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
first appeared for a sign of the Covenant Wherefore mortalls were amazed at that unwonted Being and being otherwise incredulous gave credit Secondly From hence I learn that the Rain-bow was given for a meer sign wherefore neither that it hath even to this day any reason of a cause with relation to any effect Thirdly seeing now the World before the floud had been about two thousand years old and yet there had been causes in nature which to this day the Schooles do attribute to the Rain-bow yet there was no Rain-bow Surely that convinceth of the falshood of those causes Whence at length in the fourth place it followes That unless the Rainbow be also at this day for a sign of the Covenant and for the sake of its first appointment it otherwise appeares for a frustrated purpose Therefore also the Rain-bow doth now and then remember us of the Covenant once stricken that we may believe and alway be mindfull that God the avenger on sinners sometimes sent the waters that they might destroy every soul living on the Earth that the same God might be a conscious or fellow-knowing revenger and Judge of our sin For all flesh had corrupted its way by luxurie which ought to be choaked by waters By the Rain-bow therefore God will alway have us mindefull of threatned punishments who by this sign doth signifie that he is the continuall President or chief Ruler the Revenger of nature But that the Rainbow might signifie that the World should be no more drowned with waters it was meet that it should bear before it not indeed a certain unwonted spectacle in the air without difference to any other thing but the mystery of the promised Covenant ought to lay hid in the Rainbow which might declare the promlse and belief of the thing promised by a signe Surely I seem to my self to admire with Noah three colours in the Rainbow and the pleasing splendours of three Sulphurs shining forth in co-burnt Mineralls And so the Colours do give testimony that the Earth being the womb of Mineralls is at length to satisfie the wrath of God by the extream melting of the burning of her Sulphurs Therefore the Rainbow doth not henceforth presage water but fire I wonder at the Schooles who will not hearken to the truth of the holy Scriptures delivered but that they even to this day proceed to make young men drunk with heathenish toyes or dotages For they hand forth that the Rainbow consisteth of a twofold Cloud to wit one being deeper and thicker but the other being thinner and moreover extended over that other that in manner of a Glasse it may resemble the Sun from the contrary part Verily it is a vain devise like unto an old Wives Dream For I have sometimes kicked the lower part of a Rainbow with my feet and have touched it with my hands and that not onely in Cloudy Mountains but in an open and Sunnie-field And so I have certainly known by my eyes hands and feet the falshood of that supposition Seeing that not so much as a simple Cloud was in the place of the Rainbow For neither although in the morning I did cleave the Rainbow and drew it by the colours of the Rainbow have I perceived any thing which is not every where on every side in the neighbouring Air. Yea therefore were not the colours of the Rainbow troubled nor suffered confusion The Schooles ought at least to declare why it should have alwayes the figure of a Bow or Semi-circle but never the resemblance of a Glasse Why if it be the Image of the Sun reflex doth it not shine in the middle of it self seeing the Parelia shines like the Sun with an undistinct and ruddie light Why should those two Clowds be alwayes folded together with the equall form of a Bow and variety of Colours Why doth not the Glasse that is against the Sun represent those Colours if that double Cloud be in the room of a Glasse Why doth not that doubled Cloud at least in its more outward and conjoyned part change the wandring Latitude of the Clouds if its hollow part be pierced with an abounding light of the Sun declining or going down Why doth a Rainbow also appear the Sun being hid under the Clouds and no where shining Why doth the Sun I say paint out alwayes those uniform and various Colours and so neerly placed together and not one onely Colour according to the simplicity of its own light Wherefore do many Rainbowes now and then appear together in one field For truly in so vast a Circle of the Air of the Horizon the reflexion falls not in one or two miles but the Cloud opposite to the Sun hath not its reflexion directly unless on the opposite part answering to it self in the Horizon but not on the part near to its side Lastly it is absurd that the upper and thinner Cloud which is void of Colour and which the light of the Sun doth easily pierce should fashion Colours in the other thicker Cloud which neither the Sun nor either of those Clouds have in themselves Surely I have very much admired at these vain positions of the Schooles while as I should handle a Rainbow with my hand and should see no Cloud at all round about Wherefore I have noted that the Rainbow by a peculiar priviledge hath its Colours immediately in a place but in the Air by the place mediating And so I have taken notice that those Colours and the figure of the Rainbow in their manner of existing are of the nature of light That is the Winde blowing the Colours which are immediately in a medium or mean do walk together with the mean and are dispersed according as the mean in which they are is but the Colours or Lights which are immediately in place are not changed although the Air or Mean in which they appear may change its place and flow So neither the winde blowing doth the Rainbow perish or walk For from hence it is that the object of sight is at one onely instant brought to the Eye but the object of hearing because it is not immediately in place but in an Air placed doth presuppose a durance of time and motion Wherefore the Rainbow not onely is not in a Cloud but moreover not indeed in the Air but immediately in place but in the Air immediately to wit as this is in a place For so the light of the Sun doth the more swiftly strike it self in an instant even unto the Earth because it is immediately in place but in the Air mediately to wit as this is in a place But that the Sun is the cause of the Rainbow that I believe is naturall but that a Bow immediately in place is appointed to be so coloured by the Sun but in no wise in the Air that hath the force of a sign For the Schooles have hitherto been ignorant that Light and Colours can subsist unless they do inherit or stick in some certain
At length the one onely Fountain and Spring of waters which thou hadst placed in the heart and top of the Earth is afterwards spread abroad into a thousand veins which did almost every where pierce thorow the Globe of the earth to far better uses And moreover thou hast also dashed the Sea almost into every Creek of the earth that there might be the greater fellowship of Mortalls thereby Therefore if thy punishment be blessed and happy what shall the free gifts of thy blessings be Oh Lord keep us for the exceeding greatness of thy goodness within that number who shall praise thy great and mighty deeds for ever in the sanctifying of thy name But although that one onely Fountain now ceased neither Lands being now rent asunder one alone was not enough yet perhaps the same entrance of waters remained Because in the sweet Sea between Roest and Loefelt according to the Table of Gothland a Gulf of waters is described by Olaus whereinto Ships Marriners being not aware and their endeavours being in vain are supt up For indeed it is the mouth into which the waters of that Ocean do fall and by one onely passage were before the Floud carried thence unto the aforesaid Fountain But afterwards that passage like the hollow vein was diversly distributed and hedged in by a Rock by some thousands of veins ending upon the face of the Quellem from which afterwards the waters being drunk up do hasten from far unto their appointed offices Moreover that Whirle-poole or Gulf if it ought to be any where and Olaus be a true Writer or if not at leastwise it is fitly in the Sea as well for the sweetness of the Sea as for the long and round figure of the World by me straightway to be proved In the next place if one onely Fountain were for the moystening of the Earth the aforesaid Whirle-poole shall be sufficient especially because the bottom of the Sea hath the Sand Quellem longly and largely laying open which would be sufficient for the drinking up the water And the rather because the Sea doth sometimes wash upon and rince the earth on every side and thorow many middle spaces Therefore the Sea being supt up in the said Whirle-poole it is by little and little brought thorow stony Channels and hence by lesser pipes thorow a great part of the earth Notwithstanding they are scarce over whelmed beneath the Soil Keyberch but as often as the veins of the Whirle-poole do cut or touch at the Quellem rising up thorow middle places and rushing forth into a Fountain indeed the sweet veins do perish and veins of Sea-Salt are produced Otherwise the briny Liquor if there be also any in the Gothick Sea doth through the lively Archeus of the Earth lose by degrees the nature of Salts or if the Ferments of Salts in places do any where exist those very waters do put on the seeds as well of divers Salts as of Stones and Mettalls and are changed into the same fruits For so neat gemme nitre aluminous vitriolated Sea Salts do grow of the water they as it were promising the first birth of the water to themselves And then from hence they do decline or decay into Bur or the first off-spring of Mineralls and degenerate by the guidance of the seeds So some fruits of the water do stop up the passages of their own Fountain and by their last ripeness do attain the perfection of that Minerall whose appointments the seeds did bear before them which were entertained in the Ferments of places Moreover as that Northern Whirlepoole or Gulf doth also sup up Fishes within it so it sups up the same exceeding small ones the greater being detained within the Channels Where oft-times they are either made Rockie or wax filthy through putrifying or also are seasoned with the Balsam of the soils as also that Fishes are oft-times found digged up which the Husband-man and others being amazed at do think they were born in undue places and without a seed Furthermore whether the Conduits have received the water or at length have drunk up that Quellem the waters are at least there endowed with a lively and seminall property For no otherwise than as a vein even in a dead Carease preserveth the bloud contained in it from coagulating or curdling which is a corruption of the first degree truly by a stronger Reason that right agrees to the veins of the earth which is not yet dead Therefore the water is supt and drawn within the lively soil of the Earth whence it having gotten a common life Come let us worship the King by whom all things live it knoweth not the Scituations of places it easily ascendeth unto the tops of Mountains without trouble together with the Quellem that it may from thence send forth fountains without ceasing VVhich things surely being unknown to the Schooles they have left that place of the wise man Coheleth or the Preacher scanty or barren where he saith all Rivers hasten towards the Sea the which notwithstanding doth not therefore re-gorgethem again For truly Rivers do return to the place from whence they came forth that they may flowagain Which words have been corrupted heretofore with divers modellings or qualifications Because springs in the tops of Mountains were not seen to proceed from the Sea whither they at length do rush Therefore Springs have been hitherto falsely judged by the Schooles to take their Beginnings and Causes from Air condensed or co-thickned by the force of cold between the hollow places of Mountains ready to fall upon each other The which I in a little Book concerning the Fountains of the Spaw printed in the year 1624 at Leidon have shewne that they have themselves after the manner now delivered in this place Therefore the true originall of true Springs being manifested it hitherto remains unknown to the Schooles The Scripture-Text entire and cleared But seeing the same Law course and re-course of waters from the Quellem into Fountains and at length from Fountains into the Sea was kept no lesse in dayes wherein it hath not rained for three years and more than when the whole year doth almost wax barren with a continual showre we must know that it is sumcient for the Earth that it doth not send forth such bountiful Springs through its Water-pipes and steep-running Brooks as by the common besprinkling of Dew and Rain Moreover before I shall come to the unchangeable substance of the water wherein the Schooles do promise that Air is easily changed into water and this likewise into it I will first clear up another Paradox To wit that the Globe being composed of Earth and Water is indeed round from the East thorow the West into the East yet not from the North into the South but long and round or of the figure of an Egge Which thing in the first place hath much deceived Saylors Because the Waters do slide with a more swift course from North to South than otherwise
subdivision is many times re-shaken sub-divided by the colds through which it hath passed This Gas at least should never of its own accord return into its auntient water nor should descend unto the most cold places through which it escaped by climbing upward unless the uppermost Blas of the Stars should force its descent And so the Region of the still air is not void of successive changes but that the Rain doth not there moysten the ground nor the rage of windes serve for the commotion of the waters For since the Gas which it keepes in it self is now reduced to so great a fineness of it self and all its Atomes being as it were roasted with heats in the outward superficies of the Sulphur surely they cannot return into rain unless by a sweet winde they descend to the middle Region where they do re-take the beginnings of coagulating under the luke-warm blowing of the air For a certain alteration opposite to that place from which the Gas departed ought to reduce the Gas into water For a sweet luke-warmth in the still air maketh the Atomes of Gas being covered in their own Sulphur to divide which Sulphur a skin being as it were broken thorow or like a Glasse that is brought suddenly from luke-warmth into the cold is broken and so the Mercury of the water doth dissolve its Salt at the dissolution whereof the Sulphur it self may be melted into its former water And that kinde of inversion or turning in and out of the body of the water and that torture through the exact searching of the cold is necessary that all the power of the Ferment may be wholly taken away out of the Clouds For else much corruption and the much stink of mists would soon destroy mortalls As in Silver being melted the exceeding small atomes of Gold do slide to the bottom So do the atomes of the Gas settle and by sliding they do increase or wax bigger which otherwise being infirm by reason of the coldness of the Air are again lifted up unless a gentle or favourable luke-warmth in the coldest place did now and then hinder it For so indeed rains shoures storms so Hail Snow mist and Frost are through an alteration by accident having arisen as well from a motive as an alterative Blas in the most cold places And so Gas and Blas have divided the whole Common-wealth of a Meteor into Colonies In like manner I have learned by the examples cited that the Sun doth not heat by accident but by it self and immediately And that heat is as intimate and proper to it as its light is to it The Air hath therefore its grounds or soils no lesse than the Earth which the Adeptists do call Peroledes Therefore the invisible Gas is entertained in the various Beds or Pavements of the Air if the Water hath its depths of its Gulfs it s own Gates are in the Peroledes which skilfull men have called the Floud-gates and folding doores of Heaven For neither is Gas falling down into the place of Clouds carried out of the depth of Heaven without its directer Blas Yea it falls not down but thorow ordained Pavements and folding-doores For all the folding-doores do not promiscuously lay open to the Planets but all the Planets in particular are by their own Blas the Key-keepers of their own Perolede Which thing I submit to be examined by Astrologers that are the shewers or disclosers of Meteors and I promise that they shall finde out a rich substance For so windes do sometimes hasten perpendicularly downwards and smite the Earth but otherwise they go side-wayes out of their folding-doores they beat down Houses and Trees as also bring miserable destruction on all sorts of Shipping But the more luke-warm Air doth foreshew the Winde to come out of the depth of the Air and the Gas to bring with it the Blas of Heaven downwards Whence Gas is straight-way again resolved into a Vapour and afterwards into rain Indeed Clouds do then appear which not long before were not beheld at any corner of the World Because the invisible Gas slides downward out of the depth of the upper Air the which growes together into vapours and from thence into drops For that is the appointment of the Air that it may continually seperate the waters from the waters But seeing that one part of water is extended at least to a hundred fold of its dimension while it is made a vapour and so much the finer by how much the Gas thereof is sub-divided into the more lesse parts and since there is that order and that law of universe that all things may be carried on for the necessity of man and the preserving of the World Indeed in this respect do heavy things tend upward light things are drawn downward Hence it hath seemed to me that the Blas of the Stars is disturbed into rain and is carried into clearnesses and other seasons as oft as the pluralities of Gas it self in the still Perolede of the air do seem to threaten almost choakings and the too-much com-pressions in the air Yet I am not so carefull concerning the occasionall causes of a Meteor it is sufficient that I have known an exhalation arising from beneath to wit a vapour and Gas to be the materiall cause of every Meteor It sufficeth to have known Blas to be the effective cause by the authority of the holy Scriptures The Stars shall be to you for times or seasons dayes and years This therefore is the unrestable appointment of the water that by proceeding continually upwards and downwards it should answer no otherwise than as the windes by an inordinate and irregular motion do answer to their Blas of the Stars And so the water which existed from the beginning of the Universe is the same and not diminished and shall be so unto the end thereof But I meditate of the Peroledes or Soils of the Air to be as it were the Bottles of the Stars by which they do unfold their Blas even through their determined or limited places for the uses and interchangeable courses of times or seasons And chiefly because the upper and almost still Perolede doth contain the cause why there are windes fruits dewes and especially things pertaining to Provinces For seeing that the winde is a flowing Air and so hath an unstableness in it we must needes finde the locall cause of stability in the more quiet Perolede Therefore the folding-doores are shut or laying open in the Perolede according to the Blas of the Stars which they obey Nor is it a wonder that there are limits or invisible bounds in the air of so great power and capable to restrain a heap for the visible World doth scarce contain another Common-wealth of things and the least one of powers For who will deny that under a Rock or great Stone of Scotland scarce 12 foot broad and deep 30 there is not some division of a Perolede that in the mean time I may be
Commissioner of Thunder and Lightning yet under covenanted Conditions For his Bolts being shaken off unless his Power were bridled by Divine goodness he would shake the Earth with one onely stroak and would destroy mortall men The cracking noyse therefore or Voyce of Thunder is a spirituall Blas of the evill Spirit surely an effect of great strength But Thunder is not conjoyned with a Miracle but it contains a monstrous thing in Nature So moreover although the fire of Lightning be naturall yet the manner and mean are divelish Powers For God as a most loving Father will be loved in the first place but by himself immediately he doth not willingly cause or inforce feares because it belongs not to his goodness to be loved from the fear and fearfullness of pain or punishment Therefore the terrours of his power and angry feares of his Majesty he causeth or enforceth not but by appropriated spirituall Sergeants his Ministers that is by a terrible Spirit And that thing all Antiquity hath alwayes judged with me which hath declared Jove or Jova as much as to say with the Hebrews Jehova to be the God of Thunder Seeing the Lord and Father of things doth unfold his Thunder by the bound hand of a tormenter the evill Spirit thereupon would not indeed be contented with the Title of Prince of the World but would have the name Jehova to belong unto himself Therefore Thunder and Lightning although they may have concurting naturall Causes yet the moover of them is an incorporeall Spirit Atheists may laugh at my Philosophy who believe that there is no Power or God and no abstracted Spirit But at leastwise they cannot but admire at the effects of Thunder and accuse themselves of the ignorance of its causes One History at least I will tell among a thousand In the year 1554 in the Coast of Leydon the Tower of Curingia being taken away by Thunder no where appeared after fifteen dayes a Grave is opened in a Herbie Plot of Grasse of the Burying place wherein a Shooe-maker was buried and behold under an unmooved and green Turf first the Brass Cock with the Iron Crosse appeareth and then a Pinacle of the Tower and at length the whole Tower is digged out I have seen my self being present by one onely Thunder-clap some thousand of Oaks and Hazels to be burnt up in their first bud and leaves to wit the whole Wood being named from a place neer Vilvord where the Birch the Beech and Alder-Tree being frequently co-mixed with other Trees in a thick confusion had the mean while remained unhurt by the Thunder But elsewhere by one onely stroak he strikes many things at once that were far distant asunder For who can sufficiently unfold the thousand various crafts and wiles of the cunning Workman It sufficeth that many spirituall actions do concur being divers from the ordinary course of Nature they being also alike powerfull at a distance as nigh at hand Therefore that terrible Voice of Thunder striketh the Earth kills Silk-worms shakes Ale or Beer and constrains it to wax dead causeth the flesh of a slain Oxe hung up to be flaggie it curdles Milk by the sudden Leaven of its sourness c. But Salt applied without to the brim of the Hogs-head or Earthen-pot doth turn away such kinde of effects Surely a weak resister for such an agent if in nature the thing resisting ought to prevail over the agent But why the evill Spirit hateth Salt and therefore Salt is alwayes said to fail or be wanting in his Sabbaths of his Imps he being sufficiently expert that Salt is adjured for holy water as oft as the Baptizer useth Salt Also Salt that is not blessed may trample upon his commands If therefore the Tree is to be known by his fruits therefore the Authour by his Works and so much the rather because so weak remedies do resist so great strength Nor surely doth that make to the contrary that God appearing to Moses in the Mount in continuall Lightning and Thunder environed the Mountain before Israel Yea rather it is thereby confirmed that the cracking Thunder and Lightnings do belong to Spirits his Ministers to Spirits I say his tormenters and executioners For truly Israel was driven away from ascending the Mountain under pain of death For neither therefore were the Thunders in the top of the Mountain but beneath round about the Mountain neither also appeared the Almighty to Eliah in the Whirle-winde or in the strong Winde but in the sweet Air. As an addition I will hitherto referre the Decree of the Church which in the blessing of a Bell doth prescribe certain forms wherein it confirms the same Presidentship in Thunder which I have prescribed in this Chapter For in the words of their adjurations they have it Let all layings in wait or treacheries of the enemy be driven far away the crashing of Hails the storm of Whirle-windes the violence of Tempests let troublesome or cruel Thunders Blasts of Windes c. beallayed Let the right hand of thy power prostrate Alery powers and let them tremble and flee at this little Bell of the hearer Before the sound thereof let the fiery darts of the enemy the stroak of Lightnings the violence of Stones the hurt of Tempests c. be chased far away Whence indeed all adjurations do conspire against Tempests For Hail Winde Rains Clouds c. are Meteors of Nature but a tempestuous darting exceeding the fall of a Body in grains and the flowing of the Winde are understood to be done by malignant powers These things indeed concerning Tempests of the Air Hail and the Sea are thus confirmed but in Thunder not onely the very casting of the Thunder-bolt or Stones but moreover the cracking noyse of Thunder doth depend on the powers and enemies of the air because that no renting of the Clouds or Air can naturally utter such noyses and the effects of these unless monstrous and hostile Powers do immingle themselves and play together CHAP. XVII The trembling of the Earth or Earth-quake 1. The name of the Moving of the Earth is improper 2. The opinion of Copernicus 3. A shew of the Deed. 4. All Schooles do agree with Aristotle in Causes for 21 Ages hitherto 5. The Opinion of the Schooles is demonstrated to be unpossible from a defect of the place 6. The same thing may after a certain manner be drawn from the force of exhalations 7. Likewise by the Rules of proportion and motion 8. The rise or birth of exhalations their quantity power progress manner of being made entertainment and swiftness are all ridiculous things 9. All these are demonstrated to be impossible things 10. The cause of their Birth is wanting 11. It is proved by the Rules of falshood and absurdities 12. That those trifles being supposed according to the pleasure of the Schooles the manner is as yet impossible 13. That an exhalation being granted according to their wish yet an Earth-quake from thence is unpossible 14.
