known that the same Humours do become degenerate in the passage of Digestions and are the occasions of many Diseases But that the Liver alone in Vices of the skin doth bear the undeserved blame that is a thing full of ignorance and worthy of pity I will at length moreover commune with Christian Physitians by one only Argument To wit Iâ— is of Faith that God made not Death for Man Because Adam was by Creation Immortal and void of Diseases For concerning long Life I have explained after what manner a Disease and Death at the eating of the Apple as an Effect unto a second Cause have entred into Nature Therefore in this place it hath been sufficient to have admonished That the Concupiscence of the Flesh arose from Transgression and also to have brought forth the flesh of Sin and therefore that Nature being corrupted produced a Disease through Concupiscence I could wish therefore that the Schooles may open the Causal Band and Connexion between the forbidden Apple and the Elements or the Complexions of these Whether in the mean time they are lookt upon as the Causes bringing Diseases or as Diseases themselves To wit let them teach If the Body of Man from his first Creation did consist of a mixture of the Four Elements after what manner those second Causes or co-mixt Elements onely by eating of the Apple which else had never been to fight the Bonds of Peace and Bolts of humane Nature being burst asunder at length naturally exercise hostilities and all Tyranny What common thing I say doth interpose betwixt the Apple and our constitutive Elements But if this came miraculously and supernaturally to passe that Death was made a punishment of sin Then God had made Death Efficiently but Man had given onely an Occasion for Death But this is against the Text yea and against Reason Because Death was made with Beasts in the Beginning even as also at this day unto every one happens his own Death that is by a natural course and a knitting of Causes unto their Effect It must needs be therefore according to Faith that Death crept naturally into Nature so that man was made Mortal after the manner of Bruits For it is certain that at the eating of the Apple the brutal concupiscence of the Flesh was introduced Neither do we read at length of any other knowledge of good and evil to have been brought in which was signified under the opening of their Eyes than that they knew themselves to be naked and then it first shamed them of their nakedness Wherefore I have long stood amazed that the Schooles have never examined the aforesaid Text that they might search out the Disposition or Respect of the Cause bringing a Disease unto its natural Effect In what day soever ye shall eat of the forbidden Fruit ye shall die the Death Which indeed is not so to be taken as if God had said by way of threatnings If ye shall eat of the forbidden Tree I will create or make Death in you Diseases Paines Miseries c. for a punishment of sin or that through a condign curse of my indignation ye and your posterity shall die For such an Interpretation as that resisteth the divine goodness because that for the sin of our two Parents he had equally cursed all their posterity with an irrevocable curse of his Indignation who after sin commited and the Flood it self readily blessed Noah by increase and multiply c. Wherefore those words Ye shall die the death did contain a fatherly admonition To wit that by eating of the Apple they should contract the every way impurity of Nature as from a second Cause seated to wit in the Concupiscence of the flesh of sin But seeing such a concupiscence can never consist in elementary qualities it is also sufficiently manifest that a Disease and Death are not connexed as Effects to the Elements and the qualities of these But the concupiscence of the flesh as it infected onely the Archeus even so also it did onely respect the same In the Archeus therefore every Disease afterwards established it self and found its own onely and immediate Inne And so also from hence the Archeus is made wholly irregular inordinate violent and disobedient Because he is he who from thenceforth hath framed inordinate images and seales together with a spending of his own proper substance as it were the wax of that seal For images or likenesses are at first indeed the meer incorporeal Beings of the mind but as soon as they are imprinted on the Archeus they cloath themselves with his Body and are made most powerful seminal Beings the sealing dames mistresses and architectresses of any kind of passions and inordinacies whatsoever which thing I will hereafter more clearly illustrate in the Treatise of Diseases Finally the adversaries will be able to Object That it would be all as one whether a Disease be accounted a disposition or a distemperature of the first qualities or a disproportionable mixture of humours or lastly whether it be called an indisposition or confusion and likewise that it is as one whether the Cause which brings a Disease he called the occasional or the material Cause of Diseases or the internal and conjoyned Cause thereof For truely the one onely intention of Nature and Physitians on both sides is conversant about the removal of that matter for the obtainment of health Therefore that I am stirred about nothing but an unprofitable brawling concerning a Name I Answer Negatively and that indeed because both the suppositions are false For as to the First For that doth not onely contain a manifest fault in arguing of not the Cause as of the Cause and of a non-Being for a Being But besides the Destruction and Death of mortal men doth from thence follow For for that very Cause for which a Remedy is administred to correct the distemperature of a Discrasie or the abounding or disproportion of humours because of things not existing in Nature they at least cannot deny that our Disputation is of things but not of a Name onely when as to wit they accuse cure or undertake to cure the Disease for the Cause or this for it They handle I say things that are never possible as if they were present And then also they presse a falshood Because indeed I never said that a naked confusion or indisposition of the Archeus is a Disease but I affirme that the immediate and internal matter of a Disease is to be drawn from the masse of the Archeus himself But I call the imprinted seminal Idea which springs from the disturbances of the Archeus the efficient Gause but as to what appertaines to the other supposition the occasional or inciting Cause and the internal containing Cause or the very Body of a Disease do far also differ from each other For example The occasional Cause of intermitting Fevers is present out of the fit which should not be if the occasional Cause were the very internal matter of
the great and new Paradox which I have undertaken to demonstrate in this Treatise Wherefore in the entrance obstacles that are obvious and devious are to be removed And first of all they object the Text The Earth shall bring forth unto Thee Thistles and Thornes In the sweat of thy Face thou shalt eat thy Bread I will multiply thy Miseries and thy Conceptions In pain thou shalt bring forth thy Sons thy Husband shall rule over Thee Thou shalt die the Death And by consequence ye shall be afflicted with the Calamities of Diseases and old Age. All which things issued forth on Posterity from the curse of the Sin of Disobedience even unto the destruction of the World upon no account to be redeemed and by no act of sanctity to be expiated Because God had appointed a Law to Adam that he should not eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil the transgression whereof hath defluxed as into original Sin So also it stirred it up into the perpetuity of a Curse from our first Parents equally on all their Posterity These things have been thus diligently taught hitherto Whereunto under the peace and censure of the Church I will humbly sub joyn my own Conceptions First therefore I negatively affirme the contrary because the Words of the Text do not precisely containe any Curses except on the Serpent and Earth but not at all on Man Whom if he with whom there is no successive alteration or change had cursed he had truly and alwayes cursed like the Evil Spirit For it is a foolish thing to believe that God should now curse Man whom presently after Sin and without the intervening of contrition or act of repentance he forthwith blessed with much Fruitfulness gave him the whole Earth and placed all living Creatures under his Feet Yea in the midst of the Curse uttered or brought upon the Serpent he replenished the femal Sex with his blessing saying The Woman shall bruise thy Head I will put Enmities between Tree and the Woman and between thy Seed and her Seed The which seeing it is not understood of the Seed of Man it promiseth the Messias the Saviour of the World to come of the Seed of the Woman So far is it that he had there cursed Man In the second place I deny that a Law was given and by consequence also a contradiction or opposing of a Law For it follows wheresoever there is not a Law Transgression nor Disobedience doth not interpose and by consequence a Curse doth not there befall But I prove that there was not a Law by the very Words of the Text And he commanded him saying Of every Tree of the Garden eat Thou but of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil Thou mayest not eat The Word he commanded Seemes to include a Precept and so also a Law Yet that one only Word obtains no more the force of a Law or Precept for the affirmative of every Tree of Paradise eat Thou than for the negative Thou mayest not eat For it included not a Sin although he had not eat of every Tree of Paradise And therefore it did no more contain a Law for the forbidding of one Tree than for a Liberty of all the other Trees Therefore the Text contained a fatherly Liberty for the affirmative and likewise for the Grant as also a fatherly Admonition of Caution for the Negative no otherwise than as if a Country-man being expert of the way shall say to a Traveller If thou shalt go that way thou wilt Perish and die the Death So the Admonition of the Creator thou mayest not eat and in whatsoever day thou shalt eat thou shalt die the Death do shew not a Law but a Persuasion and Wish But the transgression and Act of the despised Admonition doth indeed contain a Sin but not of Disobedience and Disobedience as much differs from a despised Admonition as a Law doth from an Admonishment it self The Prohibition therefore thou mayest not eat sounds as an Admonition to wit least he should eat his own and posterities Death by an unextinguishable Guilt because that Death was placed in the Apple but not in the opposition of eating And therefore that Death from the eating of the Apple was natural being admonished of but not a Curse threatned by a Law For the threatnings of Death which was unknown to Adam could not terrifie the same Adam And therefore threatnings had been void but not an admonition For Adam had not as yet seen a dead Carcase and the which before he saw living Creatures was ignorant of their Names And much less could he know what Death should be And least of all by far could Eve know what it should be to die in Paradise Therefore with our first Parents Death was as yet a non-Being and unknown but of a non-Being and of that which is unknown no Conception answereth and there is no fear at all Therefore neither hath God foretold Death for the threats of Terrour or a Law but from his meer goodness That when they had eaten of the disswaded Apple they might know that God had not made Death but themselves for themselves Neither doth the Text in Chap. 3. hinder these things Because thou hast eaten of the Tree whereof I had commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat c For the Words do manifestly declare the goodness of the foregoing Admonition but not a Law For the Word I had commanded is the same which before in the second Chapter and he commanded him saying signifies an Admonition only and not a Law Otherwise under an equal original Sin they had been obliged from eating of every Tree of Paradise which none of a sound mind will ever affirme For the great Sin was in a suspition of deciet falshood and fallacy of God and that they gave more credit to the Serpent than unto God and that they despised a fatherly and kinde Admonition But there was not Disobedience because a Law was not given It was indeed an Act against Gratitude Love towards God and a due and rational Obligation Therefore God cursed them not because they by eating had contracted the Penalties of Diseases Death and Miseries on themselves for a Punishment But God speaketh not of Diseases after the Fall Because it was sufficient once to have foretold Death to come while he admonished them that they should not eat In the next place the crafty Serpent assaulted not the Woman as being the weaker but because the Admonition was given unto Adam from the Mouth of God but signified unto the Woman onely from the relation of the Man And therefore God first requires an account of Adam First of all it doth not containe a cursing of the Man that the Earth should be cursed in its Work and should bring forth Cockle and that he should in the sweat of his face eat his Bread all his Life But they containe a remembrance of the loving Admonition that went before the
