of Sin of which God saith My Spirit shall not remain with Man because he is Flesh But that Sin if it hath not been sufficiently searched into by Predecessours I will add freely what I conceive For indeed in this History of Genesis do concurr together 1. The Sin of Distrust or suspicion of an Evil Faith of Deceit Fallacie or Falshood in God For Eve saith to the Divel Least perhaps we die And so she doubted that the Death admonished of would of necessity come unto them And likewise the Sin of a despised Admonition and that they more trusted unto the Serpent than to God neither was there disobedience where there was not yet a Law 2. An act of eating of the Apple not so much forbidden as admonished of bewarying of it 3. An effect of the Apple being eaten For in the midst of Paradise there was a Tree whose Property is said to be of Life Least he eat and live for ever and there was another Tree whose Property was that of the knowledge of Good and Evil unto whom there was not another like but the other Trees except these two served onely for nourishment The property therefore and effect of this latter Tree was to stir up an itching concupiscence of the Flesh or madness of Luxurie But it is called The Tree of the knowledge of Good Lost and of Evil obtained For they knew not that they were naked and they were without shame that is without the Concupiscence of the Flesh like Children because they wanted Seed 4. A carnal Copulation concurreth From thence at length a certain beastlike frail Mortal Generation contrary to the intent of God who was unwilling that Man should conceive in Sins in Sins hath my Mother conceived me not indeed that all Mothers afterwards should eat of that Apple but because presently after the Apple was eaten all Conception should not be made but by the will of Blood Flesh and Man And so that from thence should all Flesh of Sin necessarily proceed Therefore while the immediate Cause of corrupt Nature and Death is ascribed unto the Sin of disobedience Or while the immediate Cause of corrupt Flesh is attributed unto the Sin of suspected deceit in God they are faults in arguing of not the Cause as of the Cause For in speaking properly the very Corruption and Degeneration of the Flesh of our whole Nature hath not issued from the Curse as neither immediately from Sin accompanying it but from these only occasionally and as it were from the Cause without which it was not but our Nature is rendred wholly corrupted and uncapable of Eternal Glory by reason of the causalities of concupiscence and brutal Generation effectively and immediately causing a withdrawing of virgin Chastity and all hope of generating from the holy Spirit afterwards and from Eve as a Virgin And therefore original Sin is defluxing altogether on all Posterity because after the Virginity of Eve was taken away the race of men is not possible to be generated but by the will of Man Flesh and Blood the which otherwise God had determined to be generated by the holy Spirit It is therefore an undistinction of Causes and its unapt application of Effects unto their proper Causes which hath not heretofore heeded 1. Why that Apple was with so loud a voice forewarned of that they should not eat of it 2. That they have esteemed that to be a Curse which was not 3. That they have ascribed original Sin unto one Disobedience as the most near and containing immediate Cause 4. That they have thrown an unexcusable Death on the Curse and Punishment of a broken Law For although a grievous Sin hath concurred with an original declining of the Generation intended by God together with an impurity of the Flesh the corruption of Nature by carnal copulation Yet the corruption of Nature the degeneration of Generation as neither Death have proceeded from the original Sins of our Parents their distrust c. as from an immediate Cause but from the effect of the Apple being eaten as a new Product of necessity Naturally depending thereon that is Death hath proceeded from its own second natural Causes existing in the Apple Even as a total Corruption of Nature hath issued from thence because both are supported by one and the same Root of necessity But the Causes of these natural Causes were by accident co-bound unto the Sins of Distrust c. in the Unison of eating For the very guilt of the Sin of suspition of an evil Faith or bad trusting of Deciet and a Fallacy of God remained expiable by our first Parents after the manner of Sin to wit by Contrition and Acts of Repentance after the manner of other Sins But not that therefore whole Nature ought to be depraved that a Death and Misery of every Body ought to enter and perpetuate it self on all Posterity even although they should have guiltless Souls For God doth sometimes punish the Sins of Parents upon one or a second Generation But it is no where read that he hath chastised the Sin of the Grand-father on all his Posterity afterwards who had acted evilly for five thousand Years before For that pain of Punishment exceedeth the love of God towards Man whom he so greatly blessed presently after Sin It exceeds I say the Rules of Justice if the Punishment of him that is guiltless in that Sin be refered unto his Ballance And moreover I think that if God out of his goodness had not admonished our first Parent of Death If he should eat of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil But if the Devil from his proper and inbred Enmity had translated the Apple from that Tree under any other Tree and that both the Sexes of Men had eaten of the Apple that the Concupiscence of the Flesh and Copulation had equally succeeded and so although that had happened without any Sin yet that the Generation following from thence from the necessity and property of the Apple being eaten had suspended