be expected from elsewhere For he is the Prince of life and death the Alpha and Omega of all things He giveth and taketh away Victories Wars Famine and Pestilences also second partaking causes also free mediating con-causes and occasionall ones accompanying them over all which notwithstanding God is sits as chief as the totall immediate and independent cause Therefore the Firmament is a preacher of all these Works for neither doth God more erre in these free contingent things than in animall accustomed and necessary things if the Firmament was made by God the Mover and knower of all things to foreshew The Land of Libyssa shall over-cover the dead Carcase of Hannibal as Appian relates it to have been foretold by an Oracle of the evill spirit Hannibal hoped he saith that he should therefore die in Lybia or Africa who died in Bythinia near the River Libyssus For the Devil cannot foreknow the lots or events of future Wars which are in the hand of the God of Armies and as yet in the future will or judgement of man unless he shall first read them decyphered in a fore-telling Star Which Picture of the Stars while they no where finde mentioned but cannot deny but that the Devill declares things to come they have meditated of a privy shift and do say that the knowledges of future things are nearly related to Angels and so are co-natural to them but that they differ according to the Quires or Regions from whence they were expelled so that they which fell down from the highest Hierarchy of the Angels should have a much more clear understanding of future things which understanding because it was naturall God had not took away from an evill Spirit For neither is it more naturall to the Devil to have known the enlightnings concerning future things than to have known the natures and names of living Creatures not seen before like Adam But I conceive with Dionysius that the inferior Angels are enlightned by the superior but this light continually to beam forth from the wisdom of the Father and never to have been natural to Angels but to be a free and beatifical gift Next that every good gift doth descend from the Father of Lights that the gift of the Counsels of God and of his future works is not to be searched out by Creatures by their gifts of nature else the naturall knowledge of evill spirits should be almost infinite if it should include in it self the fortunes of mortall men to come distinguished in their second causes yea if an evill spirit otherwise had had this natural participation of divine counsel he had not been ignorant of future effects which he himself as the fire-brand of all evills was to raise up and suffer and so he could scarce have sinned Therefore it is more safe to believe contingent or accidentall things to be painted out by the Stars not indeed all but perhaps those of one age and likewise the Tragedy of every man to be deciphered in his own Star the Picture whereof ceaseth with the closure of his life They will say Hannibal took poyson Satan perswading him But this he did not certainly know as neither could he foretell it if man hath free will and therefore neither did he know that Hannibal would certainly obey his perswasions neither doth Hannibal die by the foolish perswasion of Satan which could not be knit to its causes depending on the divine will For neither doth he die by the poyson but first he is a run-away from many adverse battels But the Lord the onely God of Armies hath Victories in his own hand neither is the evill spirit chief in Battels Therefore to have foreknown the issue of Wars is the same as of free contingencies For truly Victory doth for the most part arise occasionally from a contingent thing not premeditated of therefore I conclude that the infernal enemy doth read the Pictures of the Stars whereby the Firmament is said to foretel the Handy works of the Lord. But thou wilt say whence do the Heavens make Predictions which no mortall men have known and the which to be known by the evill spirit is wickedness In the first place it should be sufficient that the fore-tellings of future things do chiefly declare the glory of God and the infiniteness of his wisdom and fore-knowledge to wit that it may not remain unsignified And then The Lord hath not done a word which he doth not signifie to his servants the Prophets Lastly if the number of mortall men be scarce the hundreth of Angels that are good Spirits it sufficeth that these at least do read the foretokens of future things and therefore do they praise the Lord anew Lucifer indeed hath waxed proud by the much knowledge of things both of those that do exist and of things afterwards to be and it was naturall to him the which he breaths in without grace But it doth not therefore follow that he hath known all mortall men to come and their fortunes vices defects sins grace and whatsoever things should be hereafter like to a second cause as neither the secret mysteries of God that are revealed in succession of dayes and added to a connexion of causes But whether Plagues do arise and rage or Tyrannies Wars destructions tumults or the beginnings of arch-Hereticks the Lord permitting them at leastwise those things shall be as well connexed to their own necessary and second causes although arbitrall and occasionall ones as otherwise Meteors are to theirs For neither is the office of foreshewing the Handy works of the Lord to be restrained to the changes of the Air alone but absolutely unto all the works of the Lords hands Because if the Stars can be preachers of the threatning effects of the wrath of God which without second causes should be committed to the smiting Angel why shall they not also in like manner shew the works of the Lord deputed or reckoned to second and free causes For truly what things soever God foreknoweth he can also if he will shew them by his Instruments but those proper Instruments of God are the Firmament and the Lights thereof as the Scripture witnesseth Yea truly I have been bold to attribute more Authority to the Heaven than what hath wont to be given unto it by the holy Scriptures To wit that the Stars are to us for foreshewing Signes Seasons or changes of the Air lastly for dayes and years wherefore the Text takes away all power of causes besides in the abovesaid revolutions of seasons dayes and years Neither do they act I say but by a motive and alterative Blas But the Stars are said to act by motion and light onely but motion in the Schooles is said to act onely by reason of the divers Aspects of Light for that the motion of the Heavens even the swiftest as well as those remote from us should produce as well heat as motion is a devise or fiction For truly the daily motion of the Heavens is almost
Bacchus's Feasts to Predictions Therefore Prophesie from new Wine or otherwise foretelling seemeth to be in some men almost foolish but if they were drunk familiar which constitution or frame Paracelsus calleth a drunken or besotted gift which was made known to the Jewes and therefore falsly attributed to the Apostles Moreover that I may demonstrate the events of men to be described in the Stars I will shew at least three examples of dâ—abolical Predictions instead of a thousand nor those drawn out by the evill spirit from any other place than out of the decyphered figure of the Stars First of all Roderick the fourth the last King of the Gothes reigning the Castle of Toletum which had now stood shut even from the dayes of King Bamba was through the curiosity of Roderick opened but there was nothing found in it besides one onely Chest But in the Chest a Cotten Towel rouled up shewing the Garments and Persons of the Africans But there was in it thus written When this Castle and Chest shall be unlocked a Nation shall break into Spain of this similitude and cloathing and shall obtain Victory over the Spaniards But the Moores were decyphered with a cloathing as it was to be above 200 years after Two others are modern examples The Duke of Biron being apprehended by his King for the crime of Treason straightway busily enquired of what Nation the tormenter or Executioner of Paris might arise whom when he understood to be a Burgundian he fearing sighed and said Alass I am undone for truly he had sometimes understood by a Soothsayer that he was onely to beware of a mortall stroak which a Burgundian was to give him in dayes to come The Earl of Loniguium was slain in a Duel nigh Bruxels itching with a desire of Combates and being the more bold because he had understood by Fortune-tellers that â—e should be mortally wounded by a Wolf But there was a young man a Companion in the Duel to the Earl de Sancto Amore whose Sur-name was Loup or Wolf who being deadlily pricked thrust Loniguius thorow Let the Devill be the Authour of these Predictions But it is at leastwise of Faith that the Lots of every Victory are in the hand of the Lord. Let us grant that the Devil stirred up Roderick to open the Chest and also to have pricked on very many Kings of the Moores to invade Spain Yet he could not know that he was to obtain this beyond the will of so many persons much lesse that the Arabians should obtain Victory which the Lord alone gives to whom he will unless he had first read the consent of the Lord painted forth in the Stars for neither could the evill spirit have known this by the motion and Light of the Stars that was to come for two Ages from thence In the two other Histories the Devill besides the houre and place had foretold also the Nation of the killer and his name but at leastwise a name is not shewen by the Planets Moreover the divulged Rule The Stars do incline but not necessitate hath seemed to me contradictory to the Text of holy Scripture The Stars shall be to you for Signes seasons dayes and years because it is not lawfull for any mortall men to extend the bounds effects or appointments of the Stars above without or besides the intention of the Creator Whether therefore they are for fore-shewing Signes onely or at length for causes of seasons dayes and years Seeing that they are meanes for both ends which God useth as second causes they ought to have a relation of necessity by reason of the certainty and independency of him whose meanes they are But so far as it hath regard to inclination which the Schooles do grant to the Stars it no where appeareth in the holy Scriptures that the Stars are to us causers of inclinations but as oft as the Stars are the causes of causes so oft also they are the necessitating causes of the thing caused by the meanes of other second causes For the Sun doth with no lesse necessity bring on the day and Summer than burning or flaming straw under a dry Fagot doth kindle this Fagot But when Stars do obtain the nature of a Signe Preacher or Messenger then also they do not exceed the conditions of a presage nor in any wise assume the office of a cause but they do onely then foreshew from the infallible fore-knowledge of God and so also do import a necessity as much as is from them and from mans free will as fore-shewing Signes of the Handy works of the Lord. And although they do not necessitate causatively things to come yet they do necessitate as they shew the will of the Lord. For free contingencies do depend on their causes also sometimes primarily on those not intending such kinde of effects which by divine permission do proceed from thence unthought of for neither in the mean time are those things which come to passe from free causes immediately understood in any respect to be inclined by the Stars although fore-shewing ones onely to produce their effects For truly a strong native continuall soliciting repeated c. inclination doth after some sort import a necessity over free will which I do not indeed grant in the least point of it to be inclined by the Stars For even so as a friend is not the inclining cause of War or the inciting cause if he doth secretly declare to his Prince by an Epistle that an enemy doth prepare War and plot the invasion of his Camp But the Schooles defend themselves by that saying A wise man shall rule or have dominion over the Stars As though if the Stars should stir up any one to murders thefts man-slaughters adulteries seditions drunkenness c. yet a wise man might by the liberty of his own free will make those inclinations void and this they call to rule over the Stars But surely the authority of the Scriptures being badly understood brings forth perverse consequences For first of all it is not in a wise man to resist evill inclinations but it is of grace And so a wise man in this place is not understood to be him which is fenced with sufficient grace because if he shall rule over the Stars there is no cause why he should fear conquered inclinations even as the word to dominate or bear rule doth import yet this is false throughout his whole life Next also they presuppose a falshood because it is by no meanes of the appointment of the Stars that they should cause inclinations in us but onely that they are for signes seasons dayes and years and no more In the next place the Heaven was created without spot Therefore it is absurd that it should be unto us in the room of the Devill the Tempter and which is more of an incliner because it should infuse into us a continuall fewel unto vices and a headlong inclination Far be it to think these things of the divine goodness Every
the art and knowledge unutterably Therefore although the seed doth contain the Image of the Begetter an Archeus proper to it self with all things requisite to generation yet unless the essential Being of a form did depend originally wholly exemplarily perfectively issuingly and immediately on God nature could never work any thing to attain a form because it should plainly want an active power if it should be deprived of that relative respect Therefore in the first place the Heaven or Stars in no manner of understanding by motion light influence concurrence co-operation or coupling do efficiently and immediately produce the essential forms of things which indeed are onely alone to us for signes seasons dayes and years and whose offices none may compell into new services Jeremy according to the wayes of the Gentiles do ye not learn and be not afraid of the Signes of Heaven which the Nations fear If not of the Signes much lesse of the Stars because they have not the reason of causes but as they are for seasons dayes and years Neither can a Christian without wickedness give them other offices For there is according to Gregory a power conferred on the Earth of budding from it self even as also I esteem it wickedness to attribute the power of increasing and multiplying to living Creatures as to the Heaven But the Schooles do easily go back from the Heaven to dispositive accidents But I on the contrary state it for a position That accidents neither by themselves nor as they are the Instruments of forms do produce the forms of substances Neither that they do produce any other form of one substance Seeing the form of the thing generating is locally without the seed 2. The Earth also although it hath received a power of budding and the seeds of fructifying without the intervening of the seed of Heaven or any other cause yet it is not the productive or effective cause of forms 3. I suppose therefore that God is the true perfect and actually all the essence of all things 4. But the essence which things have belongs to the Being or the Creature it self but is not God 5. For although a Being hath its essence from God dependently for a Pledge Gift League or Talent yet it is proper to the them by Creation 6. But it agreeth to a Being with its essence that it doth and operateth something for the propagation of it self according to the blessing increase and multiply Hence indeed it hath the place of a second cause 7. Therefore God concurreth to the generation of a Being as the Universal Independent totall essential and efficiently efficient cause but a created Being concurreth as the dependent partial particular and dispositively efficient cause But what the Creature can contribute to the producing of a form Mark That since Beings have nothing from themselves for generating but do possess all things from a borrowing and freely they do confess for that very cause that God worketh all things mediately and immediately but that a living Creature doth not generate a living Creature but the seed well disposed to a living Creature Therefore it doth not generate the form thereof But the seed is as it were the disposing Master-Workman as to the form of a living Creature but not as the maker of the form indeed it borroweth the Archeus from the thing generating not the form yea nor the light of life wherein the form shineth Therefore in the beginning of generation the Archeus is not as yet lightsome but it is an Air into which the form life or sensitive soul of the generater hath a little twinckled untill it had sufficiently imprinted some shadowie Seal of its brightness Which Air being greedy of the splendor felt in the generater once and shadowily conceived in it self intends by every way possible for it to organize the body or fit it with Instruments for the receiving of that light and of the actions depending on that light which way therefore it breathing in desire enfiames it self more and more this thing in a metaphoricall figure is for nature through a desire of self-love to pray seek and knock and runs most perfectly that it may receive that light form or life which at length it obtains not else-where than from him who is the way the truth and vitall light or light of life Whither therefore when the Archeus hath come nor in the mean time can proceed any further and is stayed at length it receives forms from the hand of the Father of Lights after that it hath fully performed its offices Christian Philosophy dictates these things thus which in living Creatures and Plants is made easie to be understood But in Stones Mineralls and Metalls and so in fruits of the water that are without life the same things are fuitably to be interpreted For although this Family doth not propagate by virtue of a seed neither doth send forth its posterity out of it self a Being is not therefore wanting in it which may thorowly bring it unto the appointed bounds of maturity For indeed since nothing doth any where dispose or move it self unless it be a seed it must needes be that whatsoever is generated that hath a disposer within who sits in a soft watery salt clayie c. Air Not indeed that it floweth here or wandereth thorow that masse even as it doth in bruit Beasts or that therefore it dwelleth in a perpetual juyce but the Air is incorporated throughout the whole Body nor varying from the disposition of the fruit produced yea in the number or rank of Mineralls that disposer is almost vitall and sensitive Because Chymicall Adeptists do with one voyce deliver that if the seed of the Stone which maketh Gold being once kept warm in their Egg be afterwards in the least cooled or chilled its conception and progress to a stone would be afterwards desperate which thing seeing it is like to Birds Eggs it also therefore cannot subsist without a sensitive life Truly it is to be wondered at that the Schooles do acknowledge all second matter to flow from a certain universal matter yet that they do not admit immediately to derive every life or all forms from the primitive life and first act of all things To wit to derive all the perfection of things from the universal and super-essential essence of perfection yea rather that they at this day do deride Plato with his principle of the Gods and Avicenna with his Cholcodea Panto-Morphe or goddess of Cholchis that gives a form to all things who nevertheless have far neerer saluted the truth in this thing than Christians who maintain that the very lives substantial forms and essential thinglinesses of things are produced by the aspiration or influence of the Heavens by the endeavour of accidents and the favour of material dispositions I set forth the blindness of the most rare men made under or in a time of light For they think the fire to be a substance and the light to be an accident
A Girle of three yeers old and noble takes a vomit to drive away an Ague of a boasting Italian Physitian being a few Grains of a certain Powder Also another Noble young Daughter not yet exceeding the second yeer of her age took the same Both of them indeed straightway after the taking of it vomited but both of them had their right eye wrung or wrested aside and their whole side as it were beset with the Palsie their arm indeed wholly but their leg not altogether so For the elder being wholly given to tattle yet her sorely annoyed but the younger slumber and vomiting now and then interrupting each other both of them dye I am called unto both and I attempted some things in vain Perhaps indeed because late and life failing But both their carkasses are opened And the same stinking Liquor detained in the stomack the Pylorus being exactly shut the cause of the murder comes to hand 3. A Hen when she would pick grain on the ground she retorted her neck to one side and in picking was rowled into a Circle on her left side and her legs fayling at the taking of every Barley Corn or Crum of bread she slid on her hinder part upon her tail And that had remained thus perhaps for eight dayes space before it might be declared to me I ran unto the unwonted Spectacle I unfeathered her most lean breast and a certain old woman opened her former or membâ—anous stomack with a Razor But I found that she had swallowed a small gobbet of rocky Chrystal but that woman sowed up her stomack again with a thred and afterwards she survived in perfect health 4. One of my house-hold servants forming some Vessels about Distillation with a most sharp fire of pit-Coals melted a Glasse by sporting the Fragments and Vessels themselves were dark and white from green Glasse and the sweepings of my distillations But the Fragments of his new Vessels being cast into a corner of the floor the Hens devoured them being deceived in the whiteness of glasse They were well in health but it happened that the fifteenth day after the two fatter were killed for the Table But that there were found in their first Stomack some of the aforesaid Fragments which were easily conjectured to have stuck in the same place many dayes But they were diminished so that when as glasse is not broken but Point-wise as well side-wayes as corner-wise Those Fragments were on every side obtuse or blunted But I have hence collected to my self things worthy of note 1. That the Pylorus being shut my Brother did alwayes vomit For truly also after death that stinking Liquor was found in his closed stomack which else had been in the Bowels without any notable dammage 2. That that shutting of the Pylorus was furious otherwise it had opened it self and had not so hurt 3. That the motions of the Pylorus are of another Re-publick than all others are For all contractures do cease with death those of the Pylorus not so 4. That in the vomitory medicine its poysonous faculty had stirred up the indignation and contracture of the Pylorus For he was not only contracted or drawn together but he drew forth or allured a bloody juice out of the veins of the stomack which was forth-with made black and stinking 5. That the same things happened in the two little Girls 6. That the indignation of the Pylorus doth also produce Palsies 7. But an Aeâ—uginous or cankery Liquor death 8. That in the Cock the only stubborn stoppage from the Even-tide caused his giddinesses 9. The Hen which had swallowed the Chrystal doth more strongly prove this besides which no other thing was found in her fore-stomack 10. That the detaining of Glasse in the stomack did remain with health because the Pylorus was not thereby stopped up 11. That glasse is of easier Digestion than rocky Chrystal 12. That an Aeruginous or black Liquor was made from the indignation and shutting of the Pylorus but not from the detaining of a Body or Glasse besides nature 13. That Glass was consumed by little and little in the stomack of the Hens CHAP. XXX A History of Tartar 1. That a Treatise of the four feigned humors is to be joyned in this place for the integrity of the work 2. After the rejecting of a quality being an elementary distemper we must then also treat of Tartar and the three first things or principles of the Chymists 3. The Birth and Life of Paracelsus 4. He first brought Tartar into a disease 5. Strife unhappily fell out between the Humorists and Paracelsus 6. They afterwards made use of Remedies borrowed from our fugitive servants 7. Humours were long ago silenced which I at length have demonstrated in a particular Book never to have been in nature 8. An Epitome or Summary of those things which Paracelsus hath here and there written concerning Tartar IT hath seemed to me a meet thing to premise natural things in order to the matter of Medicine because I am he who have alwayes thought the knowledge of the whole of nature to have no respect but unto the health or welfare of man Therefore have I treated of the Elements alone whereby I may drive away the fictions of the Schools touching the composition of four Elements in every single body which hitherto is reckoned to be mixt That I might shew I say that there are no mixtures nor strifes nor distempers or complexions of the same even as neither that the Catologue of diseases of the feigned temperatures of Elementary qualities can stand with truth That is that the Schools have not hitherto known the causes of diseases all which almost they have ascribed to those qualities Moreover now the same labour remains to me concerning the four feigned and false humours and the wandring corruptions of these it was to be written shewn that such humours were never in nature therefore also that they have alike perniciously erred hitherto as well in the Doctrine knowledge subscription of dâ—seasifying causes as consequently in wandring Remedies and the universal directions and applications of these And seeing that thing is already performed by me in a peculiar book printed in the yeer 1644. at Colonia by Jodoc Calchove directed for a fore-runner of this work and nigh the same yeer I set forth two other Books to wit concerning the disease of the Stone and the Plague-grave wherein I have shewnâ— that hitherto the causes of those diseases are unknown in the Schools Therefore it is enough here to have attested it Although those books are to be â—ansferred hither for the integrity or enâ—ireness of the work Therefore the causes and essences of diseases have even unto this day stood neglected by the Schools and they being neglected therefore the more weak have been destitute of right Remedies Now at length because Paracelsus hath lately dared to remove the general cause of almost all diseases into Tartar And although Paracelsus first hath rashly made that sufficient yet
