Membrane of the womb troubling or stirring up commotions in the whole Body yet the priviledge hath not been as yet granted to the Schools of beholding and confessing that that thing is likewise granted to the stomach Indeed by the complaints of many that do wanâ—onize with foolish leacheâ—â— they were compelled because they did bewail that they were oppressed with an eveniâ—â—â—owling and vexed about the mouth of the Stomach But the Schools have nâ—â— therefore recalled the traditions of the heathens into a doubt nor at least being pâ—icked by the way have they doubted to hold it confirmed whether happily there might be in the same place the light or entrance of a vital Beginning which being primarily affected by â—rovoking causes might first feel its own discommodities For neither is the command decreed but by the Court as neither is the power of life delegated or appoynted but by the life the President that is the Soul For it is from thence first manifested that unlesse a granted Character be imprinted on the Seed by the sensitive Soul that very seed is to remain barren and monstrous no otherwise than as the flower of a Pompion whereto a small Pompion is not seen joyned or grown behind Therefore if the Soul doth sit as in an Inn whence seeds do originally borrow the Character of their own fruitfulness it is also not to be doubted that the powers as well those vital as propagative do lay hid in the same place And moreover because that seat of the sensitive soul doth not only govern the digestive faculty of the Stomach and doth stir up an unnamed souâ—ness of the ferment of the Stomach unto this purpose and suffers it to be clean taken away from it self according to the vigour of the laws of nature and to be cut short of its bound But the very life of the Stomach is chief over all the digestions of the whole body however dispersed into hidden or also remote dâ—ns Indeed that is proper to the soul by a singular radiation or in-beaming and as it were participating of its own life as though by an only and naked beck and command of the Duâ—mvirate it did constrain obedience from on every side and that it were due unto it from every one whence it likewise follows that the same vital vigour is every way dilated and by an erroneous guidance that the exorbitances of the same are also diseasedly transplanted even to the fingers ends So indeed that hostile sourness the which although it be acceptable to the Stomach yea and very meetly requisiâ—e yet now in strange soyls it becomes an enemy For neither is the proof of that hostility to be borrowed from far for truly in the dog-dayes it is plain enough to be seen that fleshes presently after they have entred the threshold of their begun corruption they afford sour broths and those tinged with an unwonted colour Therefore a forreign guest of the Stomach being brought by a vital Beginning unto a strange field some strange defect doth for that very cause presently follow which doth for the most part also presently bewray its presence Indeed it is a disease which if it be brought into the Veins through the errour of the Duâ—mvirate badly enraged or enflamed it brings forth Fevers But if the hostile sourness or sharpness be brought into the habite of the body or joynts divers Apostems and errours of the joynt sickness are straightway present Apostems I say which with the least matter do bite no otherwise than as thorns or an enforced Dâ—â—â— do at length hasten into corrupt Pus a weeping liquor and thin corrupt sanies This indeed is the deceitful snare of Catarrhes or Rheumes which hath ensnated the Schools even unto late dayes through the various descendings defluxions falls and slidings of humours not existing And it was easie for Satan to have driven readily inclined minds seduced by Paganisme headlong hitherto no otherwise than as Astrologers have intentively noted the undeclarable scituation of the Moon and Planers have feigned excentricall ones relatively and simply the which indeed they knew to be vain and feigned for the necessitie of scituatioins found by measuring But in healing that was nearer for Satan thus to have deceived his own that is Pagans because sense an industrious and importunate perswader was at hand whom to prevent it hath been neglected while Art began in hast to be drawn unto lucre For truly from those things which are alleadged in the Treatise of Catarrhs concluded demonstratively and necessarily that is obvious to any one that there is no matter for Rheums likewise not a kitchin place wherein or where they should be prâ—pared as neither a
to wit by reason of an Impression communicated to the Glass without corporeal remainders Steel also after the touch of the Load-stone though well washed and cleansed doth nevertheless point at the Pole which two Bodies seeing they have neither a like co-temperament or form between themselves nor with the Load-stone do demonstrate that the Pole doth not attract Load-stones for either of those two ends Thou wilt say that by rubbing on them there is a participation of the Load-stone made in the Pores of the Steel or Spondils of the Glass A miserable excuse For the Rosin of the Firr-Tree is of it self coagulated into the hardness of the Stone the which then allures Iron unto it no otherwise than the Load-stone doth Here at least-wise thy feigned participation of the Load-stone sinks to the Ground The Load-stone only by the affriction or rubbing of Garlick thereon neglects the Pole its Form Matter and Properties being the while preserved indeed because that spiritual sensation or feeling in the Load-stone is by the Garlick laid asleep which sensation we have already before avouched to be the one only Cause of the Act of formal Properties Verily that would be a weak attraction in the Pole which could pass through so many Orbs of Heaven and the vast Region of the Air through Houses and Walls but should not know how to pierce the Juice of Garlick alone or the fumousness of Mercury the same material Root and one only Form of