Fall Again neither do these Words sound of a Curse that the Woman should be thenceforth obedient and subject to her Husband although therein the intent of the Creator doth clearly appear to wit that he had appointed the Woman to be the head top and ultimate Creature above the Man But now by reason of a double Sin that she ought to be subject to her Husband But that signifies rather a deserved Punishment than a Curse Even as a Superiour is not cursed who is laid aside for an Errour committed But whereas it is said In Pain shalt thou bring forth thy Sons the Text expresly confirmeth the mistery of the Paradoxal Position For from thence it manifestly appears 1. That Eve was not created nor appointed as that she had brought forth in Pain Wherefore this Message is not decleared unto her for a Curse But there is set before her eies how much Calamity she had caused unto her self that she should hereafter conceive and bring forth after the manner of Bruits in Pain For it is not to be doubted but that Bruit-beasts are not guilty of Sin yet do they bring forth in Pain Not indeed that they have sinned in Adam as their Father or that they are partakers of his Sin because they had brought forth in Pain whether Adam had sinned or not Neither also is it agreeable with divine goodness that Bruit-beasts should bear an undeserved Punishment while as they from a Faculty of Nature and from an appointment of Creation do bring forth in pain 2. If Bruits bring forth in Pain a likenesse of Conception and bringing forth in Bruits and in Woman after the Fall is denoted which Likeness seeing it was not before the Fall therefore this Text strengthens the Position 3. If Eve had not eaten the Apple and consequently from the Apple the concupiscence of the Flesh from the tickling of a corrupt Seed verily she had brought forth without Pain Where the Text promiseth a Virginity in conceiving and bringing forth and so a perpetual Virginity appointed in propagating To wit that she had conceived and brought forth her Womb being shut For what other thing is this than that which others think to be the Curse of Eve is in very deed only a commemoration of the good lost through the copulation of Man of Seed and of the concupiscence of the Flesh in the Flesh of Sin after the manner of Bruits henceforeward The hope I say was lost of conceiving by the holy Spirit after that she had conceived by the will of Man as every Mother in Sins doth For otherwise if Death had been of the punishment of a broken Law and not from the concupiscence of the Flesh there should be every day as many new Deaths as there are Transgressions or God should not make so much account of his Commands of the Decalogue as of the Admonition of the caution or avoiding from the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil For he would not have those Laws to be alike seriously observed which he would not have to be chastised with an equal Punishment Therefore it being as yet supposed that there had been a Law concerning the denyed eating of the Apple even as there is a Law of forbidden Worshipping of Idols Adultery c. But these Laws are not punished with a continued unpurgeable Impurity on Posterity in such a manner as the opposition of that eating is From hence therefore it most easily appeareth that original Sin was not so much from the force of disobeying a command as from the effect of a defiled divine Generation being changed into a beast-like one For else there is not an equality of distributive Justice nor therefore a conformity in the goodness of God whether we have respect unto the ingratitude of our first Parents or next unto the disobedience against a Law Because the first disobedience should pay a punishment derived on all even on the innocent Posterity rather than any tenths or hundreths afterwards and than innumerable and far more great or haynous Sins Indeed I think that there is the same rule of Justice with the same Lawgiver of every command preceptively and defensively given and pronounced that the breaking thereof ought alwayes to draw after it an equal Fault neither therefore to be punished in all the Posterity and those that are innocent and then that none of Mortals nor any one of them had been sufficient for the original punishments of their Ancestours and a hundred-fold of Deaths to wit if Death had taken its original effectively and immediately from the opposing of a Law or the unchangeable God had not appointed his future Commands to be alike observed as at first if Death should not have its root in Nature the application of which root had been onely from man Therefore If Death should be immediately from God alone from the curse of Sin Now God had made Death and so by Faith we should believe a Falshood In the next place if Death had proceeded from a Curse and had been from a supernatural Root So also neither should our Death find natural Causes in us or our Death should not be of the same kinde with the Death of Adam Yea which is far more absurd our Death should not proceed from the same primitive Beginning from which the Death of our first Parents began And by consequence our Death should not be the effect of original Sin And so unless Death do happen from elsewhere than from the punishment of a Law and the curse of Sin that is unless the Adamical or Beast-like Generation of the Flesh from the Concupiscence of the Flesh and its Copulation doth naturally containe Death in it like unto Beasts in very deed Innocent Children should pay an undeserved Punishment Again if Death should be immediately caused from a Curse or from Sin should not the Text unfitly say On the same Day thou shalt die the Death while as it should not say Presently in the same Moment thou shalt die For a Curse doth not want twenty four hours that it may operate as neither likewise doth Sin require an interval for the Guilt and deserved Punishment of the same which was expresly seen while an impure Man endeavouring to vindicate the reeling Cart wherein the Arke of the Covenant was carried from a fall payed the Punishment of his boldness by sudden Death But seeing Death consisted in the procreation of forbidden Seeds and of the Concupiscence of the Flesh it presupposeth the eating of the Apple and its Digestion And therefore those Words On the same Day thou shalt die the Death or shalt be made Mortal also thou shalt suffer punishment by Death doubled in thee and thy Posterity do strengthen the proposed Truth of our Position But there is no original Sin accounted of from the first afterwards or unremissibly derived on all Posterity but that which from the eating of the Apple thenceforth defiled the whole Nature because it tranferred the Propagation of mankinde on the Flesh
But if it listeth us to enquire into the cause hereof It is certain that Eve after the eating of the forbidden Apple made her self subject to the itch of Lust stirred up and admitted the Man unto copulations and from hence that the conceived humane Nature was corrupted and remaining degenerate thenceforward Through the Cause of which corruption Posterity are deprived of an incomparable purity From whence there is place for conjecture that Eve did by the Member through which she became subject unto many Miseries testifie among posterity a successive fault of her fall and bloody defilement in Nature For the part wherein the Image of God ought to be conceived by the holy Spirit became a sink of filths and testifies the abuse and fault of an unobliterable sin and therefore also suffers Because In sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy Sons in manner of bruit beasts because henceforward thou shalt conceive after the manner of bruits For so that Curse hath entred into Nature and shall there remain And by the same Law also a necessity of Menstrues For before sin the Young going forth the Womb being shut had not caused pain Wherefore it is lawful to argue from the Premises That the incomparable Virgin-Mother of God the Ark of the Covenant never admitted into her any corruption and by consequence was never subject to Menstrues as neither to have suffered womanish discomodities Because she was she who by the good pleasure of God hath the Moon and the Properties of the Moon subjected under her feet Unto Whom next unto God be Honour and Praise CHAP. CIX Life IF I must at length Phylosophize of Long Life I must first look into what Life is and then what the Life of Man what immortal and Adamical Life is afterwards what a Sensitive and Short Life is what a Diseasie what a Healthy Life what the Life of the World and what Eternal Life is To which end it is convenient to repeat some Lessons from my Premises First of all therefore Life is a Light and formal Beginning whereby a thing acts what it is commanded to act But this Light is given by the Creator as being infused at one onely Instant even as Fire is Struck out of a Flint it is enclosed under the Identity and Unity of a Form and is distinguished by general Kindes and Species But it is not a fiery combustive Light a consumer of the radical moisture It is as well Vital in the Fish as in the Lyon and as well in the Poppy as in Pepper Neither also doth heat fail in us by reason of a consumption of the radical moisture Neither on the other hand doth moisture fail through a defect of heat but onely through a diminishment and extinguishment alone of the vital Powers and also of the Light The Fire Light Life Forms Magnal Place c. are neither Creatures not Substances as neither comprehended in the Catalogue of Accidents Neither therefore do I distinguish the Form in vital things from their Life the mind of Man being on both sides excepted To wit there is a certain Life which is mute or dumb and scarce appeareth such as is met with in Minerals The which notwithstanding do declare that they live and perform their Offices by their Marks and remarkable Signs of vital Faculties And then there is another Life which is a little more unfolded or manifest Such as is in the Seeds of things tending to the period of their Species In the next place a Third Life is seen in Plants increasing themselves and bringing forth off-spring by a successive multiplying Next a Fourth Life is manifest in bruit Beasts by Motion Sense and a voluntary Choice with some kind of Discourse of Imagination At length the Last Life is now obscured in the Immortal Mind and Substance and is after some sort unfolded by the sensitive Soul its Vicaresse The Life therefore is not the Balsam not the Mummy not in the next place the Spirit of the Arterial Blood although this Spirit be the Conserver of the Body Because the Life is not a Matter yea nor a Substance but the very expresse Form of the Thing it self Moreover I being about to speak of the Immortal Life of Men I will follow the Text For indeed because the punishment of the broken Precept was Death For Death came not from God but from the condition of a Law I say the Almighty made not Death as neither a Medicine of Destruction in the Earth And that must be understood onely in respect of Men For neither ought the whole Nature and Condition of the Universe to be bespattered for the Sin of Adam so as that Bruits are made subject to Death through the corruption or deviation of our kind For truly even before Sin Bruits ought to dye to wit some whereof the Lord of things had substituted for meat and fodder to others For they ought naturally to dye every annihilable Life and Form whereof were onely one and the same thing Indeed it was of necessity that those Forms should perish whatsoever do obtain their first or chief antecedent and subsequent dispositions from a corporal wedlock of the Seeds The Death therefore of Bruits was not worthy of the word Death which included an extinguishment and annihilating of a Light but not a separation of the same with a preservation of the Light separated Therefore it was the great God his good pleasure that he made Man into the nearest Image of the Divine Majesty as a living Soul nor subject unto death Therefore neither is it said that God made Death It is therefore believed that Adam before transgression was Immortal from the goodness of the Creator Therefore I knew that Adam indeed was Immortal before the transpression of a Law Yet that it was not natural unto him from the root of Life but for the Tree of Life's sake For otherwise the planting of this Tree in Paradise had been vain if Man could not have suffered the successive alterations and calamities of Ages That Tree therefore was created for the powers and necessities of Renovation renewing of Youth yea and prevention of Old Age For although the Body by Creation was not capable of being wounded nor subject unto Diseases yet it had by little and little felt the successive changes of Ages if its vigor had not been continued by the Tree of Life For neither is it to be believed that the Lord of things the Saviour of the World was of a worse constitution than our first Parent But that the Redeemer of the World died and so felt the Calamities of Ages that in his thirty second year he was reckoned fifty years of Age. That happened not from his Nature nor from the root of his Life For Death as also the rottenness of Dayes had no right over him but out of his infinite goodness whereby he had appointed himself a Surety for our Sins he would subject himself to miseries and so also to Death in his most glorious
greatest evils and those mostly to be pitied Because Physitians deceiving the World by a vain Doctorship did perswade it that they had thorowly viewed all things neither that there was a Medicine for so great an evil because the Brain had equally put on an unequal distemper as it were a Garment yet they being asked which was the primary distemper of the qualities could not hitherto express it by a suitable Etymology Wherefore the barren whisperings of the Schools being despised after that I had taken notice that hypochondrial madnesses were without controversie belonging to the Midriffe I at first began to doubt whether that cursed poyson should be brought unto the Brain through certain singular or particular Arteries But at least that suspition presently displeased me because every one should labour with an unexcusable madness unless perhapt in wise men those Channels should remain perpetually stopped and so they should be diseasie persons that they might not become such Likewise I have noted a difference between feverish doatages and madness because this indeed might very often remain safe for a long time without a lavishment of the health also in late Nephews without the discommodities of the seed and life Indeed I often left off the matter then to me unsearchable and I oftentimes from compassion took it up again And at length I saw clearly that I was supported by false principles that I was led aside by the credulity and authorities of the Heathens and deluded by the unknown qualities of Diseases And that thing I thus at first conceived and by degrees being more and more confirmed I stript my self of the Doctrine which I had supped up in the Schools concerning the Soul and concerning Diseases And then from the search of the functions of the understanding I committed my minde in rest and poverty unto the Lord that he might perform what should be his good pleasure concerning me yet I was not so indifferent but that I alwayes had a desire to profit my neighbour Therefore I begged of the Lord that I might become known to my self not onely in acknowledging my own deep nothingness morally but that as a natural Phylosopher I might behold or clearly view the very powers of the minde For truly I did suppose nothing was alike pleasing or profitable after the wisdom of Divine things as once to behold my Soul as the Image of God Wherefore I revolved the question concerning the Seat or Marriage-Bed of the immortal Soul and therefore I diligently enquired with my self whether it were so wholly in the whole Body that without a dependance on the Bride-Bed or Central Seat it should wander as a banished person not being tied unto certain Cottages or mansions and it being wholly so in the finger that this being cut off the whole should depart from the whole or through a hastening or speedy chance of fear it should return inwards Therefore I found the soul to be homogeneal or one and the same in kind simple and not to be divided else neither could it be immortal And then I knew that its whole did shine only radially on the ignoble parts after the manner of the light of the Sun which should in the mean time as it were lurk in its Throne or Seat and from thence should shine throughout the whole body being altogether unknown to the sensitive soul whose life neverthelesse the mind it self should be Verily even as the God of all is intimately present with every one of us yet is he naturally