the state of innocency was 35. That the first conceptions are badly said to be those out of our power 36. A power of remembring in the Scull and others elswhere 37. The memory of the mind is divers from that of the imagination or phantasie 38. The lustful and wrathful seat of the Schools 39. The leasures of the Spleen 40. The Head follows the Midriffs 41. A stupefactive virtue 42. The Stone-vessels or Cods 43. Tickling or provocation to leachery is not to be attributed to the kidney or reins but to the stomach 44. That a frail or mortal life hath entered and is established where the soul also is 45. The mouth of the stomach is the center of the whole trunck of the body 46. What it may be to have carried the Messiah in his loynes 47. A remedy for a woman in travel 48. Judiciary Astrology fals to the ground 49. An external Spleen what virtue it may have 50. Why a woman at the time of her going with Young is troubled with wondrous conceipts 51. The mind doth not become mad 52. Splenetick conceipts 53. Curable and desperate diseases which they may be 54. The natural endowments of Simples 55. Conclusions deduced from an ignorance of the foregoing things 56. Sleepifying remedies do not heal madnesses 57. The Lydian Whet-stone for a Physitian in madnesses 58. An objection of those that are ignorant or skillful 59. Fatness limited 60. The Majesty of the Duumvirate is to be admired 61. Risibility or a capableness of laughter what it is and whence it happens to man alone 62. The dominion of the Duumvirate over the Lungs 63. The original of Spittles 64. The virtue of Sulphur is determined 65. Why the Stomach commands the Lungs IT is a saying of Hipocrates In whom a vein doth strongly beat in the part about the short Ribs their minde is presently sick or distempered For the Artery of the Spleen is most frequent yet the Pulse thereof is not manifest as long as it is in good health and doth rightly imagine But when it is rash it presently with a strong pulse even into the left ear being also oft-times audible by the sitters by denounceth madness But that thing is manifest in a thorn imprinted in the finger whose pulse before unknown is presently after before the swelling of the finger stirred with a troublesom and hard beating Therefore madness is denoted to proceed from a thorny spleen The same old man hath placed black choler in the Midriffs For the name of the Midriffs doth sound that the stomach doth undergo or supply the room of the heart and from thence he presageth the Falling-sickness if it shall get into the Body but madness if into the minde Therefore he drawes both weaknesses of the minde out of the Midriffs But they do especially flourish where their occasional cause is near at hand And so the Schools do testifie where the shop of madness layeth hid that there also in health is the seat of right judgement according to the Maxim The function of the same part is vitiated the function whereof in healthy persons is sound and on the contrary For all madnesses except the Sisters of sleepy evils do undergo watchings As a sure Argument that sleep the drowsie evil watching and madness do live in the same Inn Because sleep watching imagination dreaming are powers conversant about the same subject and are made in the same Organ and Inn. I confess indeed that sleep is after watching but that doth not argue a variety of the Inn the subject For it is not to be doubted that in a moment every operation of the minde doth cease by 〈…〉 c. Therefore if the Head should be the proper place 〈…〉 Imagination the operations of the minde should remain which notwithstanding do perish presently after light is denied from the lower parts Galen proposeth ashes of burnt Crabs against the madnesse proceeding from a Dog which madness rageth in the desirable or lustful faculty or in the fear of liquid things From whence the name of Hydrophobia is given unto it Therefore madness by a Dog layeth in the part of the desirable power For neither is the Lixivium of Crabs fit to be brought unto the brain For nothing goes thither which was not first transchanged in the stomach neither doth it go to the fifth or sixth but through the first and second digestion Therefore that madness is by intervals to wit the Cup being offered it rageth into the desirable faculty but none hath dedicated the lustful power of drinks unto the Brain Therefore when a mad Dog bit the finger of Dr. Bald that poyson crept from the finger into the stomach as the chief Instrument of the sensitive soul as also to the Spleen bending about it whither the Remedy of that Lixivium creepeth as it is the subject for the Hypochondriacal passion But least the Schools should detract from the dignity of the Brain they grant that madness to have indeed it s bound from which in the Spleen but the bound to which they will have to be within the Brain Wherein they say nothing that is excusable For although the doubt doth cease at least for a time it is sufficient that the first motion of the vitiated phantasie be in the bound from which They will answer with the more speed that that humourable and occasional cause in the Spleen doth not accuse that therefore the framing of Imaginations ought to be be made out of the Head But I will presently make that by degrees manifest by the strength of many Arguments Peter Bor a Christian in his Annalls of Belgium relates that in the year 1564 at Bruxels a Sow brought forth six young ones the first whereof for the last in generating is alwayes in bruit Beasts brought forth first had the head face arms and legs of a man but that the whole Trunck of the Body from the neck was of a Swine For there was no doubt but that the Mother was a Sow And therefore the heart Spleen and also the other Organs of the Vegetative Soul were like to the Mother Therefore although it had the head of a man yet it had onely a sensative soul Indeed a Sodomitical monster is more like the Mother than the Father So of a sheep the mother and a He goat the Father a Lamb comes forth which besides Wooll and tail hath his other parts like a sheep So a Mule his Father being an Asse and his Mother a Mare And so a Horse of a Bull and a Mare Lastly in seven Coneys from their Father a Dormouse and their mother a Coney nothing besides their tail was like unto the â—e â—â—tter If therefore that monster had the soul of a swine therefore the soul followes the condition not indeed of the Head but of the inferior members And the very prerogative of the phantastical soul inhabits in the Duumvirate although the Head be a part which is the conductresse of conceits formed in the lower parts for
others even sick solks do move themselves freely For the Stomach is loaded and burdened and the concoction thereof is not yet finished and therefore it happens to those that lay on their left side to wit which way the mouth of the stomach is wrested From whence it becomes first of all evident that the stomach also doth command the motion and especially that in this it doth govern the sleep dreams and also the motion For the dreams of the Mare are almost always the same as also the impotency of moving as long as the stomach being thus ill affected is stretched forth in sleep For the Schools do assign the causes of the Mare to be grosse vapours invading the thorny marrow And indeed they are carried into vapours by reason of the momentary solving of that distemper For if the sleepers are forthwith awakened the Mare also presently ceaseth And so those vapours ought to cease at the will of the awakener In the next place I hardly hear that grosse vapours should be accused in many or most causes of Diseases I hitherto confess that for fifty full years I never as yet saw a grosse vapour of distillations There are indeed corporeal exhalations in which a volatile matter is sublimed and doth climbe to the sides of the vessel So indeed out of Sulphur Orpiment Woods Arsenick Sal-Armoniack Camphor Urine and likewise from Mercury Lead brasse-Oar Brasse c. grosse smoakinesses do ascend upwards but vapours to wit watery ones I never saw or knew to be grosse unless among University-men who are ignorant of vapours yea however grosse they should be they should at least both loose their grosseness at the pleasure of the awakener and the heat which had stirred up those vapours should presently be stopped Both of them surely ridiculous things Again they conjecture the marrow to be affected by reason of motion denied in the Dream And so every affect of the marrow and every stopping vapour should cease at the will of the awakener which is alike full of frivolous rashness But how shall one laying with his face upwards send grosse vapours out of the stomach into his loins and the marrow enclosed within the turning joynts and covered with membranes to wit whither in another place they say that not the more thin windes do pierce especially because such a Scituation of him that layes down should of its own nature rather banith vapours out of the stomach into the bowels or should carry them upwards thorow the stomach into the Navil than downwards unto the marrow being shut up and loaded with the bowels What community passeth betwixt the speech with the thorny marrow or why shall grosse vapours out of the stomach desire onely the back-running sinews For the Mare doth not onely cause a hearing of inward whisperings and granteth to discourse also to fear but also external true and appearing objects are heard But he cannot move his tongue how much soever others may speak in time of dreaming Do the Schools perhaps think the motions of the tongue to be made by the thorny marrow Therefore those grosse vapours shall be far different from dreamy ones they not hindering the use of motion of the tongue yea of the whole Body For while they apply themselves to the sinews that they may afford the causes of unmoveableness the Schools themselves become dumb and unmoveable While they shall never understand what they say as neither after what manner those grosse that is impossible vapours shall pierce the stomach bottom of the belly hollow vein extended through the back with a beating Artery its companion and likewise the ligaments of the turning joynts And how those things shall be silent appeased and cease at a moment if haply he be awakened who suffers the distemper of the Mare Surely they had more rightly learned the action of the government of the Duumvirate to wit that an impediment brought on the stomach in its vital government aloâ—â—â— doth without vapours or Truncks trouble the Brain doth vitiate the sinews and first conceptions as it interrupteth the comforts of the spleen For so it happens that those who have the Apoplexie and Palsey do eat hear and sleep c. yet that they cannot speak For the Schools do accuse the back-running sinews to be stopped Why therefore shall not the Mare have regard to these sinews rather than to the thorny marrow Why do Remedies for the Duumvirate help those that have an Apoplexie a giddiness in the Head that know not how to go and speak those very Medicines I say being as yet present in the hollow of the stomach but are unprofitable to the back-running sinews and head Hath a Pie perhaps those sinews stuffed together before speech Shall a Cow which thrusts forth her tongue moveable into the nostrils have her tongue bound and doth she want back-running sinewes Or else she shall have them in vain if they are perpetually and naturally stopped A certain voluntary command is brought down from the Head unto the sinews of the tongue that is denied unto four-footed beasts but not unto some Birds Likewise that thing not at the first turn but by degrees through an accustomed going But he that hath an Apoplexie doth not put this command into execution because he is dismayed or astonished almost like a four-footed beast Indeed the conception of an Asse God permitting it once passed thorow unto his tongue Not indeed that the Asse was the Instrument of the Angel For then he had spoken the iudgements of God but not his own conceivings neither had he complained of his stripes From occasion of the Asse I will speak my own In the year 1643. the day before the Calends of the 11th month called January I sate beginning to write in a close Chamber but the cold was great and I bad an earthen Pot or Pan to be brought with burning Coals that I might sometimes comfort the cold stiffness of my fingers My little Daughter comes unto me who as soon as she sented the hurt or offence wiâ—hdrew the Earthen Pan and unless she had chanced to come I being choaked had perished For I presently felt about the mouth of my stomach a sore-threatned swooning I arose from my Study while I would go forth abroad I fell like a straight staffe and was brought away for dead For there was a two-fold affect one of the bruised hinder part of my head which filched away my tast and smelling but did over-cloud my hearing The other was a sounding affect stirred up from the stomach For in the first dayes my Head turned round with giddiness as oft as I looked on one side much more if upwards I thought that that befel me from the stroak of the fall with the naked hinder part of my Head suddenly and from my whole statute on a hard stone But by little and little I was better assured and I for many dayes revolved all things within my self I knew therefore at length that my giddiness proceeded
many Stools he recovered Although by a tough falling-Sickness he is accounted for dead Being a Youth and young man he was nimble enough but of an unconstant Health Presently from his Youth he felt that in running he breathed more than was meet which he attributed to a life abounding with profits In his Manhood he felt that a moderate Dance did punish him with a shorter Breath than was meet But about his fiftieth year he manifestly suspected that he was Asthmatical And that he perceived was manifestly increased about his fixtieth year For from his Infancy he had his Spleen notably offended now then payning him so that one dayes riding would be troublesom by reason of the jogging of his Spleen and especially he was tired if he had spent a day in the running of a Coach Moreover that falling-Sickness although it did not bewray it self but by the more weighty Causes otherwise laid to Sleep for some years yet it was not convulsive but like unto a fainting of the mind But he felt a certain joy about the Orifice of his stomack and presently self down Indeed he seldom had a Cough but even from his Youth a frequent Spitting out by reaching But he had his Spittle in small drops of a Skyish Colour like unto Gum-Dragon dissolved His Spitaings were seldom all the Summer more frequent in time of cold so that old age growing great he had very many reaching Spittings all the Winter At length being now wholly Asthmatical he read over a whole Psalm from the depth in one Breath his Speech not being stirred or interrupted if so be he sate He walks also in a plain the space of a League with a swift pace enough but if he climbs a Street or upright assent with a moderate step he presently Foams pants for Breath his Breast is straightned his Heart forthwith beats with and inordinate Pulse Interruptingly His Tongue waxeth dry behind towards his Jaws and he Foameth about his Teeth But besides his Knees do almost fail with the Asthma and according to the measure thereof more or less when as notwithstanding before the Asthma his whole Leg was nimble and strong But in sitting or standing yea in walking home he never pants for Breath if he doth not climb As oft as he is refreshed with a larger Supper he pants for Breath in the night his Breast is drawn together and his Wind-pipe snorts with a noise as it were continually and his Weasand would ring or tingle with Spittle All which things are presently allayed by sitting and he doth far more easily spit out some Phlegms by reaching which being dispatched he layes down backwards again But a sparing Supper as it gives rest to his Stomack so also peace to his Lungs But he perceiveth that this his Asthma hath its Nest and primitive Fountain in the middle space between the Mouth of his Stomach and Navil I thus draw out these things at Length whereby the seeds of an Asthma may be the more manifest For truly as well in the Consul Citizen and Hunter as in the Canonist the Asthma stands in a Poysonous seed which hath gotten the Spirit of some Bowel for its Root and Inn. But the property of that Seed is to contract the pores of the Lungs whereby it gives passage for Breath into the Breast The necessity of which constriction doth presently appear in the Teeth and Gums For it affecteth the whole Body because it is dispersed into the Common Archeus the Instrument to the whole Body For therefore do the Reins suck the Urine the Belly is loosened the Bowels do rumble Sanguification or Bloud-making Stumbles the Heart beats and at length the Lungs is contracted or drawn together even no otherwise than as the Cod under a desire of wantonizing But the nest of the Asthma is in the Duumvirate of which I shall treat in a particular Treatise to wit from whence the Government of the whole Body dependeth For otherwise the evil doth not sit immediately in the inflowing Spirit the which indeed should be finished by one only Fit for unless it had obtained a stable Root within it should not repeat it self as neither should it persevere Then in the next place the Character of the evil which so long as it sleepeth in a stable part it doth not seem that it can elle where be established than from whence the Government of the Body doth depend and so also it hath assumed the Prerogative of the heart The Asthma therefore in this is like to the Falling-evil the which although it doth not strike the mind doth not contract the Sinews or stir up swoonings yet it sleepeth in some Seat whence at length it defiling the Archeus with a certain contagion if it doth not contract the Sinews yet at least wise it doth the Lungs Indeed it hath a singular respect unto that Bowel yea although it may seem with the like speed to contract the Veins Kidneys and Liver yet there is not so manifest a hurting of these as is felt in Choaking All which things are as yet more cleerly manifest in the Citizen and old man of Sixty years of age For this reteined from his Infancy a Spleen ill affected and also Fits of the falling-Sickness else his Lungs were free enough But the other through the Agony or Passion of shame of Anger Revenge and the Modesty of commanding Reason sheweth that the Bowel in him was hurt wherein the first Motions of conceptions are enfolded We may lawfully therefore by a Phylosophical Liberty name an Asthma the falling-Sickness of the Lungs Indeed its Nest is in the Duumvirate it is also a Disease of the whole Body as it shakes all the Members before the Fit and so also sore shaketh the Spirit the ruler of the whole body notwithstanding it Fructifes in the Floor or Region of the Breast and singularly respecteth the Lungs themselves as it were the scope proper Object of its property That falling-Sickness of the Lungs is made by a Poyson which by its property doth affect the Lungs no otherwise than as a Cantarides doth the Instruments of the Urme There is indeed a certain Poyson which strikes the Head and whole man into an Epilepsie or falling-Sickness and much more insolently and wondrously than that it should strain the Lungs yet the rareness or slenderness of its affect durst not compel unto the Position or State of any Epilepsie when as notwithstanding in the mean time whatsoever cures an Epileptical man of Ripe years doth also cure an Asthmatical one Also I have seen a Poyson to have arisen out of the Womb which would strain nothing but the Ocsand so as that a Famous Matron could scarce swallow any thing for three Months I came unto her I knew her Malady and presently the Lord healed her For by reason of Leanness and Hunger she was molested with a continual falling-Sickness and for 37. dayes she had one only Stoole to the bigness of an Acorn In the Consul