the intent of the Creator who would not that the Sons of God and Posterity of Eve should be conceived from the holy Spirit after her Virginity was corrupted And so Death a Disease and the very Corruption of Nature and Beast-like original Inversion thereof had been and yet not from Sin Because the Apple contained a natural efficient Cause of Luxury For how unaptly do these agree together Death proceedeth from the Sin of an infringed or broken Law and so from a supernatural Curse And those Words of the Text uttered after the eating of the Apple and before the banishment out of Paradise Least he stretch forth his Hand unto the Tree of Life do eat of it and live for ever For against the Curse of God no Creature is able to resist From hence therefore it becomes evident that the Apple contained the natural Cause of a defiled Generation and of their own Death and that the Tree of Life did likewise contain naturally a conserving
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
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
Woman doth seminally conceive by Man besides the first intent of Creation Wherefore if Man were created that at least-wise from a foreknowledge of the consequence he might supply the Place of the Evil Spirits in Heaven he ought either to be created in a great Number at once from the Beginning or Successively If therefore They which are to be saved cannot be born by the will of Man of Flesh or of Blood and there was one only Man created therefore all Posterity ought by a successive Continuation to be born in Paradise of Women alone to wit the Birth-place of the Woman and of necessity to be Conceived from God and to be Born of a Woman a Virgin unto whom he afterwards Gave Power to be called the Sons of God and to be made with an exclusion of the Will of Blood Flesh and Man which Chastity alwayes pleased God doth please him at this Day and will please him alwayes And whatsoever hath thus once pleased the fountain of Chastity can never again displease him And so that Onely those that are of a clean Heart shall see God and shall be called his Sons wherefore the Prophet singeth Create in me a clean Heart Oh God! such as Adam had before the Fall And renew a right Spirit of the chaste and antient Innocency by the regeneration of the Spirit and Water in my Bowels Because my Bowels being now impure have contracted a Spirit of Concupiscence of the Flesh of Sin For indeed Man as long as he was Immortal and Pure Saw thy Face oh Lord and thou talkedst with him which Face afterwards Man shall not see and live But after that Man defiled his Bowels through Concupiscence thou casteth him from thy Face out of Paradise I pray thee therefore that thou cast me not from thy Face and that thou take not thy holy Spirit of Chastity from me Restore unto me the Gladness of the Regeneration of thy Salvation and with thy principal Spirit the Comforter do thou confirm me against the inbred Impurity of the Flesh For truly I shall teach the Unrighteous thy wayes of thy Regeneration the which among the hidden things of thy Wisdom thou hast manifested unto me and the Wicked shall be converted unto thee At leastwise free me from Bloods from the Concupiscence of the Sexes Thou who art the God of Chastity the God of Salvation as of new Regeneration and my Tongue shall exalt thy Righteousness and thy just Judgment whereby thou hast condemned Man who was born of Bloods and by the will of Man in the Concupiscente and of the Flesh of Sin as he hath made himself uncapable of thine Inheritance For loe in Iniquities aforesaid I was conceived and in Sins hath my Mother conceived me although under a lawful Marriage Bed Therefore I confess that besides the primitive scope of the Creator an Adamical Generation hath arisen into natural Death and is devolved into original Sin The Woman therefore as she hath conceived after a bruital manner she also began to bring forth in Pain The Male also in the Law was only circumcised as for a mystery of the deflowring of Eve Yet both Sexes ought to expiate the Offence committed in their privy Parts to wit whereby they had offended which thing although it be chastly insinuated in the Text Yet that was covered before Israel who were otherwise most ready for all Perfidiousness to wit that Godmight not seem a contemner of Matrimony instituted after the Fall The Woman therefore was not circumcised and yet she was saved but not the Pain of Child-birth or the Obedience of her Husband had expiated Original Sin in her For both a single young Virgin dying was saved as also a barren Wife Therefore from hence is manifested the mystery to wit that Eve so much as she could resisted the Insolencies of Adam and was by force deflowred in Paradise So that also our first Parents were Murderers of all their Posterity through Concupiscenc So also the eldest Son was a Brother-Killer For the fore-skin being taken away did of necessity cause a Brawniness of the Nut of the Yard whereby indeed he might be made a Partaker of the less Pleasure Concupiscence and Tickling whosoever should desire to be ascribed or registred among the Catalogue of the beloved People of God The Rabbins also confess That Circumcision was instituted by reason of unclean Virtues walking in a circuit The which I interpret that the diabolical and primitive Enticements of Concupiscence unto Mortality were not hid to the Hebrews and that at leastwise in an obscure sense the Sin arisen from thence was insinuated Also illegitimate Persons were in times past driven from the Temple and Heaven and those who should be born of an adulterous Conception because they did wholly shew forth an Adamical Generation but those who were born of a lawfull 〈…〉 Bed were as yet Impure until that the fore-skin being taken