unknown nor felt or perceived by us And then a debate arose in my mind whether there were many centers and those divided according to the vital necessities of the radicall bowels But at length I knew that the mind was more tied up to one bowel than to another as well in respect of the offices of seeing as of understanding And at length therefore I was reduced unto the individual bride-bed of one bowel And while I enquired into the head and heart and weighed the doubtfulnesses of Authours I presently for certainty found that I which I formerly until now detested should depart into the precepts of the Heathens who as they were denied the knowledge of the true God so also the knowledge of the divine image which neverthelesse is the object of healing Therefore I being destitute of authorities and companions knew not whence I might begin the judgment of so great an heap untill at length God permitting it I being destitute of humane help and endeavour under many years diligent search and hope of knowing the bride-bed of the soul an unwonted chance befel me the history whereof I will declare For I was diligently heedful about the poysons of Vegetables believing that the poysons of so great moment were not hurtful to Adam before sin Seeing the Almighty created neither death nor a medicine of destruction and so to have sent forth such cruel things not indeed that they might kill man but because he was constrained in the sweat of his face to eat his bread to which diseases he was made subject also in sweats that he should extract Medicines for Diseases And therefore I did promise to my self that that poyson after the manner of a Keeper and a huske did cover some notable and Virgin-Power created for great uses and the which might by Art and Sweats allay poysons and cause them to vanish Wherefore I began divers wayes to stir or work upon Wolfs-bane And once when I had rudely prepared the Root thereof I tasted it in the top of my tongue For although I had swallowed down nothing and had spit out much spittle yet I presently after felt my skull to be as it were tied without side with a girdle Then at length some businesses of my Family unadvisedly befell me I cast up a certain account wandred about the house and finished all things according to what was requisite At length this besel me which never at another time that I felt that I did understand conceive savour or imagine nothing in the head according to my accustomed manner at other times but I percieved with admiration manifestly cleerly discursively and constantly that that whole office was executed in the Midriffs and displayed about the mouth of the Stomach and I felt that thing so sensibly and cleerly yea I attentively noted that although I also felt sense and motion to be safely dispensed from the head into the whole body yet that the whole faculty of discourses was remarkably and sensibly in the Midriffs with an excluding of the head as if the mind did at that time in the same place meditate of its own counsels Therefore I being full of the admiration and amazement of that unwonted percievance I noted with my self my own notions and began the examination of the same and of my own self after a more precise manner And I plentifully found and sifted out that I did far more cleerly understand and meditate all that space of time And so that
same day where in they should eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil they should die the Death because by the approach of the sensitive Soul there was made another and a new Generation by reason whereof the Mind being astonished withdrew it self from the Sterne of Life In this thing indeed did the necessity of Death and Immortality stand For Man had wanted a mortal Soul as long as he had wished to be immortal not only because one only immortal Mind was sufficient for the governing of the Body neither was it convenient that the Body should serve two Masters at once But moreover because there was no need of a Seed which might contain in it a Disposition unto a mortal Soul Therefore the whole seminal Disposition to propagate Seed was in our first Parent Presentâ— after the Apple was eaten and before the sensitive Soul was born as well in himself and his Posterity From thence indeed it is manifest that the Mind although it hath withdrawn its hand from the Stern of the Body Nevertheless that it is no less guilty in every production of a fructifying Seed than it was in Times past after the eating of the Apple Indeed that thing the words of the Text contain In Sins my Mother hath conceived me But after what manner under the Mean of the disswaded Apple the most chast innocency was defined being free from the Concupiscence of the Flesh and from the contagion of a brutal Impurity I will profesly demonstrate afterward But let it be sufficient to have now said by the way that a vital Seed hath arisen and was conceived through the lust of the Concupiscence of the Flesh for the begging of a sensitive Soul after a brutal manner on which Seed the Mind imprinteth its seal And therefore neither with the similitude or determination of a specifical brutality Without which Seal every Seed is barren otherwise ending into a lump of Flesh or a Monster Therefore from the Concupiscence of the Flesh as the Seed so also the Mortal Soul and the Life thereof and by consequence the flesh of Sin have drawn their original and by consequence also Death But indeed Athiests and Libertines do even at this day take the Text of the disswaded Apple together with that Original for an Allegory The which the Church hath long since banished for an Heresie and hath long since condemned it Therefore the History of the Deed which Genesis describeth is true But why and after what manner that eating of the Apple hath naturally unavoidably unremissibly and irrevocably caused Death to be equally continued on all Posterity so as that the one onely transgression of the Admonition being among the most hainous of Sins hath committed an original Crime and afterwards should enclose in it the Reason of a second Cause by propagating from an unexcusable necessity of Mortality or after what manner the withdrawing of Life and Cause of Death are necessitated in the eating of one Apple I desired not to have narrowly searched into the reason of the good pleasure of God and the motion of his Decree from a former Cause or from a consequent Effect seeing it abundantly sufficeth me that I know and believe it was so appointed of God but that truly I had hoped it might be for his Glory the Splendor of Chastity and Instruction of Libertines to have more fully sifted this Parâ—â—â— and therefore also to have applied it unto my Treatise of Long Life For now is the hour come wherein that Evil shall from the North be spread over all the Inhabitants of the Earth CHAP. CXII A Position 1. The substance of the Position 2. A summary Objection compacted of the Law Sin and the Curse 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. are Arguments against the Objection 8. A new Objection 9. The Objection is solved 10. The quality of the Sin in our first Parents 11. Why the Serpent assaulted the Woman 12. The Man is not cursed 13. The Woman is not cursed 14. The Text which is thought to contain a curse confirms the Position 15. The likenesse of Conception and bringing forth after the Fall and not before the Fall doth strengthen the Position 16. The Text proves the Position 17. An eight Argument against the Curse 18. A ninth 19. A tenth 20. An eleventh 21. A twelfth 22. A thirteenth 23. A fourteenth 24. It is shewn that Sin hath not caused Death much less if there had been any Law 25. What kind of knowledge was included in the Apple 26. Two faults in arguing of not the Cause as of the Cause 27. From what Causes the Corruption of Nature hath arose 28. From whence is the continuation of the original of Sin 29. Some Errours about the abuse of those faults in arguing 30. The Corruption of Nature from what immediate Cause it hath proceeded from what occasional Cause and from what mediate Cause 31. A fifteenth Argument against the Curse 32. A sixteenth 33. A seventeenth 34. An eighteenth 35. A nineteenth 36. A twentieth 37. A twenty first 38. A twenty second 39. A twenty third 40. A twenty fourth 41. After what sort Death entred the Apple 42. A conjecture from things going before 43. The conjecture is proved 44. Brawlings about Goats-wool 45. A twenty fifth Argument 46. It is concluded from the Truth of the Text. 47. Death doth not exspect an hec-ciety or this very momentnesse as neither doth Sin 48. The intention of the Creator placed in the Text is proved because he hath no where admitted of incest between him that goes before and him that follows after in generation 49. The place of Mans corrupted Nature is narrowly searched into by eight Arguments 50. A ninth is also added 51. The chastity of the Text is celebrated 52. The excellency of those that are regenerate beyond the happiness of Adam THe Almighty out of his vast and voluntary goodness of Love hath loved and raised up Man peculiar for this purpose that he might intimately and as nearly as might be express his own Image Wherefore he adorned the same Image of himself with so great a Grace of his own divine Majesty and so prevented it with the bountiful beholding of his Love that of his own good Pleasure he created Eve and ordained that she should be the future Mother of all Humanity and Adam after the Fall called the name of his Wife Hevah because she should be the Mother of all living who was to conceive her off-springs not indeed from carnal Copulation and after the manner of Bruits nor from the concupiscence of the Flesh or by the will of Man but from God or from the overshadowing of the holy Spirit alone after the manner whereby the Humanity was conceived and born in which and by which all that are to be saved ought to be regenerated That is the Virginity of the Mother remaining entire and her Womb being shut she had brought forth without Pain Eva was constituted above the Man This indeed is
of eternal Life that is a Superiority over the necessities of Death At length if death had happened from a Law from the Punishment and Curse of Sin it should be false that God had not made Death because in very deed and immediately Death had proceeded from God and not from a natural Cause or that of Nature corrupted And by so much a stronger right where the same Person the Almighty Creator is the Law-giver like as also the Executer Last of all Sin is a mental Being or a Non-Being which cannot produce a real and actual Being And therefore Death at its Beginning had not proceeded from natural Causes even as at this Day Death doth arise in bruit Beasts equally as in us and therefore Death in its Beginning had been different in the whole kind from that at this day And therefore the Text should speak that which is ridiculous God made not Death if by reason of disobedience he had cursed Nature that it should die It is therefore of necessity that the Death of Man in its Beginning began and was made from second Causes altogether natural whereby we die at this day Also at this day Death hath reciprocally invaded through the natural Causes of defiled Nature even as in times past in its Beginning Indeed although Adam became Mortal from eating of the Apple yet his Death happened not but naturally some Ages after and from Old Age as from second Causes Far therefore be a Law an opposing thereof Sin a Curse in the original of Death appearing so many Ages after from second Causes speaking as it were in our presence Therefore every and the total Cause whereby Man hath immediately framed Death for himself is to be seen in the Position For although we are now Mortal yet we die not when we will and when we desire Because Death proceeded not from the Will or from Sin but from the Apple Neither indeed because Death it self was in the Apple as in a mortal Poyson but there was in the Apple the Concupiscence of the Flesh an incentive of Lust a be-drunkening of Luxury for a Beast-like Generation in the Flesh of Sin which Flesh carried with it the natural Causes of Defects and necessities of Death Wherefore it is likely to be true if the Serpent had not been able to obtain of Man that by Sinning he should eat of the Apple that he had cast an Apple cropped from thence unto the Root of some lawful Tree that by this means the Enemy of our Life might rejoyce to have introduced Death And that thing is sufficiently gathered from the Text which doth not say If thou shalt eat of that Tree but he saith In whatsoever day thou shalt eat thou shalt die the Death As if he should denounce that that danger of Death to come was fore-ordained For for this purpose the World was created and the Instruments of Generation were given unto Man because the Corruption of Nature the necessity of regeneration in a Saviour and the virgin Purity thereof was foreseen Let therefore those brawlings cease whether Eve ate an Apple or indeed a Fig. For the Text calls an Apple That which is pleasing to the Eye but a Fig doth not so allure by the sight of it And that one only Tree was of that Property whereof then there was not the like nor at this day is there another read to exist among created Things Finally the Words of the Text I will multiply thy Miseries and thy Conceptions so far off is it that they do signifie the Indignation of God and much less his Curse Yea rather they denote his love toward the devoted Sex For truly there is none which knows not that by how much the Life of the devoted Sex shall be the more miserable by so much also that it is nearer to the Son of Man for otherwise tribulations which God sendeth on his Saints and Martyrdom it self should by an equal right be Curses I will add last of all that as the Works of the Flesh are devillish So the Text I will put Enmities between the Seed of the Woman and thy Seed doth fully or plainly confirm this Position For first of all the Woman of whose Seed God there speaketh is the God-bearing Virgin which as a Virgin hath left no other Seed an Enemy to the Serpent but the Sons of Light the Sons of God and those who are renewed by the holy Spirit who have no Enmities with the Eggs of any creeping thing but only with the Sons of the Devil and Darkness forasmuch as they keep the Seeds of Sin Therefore the Text there promiseth a future Regeneration in the God-bearing Virgin calling those that are not renewed the Seed of the Devil because they are Adamical Flesh Therefore those things being heeded which I have already above demonstrated original Sin doth not properly expect a quickning or the moment of hecceity For although the Soul cannot be guilty of Sin before it be Yet seeing original Sin is in the Contagion of the Flesh it self is presently in the supposition of the concrete or composed Body after the manner of its receiver and assoon as there is a sexual mixture of the Seeds according to that saying For behold I was conceived in Iniquities before the coming of the Soul because in Sins my Mother hath conceived me For Sin is in the same point wherein Death consisteth the which indeed is in the very mixture of the Seeds For Death is immediately in the Archeus but not in the Soul which thing the sometimes mortal indisposition it self of the Archeus proveth from whence the conception is made voide which before now was in its whole hope vital And although the impurity of the material thing supposed be before the Flesh thereby generated and therefore also before the Soul yet there is not properly Sin unless the Soul â—all put that on There is therefore a far different infection of original Sin than of any other Sins whatsoever which require a consent of the Soul For other Sins the Soul it self committeth but original Sin defiles the Soul not consenting because the Thingliness or Essence of that original Sin is the very Flesh of Sin For neither therefore is it called the Soul of Sin but the Flesh of Sin because the Soul is defiled by the Flesh But the Devil not from elsewhere than from himself Therefore Man admires mercy but not the Devil Therefore from the good pleasure of the Creator the Apple did carry in it not only the Concupiscence of the Flesh but consequently also the generation of Seed but there was not therefore a Faculty in the Apple of propagating the sensitive Soul The Arbitrator of the World in creating would oblige himself to create every living Soul in every soulified Body when corporeal Dispositions had come unto the bound of enlivening For therefore the Apple presently after it was eaten disposed the Arterial Blood unto a Seed and from thence into a sensitive Soul And that thing was