Meats Neither is the membrans of the Stomack so passable that it doth admit of another utterance or passage besides the Throat and the Pylorus for Belching and breaking Wind the which notwithstanding are far more thin than vapours Why therefore the Legs being moved by ascending should so many Smoakinesses be made which do reach the Heart Do require a difficulty of Breathing And the which else by a more swift steep motion do not arise For if they by chance are formed in the veins and arteries or without the same yet it do not as yet from thence appear why a slower ascent and motion may bring forth more Smoaks in the vessels than a swift motion of the same Muscles in descending But if the aforesaid Smoaks be bred without the Vessels now besides the absurdity before rehearsed likewise by what way shall Smoakinesses so suddenly proceed from thence unto the Heart and Lungs Seeing otherwise if one that is not Asthmatical swiftly running should have any Smoaks they should together with the sweat sooner exhale out thorow the skin than they should desire the inward parts by a retrograde motion Wherefore there is another cause for the sake whereof the Breast is strained the heart beateth the jaws wax dry although the Mouth being shut they do breath with difficulty only through the Nostrils but the Tongue is froathy about the Teeth and the Cheek do fall indeed by the same cause all that are in good health in their Lungs are distinguished and are free from every Cough and Asthma one whereof nevertheless is preferred before the other in a wise and longer running without difficulty of breathing Therefore our man of sixty years old doth more difficulty climbe Hâ—lly places and after meat most difficulty and as oft â—he pants for breath his knees wax feeble Shall therefore meat and Drink make Smoaks whereby the strength of the Knees doth decay If this be true But then that shall happen also to those that are not Asthmatical who notwithstanding having taken no Meat are the stronger But they will say the Stomack being filled a vacuum or emptiness is diminished in the Breast Rightly spoken But this is to have gone back from a Smoak and to have fled unto the anguishs of place Why therefore likwise do not all breath with difficulty after Meat in a modeeate a scending if the region of the breast be equally diminished in all after meat is taken Is perhaps the region of the Breast extended by descending or walking in a plain A reason indeed is given of a less breathing after Meat than before but it squares not to the question to wit why in climbing with a mean Pace any one doth pant for Breath who by any the more fwift motion through a plain way is not short-winded But inasmuch as that doth more vex one after Meat it is rightly argued from an unequal straightness of place but the Lungs are not pressed together by a Stomack moderately filled that they may thereby become difficult in breathing For else why after making water and going to stool also after breaking Winds is this man of sixty years old equally panting for breath and short-winded in a climbing motion Indeed being fasting and more strongly after feeding he feels in moving upwards as it were a girdle in his Ribs a beating pulse and interruptingly happening on him But nevertheless he breaths in a long breath at pleasure without hinderance that is he hath his Lungs open and free although breathing with difficulty and his spittings are freequent and froathy but throughout all a cold season much Spitting with expulsion by reaching most like unto Gumme Dragon dissolued but besides he Coughs very Seldome Truly as I have not had any thing as to cleernesses for the knowledge of diseases from predecessours I at first considered that all Asthmatical persons do undergo some vice of the Lungs an external obtructer being there grown together or an internal one to wit which is co-thickned in the outward Mouths of the rough artery whereby they breath into the breast But forthwith neither of them pleased me because the Asthma doth suddenly invade some persons and forsakes theâ— without any notable Spitting Also the aforesaid man of sixty years old doth swiftly and freely draw a long Breath without hinderance Yea he sitting and that in the Smoak doth no less freely Breath than indeed any healthy Person I considered therefore whether perhaps the Muscles of the Legs being the more deeply contracted and elevated by ascending and the which otherwise walking in a plain or steep ground do as it were hang down the belly of the Muscle being in the mean time Globy in ascending and pressing its artery together might contain a nearer cause of difficult breathing Do therefore in this motion the Muscles hinder the Arteries and also the Pulse of the same by successive turns that hence the ascending may be with a more difficult Breathing Next I considered whether in ascending the breath be a little longer retained than otherwise in a plain or steep Motion Indeed every one doth more press his breath together while he intends to moove any thing the more strongly Thirdly I considered that in ascending the breath is interrupted almost at every pace no otherwise than at if any one should at every pace say Ha Ha whereas otherwise in a steep or plain motion there is one only and continual Ha not interrupted by rest I doubted also whether the Lungs do labour with a passion of its own and the Bowel be in a climbing motion intent not to expel smoakinesses how great a conceived errour soever it may overcome I also beheld or considered that any one doth more easily walk seven hours space than stand five Because in standing the Muscle of both Knee-pans is continually bent on both sides which in going rejoyceth in a coursary rest But he that goeth doth more difficultly breath than he that standeth because many Muscles do successively labour in going but in standing although they are bent yet they are not moved Whence I learned that a cheerful motion of many Muscles doth make one to breath the more difficultly Lastly although every one of these considerations should have some weight in them yet all being connexed in one they could not yet satisfie the question proposed To wit why a slower ascending motion doth cause difficulty of breathing but not a swifter descending one Wherefore I have added to these things that in a moving upwards how slow soever the straight Muscles of the neather belly do stretch themselves that they suffrnot the belly to be sufficiently lifted up Truly the Breast and Ribs are indeed in difficult Breathing more largly stretched out but as I have taught concerning Catarrhs the motion of the Ribs is not primary and principal for Breathing but only an asistant while the principal one is not sufficient Therefore the Belly not being sufficiently extended a difficulty of Breathing is presently hastened to wit it being willing to
recompence the fore-going errours and defect Nevertheless although it may be lawful from the aforesaid considerations to prove a greater necessity of difficult Breathing yet at leastwise they do nothing convince why there is a straightned Breathing in our Man of sixty Years old but otherwise in a healthy person not any at all And seeing in the Man of sixty Years old the Lungs do want obstruction even as is manifest from the signs supposed it must needs be also that his defect be fetched from elsewhere especially seeing he feels in his Abdomen or lower Belly the place of his Stomack pressings together the causes of his Asthma Therefore his Asthma is from the Spleen being ill affected and that from the Duumvirate and the cause is stirred up by an ascending motion otherwise sleeping by reason of the considerations above which by the action of government doth otherwise strain a weak Lungs by aspect only no otherwise than as was declared concerning a dry Asthma whither a lurking Falling-sickness the pain of the Spleen after riding the sore shaking of the whole Body in riding c. do tend Moreover that I may give the more safe judgment whether the Lungs did labour by a passion of its own or indeed by a secondary passion I busily enquired whether he felt carnal copulation troublesome unto him and he confessed to me that before the Asthma was manifested Venus had hurt him that after the flesh lyact he felt cold in his Breast a looseness in his Muscles and fainting threatned unto him But involuntary pollutions that he experienced no such thing At length in his old age presently after a seldome carnal act that he perceived a snorter of Phlegms in his rough Artery or else silence Whence I certainly conjectured that seeing from an Infant he had retained his Spleen troubled by a Quartane-ague and falling-sickness and that the Milt is the nest of carnal Lust because in the case proposed the Duumvirate strikes the Lungs with a right Line especially being prostrated by an unequal strength that the provoking and radical cause of his Asthma was in the Spleen yet so as that the Lungs doth not altogether want blame although it labour not with the first or chief affect of the Asthma For it sufficeth that it is trodden down by an unequal strength that the Duumvitate may exercise on it its own diseasie Tyranny For if the Lungs should labour with an Asthma from a primary or first affect or moving they should continually pant for Breath and breath forth a difficult air Indeed a thin or slender poyson layes hid in the Duumvirate which is the cause of this dry Asthma ordinarily fast a sleep in it self nor awakened but by too much motion and so in climbing sooner than in descending for the considerations of the oblique Muscles of the bottom of the Belly afore-touched Neither doth that poyson strike the Heart and Lungs materially in manner of an exhalation vapour or Smoakiness but by the action of Government And seeing the Heart doth beat the pulse is inordinate and also a great and frequent panting for Breath is desired and the place between the Navil and mouth of the Stomack is vexed from one only cause stirred up and by one only motion and after a like manner it becomes undoubted that there is one only Poyson which may affect the vital power of the Heart and Lungs Then also he is vexed more grievously manifestly and cruelly every Year because an unacceptable guest abiding in the Spleen doth daily through old age become more troublesom And these things I have more strongly concluded with my self because that Asthmatical Man doth complain that for many Years his left hand was now and then astonied or stupified and that he was cold in the Palm or hollow of his Hand under the auricular or ear vein and likewise that his left shoulder did greatly pain him although laden with a light habite if he walketh the farther although but modestly For I have observed that all Splenetick persons when the Spleen begins by reason of old age to fail of its office do difficultly breath This therefore is sufficient to be spoken concerning the Asthma of the Man of sixty Years of of age one thing only I will here note to wit that his left hand in the length of the palm doth pain him through cold piercing it and likewise that his fingers are now and then benummed from the discommodities of his Spleen that that is made by the action of Government But if the Schools do command that that comes to pass by reason of blind vapours at leastwise let them strew the way whereby they may go thitherto The archer therefore of this Asthma is in the Duumvirate but his mark is the Lungs Therefore there is a two-fold Asthma a moist and a dry one That indeed hath found its name from a plenteous spitting by reaching and for the most part is made by the proper vice of the Lungs and so is continual and doth more trouble one at seasons the cold and the moist in old age weakness and things a-kin to Death But a dry Asthma is for the most part interrupted And even as it tumultuously sore shaketh the whole Body even the Teeth with a confusion of the vital Spirits it must needs be the Falling-sickness of the Lungs wherein the Lungs alone suffereth a constraining or convulsion of it self because it causeth a straining together of the Pores thereof For in this Asthma the whole Archeus is defiled in its root some part to wit the Womb or Spleen c. doth first affect the inbred Spirit of the Lungs by the action of government And therefore from an invisible and sudden immaterial storm the whole Body is sore shaken and is again suddenly restored to an unhoped for health In vain therefore are openings of the pores hitherto unknown attempted in a dry Asthma and in vain are many and easie expectoratings because they are cloakative and vain helps as many as are intent on products or effects indeed vain are the Remedies which are wont to be administred in Coughs seeing the Cough doth most far differ from a dry Asthma But a moist Asthma although it for the most part produceth the Cough that it may expectorate the produced Snivelliness yet it is severed from the Cough in the whole particular kind because it is wont to be bred from many causes For it hath either a mattery imposthume or some secret phlegm obstructing in the very bowel it self or an imprinted mark of some cold or some other injury from whence it may bring forth many muckinesses or snivels and corrupt its proper nourishment Oft-times also those muckinesses are stirred up not so much from the malady of the Bowe◠as from the weakness of the wandring keeper Although this kind of vice 〈…〉 rather bring forth a Cough than an Asthma yet they do easily happen or agree together for the unequal strength of the Lungs and obstruction thereof The
which is the first and easiest sequestration of Heterogeneal things There are not a few things also which it fixeth before they were volatile or on the contrary And then among some volatile things it separates odoriferous things from things not odoriferous which distinction is falsly reckoned of the pure from the impure For truly the action of the fire is to burn and therefore it burns as well the pure as the impure And then a third separation is made by digestions and proper ferments as the parts which do stick fast with a stubborn continuity do depart from each other through a discord of the ferment For so Bodies do in the fulness of their last life voluntatily decay and entertained faculties do come to light Moreover by boyling and melting the parts formerly ruled by one rein do now act on each other under which degree they attain other virtues Therefore Chymistry produceth those things which else should never be made or had in Nature and that not onely in separated volatiles but also in things residing and the which residues are therefore calcined But if by a co-mingling and co-fermenting of the composed Body new faculties do arise that very thing is more beholdable in Alchymical things not only because Art doth wholly imitate Nature in all her operations but also in a peculiar efficacy of a moist influx and melting which do perform various operations under the fire and change the Nature For so the spirit of Salt-peter doth elevate a moist Sulphur and embrination or sharp waterishness of Vitriol from whence are poysonous waters the Spirits of both which notwithstanding being separated were fit for Healing and grateful to the Stomack In the last place Chymistry doth bring up some more milde things unto a degree as poysons may be made of Honey Manna c. most things how violent soever they are do also wax milde under the Fire So that fixed Alcalies is they are made volatile do equalize the powers of great Medicines Because by the virtue of Incision Resolving and Cleansing they being brought even unto the entry of the Fourth Digestion do fundamentally take away the toughnesse of things coagulated in the Vessels For Chymistry doth so resolve the most hard and compacted things that they being not onely forgetful of their former curdling and constancy against the Fire do retire into a tameable juyce and being occult are made manifest but moreover they become social unto us Yea it doth not onely so prepare things themselves but it also effecteth means whereby Bodies may be opened For so coagulated things do depart into the Family of resolved things fixed things are changed into volatile and on the contrary crude things are ripened and things Heterogeneal or of diversity of kind are divided into their Classes's or Ranks In the next place drowsie or sleepie things do attain degrees of Virtues and many new things spring up which have remained unknown in the Schooles of the Gentiles Finally and finally Chymistry as for its perfection doth prepare an universal Solver whereby all things do return into their first Being and do afford their native endowments the original blemishes of Bodies are cleansed and that their inhumane cruelty being forsaken there is opportunity for them to obtain great and undeclarable Virtues But how much purity the Understanding may attain under this Work the Adeptist hath onely known Ah I wish the Bottle once possessed by me had not been taken away But God hath known why he hath given to the Goat so short a Taile Let his Name be exalted throughout Ages and let the alone sanctifying Will of him onely be done CHAP. LXI The Preface 1. The Authors intention 2. The Authors excuse 3. The event is suspected from Divine Ordination 4. A wish of the Author 5. A reason of doubting of the fallacy of the Devil 6. How the Author knew that he was not deceived 7. A Reason teaching that this Talent is of God 8. The judgement of quick-sighted men 9. The whole light of Healing hath appeared in one only moment 10. What the Author hath conjectured from thence 11. Why the Author hath written sharply against the Chaires 12. The event is intellectually foreseen 13. Fevers are frequently stirred up the occasional cause being absent 14. A Relation of terms seeing it is not a Being it doth not cause a Being in act To what end the dissection of a man of sixty years old was re-minded in his sleep I Have deliberated in the good pleasure of God to make manifest that before the world and especially in the Schools the causes of Diseases the knowledge of their essences and their Remedy have been hitherto hidden To wit that the essence of Diseases have not yet been pierced by so many Ages and Judgements of men Truly I have earnestly and notably grieved that this Ignorance of Ages past and of the present Age is true and so that it ought to be discovered by me an unprofitable old Man It hath seriously grieven me that they have been careless as well for their own life as for the life of their Neighbours and that Physitians should seem to have studied only for gain but that such was the ordination of God that as long as the Schools did adhere to Paganim Doctrines they should also persevere in the aforesaid darkness until at length in the fulness of times there should be one who should open the essence and thingliness of Diseases unto his Neighbours and that indeed before the very Chaires of Medicine to wit that as it were in a Fountain the errors of Heathenism being driven away the Truth may hereafter shine and as many as had not shut their eyes through obstinacy may repent Truly I propose to the whole World and to our Posterity a matter new and plainly to be admired And ah I wish that I alone who do first make manifest these things may therefore contract on my self and sustain the reproaches nor that the life and health of my Neighbour may suffer For I had willingly been silent neither had I divulged my Talent but that I knew this one only Talent to have been given me for the life of my Neighbour And while I do as yet contemplate with my self of the greatness of the thing in the succession of so many Ages and their fatal ignorance and the continued sluggishness of Body or negligence in a thing I say of so great moment as is the life of Man I cannot but many times for amazement look back repose my quill and doubt of my own fallacy of rashness To wit that in the Universities themselves wherein fresh the more fervent wits and those not yet defiled with gain are exercised a Disease is as yet altogether unknown to wit the adequate or suitable object of the Medicinal faculty the object I say of so many readings established by Princes Surely I had wholly doubted of my own rashness unless he who giveth such a Talent were the dispenser of the same within and
did give a cleerness beyond all demonstration and fear or error Otherwise it had been hard for me to perswade my self and believe unless I being constrained within by the authority and security of a greater Title ought boldly to object my self against the censures of all For what I teach will be at first incredible among quick-sighted men if they shall place me at the Tribunal of so many Ages who willingly confess my self unfit to reach unto so great a top of light unless expert men do the more lively contemplate with me of the wonted super-abounding of the Divine Majesty For no man shall the more cleerly know the honour of God in this case and the present gift to come freely from the Father of Lights unless in my adjected smalness and ignorance they do see it to be the accustomed path of God that he reveals unto little ones that which he hath ordinarily denyed unto the greater of the World To wit by reason of one fault because they all have by a continued error even sunk themselves into the Precepts of Pagans For quick-sighted men will from hence discern first of all that they must not go against me as against a man Then in the next place they will weigh in their own jugdement the Reasons of the Schools drawn out of my bosom Whence at length they themselves being as it were led by the Principles and Theoremes of nature will voluntarily hasten unto far more sublime and famous Beginnings of healing whither the tenderness of my judgement could not ascend For truly I admonish and exhort the wise men of this World that the errors and ignorances of Physitians have not opened themselves to me by little and little and by degrees entred into my Soul so as that I have conceived or meditated of one thing before another To wit that I at first considered the Schools to be deceived about the congress tempering and complexions of Elementary mixtures and diseasie distempers but that from thence I was tossed or tumbled about the errors of Catarrhs and afterwards in the next place that I had sought for the roots causes and essential thingliness of Diseases and Remedies Indeed none of these For if one thing had been made known unto me before another I had thought that all this progress had been the inductions or inferences of reason and imagination subject to errors and fallacies But after that one only flash or enlightning of light had overshadowed the whole intellectual conceit to wit of the ignorance of Physitians as well in the knowledge of causes Diseases as of Remedies and applications at once I undoubtedly knew that this Talent was given to me for the profits of my Neighbours and therefore that it was to be handed forth to the Chairs from whom correction is much desired and expected and to be seriously under the penalty of the more grievous punishment profered unto them When as therefore I had now determined to demonstrate that the Essence of Diseases by their intimate and proper roots was not yet known there was a night before the fourth hour in the morning the ninth of the sixth Month called August and it seemed to me that as from the crowing of the Cock dreams are sometimes formed I heard from the fore-conceived care of writing that I should call to mind the Anatomy whereof a little after I shall make mention and when I seemed admonishingly to have understood these things I doubted being half awaked which way that dissection of the dead carcass might touch or concern the Treatise which I had determined to write touching the essence of Diseases Therefore I being without care dreamed that I saw a man externally big sitting at my Table and eating fresh Salmon in the sauce of Vinegar and Pepper and so greedily that as if he would fill himself thereby for in his own Country fresh Salmon was not found and I saw that two dayes after about the evening a small Ague took hold of him and that his teeth did shake and from thenceforth that it kept the figure or resemblance of a Tertian That is on the fourth day from the digestion of that meat So that nothing of its remainder had putrified and much less that that had remained which might provoke the Aguish tumult at set intervals For that which commonly sounds is that an Elementary distemperature was left which should prepare the diseasie impression But that thing besides the absurdities of distemperatures and complexions by me elsewhere demonstrated seemeth to signifie a meer Ens rationis or Being of Reason Because the thing imprinting and imprinted are indeed things in act and relative terms but the impression it self seeing it is nothing but a relation resulting from a co-fitting of the terms it can contain only the room of a Being of Reason Wherefore at least wise the impression or distemperature cannot remain a surviver where the thing distempering or imprinting it self hath ceased to be and by consequence hath ceased to hurt It must needs be therefore that the thing imprinting it self had produced a hurtful quality out of it self and had deposed it as it were its product on the subject of impression And that thing seeing it was made in an Organ which was the partaker of life that product likewise ought to be by all means and immediately sunk or entertained within the bosom of life it self and the rather if it ought to return at set periods and to interrupt the silent rest of health yea if by acting in a hostile manner it ought after some sort to shew forth signs of the life disturbed Even so that I have by this dream the more perfectly confirmed the essential thingliness of Diseases For even as these things do not happen beneath and without the life so the life it self is the very impulsive cause after that it is once disturbed in its place peace or rest Behold on the same day after the aforesaid Dream a Senator whom I had not seen for many years before comes as a guest unto my table and seeing it was the Vigil or Eve of S. Laurence it happened also that a fresh Salmon boyled was set on the Board and he eat no otherwise than as I had seen in my sleep Yea that two days after he slid into a Tertian Ague But the dissected dead Carcass whereof I had received admonition hath respect unto the same ends For truly a man of sixty years old had from the entrance of his age lived in a tender health and through occasion of a light errour was easily feverish whom sudden death afterwards at length took away and I being willing narrowly to search whether I could find the Cause of his Feverish aptness in the places wherein the lamented that he was pained as oft as he had the Feaver Indeed it was the Hypocondrial in both his sides as well where the Liver as where the Spleen are kept But there was not the least thing about these parts to be seen with