away they might seem to renounce the Concupiscence of the Flesh And in this respect they represented in a shadow also those that were to be renewed from far by the Spirit of God and the laver of Regeneration Moreover the very Word of Truth doth profesly confirm the Position 1 John 3. Except any one be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God B. Except any one be born again of Water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God C. That which is born of the Flesh is Flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit D. The Spirit breatheth where it listeth Thou hearest the Voice thereof but knowest not from whence it may come or whither it may go E. So is every Man who is born of the Spirit F. If I shall speak unto you of Earthly Things and ye believe not how shall ye believe if I tell you of Heavenly things G. None hath ascended into Heaven but he who descended from Heaven H. And as Moyses exalted the Serpent in the Wilderness So it behoves the Son of Man to be exaltâ—d Christ Jesus descending from Heaven took not on him the Flesh of Sin by Adamical Generation or by the will of Man but he receiving the form of a Servant was made into the Likeness of the Sons of Adam being found in Habit as a Man Yet being Adamical was a true Man such as Adam was being newly created But he being made into the similitude of an Adamical Man emptied or humbled himself taking on him the form of a Servant But he was not made a Servant or Impure But in this glad tydings he denieth the Vision of God or the sight of the Kingdom of God and in b. an entrance into the Kingdom of God For not that the Glory which makes blessed may be seen without entring into Heaven or the same thing is twice spoken in vain or that a. doth require another new birth than b. but a. contains a denyal of participating of the Heavens for the Souls of the Dead before the Resurrection
life it self is entertained and sits and so it hath an immediate and plenipotentiary power on the life which is con-nexed unto it in the resembling mark of uniformity for otherwise it should be an inconvenient thing for the mad or raging life of a Fever to bring forth a disease or to conceive effect and nourish a formal and essential Beginning foundation and seed out of it self For the life is not able to establish a disease which is a seminal Being in the forreign and external subject of excrements For if the life ought to suffer by a disease to be vexed and killed thereby surely it being now defiled ought to suffer all the injury from its own self according to the Proverb None is hurt but from himself Hippocrates in times past after a rustical manner perceived that thing the first called that vital spirit The maker of the Assault as well for life as for death For God made not death for man the which began from sin But I do not deny that the life is provoked into its own injury by occasional causes yet at leastwise I could wish that the Antients had divided as is meet to be the internal cause essentially from the external occasional ones But I take not the internal and external matter for a respect of the body but that which is radically and essentially proper to the disease that I call the Internal and unseparable matter But otherwise if if it be only accidentally adjacent thereunto Therefore before all it is seriously and only to be noted in what manner the very essential thingliness of Fevers may be formed by the Essence of the efficient life That not only the very local thingliness of principiating a Disease may be hereby conceived but that moreover an essential limitation thereof essentially issuing from the life it self may be known Which things therefore are more deeply to be peirced Wherefore let it be instead of a Proposition that Mortality Death and a Disease seeing they entered with sin they corrupted the life and defiled the whole humanity with impurity Not indeed that the entrance of all particular Fevers is therefore from a new sin as neither immediately from original sin although they have originally defluxed from thence But in the state of Purity there was Immortality no Death no Disease because then the immortal mind immediately governed the body and therefore it suffered not any thing by frail things which are altogether inferiour to it self therefore it deserveedly freed its own Mansion united unto it self from death and corruption But after the departure out of the right way the mind delivered up its government to the sensitive soul whence the life became subject to a thousand inconvenient necessities of death The Sensitive soul therefore afterwards stirred up the Vital air which after that began to be called by Hippocrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Maker of the Assault and the chief Work-man of Diseases But the power of the same was badly understood by his followers and that Maker of the Assault remained neglected by Successours it being also unknown that the differences of diseases did issue immediately from the life And therefore the whole buisiness of Diseases was falsely committed unto occasional and never existing Humours For I have concerning the Original and Principles of Healing delivered the manner whereby that Maker of the Assault produceth an Ideal Being from whence Fevers and all Diseases borrow their Original The which generation of Idea's or shapie likenesses being there professly handled I will only touch at by the way First therefore it is confessed that the madness of a dog is stirred up by or in his conception through the effective Idea of that mad poyson The which is not in any healthy dog even as in a mad one And from thence it is manifest that that poyson which strikes our imagination after the biting is framed by an Idea caused by the conception