wheresoever the beginning of conceptions is felt But those are called forces which are not in our power because they are the first conceits of the sensitive soul as yet out of order and not yet diligently examined by the command of the minde But that which I write touching the seat of the sensitive soul I understand also for the immortal minde For truly the minde hath not a subject more near and like to it self wherein it may be entertained than that vital light which is called the sensitive soul wherein indeed the minde is involved and tied by the bond of life by the Command of God But the sensitive soul perishing through the annihilating of it self the minde cannot any longer subsist in the Body and therefore it hastens to the Being of Beings that it may passe unto places appointed for it Therefore the radical Bride-bed of the sensitive soul is in the vital Archeus of the stomach and it stands and remains there for the whole life-time Not indeed that the sensitive soul is entertained in the stomach as it were in a Sack Skin membrane pot prison little Cell or bark neither is it comprehended in that seat in manner of Bodies enclosed within a purse but after an irregular manner it is centrally in a point and as it were in the very undividable middle of one membranous thickness And it is in a place nevertheless not plainly locally But because every Soul is a light given by the Father of Lights and Creator of things but I have proved elsewhere that lights are immediately in place and mediately in a placed Air So also the sensitive Soul is in a place or seat whereof I write at this present But the minde seeing it is a lightsome substance it pierceth a created light which is the sensitive soul and this likewise pierceth the minde and blunts it with its contagion of the corruption of Adam of which in the Book of long life concerning the entrance of death into man Therefore the frail mortal sensitive soul is a meer vital light given by the Father of Lights neither is it declarable after another manner or word seeing that in the whole World it hath not its like besides the light of a Candle the which because it burns may be compared to a spark yet onely by an analogical and much unlike similitude and as it were by the more outward husk Therefore indeed that sensitive soul although it be locally present and be entertained in a place yet it is not comprehended in a place otherwise than as the flame of a Candle is kindled in an exhalation and the light in that flame is as it were life in the aforesaid soul yet vital lights are never parching but are separated by as many diversities as there are differences of souls And from thence is God called by S. James the Father of Lights Therefore the heat of things soulified is not of the Fountain-light of the soul but a heating light of the vital life and so it is the product of life but not the life it self And therefore also it is emulous of a Sunny light even as in a Fish the vital light is actually cold because it is of the nature of the Moon And for that cause God made onely two and sufficient lights for the life of sublunary things yet the light of which light or the souls themselves are the subjects of inherency And they are altogether neither Creatures between a substance and an accident because of the Country of the intelligible world Therefore in the sensitive soul for neither ever elsewhere in frail things as it were a spiritual light made by the Father of Lights is the Immortal minde conjoyned and the which also by the hand of the Almighty every where present or by an Angel is co-knit unto the sensitive soul by the bond of life that is of a vital light which is an unseparable property of the aforesaid light But the immortal minde it self is a clear or lightsome incorporeal substance immediately shewing forth the Image or likeness of its God because it hath received the same engraven on it in creating or in the very instant of enlivening or quickning For both souls are created at once and conjoyned by God who will never attribute his own Honour of Creator unto any Creature But before the fall of Adam there was not a sensitive soul in man but by what meanes or after what manner that together with death hath descended at once into humane nature that shall be shewed in its own place At least by the coming of the sensitive soul death hath entred and the corruption of our whole nature and the Majesty and Integrity of our former nature was obliterated or blotted out For truly while the minde did immediately perform the offices of life neither was the sensitive soul as yet present immortality was also present neither had beast-like darkness occupied the understanding And so man indeed suffered Ship-wrack in his own nature and that an unrestorable one but by the new birth under the calamities of tribulations maâ—â—s exalted in a far more excellent manner while from the image of God he is taken as adopted for his Son Furthermore it is altogether necessary that every motion of the first force and of the first conception of the soul doth happen in the chamber of the soul which thing although it be chiefly felt about the Orifice of the stomach and God be admirable in his works because indeed it hath well pleased him to dispose such admirable powers in the membranes of the stomach womb and skins that cover the Brain because they do bear before them as it were a certain image of a Common-wealth yet I have found the Spleen readily to serve for the ferment of the stomach and for the Sun Cocter and Directer thereof Therefore I have decreed to call the conspiracy of both Bowels the Duumvirate or Sheriff-dome For although the digestive ferment and the like aids may seem to shew forth a Family-service of servants yet the service of houshold-servants in vitals as it contains a power and strength so also it promiseth dignity and authority So that as in the stomach there are feelings faintings of the whole body and most sensible manifest and open priviledges of coctions neverthelesse the vital breathing-hole causing the digestions of so manifold arteries and so mightily of the stomach hath commanded that without a duality disagreement or powerful preferrence there ought to be made one Family-administration of both Bowels indeed by divers offices into one conspiring scope although both do singularly attend on their own work therefore also separated in place Truly there is one onely endeavour of the Duumvirate and agreeing and set harmony of intention Therefore the neighbouring Spleen doth lay on the stomack without as if it would nourish the same by a lively co-weaving of arteries Not indeed that the arteries do give all force or virtue to the Spleen but they have themselves as
Bowels after the manner of Stars For although the Stars do borrow their light from the Sun yet there is in every one of them his own peculiar property and strength of acting which is far most evident in the Moon about the ebbings flowings and overflowings of the Sea Be it therefore that the arteries of the Spleen do supply the place of the Sun yet the Spleen it self hath obtained a double and native dignity peculiar to it self although the Family-service of the Heart rejoyceth in the preparing of vital blood and spirit Therefore the Spleen is the seat of the Archeus the which seeing he is the immediate Instrument of the sensitive soul doth determine or limit or dispose of the vital actions of the soul residing in the stomach For the sensitive soul doth scarce meditate of any thing without the help of the Archeus because it rejoyceth not being abstracted as doth the minde the which in its ebbing or going back by an extasie doth sometimes and without the props of the Archeus and corporal Air intellectually contemplate of many and great things Also in exorbitances of the Archeus an aversion confusion exorbitancy and indignation is administred And the sensitive soul it self being as it were the husk of the minde doth alwayes will it nill it make use of the Archeus Hence indeed all foolish madnesses some whereof onely have been made known are called praecordial or Midriffe ones and are ascribed to the place about the short Ribs the which notwithstanding do spring from the same seat and the same fountain of the soul as it were by the hurting of one onely point Also Remedies do scarce materially go without the hedges or bounds of the stomach And therefore they are rare which are brought thorow unto the spleen which thing in the difficulties of a Quartane Ague is plain enough to be seen For the immortal minde is read to be inspired into Adam by omnipotency and that without the Wedlock of the sensitive soul And that breath of life he calls a substance And therefore that is not found to be breathed into bruit Beasts Therefore the minde was first of all immediately tied to the Archeus as to its own Organ or Instrument the which therefore it could at its pleasure daily substitute a-new out of the meats being sufficiently and alwayes and perpetually alike strong And from thence to awaken the immortal life worthy of or meet for it self For truly the immortal minde being every where present did perform all the offices of life immediately by the Archeus and the which therefore doth borrow his own liveliness from the minde who also is therefore after some sort superiour to mortal things and seemed to be the foster-Child of a more excellent Monarchy than of a sublunary one These things were so before the fall of Adam But seeing that in the same day of their transgression they were made guilty of death a soul subject to death came unto them the Vicaresse and Companion of the minde To wit unto whom the minde it self straightway transferred the dispositions of the government of the Body For at first there was an immediate Wed-lock of the immortal minde with the Archeus Presently after the fall and the stirring up of the sensitive soul the minde withdrew it â—â—lf like a Kernel into the center of the sensitive soul whereto it was tied by the bond of life The minde is not nourished by foods it could chuse meats for its own Archeus and prepare them for him who now is constrained with an unwearied study to watch for his own support of nourishment And that by degrees he lesse and lesse fitly prepares and applies to himself by reason of the defective duration and power of the sensitive soul Thus therefore I ought to speak concerning the seat of the minde of the material occasion of mortality and the necessities of Diseases and distemper For truly what things are here required in the Treatise of the entrance of death into humane nature is demonstrated at large with an explication of that Text From the North shall evill be stretched out over all the Inhabitants of the Earth Therefore for a Summary The central place of the Soul is the Orifice or upper mouth of the stomach no otherwise than as the Root of Vegetables is the vital place of the same The minde sitteth in the sensitive soul whereto it was consequently bound after the fall But the Brain is the executive member of the canceipts of the soul as it sits chief over the sinews and muscles in respect of motion but in respect of sense or feeling it possesseth in it self the faculties of memory will and Imagination Therefore the stomach failing or being defective there are palenesses tremblings drith's Consumptions of the flesh and strength wringings of the Belly or Guts the Asthma or stoppage of breathing Jaundises Palsies Convulsions giddinesses of the Head Apoplexies c. For the most famous Physitians do wonder that oft-times extream defects are overcome not otherwise than by remedies pertaining to the stomach and that the evil of the stomach doth bring forth Diseases far distant from it self And the more modern Physitians are amazed that vulnerary potions should succesfully cure wounds of the joynts And that according to Paracelsus the Cancer Wolf the eating inflamed Ulcer are cured by a Drink Therefore the errour of those that cure the more outward parts that are ill-affected as if they were fundamental ones and they who do translate all healing about the head it being hurt by the lower parts proceedeth from hence by reason of the ignorance of the seat of the Soul life and government CHAP. XXXVIII From the Seat of the Soul unto Diseases 1. A greater sense is proved to be in the mouth of the Stomach than in the eye or fingers 2. The Schools do every where being unconstrained consent to the Paradox concerning the seat of the Soul although they do openly dissent therefrom 3. The wayling of those that are exorbitant through much leachery 4. The life of the stomach is chief over the other digestions 5. The Ferment that is a friend to the stomach is afterwards an enemy to all the particular shops of digestions 6. Divers Diseases are stirred up by the Ferment of the stomach being transplanted 7. The snare of Gatarrhs 8. The foundation of Diseases 9. The joynt-sickness proves that thing 10. Very many Diseases do flow centrally from the stomach which are feared and healed by the Head 11. Of what sort the co-mixture of the Character of some Diseases may be 12. How Medicines applied to or bound about the Head do operate 13. It is proved that the seat of the Soul is not in the heart it self 14. Remarkable things about the Character of Diseases 15. Why the effects of fear do vary their own effects 16. The same thing is considered for a poysonous occasional cause 17. They are appropriated to the vital light 18. An objection 19. The intent of the Author 20.