that the Liver being cooled doth afterwards generate the more cold Blood for all Blood being deprived of vital spirit naturally waxeth cold because it is a dead carcase But that a more cold Liver doth melt fleshes into a Dropsical water that can be founded upon no reason 18. The Schooles cannot deny but that a Dropsie is sometimes solved by the Kidneys But there is no reason why the Reines do stubornly close themselves even untill Death because the Liver was more cold than was meet Let these arguments onely as yet suffice the Humourists which are distempered with cold that the Liver may be from a mortal offence Now I will over-add somethings concerning the occasional Cause I will therefore resume the fact of our Treasurer who shewed nothing memorable in this dissection beside Blood out-hunted and hardned in his Kidney to be the occasional Cause of his Dropsie and Death yet while the Stone plentifully stopping the Kidney doth not produce a Dropsie yea although the whole Kidney shall wax brawnie or hard with little Stones and shall reserve nothing of its substance besides skin Therefore the obstruction of the Kidney as such is not the occasional cause of Dropsie But the out-chased venal Blood For so the Woman of Sixty years old having dashed her self against a corner of the Table contracted a Dropsie So those that are wounded in their Abdomen and badly Cured do become Hydropical So out-chased venal Blood lighting and laying on the Menynx or Coate of the Brain doth presently render the countenance swollen with a Dropsie So at length great gripings of the Guts do pour forth Blood out of the Veins into the space bordering on the hollow bending Bowel So those that have the Bloodie-flux And so Drinkers do enter into a Dropsie as something of blood is co-heaped in the hollow Bought of the Bowel But this thing I learned in a Fracture of the Scull and in a Dropsie of the Lungs For there the Blood making oftimes a stop blows up the whole Head and Face as it were with a Dropsie But here I have observed the Blood to have consisted or remained about the conduit of the arterial Vein for neither doth the venal blood degenerate in the form of corrupt Pus unless it be cocted in the hollowness of the Flesh but without the Flesh in a free place the Blood presently waxeth clottie and straight way after it being made more dry is hardened and presently conceives a Poysonous ferment Whence the Archeus stirs up a Dropsie Indeed our Treasurer hath taught me that the blood being hunted out and become clotty causeth a Dropsie of the Belly and besides that the Kidney is an Adequate or suitabl Aertificer Causer Executer and Judge or Arbitratour of a true Dropsie That thing hath confirmed it to me because at the time of a Dropsie the Kidney scarce makes Urine and on the other hand because the Kidney being excited to restore the Urine himself doth empty the whole Dropsie out of the Belly Wherefore also that the water is brought back into the Abdomen by the arbitration of the Kidney Vain therefore is the devise of Paracelsus that the Star Zedo is the one only and singular Architector of the Dropsie For the cause is in our innermost parts and in the very Beginnings of Life but not to be so far fetched and Cured For the Dropsie is not the workmanship of the Stars neither is there such an ordination of the Stars neither is that of concernment although Mercurie being seperated dead from its Vein doth truly and perfectly cure the threefold Dropsie For Mercurie is an Analogical and feigned Name neither doth it denote a Star but a running Mettal For what doth a Name that is Metaphorically feigned belong unto the feigned Star of Zedo For metallick Mercury is neither a Star nor kills a Star nor hinders its operation nor dis-joynes the conjunction of a Star with us if there were any For the Stars are the occasions of Meteors but of Diseases occasions onely by accident For primarily they are the Causes of times or seasons and of the Blas of a Meteor but secondarily and by accident they disturbe our Bodies proyoke Diseases or ripen the occasional matter But Causes by accident do not respect Cures but fore-cautions especially where Causes per se or by themselves do operate with or in us by a proper motion and appointment of their own seeds For indeed the left Kidney of the Treasurer is stuffed or condensed with the more dry Blood the left part of his Abdomen is extended and presently waxeth hard the right part being safe His Leg also presently swels and afterwards his Thigh on his left side and therefore the extension of his Belly is extended not by reason of the quantity of water onely but his Membranes are extended from the Disease it self no otherwise than as the Artery under a hard pulse But the Membranes are extended and contracted also before a plenty of water by the same workman which begets the Dropsie Indeed it contracts all the pores of the Membrane that they cannot transmit or send the Wind or Liquor thorow them when as otherwise in those that are alive that is healthy the whole Body is perspirable and conspirable or inspirable The Treasurer therefore first of all makes a little water the Dropsie straightway invades him by degrees and begins on his left Side And therefore presently after its Beginning his left Leg is besieged by an Oedema and afterwards his whole Body becomes swollen But why doth not his right Kidney draw the Urine nor transmit it the which otherwise happens when but one Kidney is besieged by the Disease of the Stone For therefore there is a double Kidney by Nature and a single Spleen or Milt that one may relieve another in their troubles and banishments of an Excrement Yea and from hence it is sufficiently manifest that the Spleen is not a sink nor emunctory Therefore in the Blood being chased out of the Veins deteined and condensed there is an exciting ferment such as is wanting to the Stone I will therefore declare the whole order of the matter so far as my Observation hath taught me For the Liquor Latex unknown to the Schooles as long as it is carried with the Blood in the Veins or to the Glandules it enjoyes a common life neither doth it obey the rules of water-drawing Organs But it knowes not upwards and downwards because it hath it not But it being once rejected out of the fellowship of Life now it undergoes the nature of an Excrement and hastens downwards as being burthened with its own weight Therefore the Latex is of a vile esteem And therefore as oft as every Bowel is ill affected it presently neglects the Latex and excludes it from the company of its Venal Blood and findes business enough for it self at home for its own defence The Latex therefore being once divorced elsewhere and spoiled of the society of Life doth presently receive
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
penury of distribulation and perceiving the unequality of injustice becomes a complainer and seditious as it were against a step-mother The Idea's of which passion or impatience seeing it is not meet to send else where he being crabbish retorts on himself and brings forth the effects of sorrow in his own Digestions Therefore the very seminal Beginnings themselves of Diseases are drawn out for diverse ends although they glisten in one only immediate subject of inherency because they are received after the manner of the reciever That is they do sustain a dis-formity or disagreement in their mansions through the diversity of the humane Body and parts And moreover the Archeus himself according to the diversity of his motions doth stir up a various houshold-stuff of Symptoms The Spirit saith Hippocrates hath made three motions in us within without and into a circuit and he moveth and transchangeth all things with himself even while he is orderly But in his irregularity whatsoever he shall perform he shall also utter memorable effects of his disorder CHAP. LXXI The birth or original of a Diseasie Image 1. A description of a Disease by a numbring up of things denied 2. What a Disease is 3. The vain thought of Physitians concerning a Disease 4. The Inne of Life belongs to a Disease 5. The force of a Diseasie Idea is proved by Vegetables 6. By the Blas of meteours 7. The Blas of an Archeal Idea in us is proved from the Premises 8. The ordinary seat of Diseases 9. The Images of perturbations are cited 10. From a mental Non-being is made this something 11. A twofold Diseasifying Archeal Idea 12. Idea's brought unto the venal Blood 13. The rule of right in healing 14. Why the Author keeps the names of the Antients 15. A probative or proofe-ful Idea is framed in the Archeus alone I Have already at large described an unheard of Doctrine of a Diseasie Being premised by me That Physitians may learn to look into a Disease from the fountain and may desist from being seduced by Paganish Opinions Wherefore a Disease is not a certain distemperature of elementary qualities or a victorie proceeding from the continual strife of these even as hitherto the Galenists have dreamed neither likewise is a Disease one of the four feigned Humours exceeding its natural temperature or mixture and matched to the four Elements Neither at length is a Disease a certain degenerate matter awakened by an impression of the Elements But every excrementitious matter is either a naked matter preceding a Disease and therefore an occasional Cause of a Disease or it is the product of a Disease resulting from the errour of the parts and so a certain latter effect of a Disease although afterwards it may occasionally stir up another Disease or may nourish or increase another antecedent Cause Nor lastly is a Disease a hurtful quality budding from the poyson or contagion of another and that a hurtful matter Notwithstanding such offences as those do only accuse its presence but not the effect depending only occasionally thereupon A Disease therefore is a certain Being bred after that a certain hurtful strange power hath violated the vital Beginning and hath pierced the faculty hereof and by piercing hath stirred up the Archeus unto Indignation Fury Fear c. To wit the anguish and troubles of which perturbations do by imagining stir up an Idea co-like unto themselves and a due Image Indeed that Image is readily stamped expressed and sealed in the Archeus and being cloathed with him a Disease doth presently enter on the stage being indeed composed of an Archeal Body and an efficient Idea For the Archeus produceth a dammage unto himself the which when he hath once admitted he straightway also afterwards yields flees or is alienated or dethroned or defiled through the importunity thereof and is constrained to undergo a strange government and domestically to sustain a civil War raised up on himself indeed such a strange Image is materially imprinted and arising out of the Archeus A true Diseasie Being I say which is called a Disease For although Physitians are only busied about the dissolution cleansing away and expulsion of the hurtful occasional matter yet our thought is not able to vary the Essence of a Disease To wit that because a Physitian labours in the banishment of the occasional hurtful matter therefore also that a Disease ought to be that which that deceived Physitian doth in a rash order intend to expel For a Disease is effentially that which it is whether the Physitian be absent or present For neither doth a Physitian in the begining more determine or limit a Disease than the Disease doth terminate it self because it is that which doth not accommodate it self unto the thought or esteem of others but doth dayly deride the same Wherefore as health consisteth in a sound Life so doth a Disease in the very Life it self being hurt but Life doth only and immediately subsist in the seat of the Soul but the Soul doth not operate out of it self unless by virtue of its official Organ which is the vital air of the Archeus And therefore it is a wonder that it hath hitherto been unknown that a Disease sits immediately in the same vital inne where the Life enjoys it self of which more largely hereafter for hateful persons will scarce believe that every power of sublunary things is stirred up and contained in Idea's But that thing I have already before sharply touched at by the way yet it shall profit to have it more strongly bound or confirmed For we have known and believe by Faith that a power is given to Herbs of propagating their like But that proprietary faculty is a real Being actually existing which is alwayes and successively manifested in the seed neither is that faculty a certain accidental power or naked quality but it is a seminal virtue whereby the Plant which is the Parent decyphers an Idea in his own seed the container of figure and properties according to which it will stir up delineate the seed it self and make the Plant its Daughter to grow For in seeds a manifest Image is known skilful of things to be acted for a new propagation In like manner the Sea doth not cause but suffer horrid tempests which the Wind doth efficiently stir up and truly the Wind is not moved by it self and of its own free accord But by an invisible influence of the Stars according to that saying The Stars shall be unto you for signs times or seasons dayes and years for so great a storm of the primary Elements or Air and Water breaks forth from a Being which is like unto Light But the Blas of the Elements is not stirred up from the meer Light of the Stars For although the Light of the Stars be incorporeal and immaterial yet it is not a certain simple Light but that which besides the property of a solitary Light which is only of enlightning hath a motive Blas in it self
Spirit far from the Mouth as that their dissolutions by Vegetable are difficult they promise full Hospitals wherein the continual mournings or waylings of the unfortunate Sick do dolefully sound Wherefore from hence also every one doth almost dayly behold in his own House a stubborn and uncessant Disease amongst those of his Family and Physitians are made the Comedy of stages because they have scarce done any thing worthy of thanks For some of them confess their own and their Authors weaknesses and many do unwillingly flee unto Chymical unknown Remedies most of them abounding with their adultery and ravishment they fly back to Books not likewise to Furnaces for their unexperiences do promise most ample Fruits and they boast of all illegitimate and ridiculous Remedies The which while University Men do not understand and on the other side they do behold their withered Galen so destitute they as full of doubt flee over unto Cauteries sharpish Fountains and Baths Alas for grief what an unhappiness to the Sick and a vain refuge to themselves hath so great a stumbling of darkness in the Schools produced I will therefore shew that the text and that great boasted of virtue doth by the name of Stones understand all Minerals wholly and mettals the Marrow of these before the rest Because they are those things which do scarce shew themselves in any other Image than that of small Stones or great Stones For indeed this is the most rich and constant off-spring and chief treasure of Nature So that therein the conjunctions of the Stars are laid up or hidden and moreover in speaking properly and out of the profound Idiotisme of the Gentiles the Stars do excel or are chief over Meteours only causally but Mettals in their Excellencies or Remedies do far exceed the Stars For truly I have taught according to the text of the holy Scriptures That the Stars are not unto us for Causes but only for Signs Seasons Dayes and Years Neither is it lawful for Man to extend the Offices of the Stars any further Wherefore I have never in my desire married the number of the Stars unto the wandring Stars or Planets as neither have I enclosed both their Offices and Dignities in a like equality or resemblance For as they are at a far distance from each other so also they have unlike Offices and ends of Offices divided from each other But this one thing I willingly admit of to wit that Mettals do exceed Plants and Minerals in healing by long stades or distances And therefore that Mettals are certain clear or shining glasses not indeed by reason of their brightness but rather because that as oft as their virtues are opened and set at liberty they do act by an endowed light and a vital co-touching Mettals therefore do operate after the manner attributed to the Stars to wit by an Aspect and the touching of an alterative Blas which things will by handicraft-operation more clearly appear For Mettals themselves are Glasses the most excellent off-spring I say of the inferiour Globe to wit upon which the whole central virtue hath for some Ages before prodigally poured forth its treasure that it might most rightly espouse this liquor of the Earth this duggy nourishment and this off-spring of divine providence unto the ends which the weakness of Nature did require Therefore the Glasses of Gold Silver Mercury Lead Copper Iron and Tin and the fire-stones of these are not yet shut up or closed c. But I call those shining Glasses which have such a force of piercing and enlightning the Archeus from his errours furies and defects that they restore him into a brightness through the tincture of an endowed perfection For although these Minerals are not for food or of the condition of the Body of Man Yet they have the internal faculty of a Glass and a Power most chiefly efficacious co-touching with or very near to the Archeus of man being entire and appeased such as was the Archeus before the mind was conceived the which mind indeed was afterwards estranged from its right path after that the sensitive Soul wherein the mind sits drew the government of the Body on it self the which indeed was wholly frail and brutal in it self But in shining Glasses for a distinction to wit of Vegetables which do not shine a certain figure of our former immortality hath as yet remained resident and in this respect those Glasses are not only communicated but are willingly received by our Archeus Yea and which more is the restauration of the Archeus should the longer continue if the Glasses themselves were not presently banished which thing is manifest in the preparation of Copper Iron c. These things concerning the Tree of Life I do prosecute in the Book of long Life that there may be a stable Remedy transchangeable into mans Nature to be taken from ones childhood especially as long as the growing faculty doth flourish This Remedy I say doth exceed the force of a shining Glass for long Life but not likewise for a healthy Life Furthermore whatsoever is further to be spoken concerning Stones that was either so far as they do partake of a certain Metallick Sulphurous Tincture or of a Mineral Salt But as a mineral Being is neither for food nor nourishment neither could it be Vital or for Life but before that I shall pass over unto Arcanums which is called the great virtue of Stones in this place surely it is profitable to enter into the very seat of the Body and inwardly to view how much any Remedy can there operate To which end that which I have already said above comes first in our way To wit that the Stomack doth not coct any thing but as from a single aime it doth from thence at length frame a nourishment for its whole Body and for that very cause it hath an intention to make thereof a nourishable Liquor to wit venal Blood and afterwards a spermatick Humour fit for the nourishing of the chief constituting parts So that it may be turned into a substance fit for the nourishment and increase of the parts To wit as long as they are appointed within the bound designed for growth or increasing From whence it necessarily also follows that none but fit and foody matters concocted and digested by the Stomack are transmitted into the more remote shops of the digestions Wherefore I have first of all withdrawn every Plant by whatsoever cruelty being infamous from the border of the Mesentery because every thing that is unfit for these borders is for that very cause driven downwards by the Stomack and adjoyned unto the excrements But whatsoever hath now passed over into Chyle hath presently laid aside every strange quality whereby it may act as it were by choice But if from Magnum Oportet any kinde of quality of its antient concrete Body shall as yet remain surely that is drowsie feeble sluggish loose and vain and therefore it doth for the most part deceive Physitians in
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
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.