of the mad dog The same thing ptoffers it self in the Tarantula in Serpents and things sore moved with fury So in the Plague-grave I have demonstrated that this Idea is made not only by the fear of the man but also of the vital air Wherefore also it is very equally necessary that for a Fever which is stirred up from the assaulting spirit and vital Beginning not which ariseth is moved or increaseth of its own accord or of nothing a motive Idea or effective cause springs up in the same vital Beginning being indeed poysonsome in it self and varying according to the signatures or impressions which this tree of a feverish Idea utters for its fruits For since of nothing nothing is made but of something alwayes something As well the Antients as the Moderns have supposed that any Fevers whatsoever do of necessity arise from the strife of the Elements or at least of feigned Humours Neither have they till now cleerly defined of which of these two the texture of Fevers might be But since the Elements are but three in number neither do these flow together unto the constitution of bodies because I shall elsewhere shew the connexion of these to be impossible they cannot produce any strange Beginning from themselves But Humours since they never have hitherto any where been and since Fevers are of a more aiery and abstracted body than that which a liquid excrement is thought to be I have discerned that from nothing nothing is indeed materially made but that most things are efficiently effectively and formally made from a conceived Idea which do forthwith after cloath themselves with bodies Indeed by the conception active Ideas are made and the formal Beginnings of seeds which presently cloath themselves with the coat of the vital spirit wherewith they then in the next place come upon the stage and are made that Maker of the Assault which is known by the Schools only by its name alone and therefore neglected by practical Physitians For that Fevers do now and then arise from the disturbances of the mind that is very well known to persons of no reputation and Barbers But that the Archeus or the spirit which violently assaileth doth suffer its own perturbations and conceive the Off-springs of these the Idea's stirred up in it self hath indeed been even hitherto unthought of and unheard of in the Schools Notwithstanding nothing is more certaine than that the spittle of a mad dog doth a good while after the death of the dog produce its madness in whom he bit it being plainly very like to its own dog from whence it issued Wherefore there was in the spittle a forming seminal Idea of that madness produced being like unto that from whence the first infection flowed For such an infection presupposeth an active vital and potent propagative power of its seed because it can cause death and madness in us But that power never acteth as a naked accident but as it inhabites in a formal subject of inhesion Neither also that the visible matter or Inn of its
receive moneys but of the richer sort So that a Confessour constrained me to admit of the mony of a certain man that offered it least by doing otherwise I should bar up the dores against those who being fore-stalled with shame would not dare to aske further succours from my hands For he said The gifts which thou refusest give to him that is in need and the which if thou shalt not receive thou by thy pride withdrawest from the poor that which was to be his own I also gave willingly the medicines prepared by me but because I felt the greater joy while I was called by a Primate or rich man I being angry with my self and confounded refisted long and bestowed very much pains that I might pluck up the growing branch of covetousnesse bred in me Therefore I every where searcht out more of arrogancy and haughtinesse in my self than of a Godly affection Finally God cut of the means from me as well in the Church as among civil Potentates and so also ample fortunes seemed to be promised me by Radolph the Emperour but I had incurred the danger of my foul In exchange whereof he gave me a godly and Noble wife with whom I withdrew my self to Vilvord for seven years space I offerd up my self to the art of the fire and succoured the calamities of the poor I found and indeed I sound for certainty that none should be forsaken of God who with a pious affection and fitme faith performes the office of Physitian For although I was the silliest of all I seeingly discerned that God is Charity it self towards the miserable and therefore that from his own effluxing goodnesse of charity he alwayes bore a care over me For the inheritances of my wise were increased and ample partimonies of my family befel me for although I was subdued in suites of law by the malice of men yet I became a conquerer by some revisals so as that the mercies of God openly appeared toward an unworthy person And moreover he pressed down those that excelled in might who persecuted me unto disgrace and hidden death under the cloak of piety And the darts were reflected on their own strikers so that now it more shameth than repenteth them of their manifested crimes In the mean time I desist not to cure some ten thousands of sick persons every year by my remedies neither are my medicines therefore diminished I have learned therefore that the treasure of wisdome is not to be exhausted and I daily experience my yesterdays ignorance to be to day illustrated But in returning from whence I have digressed I find that they have not yet been able to discerne what defects respect a Physitian and what a Chyrurgion Which things if I may determine of I declare that onely things suscepted or undergone do touch at Chyrurgery The which in a section concerning a new rise of healing I have sufficiently explained But