the Stone remaining stedfast A swimming Load-stone is carried in one certain part thereof to the North in its other part to the South Therefore if that positional conversion should be made by the drawing Pole the whole Northern side of the Stone would be alwayes drawn by the North Pole which is false For if it shall touch a piece of Iron with its North side it shall not incline that Iron according to its own Property to the North but to the South although the dust of the Stone shall adhere to the Iron but if it shall touch the Iron with its Southern side it shall turn that Iron to the North. Likewise the Load-stone in what part it hath alwayes inclined it self to the North beyond the Aequinoctial line it tends to the South As yet a little longer let us prosecute this Argument A Load-stone swimming in a Skiff of Cork on a quiet Poole if in its Northern Part it shall be violently turned to the South presently that that North side as it were by a forcible conduct re-addresseth it self to the North Therefore if the Load-stone should by the Pole it self be pull'd towards the Pole and that direction of the Stone were not voluntary the whole Skiff should of necessity by the same drawing float and be drawn or towed to the Northern Bank of the Poole which is false for the direction of the North side being attained both the Load-stones and Skiffe stand unmovable upon the water There is therefore in the Load-stone an influential Virtue which without respect had unto the nearness of its Object is after the manner of Celestial Bodies freely carried as far as the Pole it self seeing there is a voluntary eradiation or darting forth of the Rayes of the Load-stone unto the Pole or North Star therefore if there be now found one only natural Virtue in Sublunaries to wit in the Load-stone beaming forth it self unto an Object at a most remote distance which is never or in no wise to be ascribed to Satan It shall be also sufficiently proved that there may be also many the like Virtues or Properties wholly Natural as in the Examples alleaged and the Weapon Salve The Load-stone therefore or Iron touched by the Load-stone seeing they voluntarily convert themselves to the Pole a certain Quality is of necessity extended from the Load-stone to the Pole the which seeing we have known to be done without any corporeal Efflux therefore we denominate the same to be a spiritual Quality herein disagreeing from our Divine who distinguisheth a Spirit in opposition to every corporeal Nature as it were something besides Nature But Physitians only in opposition to the more gross compact of a Body and in this respect we say that the Light of the Sun and Influx of the Heavens the ejaculation or stupefactive darting forth of the Cramp-Fish the sight of the Basilisk c. are Qualities plainly Spiritual to wit because they are not dispersed on an Object at a distance by the Communion of a substantial Evaporation but as by the Medium of an unperceivable Light they are beamed forth from their Subject into a fit Object Which things being thus supposed and proved it is sufficiently manifest that our Divine not having as yet understood Goclenius hath nevertheless many times undeservedly carped at him First because Goclenius would establish a Spiritual Quality in a Corporeal Unguent Secondly because He affirmed that it being drawn or conveighed as through a Medium or Vehicle is carried unto its appropriated Object like as a radial or darting Light Thirdly inasmuch as such Qualities are derived unto a remote and appointed Object by a certain feeling of the Spirit of the World the causative Faculty of all Sympathy This Spirit the Divine interprets to be a Cacodaemon or evil Spirit but by his own and I know not what Authority seeing it is the more pure and vital An of Heaven which Spirit nourisheth the Sun and the sunny Stars within and being a mind or intelligence diffused through the Limbs of the Universe acts the whole help thereof and so governs the World by a certain Communion Conspiracy of Parts and Faculties according to the consent of all that have rightly Phylosophized For Examples sake the Sun-following Flowers do feel the travall or journey of the Sun the Sea takes notice of both Lunestices or the full and change of the Moon In Summ every Creature doth by its self Let us worship the King to whom all things live Essence Existence and Sensation or Perceivance bear witness to the Majesty Liberality or Bounty and Presence of the Creator Wherefore our Censurer is deservedly to be reproved in that before he understood the Physitian Writing in a Phylosophical Style he hath plainly carped at him with an unsufferable boldness For so hard a thing hath it been to have kept a Mean in all things Thou askest us what can be attracted out of the wounded Party and after what manner an attraction can be made by the absent Unguent But surely I should not answer injuriously when thou thy self shall shew us for what Cause the Load-stone shall attract Iron and convert it self to the Pole Then shall I also shew thee after what manner Mummy can cure another Mummy being touched on by a third mediating Mummy but because we have determined to repaire the insufficiency of Goclenius in this respect we are also presently to shew by a doctrinal Argument from the Cause to the Effect how a Magnetical attraction of the Unguent happens yet provided