changed for those only shall rise again changed who shall rise again glorified in the Virgin-Body of Regeneration which change the Apostle understood because that He who is not born again cannot enter into the Kingdom of God And therefore He that shall rise again being not born again by consequence also shall not be changed from his antient Being if he shall rise again from Death neither therefore also shall he have entrance unto Gods Kingdom because by the new Birth the whole Man is made Spirit And therefore he which shall rise again from the new Birth shall rise again in a spiritual Nature Otherwise He that is born of the Flesh and not born again of the Spirit shall hear indeed the Voice of him that is born of the Spirit but shall not know from whence it may come or whither it may go This indeed is the changing of Bodies into Spirit and the change of Bodies in the Resurrection or it is the Glorification of those that are to be saved after the Resurrection But other Sins were expiated indeed through Repentance with the victory and triumph of the Lamb but the loss of that Virginity and primitive Purity doth without Regeneration reserve an Eternal Spot of Impurity and Uncapacity No otherwise than as a virginal conservation and Integrity of the re-born Faithful gives unto Virgins that are born again a Golden or Laurel Crown equalized unto Martyrdom Christ therefore as he is the Father of this Virginity so also the Father of the Age to come But those that are to be saved are his own new Creature and new Regeneratition Who to wit hath given them Power to become the Sons of God unto these who believe in his Name who are born not of Bloods nor of the Will of the Flesh nor by the Will of Man but of God after a most chast manner of the holy Spirit by whom before the brutal Concupiscence of the Flesh arose it was decreed that altogether every Man ought to be born of his Mother being a Virgin Therefore Christ being the Top and Lover of Chastity doth distinguish Men as well in this Age or Life by Chastity as in Heaven and will grace them with an unimitable and eternal Priviledge For a great Company followed the Lamb whithersoever he should go and Sang the Song which no other was able to Sing But these are they who are not defiled with Women For there are Virgins of both Sexes Because there shall not be there Jew or Greek But they are all one in Christ For the Almighty hath chosen his Gelded Ones who have Gelded themselves for the Kingdom of God its sake of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven Therefore married Persons are reckoned to be defiled with Women and Mothers to have conceived their off-springs in Sin and in this thing are far inferiour to Virgins For indeed because the Gospel promiseth unto Mortals not only that the Son of God was Incarnate and suffered for their Salvation But that moreover these two Mysteries least else they should be frustrate are to be applyed unto individual Persons I indeed contemplate thus of this Application that as man through the Sin of lust brake no less the Intent of God than his Admonishment and the humane Nature was therefore afterwards radically Corrupted and that thereupon another and almost brutal Generation thereof followed Therefore the joyful Message hath included as well an Abolishment of Original Sin as of other Sins consecutively issuing from thence Who by dying destroyed our Death not his own because he had none The which is not understood of temporal Death for the righteous Man as yet to this day dyeth just even as before the Passion of the Lord but of Eternal Death Therefore seeing man since the Fall ought to be Born Increase and Multiply no longer from God but from the Bloods of the Sexes by the Will of the Flesh and of Man nor from thence could ever be able to rise again of himself and to re-assume his lost and antient purity nor cease that he might again begin to be otherwise and better therefore the joyful message hath brought an assurance unto us that Baptisme should be unto us for the remission of sins through a new birth of Water and of the holy Spirit That our mind as it were through a new Nativity of its Inne by Regeneration might be partakers of the unspotted Virginity and humanity of our Lord. Which New-birth doth indeed repose the Soul into its former state to wit by taking away the sin or debt and the stinks or noisomenesses thereof but by reason of the continuance of Adamical flesh in which the Immortal Mind liveth the antient possession or inclination unto sin is not taken away nor is there a translation of the corruption drawn from the impure original of the blood of Adam But that this is really so we are perswaded to believe For God doth manifestly daily grant a testimony of that actual Grace and attained Purity to be derived into the Body of those that are Baptized through a true and substantiall Regeneration as well in Body as in Soul For truly for this end and in this respect alone Mahometans are Baptized for a proper reproach because Baptisme from the fact or deed done however unlawfully it be administred and received takes away from them for the future the noisomness inbred in them otherwise to endure for their Life time such as in all the Hebrews or Jewes in many places up and down we do daily observe to be with loathing and weariness The true effect therefore of Regeneration and its co-promised character doth much shine in Baptisme even outwardly also in a defectuous Body And the enemies of the Christian Name do serve us for unvoluntary witnesses unto this thing Yea the perpetuity of the same Effect confirms the unobliterable Character or Impression of Baptisme and the wickedness of it being repeated But the New-birth by Baptisme doth not yet for that Cause take away a necessity of Death For Baptisme forsaketh its own with the fardle of a defiled and Adamical body begotten by the Will of Man And for that Cause also the Soul as subject unto the Vices of the corrupted Body and of a Will long agoe corrupted Wherefore by reason of the frailty of Impure Nature also an easie inclination and frequency of Sinning Baptisme hath been scarce sufficient for those of ripe years otherwise for the more younger sort it is abundantly sufficient Therefore the Sacrament of the Altar is Wine which buddeth forth Virgins Which is as much as to say the end and scope of the Lords Incarnation or of the instituted Sacrament of the Eucharist should bud forth Virgins as demonstrating that the intent of the Creator from the beginning esteemed of and reckoned upon Virginity alone and of how great abhorrency Numb 25. Luxury is in the sight of the Lord. For although Bigamy or a Plurality of Wives and likewise a dismissing of ones Wife and much loosing of
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
and Ligation or Binding up and both with Magnetism To wit he as in anguish undistinctly alledgeth any the more abstruse or hidden effects whatsoever whereby he being destitute of reasons might make good his own Magâ—etism I will by an Example distinguish Witchery from Sympathy and both from Magnetism A Dog hath an Antipathy for Sympathy and Antipathy are daughters of the same stock with a Hen for he preys upon this Hen and this Hen flees from the Dog but when she hath newly hatched her Chickens this Hen chaseth the Dog although a couragious one to wit the soul of the Hen by Fascination or Witchery tying up the Soul of the Dog the former Antipathy unequal defence of Weapons and unequality of Strength nothing hindring it Yet in these things Magnetism is no where seen Moreover what Examples the Physitian brings concerning Seals or Impresses Characters Gamahen or magical Images Ceremonies and for the most part vain Observances are altogether impertinent to this purpose and do rather destroy Magnetism as rendring it suspitious than build it up my Genius or Wit carries me not to determine any thing of these things And then Goclenius Errs and that indeed rashly like as also ignorantly dreaming from the Prescription of Paracelsus that the Weapon which wounded if it be involved in the Weapon Salve doth cure the Wound For the Weapon or Point of the Sword shall be in vain anointed with the Unguent by him prescribed unless it be made Bloody and the same Blood shall be first dried on the said Sword For with Paracelsus the Sympathetical Ungent is one thing in respect of the Blood fetch'd out of the Wound and the Ungent wherewith the Weapons that were tinged with no Blood ought to be Emplaistred certainly another and therefore he calls the former the Magnetick and Sympathetick Ungent but the latter the Magnetick Armary or Weapon-Ungent the which therefore receives nor that indeed in Vain Honey and Bulls Fat over and above into its Composition Last of all Goclenius that he might satisfie his own Genius hath altered the Description of Paracelsus affirming that the Usnea or Moss is to be chosen only from the Skuls of hanged Persons of which his own and false Invention he enquiring the Cause blusheth not to dream that in Strangling the vital Spirits entred into the Skull and there remain so long as until that six years from that time being accomplished the Moss shall under the open Air grow up thereon Paracelsus hath taught the express contrary and by practical Experiences it is confirmed that the Moss of the Skuls of those that have been slain or broken on a Wheel is no less commendable than that of those who were strangled with an Halter For truly the Quintessence is not extracted out of living Creatures because the principal Essence perisheth together with the inflowing Spirit and Life but only the Mumial Virtue that is the implanted and co-fermented Spirit which surviveth in Bodies slain by violence What things Goclenius hath delivered concerning Remedies for repairing of the Memory as we acknowledge them no way agreeable to the end intended so also we not any thing doubt to prove them to be impertinent flourishes There is no Question between our Divine and Physitian about the truth of the Fact for both of them grant that a cure happens to the wounded Person the controversie layes only in that that the Physitian affirms such a Cure to be natural but the Divine will have it to Satanical and that from a compact of the first Inventer of which Censure he brings not any positive reason in his Anatomy as thinking it satisfactory if he in his own judgment shall abolish it although he shall openly produce no grounds of that abolishment to wit he acquiescing in this that he hath removed the feeble Reasons of the Affirmer the which to do is a matter of no labour of no skill nor also is it a matter of any authority For to what end tends it to give judgment on the thing it self from the foolishness of the Reasons of some unskilful Brain and to declare it to be wicked if he hath not so much as dreamed of one petty Reason of his Sentence What if I who am a Laick should commend Presbitery with untrimmed Reasons and some one should reject them as unworthy ones shall the Priesthood it self therefore be to be rejected What I pray you doth the Unskilfulness or Rashness of any one touch at things themselves Surely Phylosophy submits not it self to censures unless a Considerable gravity of the Censurers well confirmed by reasons doth concur I therefore who have undertaken to prove against the Divine that this Magnetick cure is even natural First of all have supposed Goclenius worthy of excuse if he hath laboured in vain in the finding out of the immediate Cause of this unwonted effect What wonder is it when as the Divine consesseth that he is ignorant of the same and therefore conjectures Satan to be the Author thereof for such is our Infirmity that we are destitute of the knowledge of the most and most excellent things For therefore we unwillingly wrest very many things aside unto the sacred Anchour of Ignorance and refer them to the Catalogue of occult or hidden Causes For who among Divines ever knew how to demonstrate to the full the Cause of risibility or capacity of laughter or of any other formal Property to wit of heat in the Fire Is not the Fallacy of Begging of the Principle committed if thou shall say The highest degree of Heat belongs to the Fire because it is of the Nature thereof Truly the Essences of Forms because they are unknown to us from their Cause therefore also the race of formal Properties is wholly scanty and unknown and where we observe any formal Passion to lay under the Mind as if it were tired in vain presently ceaseth from a diligent search thereof and reposeth it self being contented with the name of occult Properties Go to I pray you hath the Anatomist the Censurer haply known the Cause why a Dog that rejoyceth swings his Tail But a Lyon in like manner when he is Angry A Cat also making merry in token of Favour lifts up the same What therefore if himself hath not known so much as the reason of the moving of a Tail will he wonder that Goclenius hath given an unsolid Reason of Magnetism and from the refuting of that presume that he hath more than sufficiently demonstrated the dure which belongs to Magnetisme to be Satanical Far be so great a rashness of Judgment from him Come on then why dost thou call that Cure diabolical Truly it had behoved thee to have added a reason of thy Censure unless thou expectest to have it denyed by others with the same Facility wherewith thou declarest it to be of the Devil Lawyers require only the affirmative Part to be confirmed but Phylosophers both parts least either the Ignorance or also the malepartness of the
is observedly between objects at a distance The Vine which is in its Flower disturbs Wines a far of Thou wilt excuse that the same Perturbation is made by the violence of the Heavens We prove that it is not For if the Heaven should cause the flowrings in the Vine and the Turbulency of Wines in Hogs-heads it would needs be that both those Effects should be wrought every Year at a set and as it were determinate moment which is false For sometimes the Vine sends forth her Flowers and the wine is troubled before the Solstice or sunstead and in the same Region another Year long after but the Sun and the fixed Stars some few minutes excepted return every year unto the same point therefore the Vine should flower and the Wines should be disturbed alwayes at the same time But if thou seekest an Evasion and shalt say That other Planets besides the Sun are the Cause of this thing which have not every Year a like scituation at the time of the Solstice but only that that Motion of the Heavens or superior Orbes is most common all Vines would for the most part the same Year flower every where at once which is false For as there is an Astral Nature subsisting in the ground or soil So also there is the same Particular Nature in the Vine which also it self of it self no otherwise than as the Earth hath a Power given it of budding by it self brings forth the Flower Fruit and Seed and composeth and moveth it self according to the Meeter of the most general Motion of the Heavens Hereunto they affirm that Wines are never disturbed in those Countries wherein no Vine grows therefore the Flower of the Vine and not the Motion of the Heavens troubles the Wines and that many miles off but indeed so much the more powerfully by how much the Wines are nearer to the Vine I gratefully applaud publick Studies and I bear good will to him who first discerned after what manner vulgar Antimony in time of its preparation continually directs it self unto an Influence I am willing to have the same measure I mete to be measured to me again Therefore I shall satisfactorily prove that there is a certain Influential Power familiar unto sublunary things which is not subject unto distances of place and so much the more forcibly in favour of Magnetism if I shall teach that the Load-stone himself doth direct himself of his own free accord unto the Pole but to be in no wise drawn by the Pole for one Load-stone declines unto three another unto six seven and eleven Degrees from the Pole but none that I know of doth in a direct line point upon the Pole therefore if the Load-stone should be drawn it should be pulled either by the Pole or by some neighbouring Star to the Pole but not by the Pole it self because whatsoever attracts 〈…〉 it self by a direct or right and not by an oblique or crooked line Wherefore 〈◊〉 the Load-stone were drawn by the Pole it would also point in a direct line upon the Pole therefore Load-stones at least accord to what I have seen hitherto are not attracted by the Pole or North Star nor also by any other neighbouring Star for that very Star is never at rest but is uncessantly carried in a circular Motion therefore if it should attract the Load-stone it should also render it disquieted by drawing it sometimes some Degrees towards the East and anon as many Degrees toward the West but should sometimes pull it toward the Zenith or Vertical Point either above or beneath us which is false Therefore the Load-stone is not drawn but is carried thitherwards of its own free accord But that otherwise the Load-stone is of it self elevated upwards towards the Zenith there is a certain Instrument invented by William Guilbert the glory of which Invention Lodowick Foâ—seca lately endeavoured to arrogate to himself in the presence of his Catholique Majesty this Instrument I say by a voluntary elevation of the Load-stone in a Brass-Ring hung up shewes not only the latitude but also the altitude or height of the Pole in all Places of the World Thou viewing for a way of escape wilt contend in behalf of the Pole that the Pole indeed attracts the Load-stone but that it puls the same Load-stones not in a direct line towards it self for such is the condition and will of the Attracter but unto a neighbouring place Which is to say The Pole or North Star drawes indeed the Load-stone unto it in a right line yet the Load-stone is not attracted in a right line to the Pole by reason of a certain unknown Impediment which thou callest a certain Disposition thereof existing in the Load-stone which resists the attraction of the Pole and is more powerful and superiour than it although the same influential allurement reach safe and sound unto the Load-stone at so many thousand miles distance Dost thou see how much truth thou hast granted by thy Evasion And how that against thy will thou notwithstanding affirmest that there inhabites in the Load-stone some certain motive Disposition thou callest it certain yet feigned to thee and to all others wholly uncertain which thou rejectest from being in the Load-stone besides and above the attraction of the Pole Which is as much as to say that there is in the Load-stone a directive virtue unto some distinct Place but that it is not drawn by the Pole Thou wilt retort in behalf of a neighbour to the Pole by saying that the Load-stone is drawn and doth not direct it self not that it is drawn by any one point of Heaven or Star but by a certain whole Circle nigh the Pole I answer this Shift is far fetched for that Circle shall have a latitude even of eight Degrees at least to wit from three Degrees to eleven Because I have seen Load-stones of so great a variation Therefore if there were a Power of attracting in the whole Circle the same Load-stone should continually varie and in the same hour declien sometimes to three and anon to eight or eleven Degrees from the Pole which is false Therefore there shall in a Circle of so great latitude be at least diverse lesser rounds every one whereof shall allure its own Load-stone which being granted thou wilt fall again into the same Gulfe to wit that there is a certain disposition in the Load-stone why it can rather be enticed by this than by the other Circle and by consequence thy fictions being stretched according to thy own desire there will nevertheless be a motive Virtue in the Load-stone himself We are not yet satisfied if the Pole should draw the Load-stone this should be done either by reason of the Elementary and Material temper of the Stone or by reason of the Form thereof But a Glass wherein the Magistery of a Load-stone hath been prepared though it be most exactly washed and however cleansed by often rubbings doth also for the future observe its Poles
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
that Paracelsus was ignorant of the Root of long Life as well from his Writings and Medicines as by his Death For truly the renovations and restorations whereof he deservedly in many Places and much oft-times glorieth in are only the purgings of the Parts containing with a correcting and banishing of those contained and thus far he was the revenger and healer of almost all Diseases yet his secret Medicines do not so much respect a long Life as an healthy one and the Commodities hereof For the Haires Nailes and Teeth are renewed and although these are most hard yet they first feel the Flesh And therefore it is not written in vain That Moses had all his Teeth at the 120th Year of his Age For as they live obscurely they have their Kitchin out of themselves also they most easily putrifie For perhaps Egypt and the neighbouring Places have that thing unto themselves from a Property For truly I remember that Prince Radzvil the Poloman hath thus written of the Mummy of Aegypt For those Bodies are preserved entire with the least putrefaction of any Member even unto this Day But so great is the multitude of these dead Carcases that there are few who are able to endure with Patience the disdainfulness of seeing them all They are so condensed with the Fat of Spices and Oyntments that they shine as being hardened after the manner of Pitch Especially their Brain Muscles and Shoulder-blades which are the more fleshy Parts for the Breast Hands and Feet seeing they have little Flesh and are extended after the manner of a Membrane they do not provide for with Mummy It may be collected from the Judgment of their Nostrils how much Myrrhe ought to have been admixed with these Unguents Likewise those Oyntments preserve a wonderful Whiteness in the Bones About the Caues or Vaults without a great Power of Bones layes cast aside from which the Mummy was withdrawn among which we did not by the way nor in a short time contemplate of the Skuls and the neather Cheek-bones where the Teeth were fastened we found none at all which might have so much as one rotten Tooth or any mark of plucking out So in all the Cheek-bones they were full sincere and somewhat white For among so many hundreds of Cheek-bones there were also those of old People whose Teeth were short and worn such as are seen in old Folks but there was none which had any putrified hollow holey Tooth or sign of a Tooth slidden out From whence I collect first That Moses might naturally have all his Teeth 2. That as cold things do hurt the Teeth So also the cold Air of our Country is hostile to the Teeth 3. That therefore the Aethiopian and Spaniard have white Teeth 4. I take comfort for the Dutch from the Words of the same Prince In Caire of those commonly reckoned up they are reported to ascend to the number of seven Millions of the Jews unto the number of one Million and six hundred thousand Women and children being computed But in so great a multitude of Men scarce a third part of them have their full Sight All do in many places labour in their Eyes from the eating of Fruits and the Drink of Water being over-added But 5. Paracelsus put confidence in himself not altogether in vain touching his Elixir of Propriety prepared of Saffron Myrrhe and Aloes so he had not erred in the preparation of the same but had composed that Medicine after the manner of the Tree of Life For as Myrrh keeps Mummy from an aptness of putrifying if a passage of Myrrhe unto our constitutive Parts be granted the authority of Myrrhe for long Life shall not be vain But as to a renovation so greatly praised by Paracelsus which reneweth the Haires Nailes and Teeth together with an excluding of all Diseases Surely the Haires and Nailes as they do sometimes fall off of their own accord So also in any Age they do easily grow and their renewing is of little moment I have seen also an old Man and old Woman whose Teeth having been once lost were of their own accord renewed in the 63d Year of their Age also with childish Pains Yet it denoted no long continuance of Life because both of them died the same Year For the promise of Paracelsus concerning the renewing again of Child-hood hath raised up many unto a hope of long Life To wit they have thought that from a renewing of the Teeth and Nailes there would of necessity be a renewing of Child-hood Chiefly because they should put off grayness the token of Old Age and the former colour of hairiness should return But their errour was from an undistinction For Alexander makes mention that he saw a Man of eighty Years of Age in whom as many Teeth as failed new ones grew up but he doth not therefore mention also his length of Life And although he might also by accident have been long lived Yet seeing one doth not contain another in the Root or necessary Causes it was a faulty Argument to derive from the one the other by a sequel Because Nature hath often attempted such kind of Renovations under which in the mean time she hath cut off the Thred of long Life For it is not unlike that the Pear-Tree is every year renewed with Leaves Yet not that therefore that Tree is long lived the Turpentine Tree or Cedar or Firr Tree of a short Life Yea neither doth the Pear borrow any virtue of Long Life because its Tree is renewed every Year Therefore the renewing of Medicines hath deceived Paracelsus because it is that which proves health only by reason of an intimate and supream cleansing of the similar Parts but not the renewing Root of Life or a prolonging of Life thereupon For they have been deceived because the Stag puts off his Hornes and the Snake his old Skin and are long-lived Bruits And therefore they have abusively referred that Renovation unto the Cause of a Life of long continuance For Crabs Spiders Grashoppers and Insects of a shorter Life do oftentimes happen to put off their Skin But on the opposite Part a gelded Stag changeth not his Horns because neither doth he make new ones Yet he ceaseth not therefore to be alike long-lived For the Stag casts not away his Horns in time of Autumne or Winter while as great Beasts compose themselves unto a greater rest but while he is fed with a new bud of Branches wherein a renewing Faculty of his Bud is as also it is transferred on Stags but not on Oxen because the Stomack of the Stag by a proper and specifical Ferment preserves the budding Faculty or Virtue of young Sprouts and derives it into the middle Life of the Stag Which thing happens not unto a gelded one wanting Horns as a Beard is denyed to Eunuchs This sort of renewing therefore is an Effect indeed of a more flourishing oâ— growing Life yet not an unseparable token as neither a conjoyned Cause of long
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