things suscepted are a wound made by piercing a cut or incision made by a fall biting bruise burning or scorching or congealing Likewise every swelling proceeding from a fall stroak c. Also a rent pulling asunder burstnesse breaking of a bone and displacing thereof As also contagions externally drawn being those of scabbednesse the kind of Anthonies fire called Herpes c. and no more But unto Physitians besides the internal defects of things retained it belongs to cure any Ulcers Apostemes and whatsoever external affects do proceed from an internal Beginning such as are the Cancer Wolf Leprousy Gout the disease Paneritium the Sciatica c. But at this day there is the more mild brawling between both Professions because most Physitians are ignorant of a method medicine and succours no otherwise than as Chyrurgions are And therefore although they joyn hands and so exhaust the purses of the sick party yet at length they hasten to the bound of despair And in the proposed question concerning the Plague they are unanimous enough For the Physitian refuseth the Plague to be of the diseases placed under him because it beares before it a Carbuncle Kernelly Glandules Sores about the groyne called Bubo's an Escharre bubbly Tumours and Tokens And at leastwise he condescendeth with the Chyrurgion because he promiseth that he will scrape together out of renowned and standard-defending Authours any the best Antidotes if not the curative medicines of external affects at least preservatives against the cruel poyson Yea if the Triacle of Galen doth not suffice which according to Andromachus conteineth only 66. Simples that is the last part of the name of Antichrist he promiseth to his herbarists that he will super-add very many more which are sufficient for the putting of the Plague to flight and that if they are not prevalent in a sufficient power of faculty they may at leastwise be able to strive with the Plague in multitude by their number But if the Doctour shall be hired from the City with a stipend least he should hurt or be wanting to his other sick patients by causing a fear thus he over-covers his own fear with anothers dread he ingeniously promiseth that he will shew by his pen that the affairs of the sick are cordial unto him So that he will also frame a book out of the most Famous Authors on every side which he promiseth to dedicate to community indeed under the hope of repaying a reward of his vain-spent labour unto the writer For in that treatise he promiseth that he will so distinguish of diet exercises to be performed avoyded and of meanes to be curiously examined besides remedies and preservatives out of all Authours that the very Plague it self shall upon the sight of that book of necessity become diseasy In the next place the Chyrurgion saith that the Plague as it is joyned with a Fever stands not to be ruled by his will or judgment But however successfully the matter shall sometimes prove unto him at least wise that for six weekes after he should be profitable to none with his sissers file knife or rasour or launcet What therefore shall he that is suddenly taken with the Plague do being left destitute by both forsakers Or what will the Magistrate do being deluded by his own stipendiaties Because they are they which respect nothing but gain the one only scope of their whole life The Physitian therefore will dismisse the sick unto the non-feared Pest-houses wherein there is as unlawfull a pleasure for a Physitian to kill as for a tormentor and souldier The Chyrurgion answers That there is a Mate known unto him who is without fear after that he hath notably drunk who although he hath not known how to open a vein for this is estemed the top among them neither is worthy of his family-service yet he hath oftentimes brought Simples out of a wood or mountaines and therefore that he is skillfull in some Simple which whether it be an Herb Shrub or tree or living Creature he hath hitherto refused to declare Yet he undoubtedly
in that Well should be more troubled by Sulphur than in its neighbour-wells wherein no such thing was seen Lastly we must know that an Earth-quake is not made by the long preparation of causes from three dayes before Because then the Earth could not be lifted up in one manner at once Yea if any exhalation of Sulphur had now three dayes before fore-timely made a passage for it self at that very time it had now found a passage for it self and had sooner breathed forth that way thorow that Well before it had lifted up so great an heap on every side yea a passage being found it had made the water by its blast and boyling up to sound in the boyling and much more prosperously in the streetes that were so much lower and the exhalation had broken forth in the more neighbouring places and had burst in sunder the Hill it self more easily by rising into an heap but the Earth had not trembled Therefore I reject the example of the deed as long as the reasons opposed by me against it from its impossibility are not overthrown Therefore the Earth trembleth not because it feeleth or feareth after the manner of a living Creature but it denounceth unto us something like it and doth as it were speak unto us accusing of the stroak of the Angel or the hand of an angry God But the Earth is smitten and trembleth by the Command of God pointing out that sin hath ascended up to Heaven crying out for vengeance before his Throne Indeed the smiting doth presuppose indignation and indignation a heaped up measure of sin But the end of an Earth-quake is that the sinner may amend himself and that the righteous man may as well beware that he doth not sin as of the threatned punishment of sin Therefore an Earth-quake doth alway threaten punishments But all particular offences have