that I shall first satisfie thee what can be drawn from the Wound It is to be noted therefore that in a Wound there is made not only a Solution of Continuity or disunion of the part which held together but also that a forreign quality is introduced from whence the lips of the Wound being enraged they by and by swel with heat are apostemized yea and from thence the whole Body is in a conflict through Fevers and a various concourse of Symptoms For so an Egg whose shell is but even slenderly hurt or crackt putrifies whereas otherwise it might be preserved The Magnetism therefore of this Unguent draws that strange disposition out of the Wound from whence its lips being at length overburthened or oppressed by no accident become without pain and being no way hindred suddenly hasten unto a growing together Natures themselves are the Physitianesses of a Wound the Physitian onely the Servant thereof Neither doth the Medicine beget flesh in a Wound it hath enough to do if it shall but remove impediments Which impediments the one onely Armary Unguent or Weapon Salve doth otherwise sufficiently securely and plentifully expel Thou wilt Object That the Weapon Salve ought not rather to allure forth the forementioned strange quality than the natural strength and powers of the Veins and that the Blood seeing it is sound or uncorrupt in the Unguent ought to call to it the Health but not the indisposition of the wounded party even as indeed was written of the Carline Thistle I Answer that there are divers Magnetisms for some attract iron some chaffs and lead some flesh corrupt pus or matter c. but such is the favour of some Magnetisms that they extract onely the Pestilential Air c. Yea if thou shalt couple the effect of curing in our Ointment with thy own Argument thy own Weapon will wound thee For from thence that the Effect of the Unguent is to heal perfectly speedily without pain costs peril and loss of strength hence I say it is manifest that the Magnetical Virtue in the Unguent is from God in a natural way and not from Satan Because if this Satan should be a co-worker of the said Cure which thou affirmest the same Cure would be imperfect together with loss of Strength Weakness Dammage or hazard of Life a difficult Recovery or with a sensibility of some greater inconveniency and relapse of misfortune All which events as they are annexed to Diabolical Cures so they are far absent from the Cure of our Unguent As many as ever have been cured by this Unguent will give in their Testimony for us Satan is never a teller of Truth never a perswader unto Good unless that he may deceive thereby yea neither doth he long continue in the Truth For alwayes if he shall bring any thing of good to any one this Enemy under-mixeth somewhat more of evil therewith And surely he would according to his custome observe the same rule also in this Unguent if he were the Author or Favourer thereof At least-wise this Remedy would then fail when the wounded Person is recalled as it were from the pit of death who otherwise through the mortal contagion of Sin had through his dangerous wound soon poured forth his Life together with his Blood unlesse haply thou shalt say that Satan then takes compassion on us and that he hath now attained to himself a right or jurisdiction over such a wounded person himself leaves it in doubt to wit in curing him by the Magnetical Unguent whom he had rather should perish perhaps because Satan is now in your esteem a strict observer of his Word and Bargaine and no longer wholly a turn-coat fraudulent impostor and lyar Besides we deny the supposition also That the out-chased blood is perfectly sound or uncorrupt but rather that it being now deprived of a common life hath also entred into the beginnings of some degree of corruption onely that it obtains a Mumial Life Hitherto conduceth the putrified and yet Magnetical blood in an Egg. I therefore pass by the absurdity of thy Objection in that it hath been so bold as to wrest the Magnet or Attractive faculty of the Unguent according to thy own pleasure and not to that end for which it was given of God Positive Reasons of Magnetism more nearly brought home unto us by Metaphysical and Magical Science It is now seasonable to discover the immediate cause of Magnetism in the Unguent First of all by the consent of Mystical Divines we divide Man into the external and internal Man assigning to both the powers of a certain Mind or Intelligence For so there doth a Will belong to flesh and blood which may not be either the Will of Man not the Will of God and the heavenly Father also reveales some things unto the more inward Man and some things flesh and blood reveales that is the outward and sensitive or animal Man For how could the service of Idols Envy c. he rightly numbred among the works of the flesh seeing they consist onely in the Imagination if the flesh had not also it s own imagination and elective Will Forthermore that there are miraculous Ecstasies belonging to the more inward man is beyond dispute That there are also Ecstasies in the Animal man by reason of a intense or heightened Imagination is without doubt Yea Martin del Rio an Elder of the society of Jesus in his Magical disquisitions or inquiries brings in a certain young Lad in the City Insulis that was transported with so violent a cogitation of seeing his Mother that through the same burning desire as if being rapt up by an extasie he saw her being many miles absent from thence and returning to himself being mindful of all that he had seen gave also many signes of his true presence with his Mother Many the like Examples daily come to hand the which for brevities sake I omit But that that desire arose from the more outward man to wit from Blood and Sense or Flesh is certain For otherwise the Soul being once disliged or loosed from the Body is never but by a miracle re-united thereunto There is therefore in the Blood a certain ecstatical or transporting power the which if it shall at any time be stirred up by an ardent desire is able to derive or conduct the Spirit of the more outward man even unto some absent object But that power lies hid in the more outward man as it were in potentia or by way of possibility neither is it brought into act unless it be rouzed up by the imgination enflamed by a fervent desire or some art like unto it Moreover when as the Blood is after some sort corrupted then indeed all the Powers thereof which without a fore-going excitation of the Imagination were before in possibility are of their own accord drawn forth into action for through corruption of the grain the seminal virtue otherwise drowsie and barren breaks forth into act Because that