forreign and hostile and so extraordinary affects do arise from co-like Causes For neither have I unfitly taught that that wheyish matter which is carried as being throughly mixed with the blood and is by sweat or otherwise unsensibly dispersed is not urine as neither that it hath the properties of the same nor that it is a whey the imitater of Milk and much lesse that it is Gaul or yellow Choler but a part of the Liquor Latex of which in its own Treatise CHAP. VII Duelech Dissolved 1. The inconsiderate rashnesse of the Schooles is accused 2. An account or reckoning up of Knaves over whom the Magistrate ought to be intentive 3. The Author excuseth himself 4. Every Disease in its own kind is curable 5. How much is to be hoped for from the Shops 6. Or what may there be found for the Disease of the Stone 7. A double Indication or betokening 8. A somewhat deaf intention of the Schooles 9. The vanity of this kind of intention 10. Why the Marsh-mallow Mallow juyce of Citron c. may profit 11. A frivolous objection against Vrine-provoking Remedies 12. The imposibilities of the Schooles 13. The Reasons of the Schooles for an impossible Remedy 14. The Reasons of the Alchymists 15. The testimony of Cardanus 16. The writ or Charter of the Prince of Saltzburge 17. The delusion of the Schooles from a ridiculous enquiring into Remedies 18. Ridiculous privy shifts 19. That the Stone is not confirmed 20. The stones of Animals and Vegetables after what sort they may be profitable unto us 21. The manner of preparing them 22. From whence Ludus took its Name and the preparation thereof 23. Ludus where it is to be found 24. A blockish beasting 25. An errour of Paracelsus 26. The rashnesse of the Schooles 27. Paracelsus prattles no lesse unsavourily concerning the matter of the Stone than the Humourists 28. A declaratory confession of things un-soulified and of the Balsame of Salt 29. The manner of administring a Remedy 30. The Bladder of the Bul-Calâ— being an Embryo 31. Observations about the stone of Crabs 32. An Errour of Paracelsus 33. A wondrous Antipathy 34. A new Catheter I Have spoken of the Womb of the Affect or Disease of the Stone But now I must seriously consider of its Remedies For indeed the common people laugh at the Schooles who are become a Reproach because there hath not been any thing hitherto diligently searched into concerning the true Causes or Curing thereof I have indeed elsewhere rehearsed that the power of the mind being as it were barren or feeble hath acted the original of Medicine that Medicine being also in its ripe Yeares even unto this very day brought into a Circle without any progress because they have been willing rather to abide in forreign Grecian Barbarous and Heathenish Inventions and have held it an Honour to have polished other mens Principles While as in the mean time new Diseases arise also those that were once spent or grown stale do rise again masked and therefore do they appear illegitimate nor any longer answering to the descriptions of the first For indeed Medicine stands without any progress while as our health stands in the greatest need of the increase of healing As a slow and ungenerous kind of Physitians hinders the same because they would be wise only by anothers commentary and deny Art to increase above what they have known And therefore also whatsoever they are ignorant of they by a certain despair drive away into the Catalogue of uncurable Diseases As if the invention of Ancestours had stopt up the way of our industry had shut up the treasures of wisdom and as if all the modern force of the mind were barren and the power of divine wisdome exhausted that there were nothing any longer which may demonstrate unto us a further truth Truly the cup of sloath hath even from the very beginning befooled the world with a Lethargy for therefore every one had rather to assent than diligently to search For so great is the sweetness of gain that every one doth with love admire his own societies or confusions and Miscellanies of Medicines they call them received Magistrals and those Medicines which being in times past the more secret ones have rendred Physitians that were Lovers of labour famous old women by reason of the drowsiness of Physitians have at this day spread abroad into the hands of Apothecraies From whence every Barber Bather Nun Tormenter or Bawd that was chased out of the Stewes of harlots boasts of medicine the number whereof I will here describe For those first come to hand who will heal being indeed not instructed for this purpose but being prompt by nature and daring to do any thing hand forth those things to the sick which they have heard to have profited others without the knowledge and difference of causes and so they drive them head-long into danger For from thence almost all the experiments of the Schools have issued The which also Galen after the example of his Master Quintius hath confirmed For the Schools making experiments by the deaths of men presently call their Graduates most expert Physicians Others being vulgar ones had rather heal only the vulgar and unto these they give their Counsels Some also from favour alone and being entreated Many also by reason of the ambition of honour and that they may seem as wise men have this kind of vice bred in them for such kind of Deceivers will seem to be rich and therefore they perform all services for death or a chanced health freely Of this sort are those first of all who at Rome thrust a Triacle on the Cardinals and Peers as composed of better Simples than God hath created in nature For so we have deceived the people in the City and have seemed to be holy Apothecaries There succeed these such as require rewards indeed but in no wise money lest they should be known to have put off the condition of Noble persons and likewise their promised poverty And therefore they are those who say they earn or merit nothing for themselves but only for a poor Community There are Apostates like to these who confess indeed that they are not Physitians but that they have their secrets from a Queen or an Emperor For these are wont to interpose as middle persons which extol the price of their medicine And then there follow these who wear garments and a purse bored full of holes like a sieve neither in the mean time are they slow to exercise of their own imposture As that they were sometimes very rich but now impoverished in a hogs-head of wine by the Art of Chymistry by Wars and by the constancy of Religion There are also those who at sometime were valiant in a troop of Souldiers but in War for the conflicting for moneys they bestowed all their wealth they shew their scars in a bravery perhaps being received as a due reward Some also have left wives and
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
it self since it shall not produce any good to it self thereby For that Chyle or juyce being attracted doth as yet want foregoing means whereby it can ever be brought unto the perfection of arterial blood Otherwise the Arteries had drawn unto themselves more vexation but by a little sucking of a forreign liquor than they are able to wear out by long pains for the future I grant indeed that the Arteries do ordinarily and immediately attract a be-drunkening spirit of the stomack which is bred almost in every vegetable which is disobliged from the composed body through art only by vertue of a serment and at length is drawn out by the fire For example If the berries of Juniper are boyled in water under an Alembick an essential oyl and water do presently after rise up and are collected At length if those berries are then in the next place steeped by a ferment the distillation being afterwards repeated a water most gently burning or an Aquavitae is extracted yet less than if from the same berries an oyl were not first withdrawn Thirdly at last if the remaining berries being strained thorow a searse are boyled into an Electuary thou hast now obtained solutive Medicine excelling all the compositions of the shops An Artery therefore willingly snatcheth to it self the burning spirit of life a guest of the vegetable nature out of the stomack which the Grecism of the Schools never saw or knew the which otherwise nature by her first instruction prepares out of the digested Chyle surely she rejoyceth that she hath found a liquor with much brevity from whence she may make vital spirit for her self For in this respect Wines are regularly pleasing to Mortals they exhilarate the heart and do make drunk if they are drunk down in more than a just quantity For the spirit of Wine is not yet our vital spirit because it is as yet wanting of an individual limitation that the vital inflowing Archeus the Executer of our functions may from thence be framed Wherefore since neither the Mesentery nor Liver are ordained for the framing of vital spirit the heart rejoyceth immediately and readily to suck to it that spirit being already before prepared through the arteries out of the stomack Whence it follows If the arteries attract unto themselves the Spirit of Wine like unto vapours they shall also draw the odours of Essences For from hence are faintings yea and on the other hand restaurations But the arteries draw not Oils although essential and grateful ones because they suck not the substance of liquor and much less oils Therefore that a Medicine may be received by the heart and by this heart attracted inwards it ought to be that which yields a good smell and to be unseparably married to the spirit of wine Wherefore Wines that are odoriferous do more readily bedrunken than others because the odours which are married to the spirit of wine are most easily admitted unto the heart head womb c. But oylie odours being abstracted from their Concrete bodies do rather affect by defiling than materially enter into the Arteries For therefore through the immoderateness of Wine and the errours of life not only a meer spirit of Wine is allured into the arteries but also something of juyces together with it Whence at length difficult heart-beatings grow up in the gluttons of Wine and the meer or pure spirit of Wine by an importunate daily continuance strikes the reed of the artery within disturbs the local and proper digestions thereof wherefore also a part of the arterial nourishment degenerating stirs up divers miseries even durable for life For it happens in the Artery of the stomack that the spirit of wine joyning it self by its own importunity to the spermatick nourishment of the artery in the course of dayes stirs up un-obliterable Vertigo's or giddinesses of the head continual head-aches the Falling-sickness I say Swoonings Drowsie Evils Apoplexies c. For in the family-administration of this member as it were that of the heart it obtains its own animosities durable for life which are not to be extirpated but by the greater Secrets The same way also sudden or unexpected death hath oft-times made an entrance for it self because such a vitiated matter is never of its own free accord drawn out from thence For although the Archeus be apt at length to consume his own nourishment yet he doth not obtain this authority over excrements degenerated by a forreign coagulation and so for that cause not hearkening to the vital power or vertue For therefore that part hath assumed the title of the heart stirs up swoonings from an easie occasion Falling-sicknesses also after the twenty fourth year and likewise such affects as are attributed to the heart are accounted uncurable by those who have not much laboured in extracting the more potent faculties of medicine Hippocrates by leave of so great a man and of such an age I speak it was ignorant of this seat of the falling evil because he was he who being constituted in the entrance of Medicine faithfully delivered unto posterity at least his own observations and Medicinal administrations sprung from these For he said If Melancholy passeth into the body it breeds the Falling Sickness But foolish madness if it peirce the soul If therefore black Choler passing over into the body and soul causeth the Falling-sickness and Madness Whither therefore shall it proceed that it may generate a Quartane Ague The Schools especially rejoyce in so great an Author for their humour of black Choler But they are forgetful of a Quartane which far departs from the Falling-sickness and Madness For after whatsoever manner they shall regard it a Quartane shall either not be made from black Choler or this shall not be in the body nor in the soul while it makes a Quartane But as to what pertains to Madness and the Falling-sickness as if they were separated only in the diversity of passages or that the same humours did sometimes evaporate or were materially entertained in the Inns of the principal faculties Surely it is a ridiculous although a dull and plausible devise to have found out the cause of all diseases in so narrow a quaternary of humours For first of all The Falling Evil doth much more strictly bedrowsie and alienate the powers of the soul although Madnesses do that far more stubbornly or constantly Wherefore the aforesaid diseases are far otherwise distinguished let the Genius's of Hippocrates spare me than in the changing of their wayes and bounds And which more is the general kind of foolish Madness shall differ by its species in its proper matter and proper efficient as is to be seen in madness from the biting of a mad dog or stroak or sting of the Tarantula For the cause of things had not as yet been made known in the age of Hippocrates the knowledge whereof the Prattle of the Greeks hath hitherto suppressed Neither also are wrothful doatages made from yellow Choler bruitish ones from
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
Tragedy of the world would again be hidden at leastwise I suppose that there will be other far more horrible Plagues than ever heretofore and against which all Antidotes will be vain For truly our Plague at this day doth not affect bruit beasts But in the last dreggishness 〈…〉 they shall destroy wild beasts also yea fishes and trees and there shall be Plagues but not an ordinary Plague otherwise this should be an uncertain sign of the future destruction For there shall be Plagues from the hand of God from the powring out of the Vials as the Revelation hath it But against those Plagues there is not to be a Buckler in Nature I promised therefore unto my self before I attempted to write these things that the Plague that was curable even unto that face of times and a true remedy thereof was to be fetched out of the Grave of Hippocrates or rather from above from the Father of Lights I will declare what I have learned for the profit of Posterity CHAP. III. The Heaven is free from as also innocent of our Contagion or Infection NOt the least comfort hath appeared unto the Soul that is earnestly desirous of knowledge or unto the miserable and forsaken sick from the writings of the Antients First of all it is of Faith that the Stars are for signs times or seasons daies and years nor that man can any way alienate the offices of the Stars or decline them unto other scopes That the Heavens are the works of the Lords hands that God created not Death and therefore that neither doth the Heaven contain Death a disease poyson discords corruptions or the effective cause of these For truly they are ordained not for the cause but for the signs of future things and only for the changing of seasons or Meteors and for the succession of daies and years The office therefore of the Heavens is not to generate evils to cause poysons to disperse or influx them to sow wars and to stir up deaths Because the heaven cannot exceed the bounds of its own appointment the heavens declare the glory of God for whose honour and the uses of ungrateful humanity it was created And therefore it rather contains in it life light joy peace and health with an orderly and continued motion no curse is read to have been communicated to the heaven after the transgression of Adam nor execration to be infused into it as neither a spot to have been sprinkled thereon The earth indeed brings forth thistles and thorns because under the Moon is the Copy-hold of the Devil and Death because of sinners the Empire of discords and interchanges The earth hath become a Step-mother unto us she is therefore the vale of miseries being great with-child of the corruption and fardle of sinners because it hath pleased God that there should be no other way unto rest but by tribulations yea it behoved Christ to suffer and so to enter into glory not indeed anothers but his own because he was willing to take on him the form of a servant I belive the Word of God but in no wise the vanities of the Sooth-sayers of Heaven and I judge that they who write that the Plague doth arise from the heaven do stumble as being hitherto deceived with the errours of the Gentiles The Heavens declare the glory of God and the Firmament sheweth the handy-works of the Lord The Heavens therefore shew a sweet or bitter thing to come but they do not cause that sweet or bitter yea neither is it lawful for us to call bitter things evils for God hath directed all things to a good end Therefore the heaven declares future things unto us but doth not cause them and the stars are only unto us for the signs of things to come and therefore there shall be signs in the Sun Moon and Stars The Stars also cause the successive alterations of seasons in the ayr waters and earth only by a native Blas From whence the changes and ripenesses as well in fruits as in the body of man especially in a sick one do consequently depend I understand also that the stars are in this respect for times or seasons unto us by their motive and alterative Blas For neither therefore are the Heavens Sorcerers or the Cocters of poysons the incensers of wars c. I knowingly consider them to be altogether as the alterers of successive interchanges in Elementary qualities as to the interchangeable courses of Stations Wherefore it happens that the sick aâ—e diversly altered in the promotion and maturity of seeds conceived in them because our vital faculties do stir up every their own Blas according to the rule or square of the most general motion of the stars not indeed as of violent leaders but of foregoing or accompanying ones For the Book of the Revelation doth not attribute even any the least punishing power unto the Heavens but the same to be distributed by God among the Angels and the which therefore are called smiting and ministring spirits performing the commands of the Judge Therefore I shall not easily believe that the Plague owes its original unto the importunate or unseasonable changes of times the which also Eudoxus according to Fernelius perceived And I cannot be induced by any reason to believe that the Heavens do give growth form figure virtues or any thing else which proceedeth from the Being of seeds For the Herb was potent in a flourishing seed even before the stars were born so that although there should be no stars yet every seed by the power of the Word is of it self naturally for producing of its own constituted body and against the will of the stars and stations of the year yea and of climates many seeds and forreign fruits are produced by Art Wherefore the Epidemicks of Hippocrates illustrated with the Commentary of Galen do also contain very many things unworthy the name of the Author not only because it attributes diseases to the stations or seasons of the year and not every one to their own seeds and divers infirmities to one root that is unto the first qualities of the ayr and so coupleth divers effects with unjust causes but because they contain very many absurdities of trifles For I am wont in this thing to compare Judiciary Astrologers unto Empericks who having gotten an oyntment powder or any other medicine extoll the same to be prevalent well nigh for all diseases and also for many other So many of those being not content with the shewing or betokening message of the Stars constrain them to be the workmen Deasters and absolute Patrons of all fortune and misfortune to be conscious or witness-bearers and the workers of life and death to come Lastly to be the Councellors and Judges of thoughts and questions asked If therefore they do not contain death wars poysons nor the Plague verily neither shall they be able to rain down such scourges upon us seeing they cannot give those things which they have not do not contain
joyned unto a new poyson For many as it were dispairing have thought that the strength of our nature doth thus run down unto its end in a short space But the Word of God hath a stable Government there is not any defect of these incorporated with the humane species but adhering onely unto individuals by accident and seeing every forreign adhering matter is subject to a separation and no strange thing is fit to be conjoyned pithily to the image of God in constitutive principles Therefore every forreign matter doth of necessity receive its birth increase ascent state declining and death and at length also of its own accord expecteth a restoration by further propagations For the seeds and species of the word are durable for ever Hence it follows that a forreign guest ought at length to depart from the fold whereinto it hath theevishly crept through a privy error Because the power of the Word-suffers a prescription by no seasons length of motions or daies as neither by the wiles of the enemy The flood indeed over-covered the earth because man had corrupted his way And therefore at this day also by reason of sins an infirmity hath made it self roome amongst us it groweth new daily and besides another is about to threaten us In the year 1540. under Paul 3. about Autumne a Tarantula first appeared in Apulid nigh Tarentum being a monster so called by the City like unto a spider but twice bigger The which afterwards remained in the species and from the land of Tarentum was now also transplanted into the Roman land For according to Daniel every monster growing up on the Common-wealth comes from the sea new flatterers are confirmed by this monster who befool or make men mad that are bitten by them and they trippingly dance with exceeding gladnesse as if they had done well in believing flatterers In the year 1550. in the sixth moneth called August the French first saw wheat which they call bedewed or honyed wheat it representing in its ear being as yet green a smoaked or red-herring in its smell but in its ripe ear nothing but a stinking black powder I wish not the cause of any popular diseases It is a stroak or punishment which steals from us a great part of victual for cockle or tares is sown against the more mighty Prelates the which I wish they knew and did foresee In the year 1556. The Scurvy first appeared in our sea-coasts being unknown to the ancients the which infects the gums and breath and legs because it â—lâ—o besiegeth the most inward parts In the same year there are men remarkably noted being admitted of in the Low countries subverting within and without those that rashly believe on them with a sweet contagion Not so long ago a camp-â—ever assaulted our countrey-men with a deep contagion killing without thirst and heat and they are denoted who under a shew of Piety spread new and suspected opinions among people in families But at leastwise nothing which is once hostile doth afterwards kill in its own kind because it is sent into us for a scourge and we being blind do not diligently search into the occasional cause deadly mean end and remedy For they at this day accuse the impuriâ—ies of Camps Fens houses together with the poverty of souldiers as the causes of unwonted sicknesses and among Physitians the whole preservative is conversant about this occasion As if indeed Camps were in times past purer whilst Plagues and unwonted Fevers not as yet were For I know that as oft as a Fever falls on the body from the pedigree of antient ones which actually suffers the Lues venerea or which at sometime had it and being badly taken away that that Fever forthwith associates it self with the poysonous sweepings or reliques of the Lues from whence it borrows poysons which began to be called a malignant and Camp-Fever and that it propagates it self by its contagion even on those that are free from the Pox And it is indeed of the Fever its father and the Lues its mother being a third monster divers from both parents as being from diseases distinct in kind From hence surely as well a Fever as the Plague have become masked and unknown For so the Lues proceeds to be dispersed in a feverish Chaos and is made to be of a common right For the unluckie monster of the Lues being unlike unto both parents is a treacherous poyson and becomes a striving imitater of the plague And by a new ferment of putrefaction it produceth the Plague it self to be more cruel then it was wont to be It is not therefore an absurdity that Camps at this day do stir up many sick souldiers more frequent deaths and those Fevers more malignant in contagion Neither do more ready infections undeservedly follow Camps than otherwise the more populous Cities because the souldier is a nigher object of the Pox than Citizens The Plague therefore finding a fewel for its spark doth easily return CHAP. 5. The Opinions of the Ancients THe Pest is in every age reputed for a punishment sent from the angry Gods Therefore Hippocrates names every blemish of contagion wholly in diseases Divine The Heathen do as yet to this day flee over to their Idols The gods of the Nations are devils But we Christians have recourse unto the one onely eternal Power and do implore the aid of Saints because God is glorious and wonderful in his Saints who by request obtain those things which our unworthinesses do deny us For there are Cities in the Neatherlands wherein the fellowship of Saints Patrons in the Plague hath for a long time hitherto kept the Citizens free as many of them as were sent for the succour and service of those that were defiled with the Plague For none that was sent by a head-fellow-Citizen and companion although he readily served him that was infected by the Plague was ever laid hold of by the Plague So it is The hairs of every ones head are numbred A leaf falls not from the tree without the permission of God much lesse doth any thing happen unto us besides the permission and fore-knowledge of God So it is true a certain Plague cometh from the hands of the Lord the which to avoid is impossible because it comes from him who cannot erre in arching Therefore I have decreed not to write any thing at all concerning this Plague as neither of the curing of a miraculous one For if a natural Plague be healed by a miracle that belongs not to a Physitian very many of us also are of opinion that the Plague is nor sent but from God without the concurrence of a second cause The Mahometans also with the Calvinists believe the Plague to be the lot of an unavoidable Predestination Neither therefore do they avoid infected places or bodies as neither any hurtful things being badly constant to themselves for truly a wild beast cannot hurt without the consent of the Lord and so in this respect he