chastisements suitable to themselves For Luxury and uncleanness have Plagues and Diseases for purging sacrifices and punishments But Adulteries pay their punishments by Diseases imprisonment disgraces poverties also barrenness of off-spring untimely death or the like According to that saying He that someth in the flesh shall reap in corruption But pride of life is punished by poverties barrennesses wars destructions sudden death a miserable losse of friends c. At length covetousness payes its punishments by deceits thefts juggles discommodities of some member c. But if two or three sins do abound at once among a people then punishments are also co-mingled to wit in-clemencies tyrannies breakings of a Vow or Oath juggles or deceits extorsions plagues barrennesses wars c. But if sins are conjoyned in Powers or Princes as well of the Church as in Secular ones Judges The Prophesies are full that for the injustice of the same Kingdoms are translated from Nation to Nation Which things if they happen with the rise of Arch Heresies scandalls and subversions of Altars and especially where the Poor suffer together with them it is a signe that these evills do proceed from filthinesses in-clemencies ambition covetousness breakings of a Vow and drunkennesses or gluttonies For the Prophesies do abound with threatnings that Jerusalem shall be plowed as a field the City shall be made as a heap of stones that the Pestilence and Enemy shall take away all the prey and shall lead away the Chief of the Church bound the holy place shall be defiled that they may be for a derision among the Nations But if Wars do not touch Religion the sins onely of Princes and Judges are taken notice of But the Earth trembleth being smitten especially for the sins of bloud which cry out for Heaven to be a revenger Therefore after an Earth-quake punishments are to be expected which are deservedly due to excess cruelty and injustice The trembling of the Earth therefore denotes nought but the judgements of God a Revenger To wit a good thing from an evill cause as it containeth an inflicting of punishment on the impenitent Therefore from the Lords Resurrection the Earth trembled signifying the desolation of the City and of the Jewish Monarchy which the Gospel together with the teares of the Lord foretold and which Josephus hath written down at large For no calamities are without the Lords permission nothing without its cause neither doth grief or misery spring out of the ground Job 5. Isai 45. Neither do calamities at any time happen unto us by chance It was the most rare or un-couth wickedness of men that slew the guiltless Son of God for his benefits wherefore a most rare kinde of purging of the offence ought also to rain upon that Nation which had been educated with so great favour to the killing of the men and lasting destruction of the Common-wealth As was fore-seen by Daniel Isaiah and Psal 10. But when an Earth-quake runs as it were thorow street by street a tumult of a City against a City is signified and the streetes to be desolate or forsaken For a friend saw this Chapter it being as yet in Writing he presently perceived that a naturall cause was wanting and he consented but he was angry because I had deciphered the manner and that the Earth should be smitten not indeed with a Staffe but by a note or voice and he laughed at the conjecture Why hath not God he said done those things by Gun-powder by Winde an exhalation and a vapour wherefore hath not he said it or spoken it and the Earth was moved with God there are a thousand wayes neither is it certain what mean he hath used First of all if I have given a reason why the Earth trembling doth necessarily chap by the example of a Bell which trembles after the stroak certainly he ought not to be angry with me For neither intended I that he that exceedes every manner doth tie up himself to manner and meanes But in-as-much as that friend doth inter-ject naturall meanes as are the winde a vapour an exhalation Gun-powder laid under the Low-Countries These things were already sufficiently refuted in my Writings as to be possible in nature wherefore they are again unseasonably alleadged as if God should have need of those meanes Because when God makes use of meanes in working miraculously he also often-times useth naturall things but he doth not then make use of things which are reckoned as fellow-causes For those meanes rather are and do contain mysteries than the vigour of any causality Therefore I have drawn my conjecture of the smiting voice or tone not that I am a conscious or a fellow-knower of or a searcher into divine Counsel out of that word The Voice of Thunder shall strike the Earth Moses smote the waters of Aegypt and they were turned into bloud and the Frogs over-covered the Land of Aegypt he smote the Sea with his Rod and the waters stood still he smote the Rock and it brought forth a Fountain Elisha commanded the King to smite the Earth and was wroth with him because he had not smitten it