the Headach ariseth from over-eating or drinking 4. Paine ariseth from a contraction of the Coats of the Brain without a Vapour 15. A Position for the Duumvirate 16. The Conclusion THe Heathen Poet doth morally yet from a homely judgement call Sleep the Image of Frozen Death But I seeing that I know Sleep to be a natural power dismissed from the principality of the Stomack into the Brain and to be committed to the charge of the Power of Government that it might be put in execution being a Christian do believe that God alwaies to be sanctified When he intended to frame Woman of the rib he cast a Sleep upon Adam Not indeed as a privative Being but as an actual real faculty and meerly positive And therefore that the Power of Sleeping is vital necessary and consequently natural For I may not believe that God made Death in man or the image thereof Neither was it meet that the image of Death should go before sin and the occasion of Death The Schools indeed teach that Sleep is caused by vapours lifted up out of the Stomack into the Brain stopping or intercepting the passages of the Senses Motion Speech Judgement c. which things surely I being as yet a young man judged to be ridiculous For in very deed so a disease had been before sin because sleep should be a disease to wit there had been a flatulent and vapoury Palsie and Temporary madness both in a body then as yet not capable of suffering and in a life immortal It s a shamefull thing therefore that the blockishness of Paganisme should as yet be seriously taught in the Schools especially by Christians better instructed Yea the Schools do erre in their own position proposed For those that sleep do move and turn themselves up and down some do walls about do feel the stings of a gnat or flie so as that they do thereby awake others also do speak and oft-times aptly answer At length as the Schools do badly accord with themselves while they confound sleep and waking Catarrhs with the same root causes and manner of making so I after that the toyes of a Catarrhe were hissed our rejected also the assigned causes of sleep as vain fables Last of all the Schools also lay hands on themselves while they teach that from Opiates things as they say most cold and rather things powerfully restraining every evapouration at least wise they are feigned to restrain c. Vapours for Catarrhs more than Coriander from their own nature Sleep the Drowsie evil yea and death are most readily brought on a man and so much the more speedily by how much the Opiate shall be of a more gradual cold in quality and quantity And that by how much the more of sincere Opium shall be taken and the more inward cooling made by so much the more plentiful and more continued vapours should be brought from the stomack into the head also although the mouth of the stomack be shut But surely it is a stupid devise that sleep should be made by cold Neither is it to be understood how one onely grain of Opium can cause a sufficiency of cold in the Stomack and had actually driven a sufficient quantity of vapours into the Head How likewise it shall belong to cold to stir up vapours rather than to restrain them But these things we may suppose to be granted by the rule of falsehood And that Sleepifying vapours are derived upwards from the meats also that the Sinews the authours of the senses and motions are stopped by these vapours But I would they had first considered that the roots or first extremities of the Sinews are continual to the Brain and thornie marrow and that the other extremities or outmost ends of the Sinews do end into the more outward muscles or into the very Organs of the Senses and so that therefore sleepie vapours first ought materially to pierce and plainly to be imbibed into the substance of the brain and thornie marrow and to obstruct both before that they should according to the position of the Schools cause sleep And which way should these vapours incline from the Stomack and pierce thorow the whole Substance of the Brain by what meanes should they reach even unto the very innermost and altogether continued root of the Sinews it self which is unseperably connexed to the Brain In the next place how could he that is awakened at the will of the awakener be so speedily loosed and freed from those impediments Or what may detain those vapours there for so many hours without their co-binding or co-thickning into water for truly those vapours being once constrained a passage should lay open to the Spirits which should presently shake of the sleep Or what at length may hinder that new vapours should not continually make towards the same beginnings of the Sinews and being there Coagulated should not bring forth of necessity daily Catarrhes or rheums and undoubted palseys Surely if an Anatomist or a man in his right mind doth but once at least rudely contemplate of these things he ought of necessity to admire with amazement at these fables of heathens especially because they have no affinity or connexion with the principles of our constitution It also happens that some one is many times awakened in one only night that he ariseth and goes to sleep again and so almost at his pleasure there should be so many obstructions of the Sinews in one night yea in one hour I passe by in the mean time that sleep is stirred up an Opiate being as yet materially within the Stomack even as unvoluntary experience hath often taught Therefore either so small a quantity and onely the Odour of the Opium ought to fume up into the Brain or it self being there detained should send away sleepy Vapours its Vicars But not the first because before that the Opium could strike the sense of Tasting or Smelling the Opium should be continually percieved in the Tongue Palate Nostrills and Jawes and that before Sleep which is not done Moreover the Sulphur of Vitriol which is an exceeding Sleepifier seeing it is fixed cannot shake its Vapours into the Head as neither dismisse from it its Vicary partakers Truly I conjecture that the Greek Authors of Sleep or those that were riotous when they perceived that themselves being drunk were given to Sleep judged that they were to derive all Sleep from no other thing neither that Sleep could any longer creep on us not so much as late in the Morning and the Meats being now digested but only from Meat and Drink I find also in the Schools the material causes of Giddiness of the Head not a whit to differ from the causes of natural Sleep All which things I have elsewhere concerning Rheums proved to be meer ignorances and unsavoury consents having arisen from a sluggishness of diligent searching and a readiness of subscribing But I pray what is that which is so cold in Opium which causeth Sleep against my
Stomatical and Aromatical things being Distilled Furthermore in as much as in fits of the Falling-sickness all Sense not likewise motion faileth Yet that doth not therefore argue that the sensitive Soul is not the Fountain of both For although all the intellectuall powers do fail and onely the Testimonies of a shaking and leaping motion do remain as long as that Eclipse endureth yet all those Powers are denoted or designed as issuing from the Soul into the Body as if they were proper to it But those Powers which it self hath planted in the Archeus implanted in the Organs are under an Ecclipse and are tumulted by the commotion of the Soul yet they subsist obscured because the Life is not taken away neither doth the Pulse therefore cease But in as much as an unvoluntary convulsive motion doth even still remain that is not to be attributed so much to the Soul as to the singular Life of the Muscles The which indeed I have elsewhere shewn as yet to persevere for some time after Death And that a Tetanus and strait Extension doth begin long after Death So that although the Life of the Muscles doth proceed from the sensitive Soul yet it obtains a certain peculiar Efficacy as also Station of place Therefore it is less wonderful or absurd for the Muscles to be therefore tumulted by their own Motion if on this side Death they have felt the common Life to be Eclipsed But in an Apoplexie and Swooning even the motion of the Muscles also doth plainly fail except the motion of those between the Ribs because then the sensitive Soul doth undergo a total darkness Therefore the Soul the directress of Life according to the divers Tragedies of its perturbations doth manifoldly dismiss its Guardians into the Organs placed under it But every Life seeing it is of the disposition of Lights descending from the Father of Lights it exceeds a humane Understanding And so by an unfit word the Father of Lights is called by the Schooles the Intelligible World who doth least of all fall under our Understanding For neither is the most Glorious Father of Lights and his whole Common-wealth wholy unknown unto us according to the Testimony of Truth to Nicodemus but also the Essence Thingliness Direction and Distribution of the vital Powers do exceed our Capacity For how astonishable is the privation of Understanding Memory yea or of Speech only especially Motion Sense Appetite yea and the integrity of Health remaining And how terrible is the fall of these at every onset of the Falling-sickness Swooning or drousie Evil And how much doth it exceed humane Industrie that so diverse Faculties do arise and inhabit in one Stomack Because so diverse Symptomes do bewray the same hurtings of the Faculties For all things do drive us unto the amazement of a Miracle or Wonder And therefore we being admonished by so many stormes on every side of our Ignorance and Fondness do confess that that one only sensitive Soul is the Fountain of Life also Life the Spring of many Powers and Distributress thereof as well in the healthy as in sick Persons Therefore also if we Physitians ought to lay the Ax unto the root of the tree we are intent for the obtaining of Universal Arcanum's or Secrets which may conserve preserve plant and build up the Life in the very Fountain of Life the Author of Death and Diseases no less than of Health For I now have regard to the frail Soul but not to the incorporeal and immortal Mind The which we believe to be Originally inspired alike and alike perfect in all And therefore Conditions Inclinations Domestick or Forreign Mild or Fierce Tractable or Teachable Humble or Proud are instilled into us by the Mortal Soul Wherein as in a Subject or Place locally disposing the Inclinations of varieties are unfolded which otherwise from the Mind or Image of God are naturally banished Therefore sleep was not in man naturally in respect of his mind but was afterwards sent into him by the Creator But before sleep was bred Sense Motion and Appetite were present Because the Mind as it was thenceforth Immortal it was also unweariable and had no need of Sleep or Rest Yet Sleep was sent into Adam before the Fall Not so much for that he stood in need of Sleep especially a few hours after his Creation as chiefly because by Sleep he was not yet made sore afraid of known Death threatned unto him for eating of the Apple Otherwise Sleep produceth from it self sluggish idleness and foolish vain Dreames and causeth the loss of almost half the Life Whence even at this day from the antient Sleep sent into Adam they have yet retained Dreams That the Old Men shall Dream Dreams the Young Men shall Prophesie And Night unto Night shall shew Knowledge For the sleepifying Power which was sent into the Mind before the Fall and the same also being after a sort free from the wedlock of the Mortal Soul would after some sort draw it into its Original Prerogative of Prophesying unless the darkness of the Soul sprung up and put in place did obscure the same But while I declaim the Stomack to be the Inne of the sensitive Soul and for that cause do dedicate the sink of Diseases to the Stomack I have indeed considered Occasional Causes near the same place to sit as well in the hollowness and bought thereof and being as it were strangers onely there to stick and likewise in the tent of the Bowel Duodenum which is the Prison deputed for the Jurisdiction of the Gaul and Pylorus and most troublesome to Anatomists for its composure of Vessels and Glandules as in the Archeal sheathes no less of that which is inbred as of that which is inflowing To wit that through the conspiring distemperature whereof the sensitive Soul is diversly disturbed and all the Vital Faculties the Chambermaids hereof to be co-shaken and so the same being weakened that an Army of Diseases doth arise as well those Radical or Chronical as those soon hastening as I long since have known being thorowly instructed by many Experiences So that I saw Hunger and unextinguishable Thirst to proceed not so properly from the sharpnesse of the matter provoking as from the very fury of the sensitive Soul For otherwise a Thorexis or Draught or Potion of generous Wine should not dissolve Hunger unlesse Hunger being as it were made drunk by appeasing should soundly sleep And therefore Thirst in Feavers doth not afflict but in its own Stations although the same matter yea and a more cruel heat doth presse more in their Vigour than at other times Now even as the Government of the Stomack hath been enlarged on So also it hath been shewn that the sensitive Soul doth there abide as in the first or chief Kitchin of the Meats and that the Life doth there Inhabit For truly the most potent Powers of transchanging and digesting do there exercise their Offices and therefore not onely Kitchinfilths are