into the aforesaid Bladder being pressed together laying on the ground and void of every Body however most strongly it should blow yet it could not at all blow up the Bladder because the low Countries laying on it should presse it together But if indeed a fiery exhalation be sought for in the place of the Winde or Air I have already demonstrated before that fire to be impossible and the exhalation of so great an effect throughout all the low Countries to be fabulous At length that continuall Bladder so strong and capable to be hammered thin also faileth which may sustain with its back the low Countries Seas Rivers and far more For although I have granted the same it is not because I think it to be but because that Bladder being supposed so great absurdities may also follow and the Schooles at length be squeezed to an impossibility Mountains Sulphurous places and the mansions of Mines have afforded to Countrey people whence the Schooles have them the beginnings of this Dream Alass is there every where a miserable drowsiness in searching into the causes of effects The Mountain Soma or Vesuvius nigh Naples hath burned now for some Ages with Sulphur or Brimstone and fire-Stones But it hath a gap in its top large enough whereby the smoaks and flame might expire or breath out To wit perhaps to the largeness of three filed measures or Acres of Land But a Vault that was next to the flame as being now sufficiently roasted and full of chaps at length about the sixteenth day of the tenth Moneth or December of the year 1631 by one sudden fall fell down into the Gulf of the flame But it is the property as well of some Metalls as of bright shining Fire-stones while they are melting that if any thing of water shall fall in among them they all leap asunder therefore the Sulphurs with the Fire-stones being melted in the bowels of Vesuvius they did not endure the roasted fragment falling down from the Rocks without a great deluge but the flame did vomit out all of whatsoever had slidden down from above and more Neither was this sufficient But moreover some Fountains were loosed from above into the Chimney of the fire But what have the melted Sulphurs or what the raging tempests of smoakes common with an Earth-quake Do Sulphurs thus burn throughout all the low Countries For an Earth-quake had gone before at Naples and did accompany that danger of Sodom And although they shall happen together they do not therefore partake of one onely root the which do obey divers causes that Earth-quake fore-shewing a wonder did also inclose in it a monstrous token and doth alwayes inclose some such But the belching out of Metallick Veins stands by its natural causes Surely a wretched Sophistry it is to argue from not the cause as for the cause For neither are exhalations to be believed to have been enclosed in that Earth-quake a Chimney is produced having long since a way opened for exhalations I would the Schooles hath hearkened to their Pliny that oft-times at the present time or urgency of an Earth-quake Birds the winde being still being as it were sore smitten with fear do fall down out of the Air that in a quiet Haven the Oare Galleys do leap a little But what fellowship interposeth between the Air and the Sea with an exhalation shut up under the Earth For doth the Air tremble when the Earth doth Is so small a trembling of the Air sufficient to cast down Birds which fly in every winde For because the Sand of the Sea and that indeed without gaping should leap a little for the depth of half a foot ought therefore the Superficies of the deep Sea void of Winde together with Ships to tremble A Manuscript of the Curate of S. Mary beyond Dilca of Mecheline was shewen wherein he had written that in the year 1540 once every day for three dayes space the Earth trembled before that lightning inflamed its Sand-Port and also the Gun-powder contained therein whence the City by an un-thought of slaughter being almost utterly dashed in pieces went to ruine Lastly in the year 1580 the second houre after noon the fury of the Windes ceasing the City trembled two dayes before the English invaded Mecheline and took it for a prey But what have those events happening from a fatall necessity common in the joyning of causes with a dreamed exhalation under the Earth For what could a supposed exhalation portend besides or out of it self For why should it include a future signifying of a VVar-like invasion or Lightning to come and to kindle the Vessels of Gun-powder there also kept shaking the Sandy Tower and throwing down the whole City For before that the Mountain Vesuvius belched out its bowels and covered very many small Towns with a Minerall Clod and denyed hope to the Husband-man for the time to come thick darkness under the Sun went before in the Air lamentable howlings and the Earth trembled things stirring up the required devotion of the Nation Truly the Earth trembled from its own cause for a fore-knowledge of the future slaughter threatned But the slaughter it selfe followed by its naturall causes But the fore-going signes have never any thing common with the event of future fire Since therefore now it is certain that there is no place among the Pavements of the Earth nor exhalation that layes under them and if any should be under yet that it were impossible to cause an Earth-quake yet that it is an undoubted truth that the Earth doth truly and actually tremble without the dis-continuance of its pavements or through the opening of some gap I have considered that trembling to be in the Earth no otherwise than in Brasse when as the Clapper hath smote the Bell. For as long as the Bell trembles without a cleft so long it gives a Tune The Earth also while it is shaken with its Super-natural Clapper sends forth a deaf sound because its body toucheth together indeed by Sand and VVater even into its Center yet it is not holding together by a continuance of unity without intermission And it may tremble without the dis-continuance of touching together indeed by so much the more freely if the Mettall be bended without the renting asunder of that which holds together the Earth also in trembling hath its inward Clapper more famous than the voice of Thunder But because the stroak waxeth deaf in the Sand and VVater therefore it is shaken together with a certain tune or note while it trembled yet the roaring which is sometimes heard is not of the Earth but a strange one not proper to the Earth-quake but an accidentary howling of Spirits which by the Italians is called Baleno At length I weighing the cause of an Earth-quake do know that in the first place there is a motive force in the Air whereby the Air doth commit to execution the spurre conceived in the Stars For the Stars shall be to you for
signes times or seasons dayes and years Moreover I know that in the Sea and deep Lakes there is their motive force whereby they suffer a raging heat without windes whereby I say our Ocean is rowled six houres and else-where six constant months with one onely flowing Lastly I know that the Earth is at rest nor that it hath a motive force actively proper to it self Therefore I believe that the Earth doth quake and fear as oft as the Angel of the Lord doth smite it Behold a great Earth-quake was made for the Angel of the Lord descended from Heaven Mat. 28. The word For among the Hebrewes doth contain a cause as if he should say Because For this is the onely cause of an Earth-quake whereby all things do without resistance equally tremble together as it were a light Reed In the Revelations the third part of Mortalls Trees and Fishes perished at the very time wherein the Angel powred forth his Viall For abstracted spirits do work by the divine Power and nothing can resist them Evill spirits also as oft as it is granted them to act by a free power they act without the resistance of bodies or a re-acting of resistance For matter is the Client of or dependant on another Monarchy and it cannot re-act into a spirit which it by no meanes toucheth and with no object affecteth Even as the Angel useth the powred out liquor of the Viall unto the aforesaid slaughter so for the Earth-quake he for the most part makes use of a note or voice For a wandering note was heard in the Air no otherwise than as the creaking of Wheeles driven thereupon as it were a tempestuous murmuring sound succeeded yet without Winde and at that very time the whole tract of so great Provinces trembled at once with a huge horrour Which same note accompanied the trembling of the Earth at every of the three repeated turns The same thing almost happens in Lightning Truly the Lightning burns and causeth melting but surely it smiteth not According to that saying The voice of Thunder shall strike the Earth because it smiteth For Silk-worms die Milk is curdled Ale or Beer waxeth sowre a slain Oxe hanging up retains flaggie flesh unfit to take Salt and that onely by the Thunder-stroak the Lightning doing no hurt there Therefore let the voice of Thunder and the voice of the Earth-quake be the note or tone of ministring spirits But the Stars do not stir up a motive and alterative force of the Air or Water through a note but do act onely by an Aspect which they call an Influence And it hath its action and direction in a moment even as light sight c. For otherwise there should be need of many years before the audible Species or resemblances that are to be heard should come down from Saturn to the places of a Meteor And then a note or sound although it be great yet it faileth by degrees in the way But that the Earth doth tremble with a Tempest of Windes or that the Tempest doth sometimes run successively thorow Villages Cities and as it were thorow street by street in its wheeling about That is wholly by accident and according to the will of him who shaketh the Earth for a monstrous sign Likewise that else-where it doth oft-times tremble in quick Belgium very seldom that changeth not the moving cause For it stands in the free will of him who encloseth the Universe in his Fist who can shake the Earth at his pleasure and alone do marvellous things At the beholding of whom the Earth shall at sometime smoak and the Mountains being melted shall go to ruine But that in another place gapings chaps after an Earth-quake have sometimes appeared and a filthy poyson and fumes of arsenicall bodies have breathed forth that is joyned onely to its naturall causes Nor are they the effects of an Earth-quake but by accident but not the causes But this blindness of causes of the Earth-quake hath been invented the Devill being the Authour whereby mortall men might set apart all fear of the power and so might prevent if not wholly neglect the ends which God hath appointed to himself for the serious reverencing of the power of his Majesty that they being mind-full of the faults of their fore-led life might repent Deh qual possente man conforzze ignote Il terreno a crollar si spesso riede Non e chiuso vapor como altro crede Ne sognato stridente il suol percuote Certo la terra si rissente scuote Perche del peâ—cator sa aggrava il piede Et i nostri corpi impatiente chiede Per riemper se sue spelonche â—uote E linquaggio del ciel che l'huom riprende Il turbo il tuono il fulmine il baleno Hor parla anco la terra in note horrende Perche l'huom ch' esser vuol tutto terreno Ne del cielo il parlar straniero intende I l parlar della terra intenda al meno Behold with what a mighty yet unknown A force the Earthy Body makes a noyse And with so thick a rushing gives a groan 'T is not a vapour hot shut up they 'r toyes Even as some believe which beats the ground Or thumps its entrails with a whistling sound Truly the Earth it selfe doth feele and quake Because the sinners foot doth load its back And our impatient mortall bodies fall In to fill up its own deep Vaults withall The Language of the Heaven which reproves Man is the Whirle-winde Thunder Lightning flash And sp'ritous howling in the Air Ecchoes Now speaks the earth more-o're with horride lash Of signall tokens ' cause since man which would Be wholly earthly doth not understand The Linguo strange of Heaven yet may or should At least the Earth it 's Language apprehend These things nothing hindering there hath not been one wanting who said that from a most deep well of the Castle of Lovaine he by a sure presage foretold an Earth-quake was shortly to be because the water of the same Well three dayes before sent forth the stinking savour of Brimstone and that its contagion yellowness together with the turbulency of the water did bewray it But let that good man know that that Well is one hundred and fifteen foot in depth because they go up to the Castle from the Street that is next unto it by ninety three steps And so that Well in one part is not deeper than its Neighbouring Wells although in the other part where it is co-touching with the Hill of the Castle it is deep as I have said But seeing that a vein of Sulphur is not hidden in the Hill the water could not breath Sulphur which was not there But if it cast the smell of Sulphur a sign might precede God admonishing but it had not Sulphur which neither is in that place nor was enflamed therefore neither could it cause an Earthquake unto all Belgium or the Low Countries Therefore there is no naturall reason why the water
some other place namely in the heart alone Again from the same position it followes that that there may be a Fever it is not-required that the offending and feverish matter be enflamed but some other inflameable thing primarily residing in the heart and from thence slideable throughout the whole body For this inflameable body I together with Hippocrates call the spirit which maketh the assault But this last matter I have brought hither not from the minde of the Antients but it is extorted and by force I have commanded it to be granted me Whereof in its own place when I shall discourse of the efficient cause of Fevers At least wise that being now violently begged it followes that the peccant matter of Fevers is not properly enflamed neither that it is in it self primarily or efficiently hot nor indeed that it makes hot besides nature if the first inflameable body ought to be kindled in the heart Therefore neither is the peccant or offensive matter in a Fever hot beyond or besides the degree of nature But that which is kindled in the heart was not kindled before the comming of the Fever and so it every way differs from the peccant matter in Fevers At length it is also from hence fitly concluded that in whomsoever they intend to slay a Fever by cooling things as such they do not intend to cure by a removal of the causes by a cutting up of the Root and a plucking out of the fountaine and fewel of the Fever but only they intend to take away and correct the heat which is a certaine latter product entertained with-out the feverish matter To wit they apply their remedies unto the effect but not unto the cause For truly the heat of Fevers is kindled in the Archeus which maketh the assault and the root of Fevers is the peccant matter it self They have regard therefore only unto the taking away of the effect following upon and resulting from the placing of that root for the sake whereof the Archeus is enflamed not indeed by the root but by heat drawn from elsewhere while as indeed he enflames himself by a proper animosity and by his own heat being beyond a requirance extended unto a degree wherein he is wholly troublesome as he is enlarged beyond the amplenesse of his own necessity Foâ— neither must we think that any heat is so in a hateful feverish matter which with me they name the offensive one that it afterwards makes feverishly hot the whole entire body For truly that for which every thing is such that very thing they will have to be more such And then also because every calefactive or heating agent doth throughout its own specie's more strongly act on a near object than on an object at a distance wherefore if a feverish matter should make the other parts hot by its own heat it should of necessity be that the center or nest wherein that peccant matter of a Fever is received should be first roasted into a fryed substance before that any distant object should be made hot thereby Yea if the peccant matter should be hot of its own free accord and the Fever should be that meer heat besides nature every Fever as such ought to be continual nor should it have intermission until that all the offensive matter were wholly consumed into ashes Neither therefore should there be any reason of a repetition or relapse seeing the peccant matter should even from a general property always make hot for the consuming of it self And moreover a dead carcase also should be hot as well after death and be more ardently tortured or writhed with a Fever than while it lived because the same matter in number from the obedience whereof death happens even still persisteth in the dead carcasse and seeing they suppose it to be hot by a proper heat of putrefaction and since it is more putrified after death as also after death more powerfully putrifying and affecteth more parts co-bordering upon it than while it lived therefore also it should be more actually hot after death than in the life time But surely this errour is bewrayed For a Fever which made a live body hot ceaseth presently after death and all heat exspires with the life The which ought to instruct us that the heat of a Fever is not proper unto the peccant matter or its inmate and that the heat of the offensive matter doth not efficiently and effectively make hot in Fevers Therefore it is perpetually true that the peccant matter makes hot occasionally only but that the Archeus is the workman of every alteration and so by this title that which efficiently primarily immediatly always every where maketh the assault and that he alone doth not make hot according to the maxime Whatsoever utters healthy actions in healthy bodies that very thing utters vitiated ones in diseases For that spirit heats man naturally in health it being the same which in Fevers rageth with heat For example The thorne or splinter of an oake being thrust into the finger and actually and potentially cold presently stirs up a heat besides nature in the finger Not indeed that hot humours do flow thither as if they being called together thither by the thorne had exspected the wound of the splinter and the which otherwise as moderate had resided in their own seates For truly the blood next to the wound first runs to it and preventeth the passage for other blood coming thither And that blood also by it self is not hot but for the sake of the vital spirit Therefore the inflamation and swelling together with an hard pulse pain and heat do proceed from the spirit alone causally but from the infixed thorn occasionally only Surely it is an example sufficient for the position manner knowledg and cure of a Fever To wit the cause offending in a Fever is not hot of it self but it makes hot only occasionally and upon the pulling out of the thorne or occasional cause health followes The Archeus alone every where effectively stirs up the Fever and the which departing by death the Fever ceaseth with it Therefore heat is a latter accident and subsequent upon the essence of a Fever For indeed the Archeus enflames himself in his endeavour whereby he could earnestly desire to expel the occasional matter as it were a thorne thrust into himself But whosoever takes away this thorne whether that be done by hot meanes or by temperate ones or at length by cold ones he takes away the disease by the Root and it is unto nature as it were indifferent Because for that very cause the animosity of the Archeus is appeased and ceaseth Wherefore heat however it being besides nature increased may be a token of Fevers yet it is not the Fever it self neither therefore must we greatly labour about it in time of healing For from hence Hippocrates hath seriously admonished that heat and cold are not diseases as neither the causes of these but that the causes to wit the
occasional ones of diseases are bitter sharp salt brackish c. But that the spirit is he that maketh all assaults Galen Juniour unto Hippocrates by five hundred years afterwards easily stained much paper and by his prate allured followers unto himself But posterity having admired this prattle followed the same it hath always had that in the greatest esteem which was of the least worth And then the world every where grew aged in frivolous judgments always esteeming that to be of great weight which was most like unto its own unconstancy CHAP. II. The Schools Nodding or Doubting have introduced Putrefaction 1. The Schools have been constrained to devise another thing in Fevers beside heat 2. Another defect in the definition of a Fever 3. The Schools contradict the principles laid down by themselves 4. That the essence of Fevers is not from heat 5. They by degrees are forgetful of their own positions 6. The spiciness of Roses is most hot 7. Whether a Feverish heat be rightly judged by the Schools to arise from Putrefaction 8. A malignant Fever wherein it differs from other Fevers 9. A Crisis of Fevers by sweat is most wholesome 10. Why the Schools have fled back unto Putrefaction 11. A blockish comparison of heat in horse-dung 12. Why horse-dung is hot 13. A degree of the heat of a putrifying matter is not sufficient for heating the whole man in a Fever 14. Putrefaction is no where the cause of heat 15. Dung waxeth not hot from Putrefaction 16. Why they have not drawn a feverish heat from hot Baths 17. The ignorance of the Roots hath wrested the Schools aside unto the considerations and remedies of effects 18. Dung looseth its heat while it begins to putrefie 19. The great blindness of the Schools 20. Galen convicted of error 21. That the blood doth never putrefie in the veins and so whatsoever they trifle concerning a Sunochus or putrefied Fever is erroneous 22. The foregoing particulars are proved 23. The natural endowments of the veins 24. Either Nature goes to ruine or the Doctrine of the Schools 25. An example from the variety of blood 26. A ridiculous table of blood let out of the veins 27. An argument from the Plague against the Vse of the Schools 28. Again from the Pleurifie 29. The heats and turbulencies of the blood do not testifie the vices thereof 30. A wan deceit of the Schools 31. To suppose putrefied humours in Fevers is ridiculous 32. Against the definition of Fevers of the foregoing Chapter some absurdities are alledged 33. A frivolous excuse by a Diary 34. The foregoing definition of Fevers is again resisted 35. The unconstancy of the Schools 36. That the blood doth not putrefie in the veins 37. Corruption from whence it is 38. That the blood of the Hemeroides is not putrefied 39. A wonderful remedy against the Hemeroides or Piles by a ring And likewise for other Diseases THE Schools meditated that an heat did oft-times spring up through exercises not unlike to the heat of feverish persons the which notwithstanding seeing it was not a feverish one they indeed judged heat to be of necessity in Fevers not any one in differently but that which should be stirred up by putrefaction Now they are no longer careful concerning heat as neither concerning the degrees or distemperature thereof but rather concerning the containing cause thereof For neither hath a heat graduated besides nature seemed to be sufficient for a Fever unless that heat also spring up from putrefaction which particle surely hath been dully omitted in the aforesaid definition of Fevers Therefore the essence of a Fever is now no longer a naked heat neither shall this heat distinguish Fevers from the diversity of heat although a Species doth result from thence whence the essence is but from the varieties of the putrefied or at leastwise from the putrefying humours It was finely indeed begun thus to wander from the terms proposed that when as they before respected nothing but heat which should exceed the accustomed temper of nature they afterwards require heat and a subject of putrefaction which heat they will have to be kindled in an offensive putrified matter but not any longer first in the heart But seeing that of heat there is not but only Species in degree but very many moments or extensions of the same and there are very many particular kinds of Fevers neither that the specifical multitude of Fevers can proceed from one only Species of heat besides nature Therefore in the Essence or Being of heat another thing is beheld besides the degree of the same Heat therefore shall not constitute the Essence of a Fever but that other thing by reason whereof the diversity of Fevers breaks forth If therefore putrefying of divers matters be the efficient cause of the diversity of Fevers heat shall be thing as well caused from putrefaction as the Fever it self and so seeing the action of causality of the putrisied matter involveth some other thing in it besides heat it self a Fever shall not be heat Now the Schools do confusedly adjoyn very many things on both sides that if one thing do not help at leastwise another may help them So that although they toughly maintain the aforesaid definition and adore it yet they by degrees decline from the naked distemper of heat unto the putrefaction of Humours Neither do they stay in these trifles but moreover they flee back unto hot remedies as having forgotten their own Positions And that whether they attempt Purgations or next whether they shall convert themselves unto the proper specifical Rdmedies of Fevers For what is now more solemn in healing than to have given Apozemes of Hop Asparagus c. and to have seasoned the same with Sugar For what is more hot than the spiceness included in Roses whether thou respectest its savour or application without which notwithstanding the Rose it self is a meer dead carcase what doth every where more frequently offer it self than to have mingled the corrosive liquor of Sulphur or Vitriol being through the perswasion of gain manifoldly adulterated with Juleps for Fevers In the next place to have drawn forth those which they feign to be guilty humours by Rhubarb and Scammoneated Medicines Therefore before all we must profesly examine whether the heat of a Fever owes its Original to Putrefaction Wherefore first of all I have plainly taught That a feverish heat doth in no wise causally depend on the peecant matter And then I have learned that a malignant Fever alone differs from other Fevers in this that its own offensive matter hath a beginning-putrefaction adjoyned unto it The which if it shall afterwards creep unto its height until the putrefaction be actually made and shall remain within it straightway brings death of necessity But if it be driven forth in the making of the Putrefaction as in the Measills an Erisipelas c. it is for the most part cured Because health for the most part accompanies a motion to without