Fishes before the Floud Because then one onely Fountain did water the whole Earth and the Sea stood on the other part of the Globe whose other half was calfed dry Land And so Fishes were onely of the Sea while the whole World was an undivided Continent in the middle or heart whereof one onely Fountain being divided into four Rivers did water the whole Earth Therefore Cock-boats or Skiffs had not as yet been made known so fishing in the Sea was unaccustomed Neither also did the Habitation of men occupie the shoares For one onely and vast Continent of the Earth gave pleasures enough to the Husband-men that they detested the barren Sea made frightfull by a thousand Tempests Gen. chap. 1. v. 28. It is read that first of all the Dominion of the Sea was given to man and then over the Fowls of Heaven and thirdly over all living Creatures which move upon the Earth yet when as the speech is of meats Chap. 1. v. 29. Every Herb and Tree is given for meat And Chap. 1. v. 30. All living Creatures of the Earth and Birds of Heaven and whatsoever is moved upon the Earth having a living Soul is given to men that they might have that which they might eat Yet the Fishes are no where read to have been granted as neither the Fishes of the Sea to have been brought over to Adam that they might obtain their names From which particulars it is presently plain to be seen that no Herbs Trees or any creeping things were contrary to man or for a Medicine of destruction unto him Likewise the restriction for Birds and what things do move themselves upon the Earth doth exclude the Fishes Wherefore as soon as after the Floud by the dividing of the one Continent the Springs and Floud-gates diffused themselves from the lowest bottom Fishes being allured by the sweetness of the down-sliding waters some remained in Rivers and Fens others in the mean time through a new thorow-mingling and liberty of the Floud ascending out of the Sea Therefore let Fishes be fleshes although before not used by man Fleshes I say which after the Floud should be like unto Pot-herbs otherwise the flesh of flying Fouls did nor repay or supply the Rooms of Pot-herbs but Corns as four-footed Beasts had now long since from the beginning supplied the place of pulses Therefore our first Parent being banished into the Earth and being full of miseries weariness and repentance through the leasure of most ample Ages perceived his nature now to be defiled with corruption and wanting preservation Lastly as necessity is the Mother of Wits and Inventions he began to meditate by what reason or meanes he might prevent the inward Calamities of life and especially the injuries of a Meteor In which labour the eldest of his Sons began thorowly to weigh the Nativities of fruits their prosperous and unfortunate increases whence Agriculture or Tillage was the first Philosophy The other Son also noted the properties and Societies of living Creatures whence by the undoubted hope of a Flock a quiet life is led This indeed was Zoosophie or the wisdom of keeping living Creatures together But their successors making afterwards a more plentifull progress joyning the decrees of the Stars with the observations of their Predecessors observed the denounced successive changes of things with a profitable and pleasant observation Therefore Astrologie the Chambermaid of Tillage thus arose Notwithstanding the dispensations of naturall things have remained altogether obscure even as also among all men the knowledge of ones self is the last and hardest of all things But the generations or births of Diseases their Remedies and Curings which as yet then were most rare or seldom were far more obscure For at first every one brought the Remedies which had profited him into open view without envy But Hypocrates first laid up his Observations into a written style or method in which labour he felt the divine assistance which he had not known But Galen as it were the North winde having seemed to himself to have dispersed the vain Clouds of desires having filched many things from every place boasted that he had raised up the Speculations of the Elements first qualities Complexions and humours And dedicated all the works and fortunes as well of found as invalid nature to these which things afterwards the Greek Nation plentifully increased By which suppositions the Moores striving for the Victory built loose experiments upon them This therefore was the Originall and condition of bringing forth Medicine and these were its inventers At length in these it was at a stand neither afterwards made it a progress Galen being instructed by his Elders observing that fire was quenched by water and that water being heated by fire did vanish away supposing that he held the Hare by the Eares boldly constituted almost all Diseases and their Remedies in those first Bodies and their qualities For he said The fire was at enmity with the water and this with it whence he established it by a generall decree that there is in us the combate of four Elements fighting in us by a continuall Warre And that there doth skirmish in us a continuall and unexcusable strife of contraries Wherefore although nothing should weary us from without yet it would come to passe that sometimes a distemper or Disease and ruine should happen of their own accord That death I say should break out of the composition of the Elements This indeed was to be winked at in Galen But not in Christians if they do not teach that in Adam there was a like necessity of composition before as there was after sin To wit if the composition of Adam stood connexed unto four encountring Elements Therefore all the Schooles do determine that onely contraries should be the remedies of contraries To wit whereby every excess being notably marked with the name of a Disease might be reduced into a mediocrity or mean That plausible and stupid Doctrine easily pleased all that were inclined to a sluggishness of subscribing Because it was that which might easily be conceived by a rusticall sense a great compendium and in all places by any one and hence therefore it was most greedily drunk in Galen the while although he knew that cutting off or resection was privately opposite to a Being that is born yet he doubted not to reduce the withdrawing of parts or humours in respect of the members unto the order of contraries And he neglected the Family of privations as born by an adulterous congress Hence all things universally which should disagree in number scituation magnitude proportion afflux or eflux he took from their due order as though they were contraries that he might make an establishment of his own foolish Rule As if Medicine did not work naturally but stood by learning by demonstration alone Hence at length by a most generall absurdity he dictated the naturall indications or betokenings of Diseases to be made onely by the oppositions of contraries For