foolish thing to reckon a Being of Reason a Mental Being or a Non-Being among Natural Causes Moreover I had willingly hastened unto the bound which I have proposed unto my self concerning Long Life unless Death should cut off the intended thred interlacingly prefixing its priority as it were a Remora or stop The Paradox also whereof I had willingly detained among Secrets but that the Treatise of Long Life did require its right after Death whereby it hath naturally stablished an entrance into the Inne of Man Surely this Mystery of God is an unheard of Paradox and the which therefore I humbly prostrate unto the Censure of the Church But let it be in stead of a Proposition That God made not Death But that thing I first understand to be denied for Man onely For otherwise for bruit Beasts Death was already naturally ordained before Man was Created and indeed from the same Root whereby Death entred into Man For truly most Beasts live not but by the slaughter of each other In the next place Death doth not in this place signifie a naked separation of the Soul from the Body as it denoteth a meer privation as if the sense were That God hath not made a Non-Being which is called Death For such a Declaration or Proposition in the holy Scriptures should be ridiculous For the very Word He hath made and a denial thereof is the same and respecteth that he made and they were made And so a denial thereof bespeaks the absence of a positive and not of a privative Being and is equivalent to this Proposition God made Man without an Inclination unto Death Neither made he Natural Causes in him whereby he should be Mortal In the next place neither hath the evil Spirit made Death Because there is not a kingdom of Infernal Spirits in the Earth and much lesse was there in Paradise Neither can Satan by any means change Essences instituted by the Creator invert them abolish or slay those Essences which God hath made void of Death Death began in us from the evil Spirit indeed suggestively and excitingly after a manner plainly by accident and external Neither could he produce a Cause of Mortality in a Subject through the grace of the Creator uncapable thereof Therefore if neither God nor the evil Spirit have made the Death of Man efficiently therefore from a sufficient enumeration of parts Man alone made Death for himself and hath applyed Causes unto himself as a Positive Being From whence he hath become mortal and Death hath been made natural For what the Devil could not do man having a possibility but not a necessity of dying could do For he was in the possession of Immortality and he was able not to dye if he would because Death was unto him a free Contingent but indeed because the Body of Adam had need of the Tree of Life therefore in respect of his Body he was not absolutely Immortal and therefore also he stood in need of nourishment but he was to be Immortal from the free goodness of the Creator And he who had preserved Adam from Death by Grace and had given him the natural endowment of the Tree of Life had therefore defended the same Adam from any kind of Injuries Therefore Immortality in Man had been continued by the Tree of Life and he was therefore banished out of Paradise lest also after the Apple being eaten He stretch forth his hand unto the Tree of Life and eat c. For as the Apple included the Cause of Death so the Tree of Life contained a superiority of Life over the Causes of Death For it was not convenient for Man who had eaten his own Death not to Dye and to deride threatned Death and therefore he ought to be bannished in Paradise But Man was Immortal as his Immortal Mind did immediately perform all the Offices of his Body and give from it self an Immortal Life For seeing it knows no Death neither therefore is it subject unto the importunities of frail things it behoveth if it was to govern the immediate family-administration of the Body that it should after some sort communicate a like Immortality to its Body at-least-wise as to an excellency of the ruling Powers Although in respect of the nourishments of the Body Man had by little and little failed if he had not been supported by the Tree of Life Yea in speaking distinctly all plurality of his Powers was supt up into the Unity of his Mind And at this day the Mind is not capable of suffering through Duration and the Alterations of mortal Things because a mark of resemblance is wanting to these whereby they may immediately touch at or pierce the Mind Therefore that Death might make an access and entrance into Man it behoved that the Mind did first desist from its immediate and former Function of the Offices of the Body and that another Soul to wit a Mortal one Sensitive and Seminal being as it were the Band of the Body should enter The which indeed being far different from the Mind is begged in the course of Nature by the vital Air from the Father of Lights the giver of Life even as elsewhere concerning the birth of Forms and perisheth with the Death of Man For if the Seed of a Dog doth voluntary issue even into a living Soul exclusively Therefore it was meet that Man should be conceived without Seed and a manly Copulation or at leastwise that the Seed of Man should not be without the disposition of a seminal Life but to be limited by the common guidance of created Nature into a living Soul exclusively the manner whereof I will explain afterwards Furthermore that Death was placed in the eating of the Apple that is that the natural Cause of Death the producer after a dispositive manner of the sensitive Soul which otherwise Man had wanted was by the Seed and that indeed after the manner of Bruits and that the Mind thereupon hath forsaken the government of the Body as it were abhorring the beast-like Impurity thereby contracted shall be made manifest in following Treatises For from what moment of Time Man made a Seed within himself for the propagation of his own Species he delineated at leastwise dipositively by the same endeavour the Beginnings of a mortal Soul occasionally it being the covering and wrappery of the Mind that it might receive on it self the whole ministery of the Body For truly the Creator had already obliged himself unto the Seeds of things in Nature that as often as the Seeds of sensitive Cratures had come unto the bound of multiplying the Parent himself of vital Lights might infuse meet Souls into all particular Seeds the which I elsewhere in the birth of Formes have profesly prosecuted And therefore there was in the Apple a Faculty of producing a fructifying Seed and after a brutal manner containing a seminal dispositive Archeus of the Young and by request obtaining for it self a mortal Soul from the Giver of Life For on the
copulation of the Sexes for he was truly Immortal and the first who therefore arose from the Dead by his own Power unless the amorous or loving Embassage for which he had come had made him electively to be born in the form of a Servant Therefore now the Question hath seemed to me to be decided which hath driven many that were in anguish about the unspotted Conception of the God-bearing-Virgin into many brawlings Furthermore not onely Regeneration by Baptisme is enjoyned but also unless we shall eat of the super-substantial Bread we are to have no Life in us Which benefit of a vital Purity is the supream pledge given for the Life of the World or for the frail Adamical miserable and mortal Life Because that Heavenly Bread which descends from heaven which is the Wine budding forth Virgins and the same in supposition from its own free property takes away the spot contracted from Adam and the broken Virginity of Eve Because the Merits of the Passion being participated of in that Pledge are communicated of from the unspotted Virginity of the Body of our Lord. The Communion therefore of that most Chast Body uniteth us unto his Mystical Body and makes us partakers of his Incomprehensible and Amorous Incarnation as we participatively put on his Virginity in which we ought to be saved by being born again For Christ was born that he might be crucified for us Therefore his Death was that it might give us Life and that for the whole Species of men in general But in the individual as oft as of the Bread the Body of the Lord is made as if Christ is re-born again not indeed that he is crucified again But that he may give the intended scope of his Incarnation unto that individual Body which there eats the re-born Lamb that is the Merits of his Passion Indeed there are two principal Ends of the holy sacred Eucharist To wit that the Virgin nature of Christ and the Merits of his Passion may be unitively communicated unto us Truly Children that are Baptized shall rise again indeed in a glorified Body Yet by so much the lesse lightsome by how much they were remote from the Union of the Beatifical Body And although there do not now appear the visible signes of so great an effect such as I have above related concerning Baptisme yet they are in very deed communicated unto their immortal mind Because it is that which shall therefore at some time reduce their Body into the form of a Spirit For otherwise Regeneration doth not grow anew in the Resurrection which hath not fore-existed in the Life-time by being born again Neither is Faith of feigned Non-Beings but of things chiefly true although not alwaies visible because they do primarily operate on the Immortal mind which is invisible Wherefore although the mark of resemblance of Union with God by the Eucharist be altogether unsearchable and the fruits thereof are unto us invisible Yet a Mystical aâ—â— real New-birth is reckoned to be in the speech to Nicodemus it being as yet earthly and as it were natural By which title indeed I have transferred this free endowment of Purity among natural Considerations to wit that under the Doctrine concerning Long Life I may speak also of Immortal Life as it is understood by true Christians and actually derived into a true use For I contemplate of the Regeneration of those that are to be saved and of the participation of Life in the Communion of the Eucharist to happen and be reckoned among earthly things because there is shewn something like unto it elâ—â—where in Earthly things Verily almost even as in the Projection of the Stone which make â—â—â—old For I have divers times handled that stone with my hands and have seen a real transmutation of â—aleable Argent-vive or Quicksilver with my eyes which in proportion did exceed the powder which made the gold in some thousand degrees Indeed it was of the colour such as is in Saffron being weighty in its powder and shining like bruised Glass when it should be the less exactly beaten But there was once given unto me the fourth part of one grain I call also a grain the six hundredth part of an ounce This powder therefore I involved in Wax scraped off of a ceâ—â—ain Letter least in casting it into the Crucible it should be dispersed through the smoakinesses of the coaâ—s which pellet of wax I afterwards cast into the three-corner'd Vessel of a Crucible upon a pound of Quicksilver hot and newly bought and presently the whole Quicksilver with some little noise stood still from flowing and resided like a Lump But the heat of that Argent-vive was as much as might forbid melted Lead from re-coagulating The Fire being straightway after encreased under the Bellows the Mettal was â—elted the which the Vessel of fusion being broken I found to weigh eight ounces of the most pure gold Therefore a computation being made a grain of that powder doth convert nineteen thousand two hundred grains of impure and volatile Mettal which is obliterable by the fire into true gold For that powder by uniting the aforesaid Quicksilver unto it self preserved the same at one instant from an eternal rust putrefaction death and torture of the fire howsoever most violent it was and made it as an Immortal thing against any vigour and industry of Art and Fire and transchanged it into the Virgin purity of Gold At least-wise one onely fire of coals is required herein So indeed if so be a just heat of the faithful shall be present a very little of this mystical and divine super-celestial Bread doth regenerate restore and renew a huge number of the Elect Which indeed was the one onely scope of so great a Sacrament And therefore it is said With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with yoâ— Let the Divine pardon me who being to write of the Life of the World if by a similitude I have drawn a demonstration from earthly things in the perswasion of the Lord to Nicodemus to confirm the real and Celestial Regeneration of Purity and Restauration of mans Relapse because it is by an Argument drawn from Earthly things But that person who is so regenerated and preserved against the Fire and Death the Lord will raise up the same in the last day who gave his Life to the righteous eater for the Adamical Life of the World For so a uniting of the amorous Incarnation of the Lord makes us partakers of his integrity so far as by Regeneration we participatively attain unto the Virginity of Christ in which we ought to be saved This indeed is the most proper Circum-locution or expression of the sense of those Words The Wine which buds forth Virgins And without this Remedy some shall rise again being not changed in their former and ponderous Body of Adam the wished for necessity of death being onely taken away from them I return unto the Priviledges of that purity that it may be
manifest how most nearly a single Life doth come unto the Primitive state of Innocency and so that also from thence we may learn that the intention of the Creator was in a single Life For now and then that word of Truth comes into my mind which requireth the state of little Children in those that are to be saved under the penalty of infernal punishment and that we must despair of Salvation unless we are made or become like unto them In whom notwithstanding I find a suddain speedy undiscreet and frequent anger stripes kickings lyes disobediences murmurings reproaches a ready deceit and lying in play an unsatiable Throat impudence disturbances disdaines unconstancy and a stupid innocency lastly no acts of devotion attention or contribution But yet those are not the things in little ones which are required for those that are to be saved under pain of an Eternal loss In the next place neither do little Children want their pride of Life and despising of others and especially their hatred of the poor also a frequent desire of revenge cruelty an itch of getting or attaining the concupiscence of the Eyes and are wholly and perpetually addicted to and drowned in self-love But neither are those the things required in them that are to besaved under Gods indignation But they want the concupiscence of the Flesh alone This indeed is the Mark which with so loud sounds it required for those that are to be saved Because it is that which was of a primitive intention in Creation And therefore from an opposite sense I argue That the chief fault of the Fall of the Apple being eaten was convenant about the infringement of that chast bashfulness that is that Original sin was scituated in the breaking of Virginity in the act of Concupiscence and propagation of feed But not in the very act of disobedience and despised Admonition and distrust of the truth of the divine Word For B. Hildegard also in the Third Book of her Life seemeth to have testified the same thing The Author saith She freed the Matron Sibylla of the City of Lausaâ—ium beyond the Alpes who required her help by a Messenger from a daily Issue of Blood by the subscribed Letters being sent unto her Thou shalt put these words between thy Breast and 〈◊〉 in the 〈◊〉 of him who rightly disposeth all things In the Blood of Adam arose Death In the Blooâ— of Christ Death is extinguished In the same Blood of Christ I command thee Oh Blood that thou contain or stop thy Flux And the Matron was cured by these written Words the which others have many times experienced Therefore Death was extinguished by the effusion of the Blood of Christ and the particiâ—â—â—â—on thereof in being born again that is by the offering up of Chastity to God the Father for those that are to be renewed in his Blood And moreover if we do well mind it is acknowledged that God hath loved women before Men in their Sex by reason of an inbred bashfulness Unto which Sex therefore he hath freely given Devotion as a gift of Nature whereby â—ere should be some kind of natural faculty and virtue proper to that Sex a Medium unto Salvation For the first Apostoless before the coming of the Comforter by one onely Sermon converted Samaria the head of the Israelitish Kingdom otherwise most stubborn Only the Women from Galilee being constantly although disgracefully serviceable adered to Christ at his Death and under all ignomiâ—â—y he being left by his disciples the witesses of so many Miracles and that at the first blast of adversity For the poor Women rejoyced in their reproaches so they might but follow Christ carrying his Cross upon his back Magdalen also first preached the Gospel of his Resurrection unto her own who did not believe and confirmed them in Faith who doubted and deserved to be the first beholder of Christ after his Death because she sought the same with the fervor of the greatest Devotion God I say hath heaped very many Diseases Adversities and Subjections on this Sex that it should be by so much the more like and nearer to his Son But the World despiseth Women and preferreth Men But in most things the Judgements of God are opposite unto the Judgements of the World so that also the World despiseth the Poor of whom Christ calleth himself the Father but not of the Rich. Then in the next place Christ calls himself in many places The Son of Man But seeing he had not a Man unto his Father therefore by an Antonomâ—sia he calls the Woman the Virgin Man by an absolute dignity of Name and worthy of or beseeming the Femal Sex as if for that reason the name Man ought thenceforth after sin to be proportioned and stands for the Woman in the more famous signification Shewing at leastwise that in thing the Mother-Virgin was after the sin of Adam the one onely Man such as the Divinity had espoused unto it self in the Creation of the Universe for the replenishing of the places laid waste by the Evil Spirit And that what Eve ceased to be through an infringing of Chastity that Mary the most glorious Virgin was to wit The one only Mother of those that are to be saved in the Regeneration of Purity But neither 〈◊〉 I undertaken a laudatory Oration in behalf of that Sex Only it is sufficient to have shewn that God hath loved the Femal Sex by reason of its love of Chastity For a Virgin thinâ—â— on the things of her God The Apostle also Commands Widows which are truly Widows to be honoured And in the old Law those were reckoned impure as many as even conjugally had known their Wives if they were not seriously washed and were to be driven from the Temple unless they were first duly rinsed He also violently fell by a sudden Death because such an impure Man although from a good zeal put his hand to the tottering Cart wherein the Ark of the Covenant the Image of the God-bearing-Virgin was carried Indeed on both sides the Truth being agreeable to it self doth detest and attest the filthyness of impure Adamical generation For the Impurity which had conceived a contagion from any natural Issue whatsoever of Menstrues or Seed and that by its touching alone is reckoned to be equal to that which should by degrees creep on a person from a co-touching of dead Carcasses and to be expiated by the same ceremonious right That the Text might agreeably denote that Death began from the Concupiscence of the Flesh lying hid in the fruit of the Apple Therefore also the one only healing Medicine of so great an impurity contracted by touching consisted in washing under the likeness whereof Faith and Hope which in Baptisme were poured into us are strengthened For as soon as Adam had known by Fratricide that the first-born of Mortals whom he had begotten in the Concupiscence of the Flesh had slain his guiltless and righteous Brother and fore-seeing the wicked Errors 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
that true in any other Sense but that afterwards Children are not procreated without the Copulation of the Flesh To wit if any Married-folks shall live as they ought and those that have Wives be as they had none and never using their Wives but for fructifying sake unto the Honour of God These indeed do deserve the Favour of Increase But as yet do they far differ from those unto whom God from the title of Gelded-persons or Eunuches alone promiseth the Kingdom of Heaven But it is said unto Married-persons When ye have done all these things ye shall be as yet unprofitable Servants But that is no where read to be spoken unto one abstaining from lawful things in Patients and not in Agents and least of all doth that touch at the Flour of Virginity For abstinent and chast Persons seem by a certain fore-choice to be sanctified also to be promoted unto a further Degree of Perfection And therefore They follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth For those that do well as they suppose a hope of reward So Virgins abstaining and suffering do contain themselves within Love and Humility Neither doth that argue on the contrarie because it is said Gen. Chap. 1. v. 27. God created them Man and Woman and Gen. Chap. 1. v. 28. that He blessed them that they might increase and be multiplyed and replenish the Earth As though Wedlock had been from the appointment and first intention of the Creator For the first Chapter of Genesis doth briefly finish the whole History of the Creation But the second and third Chapters do prosecute the Creation of the Woman in Paradise likewise Sin c. And therefore the blessing of Generation was not described in Gen. 1. v. 28. For truly not as though the blessing of Generation had been given in the Beginning of Creation before the Woman was created the which was neither given in Paradise after the Woman was framed but after Sin and after their Banishment out of Paradise into the Earth For it is said That they should fill the Earth with Off-springs but not Paradise And a full Dominion was given them over the Bruits of the Earth wherein is manifested the goodness of the Creator that he blessed a guilty Creature nor as yet repenting in off-springs being also Corrupt and Impure Indeed he foreknowing the Restauration for which his Son had appointed himself a Surety before the Justice of the Father For otherwise on the same day wherein they had tasted of the Apple they had actually and of necessity died unless the Father had accepted of the Death of his Son for the Remission of Sin Thirdly it might be objected God made nothing in vain but he framed the sexual Instruments of Generation from the Beginning the which while they did denote a necessity of appointment God also from the Beginning sufficiently exposed his own intention and modern manner of Generating in their Bodies I answer By granting that the Creator conferred on them Members and a Freedom of Will otherwise if they had wanted Instruments a liberty of Sinning through the Concupiscence of the Flesh had been in vain conferred on them As therefore the Intention of God for a future Regeneration is not rightly turned unto a freedom of will of sinning So much less rightly is the same Intention inserted by reason of the framing of Instruments For this Argument is like as if it should be said God made Remedies against Diseases and Death therefore God made also Death and Diseases The Consequence is false Therefore also the Antecedent For the Almighty fore-saw from Eternity the Fall of Adam Neither therefore being content with Paradise alone he moreover created the Earth and from the Earth Medicine against Death and Diseases So also he made Genitals in our first Parents It was sufficient for Adam that he never felt any Spur in himself either from his Members or from the beheld nakedness of the Woman as neither the Woman likewise from the Society of the Man which unsensibleness was called The State of Innocency Otherwise it might likewise be concluded God created Man that he might live happy in Paradise Therefore he in vain created the Earth before the Fall or Corruption of Nature especially because Sin was from a free Contingency For both of the aforesaid Arguments is from a non-premeditated end of Contingences or Things which happened and therefore it contains an Implicite Blasphemy For God had not created the Earth for himself and the Bruit-beasts So also the Instruments of the Sexes do denote indeed a foreknowledge of future things but not a divine Intention in creating them Next the Atheists strive and will have the Text to be Fabulous and Ridiculous that the Effect or Disobedience of the eaten Apple should go over all Posterity The which Argument we have already sufficiently opposed And likewise they Argue If Shame be from Original Sin truly as Sin doth equally touch all So also Shame should touch Children those of full growth the Blacks Americans Aegyptians Aethiopians c. And neither indeed hath it hitherto shamed the Abyssine or Aethiopian Priests who are Christians Therefore Shame is not from the Apple being eaten not from the Sin of Disobedience as neither from an unwonted newness of Generation or Concupiscence of the Flesh But Sophisters know not that Shame was forgotten in Barbarians by Degrees and that the loss of Bashfulness grew up through a scurrilous accustomedness and a foregoing Penury of Rayment Which Shame that the People of Israel therefore might not loose they being for a great part of them Wicked God suffered not their Garments to be worn out for 40 years in the Wilderness By that Miracle I say God continually diverts the loss of Bashfulness and by that Signe sheweth that nothing could be alike hateful unto him as is the loss of Shame From whence it becomes conspicuous That the Shame attained by the eating of the Apple was not troublsome unto nor forbidden by God but that under the Etymology of Shame the chast Speech of the holy Scriptures whereby it covered the forbidden Concupiscence of the Flesh lay hid In the next place as many as do lay Barbarisme aside do also likewise re-take their Shame that was at first lost Yea neither is it a wonder that People have lost their Shame through the perswasions of that Mocker which teacheth Shame to be in the knowledge of evil At length the Athiests do oppose that it is a ridioulous fable if it believed that the Serpent spake with a Humane Voyce and as perswading Adam who had given unto Bruits their proper Names and therefore neither could he be ignorant that Speech was wanting to the Serpent for he ought to have been amazed but not to believe such a perswader But the miserable men are deceived The Serpent dissembled the countenance of a Man unto which wonder if Adam had not yet given the name of a Monster it is no wonder And if he ought to give that Name from
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
nativity wherein the Lord took on him the Form of a Servant But how much he departed from that former and proper or natural dignity of his humane nature wherein he was conceived in the Womb himself sheweth Because he who came forth into the World the Womb of the Virgin being shut and the bolts of dimensions being contemned presently prostrated himself to the ordained condition of Death and willingly felt every necessity of a servile nature For both Adams in their beginning were immortal For the first Adam ought to be preserved by the Tree of Life But the second did wholly contain the Tree of Life in himself Both of them indeed chose to dye before a possibility to live For the former chose it from a Vice but the second from Charity The Tree of Life therefore and wholsomness of the place of Eden had vindicated Adam in his antient vigor from Death until that a number of years being finished he as happy had departed translated without death unto the Country of Glory Moreover it is of Faith that Adam never tasted of the Tree of Life and that lest he should eat of it he was cast forth of Paradise who ought to dye the death Yea he being now banished out of the Garden of Pleasure was of so perfect a constitution that he had lived unto some thousands of Years who was immediately formed by the hand of the Almighty without the commerce of Nature and had far exceeded the age of Mathusalem from the voluntariness of his own nature but that through the continued mourning and grief of one Age he had cut off the thred of a most Long Life from himself The Death therefore of Adam is not to be bewailed as otherwise Paracelsus badly perswaded himself because that the vital Spirit and knowledge of Long Life had fallen at once together with him For those are contradictions to enjoy Long Life from Knowledge and likewise to be Immortal from the forming of the hands of God and the suffrage of the Tree of Life also after sin to have retained the gift of Long Life by reason of his most perfect and noble constitution of Life and Body From whence the Spirit of a flourishing and abounding Life being at length translated on Posterity its vigor by degrees declining through a passing over of Generations the injuries of Life and Diseases and through the rottenness of Years the Curse co-operating manifested it self as a Magnum Oportet or a thing of great necessity The which having once entred into the Bowels of Mortals presently took possession of the same For the Life of those which at first was by the Tree without Death presently also without that Tree languisheth as being enrouled in a short term of Time and underwent an increase state or height declining and cessation after the manner of other things For so indeed Death through the perswasion of the Devil stablished it self into its Empire For Poysons that were harmless under the Tree of Life were afterwards supported for a Medicine of Destruction For I think that the Conditions and presence of the Tree of Life were hidden from Adam Else that he had extended his hand unto this sooner than unto the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And although the Tree of Life which the bounty of the Creator hath of late discovered may be so prepared that it may proceed unto the first constitutives of us with a refreshment of the decaying faculties yet I do not understand it to be that which is read to have been implanted in the Paradise of Pleasure whereunto no mortal man shall ever stretch forth his hand But ours is a shadowy one and the Vicaress of the other To wit the which hath nothing excellent and famous unless that under a retainment of properties it be reduced by Art into such a juice which may be able by its least parts to co-mingle it self with the solid parts Neither indeed doth our Tree of which I as the first do treat contain a non-sufferance unsensibleness of the pain of Diseases and an uncapacity of Death as the other did And moreover although the Tree of Life of Paradise should at this day be present with us yet it should not cause immortality Because the condition of the receiver is changed For indeed man is become composed by the bond of another generation of corrupted Nature and of another Long Life wherein the immortal mind hath no longer immediately sustained in it all the actions of Life but a frail or mortal sensitive Soul succeeded exercising the Vicarship of the mind and providing for the necessities of Life it self being like the flame slidable and extinguishable every hour CHAP. CX Short Life THe Air which is the former in the Seed ascending by degrees unto its Maturity at length conceives the Light or essential Form of its own Species which is made immediately by the Father of Lights and is of a proper name Life For as many things as differ in their particular Kinds which are involved in Darkness so many also ought the Forms to be under the species of Light For if a thing is what it is by reason of the Form in diversity from any other things whatsoever But the Form of living Things except the Mind and Life are Sunonymals there must needs be as many Lives as there are vital Forms Therefore the Light of Life is by it self every where simple and specifical but not fiery because vital formal and essential But that the Light of Life is hot or cold it denotes that the Life hath not married Heat or Cold but accidentally so that Heat or Cold proceeds from Life but not Life from Heat or Cold Life therefore cannot be otherwise understood than under the Conception of Light And neither Light is more demonstrable from a former Cause than the Forms of things themselves and whatsoever issues immediately out of the Bosom of the Almighty A vital Light therefore by its species wants a proper name We may indeed make a fiery Light to be given unto us for great necessities but it is not in the Power of the Artificer even immediately to produce a vital Light from himself Which thing the Chymists say The Artificer cannot introduce a substantial Form The Generater indeed is the begetter and producer of a vital Air forasmuch as he contributes Matter after the likeness of himself and Dispositions thereof in order unto Life but is in no wise able to produce Life or an ultimate perfect Art In Diseases also sometimes the Light of Life ascendeth unto the degree of Fire Because the Archeus from a threatned distinction or nothing of difference strikes out a fiery Light Not that the Archeus produceth this Light as he that generates his Like But the Archeus through Fury presseth together the moist Hay and it is enflamed the which being dry comes not so to pass After another manner also Woods by a co-rubbing and Iron by striking against it do conceive the fire
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
incorporeal Gas which is therefore straightway comixable with our Archeus Therefore that Gas refresheth those that are affected in their womb with its smell but not the oyl not the tincture milk or floure of Sulphur But after what sort thou mayest know that Gas of Sulphur to be distinct from the watery vapour thereof kindle a sulphurated torch or candle in a glass bottle thou shalt forthwith see the whole bottle to be filled with a white fume and at length the flame to be stifled by the fume Afterwards keep thou the bottle most exactly stopt with a cork and thou shalt see a sulphur to be affixed unto the sides of the vessel and in the superficies of the water if there were any in the bottom But if indeed after some daies thou shalt put the same enflamed torch or bottle into the neck of the candle the flame is forthwith extinguished by reason of the condensable Gas of the Sulphur no otherwise than as the odour of an Hogshead putrified through continuance stifles the flame of a sulphurated candle But Hippocrates perfumed all the wine which he gave in the plague after this manner He perfumed the pot or cup of a narrow neck with a candle of burning sulphur he powred in wine to the filling of the pot a third part full and stirred the pot being exactly shut by shaking it a good while together upwards and downwards until the wine had drunk up all the Gas of the sulphur into it self For medicines to be hung on the body and Amulets or preservative Pomanders had not yet been made known But he supplyed external medicines that take away weariness or faintness in the room thereof by anointing the body with Greek Wine wherein he had boiled the most fine powder of Sulphur But he besprinkled the same fine powder being dryed in the Sun on those that were in a sweat and commanded it to be applyed with rubbings But the Pest since it never wants a Fever and that the Grecans saw the remedies of Hippocrates they began first to call the Pest and then every Fever 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a fire Not indeed by reason of a remarkable and necessary burning heat of Fevers although it so pleased Galen For truly they called the beginning cold rigours and horrours Pyâ— or a fire as well as a burning Causon For Hippâ—crates lightly ground Sulphur with water on a Grind-stone and being again dried he kept it for his uses But he gave twenty four grains of Sulphur with salted and hot wine that he might provoke sweats But he first made the salt to crack in a glassen pot and presently afterwards he melted it by increasing the fire for else salt containeth in it excrementitious filths which at the first cracking fly away the salt cleaving asunder and leaping a little These Spirits do easily putrifie through continuance and subject the salt to a fear of contagion for they are very forraign to the salt the which although they fled away a good while before the fusion of the salt yet he made a melting of the salt that whatsoever forreign thing was contained in the salt might be consumed by the fire For indeed he saw that presently after the invasion of the Pest the appetite was prostrated and then also that fermentally putrified and burntish impurities grew in the stomach from whence arose the headach vomitings loathings doatage the drowsie evil c. which would hinder the cure of the plague Therefore he took the common balsam of the salt of fleshes which might overthrow the fermental putrified poyson and putrefactions by cleansing them away together with a conâ—â—â—ing of the strength and he gave the wine being salted hot but not luke-warm 〈…〉 restrain the loathings of the stomach and mightily provoke sweats and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sulphur that it might kill the plague as it were with its odour because salt cleanâ—â—â—h preserveth from corruption and Sulphur restrains poyson But he prescribed this sweat for three daies space at least yet oft-times he extended it unto a weeks space but they did sweat twice every day and at every turâ— for the sixth part of a day if they were able on the first daies more and on the after succeeding daies less For in time of sweating he took away all drink but the term of sweating being finished he fed them with Barley-Cream and for drink they had Greek Wine pitcht wherein were a few grains of the aforesaid salt and Sulphur But he laid the leaves of Assara Bacca being steeped in vinegar upon the Bubo unto the soals of the feet and palms of the hands which after every twelve hours he commanded to be buried because they stink greatly It came to pass afterwards that Greece be sprinkled their grapes divers times with the Brine of the Sea before they were carried to the Press For Hippocrates perswaded that thing that so together with it Inâ—ects might be driven from the grapes Hence it is that the Wines of Greece are salted even unto this day the reason of this use being unknown Unto great Buboes in the groyn and marks he applyed hot Towels tinged in rich wine wherein as I have said he had boiled Sulphur Furthermore he reserved a secret to himself through the sight whereof he attained to himself divine honours But it was the flesh of a Viper or or Snake which he cleansed for the utmost part of the tail and the head being cut off he stript off their skin casting away the bowels together with the gawl he reserved only the Heart and Liver but he drew out all their blood with the vein running down the back-bone But he boiled not their flesh after the manner wherein it is put into Triacle but he exactly bruised the same together with the bones and aforesaid bowels and dryed them in a warm Oven until they could be powdered which powder he sprinkled on hony being sufficiently clarified and boiled until he knew that fleshes in boiling had laid aside their virtue as well in the broath as in the vapours But he added unto this Electuary the Spice of his Country for to cloak the secret and therefore neither was it made manifest by the Angel But the cure contains a mystery that as Death crept in by the Serpent it self also ought to be vindicated by the death of the Serpent For Adam being skilful in the properties of all Beasts was not ignorant also that the Serpent was more crafty than the other living Creatures and that the aforesaid balsam the remedy of death lay hid in the Serpent Wherefore the Spirit of Darkness could not more safely deceive our first parents than under the Serpents skin For perhaps they hoped that they should escape the death sorely threatned by God by the aid of the Serpent Hippocrates used also wine that was pitched Wherefore it is worthy our consideration that Spain is seldom afflicted with the plague not because sins or filths are wanting where there are almost no Jakes's It s a
whose hands't shall come this Book to view See that your hearts are simple to the pure No filthinesse true wisdom can endure The milky way must be the paper here And th'Inke Nectar from th' Olympick sphere And then 't may open unto you a path For finding that which long been hiden hath For there 's a way by Simples for to cure Unto Simplicity the nearest sure If not Antiquity at Scriptures note Solomon for ' n example may be brought The Author opes a gate in that Divine Chapter that treats â—'th power of medicine And not a little of Moses Câ—â—â—lism He hinteth at that in of Magnetism So truly doth the Saviour report That to the carkasâ— Eagles do resort In former time thy younger learning years Thou as a tender heart yet void of fears People that had the plagues infection Didst visit and by them wert spew'd upon Some breathing forth their life within thy arms Unto thy grief because thou then their harms Wert not so able to repair untill Thou hadst attain'd a great Adeptist skill For thou by Revelation dost show What Co-us us'd two thousand years ago All which supposed I can freely wink At some mistakes whereby thine eye did blink As to Religion because thou wert Honest upright sincere and sound in heart For if the folly of them thou hadst seen As other things deâ—y'd by thee they 'd been And if in Nature thou art ought mistaken Thy many truths are not to be forsaken For why ye Schools ye cannot neither dare ye Deny but that humanum est errare Until the minds perfection in the Light Which he believ'd yet would not claim it quite And so his candour is to be commended In not assuming what God had not ended Yet know that where one truth is you among In Helmonts breast there lodged ten for one And that not taken up by hear-say trust As ye are wont but stamped by the Iust For Reason Dialectical he saith Must vail the Bonnet unto light in faith Sith Reason savours of an earthly soil Dies with the sense our Parents did beguil And therefore Logick may no longer center Within mens minds as Sciences Inventer And Nat'ralists must needs go to the wall As those of Athâ—â—s in the daies of Paul Since that four El'ments Humors and Complexions Are proved plain to be but childish fictions Which Ethnicans by phansie blind misled Have rashly plac'd in seeds and ferments sted This is some liquor pour'd out of his bottle A deadly draught for those of Aristotle Astrol'gers also will be soon undon Since Herm's and Venus circle with the Sun And since the Planets common Ordination Was to stir up a Blas for seasons station And since the Heavens can no forms bestow To th' Prince of life all creatures do them owe. Ye Theologians look what will befal ye Since man is not defin'd by Rationale But by a Spirit and Intellectual light Now every one may see by his own sight And living waters out 's own Cistern drink Need not â—ew Cisterns that do leak and chink Nor tug with pains to dig for earthly Wells The Spring 's within him as Christ in him dwells Nor run to Temples that are made with hands Himself 's the Temple if he contrite stands And cause a New-birth is requir'd of all Since brutal coupling entred by the fall And so your follow'rs can't be reputed Christians by birth nay but must be transmuted And since the mind of man may be compâ—eated In this lifes time as sin and self 's defeated Since Char'ty not to dwell by many's known In those that with the letter up are blown For as from mud or dung ascends a stink So Pride from Leathing sents up like a sink He did refuse to be a Canon great Least as saith B. he peoples sins should eat What will protracting crafty Lawyers doe Since Christ against them hath denounc'd a woe He would not bâ— a Professor of the Law Enough for man to keep 's own self in awe And what will come of Atheists since 't is true That there 's a Power Eternal who in â—â—e Of fallen Angels did mans Soul ereate In mortal body an immortal state To live in h's hand in weal or woe as they His call of Grace shall or shall not obey What of curst Hypocrites who in deceit Take up Profession for a Cloak and Cheat Better for Sodom and Gomorrah than For such when Christ doth come the world to fan But stop my Genius run not out too far Although thy shackles much unloosed are And vitals subtil while thou tell'st the story Of what concerns mans good and God his glory Least Prince of th' Air like Poets Pegasus Prevail to make thy wit ridiculous By mounting thee too high upon his wing Of fleshly pride and Aeolus thee fling Down from the quiet Region of his skie In the Icarian waters for to die Or whirl thee higher in his stormy hail And sting thy conscience with the Dragons tail For if an inch be given so they tell It is not safe for one to take an ell Wherefore retreat in time of thy accord Least thou incur the anger of the Lord And throw thy self along down at his feet After the Author thou shalt once more greet I b'lieve thou wert a Medel-master made By the Creator of the Root and Blade Of healing virt's the Father of lights I sing Whence every good gift doth descend and spring Thou livedst well and in the Belgick Nation Wert a tall Cedar in thy Generation A good memorial thou hast left behind Of what in daies now coming men shall find Writ in Christ's Bosom and in Natures spread As they are worthy in those books to read Thou diedst in peace in Anno forty four I doubt not but thou liv'st for evermore My friend is also gone yet I survive Lord grant that to thine honour I may live And as my life thou gayâ—st me for a prey When in a gloomy and despairing day I thought I should have died without the fight Of thy Love-tokens and thy face so bright So I intreâ—r upon my prostrare knee That I thy way and Cross may never flee Than turn a new unto Apostasie Or thee dishonour raâ—ker let me die Than to depart again out of thy fear Better wild horses me in pieces tear If the remembrance dwell not in me rife Of thy great goodness pity of my life But as large mercy is to me extended So what is faulty may be fully mended That perfect righteousness may cloath my back And I to sound thy praises will not slack In life or death or suffering by the world Who in transgression up and down are hurl'd And Topheâ—s pit shall surely help to fill If they in time repent not of their ill But as he did for 's en'mies pardon cry So do all Chrictian hearts and so do I. O holy holy holy holy God! Whos 's Name 's exalted in th' Ascendant Jod My self doth tremble and my flesh doth quake While I the King of Saints my Subject make I dread thee Lord I dread thy Sov'raign fame I love thee so I can't express the same My Spirit 's on site and my heart doth flame With a desire to sanctifie thy Name My Soul is melted and my heart is broke In feeling of the force of thy Love-stroke Father I thank thee that thou didst enable Me to convey the dish from Helmontâ— Table And if some crums or drops have fell beside 'T was what a careful servant might be tide It being weighty full of divers fare If none should over-fall or flow 't were rare A Corydon I h'd rather some me deem Than t' use dark-phrases that would not be-seem Rather a Tautologian be dained Than to the meanest leave words unexplained Rather a home-spun Patcher wanting Art Than th' Authors meaning willingly pervert And if his tongue could speak out of the dust Hee 'd justifie this Translate all almost For though his learned Art I don't comprize Yet in the Root our Spirits harmonize The Dish lest somewhat of its crums and drops As it was carried through the Printing Shops Yet what the Press hath nipt off by the way It here returns again by this survey ERRATA IN the Authors Dedication to the Word Pag. 2 lin 6 read except In the Translators premonition P 2 l 35 r and is p 3 l 19 dele other In the Preface to the Reader P 11 l 46 r Eternally p 12 l 28 r the work p 13 l 35 r world In the Poeticall Prophesie P 1 l 4 r spiting P 14 of the Book l 10 r knowingly ibid. l 28 r vain ibid. r give p 17 l 37 r it with p 7 l 32 r Nuns p 34 l 55 r first 〈…〉 p 57 l 25 〈◊〉 as r is p 295 l 2 r 〈◊〉 p 298 l 60 r Watchman p 407 l 28 r whereof they are said to have been the p 477 l 26 r vital p 504 l 31 r it is p 518 l 50 r this is â—oheaped p 535 l 41 r efficacy p 537 l 38 r Plato p 519 l 28 r 〈◊〉 p 575 l 5 r But be sides p 577 l 61 r Lile p 515 l 18 r anothers cherry p 621 l 53 r 〈…〉 710 l 30 r the God p 739. l 28 r Mols p 741 l 22 for any r and. p 825 in the Title of the disease of the Stone r root p 838 l 55 r by p. 1073 l 13 r voice p 1150 l 12 r worms ibid. l 44 after terrible dele and. p 1157 l 1 r the plague Medicine Aesculapius Hippocrates Pandora Latine Er Greek Ro Hebr. Res Errours Eccles 1. 11. On Psal 140. 143. 1. The essentiall Form 2. The Vitall Form 3. The substantial Form 4. The formall substance N Lib. 14. De Civitate Dei Cap. 17. Lib. 4. Contra Jul cap. 10. Lib. of Marriages 12. Flesh of Sin cap. 24. Lib. 5. Cont Jul. cap. 15. Lib. 5. Cont. Jul. cap. 12. * Of his Testament Chap. 26. * The signs of a true Physitian * Bernard