Cough Concerning the Remedy thereof nothing hath been dreamed of which may be profitable For first of all they have given to drink the decoctions of Herbs and Colts-foots but with what an unprosperous event almost every house doth mournfully detest by its own Law At length decoctions being lesse succesfully used it hath made the Physitian to meditate of Tablets made or confected of Sugar lastly they have receâ—ed into Syrupes and Lohochs hoping I have shewen that to be ridiculous in its place that by swallowing slowly the spittle together with the Eclegma or Lohech would slide down through the think of the voice into the VVind-pipe Nor having regard that there would be a straightning of breathing Coughs choaking and expectorating of greater misery by reason of the admitting of a forreign guest than the Cough it self becomes which stirs up such unhappy fictions of help which things I have elsewhere on purpose opened at large Alass and a wretched remedy of Fox-lungs hath also entred whereby the poor living Creature may bestow the power of his daily race which living he possessed on Sugar after death For the Schools and the dispensatories of these have been wholly ignorant that the Lungs in only a sieve of Brasse neither that it doth bring any help at all unto the in-breathings of a daily motion They are ignorant I say that it affords no comfort to him that is lame or hath the Palsey although be should daily eat Hares feet or Stags-feet At length the root of Chymists succeeded who when they saw the ground where Sulfurvive groweth to wax dry and barren but I call the vive or quick naked Sulphur that which is not exacted out of the Firestone or from elsewhere they likewise hoped that snivel the off-spring of the Keeper was to be dried up by Sulphur which thing the Schools hoped to finish by the flour of Brimstone Therefore some have sublimed that from Aloes Saffron Myrrhe and burnt Vitriol But others afterwards tryed to solve it by Lime and Alcalies which they have â—amed the milk thereof surely a stinking one but that lost its credit after that the milk yea the yellow Liquor of the Sulphur being prepared with Lime Vinegar being powred on it the antient Sulphur returned again unto it self Indeed they have covered the stomach with a various Vifard that they might restore the defects of the Keeper placed in the entrance of the Wind-pipe and the apprehended blemishes of hurtful things For so the hope of the sick and the purse hath been divers wayes deluded I deny not indeed that Sulphur fitly resolved doth relieve or help the Asthma or shortness of breathing But that Asthma is not the guest of the Lungs to arise from its proper Epileptical passion to wit whither those Sulphurs have not entrance But the nest of that Asthma is about the Stomach which I shall teach afterwards which way also there is an entrance for the Sulphur the helper Furthermore the saleable floures of Sulphur are from the vein of Brasse For the veins are burnt with a slow fire that they may thence drive away the theevish Sulphur For else the Sulphur would snatch a great prey of the Brasse Therefore let every one who hath known why Arsenick hath obtained the name of the fume or smoak of Mettals well consider the strength of that Remedy Truly the Lungs doth speedily hearken to the destruction of it self and there is a very difficult restoring of its sliding life Also the Lungs doth scarce obtain help by nourishments which have through so many shops of digestions long agoe laid aside the endowments of their natural disposition before they enter unto the Lungs And it is little although they have reserved a small quantity of their antient Odour from their own composed Body in then middle life For that is unefficatious enough and unsuitable or unequal for restoring their weakness And that is especially more manifest in the Inn of the Lungs where the power of the Keeper according to his pleasure doth retort alienate and corrupt its proper nourishments that are immediately to be assimilated or made like unto it Wherefore I have expelled Minerals from this aim or scope except the greater Secrets because they are those which neither have a passage to nor have contracted a familiarity with the implanted Archeus of the Lungs I have also examined the Remedies throughout all their Ranks or Orders and those vulnerary ones have promised singularities which do appease the Archeus next which do divert from corruption and hence do restrain the wonted furies accustomed to the wound But not that I hope that those Remedies can reach unto the Lungs or vvind-pipe in their former power even as I shall elsewhere make manifest more commodiously on purpose But onely I did meditate that although the defects of Coughs were not separations of the Continual as neither that spittings were corrupt Pus yet that a vulnerary potion is that which might afford a nourishment to the whole Inn of man of such a sort that it might materially and efficiently by it self employ it self in restoring the exorbitancy as well of the Archeus as of the Keeper Therefore there was a great necessity of both Keepers to wipe of the inspired filths which else being brought inward would willingly affix themselves to the moyst sides of the Ribs and the Breast would presently thereby in all its parts be filled up with a Clay wherefore the snivel which should receive those opposite filths ought to sweat out as well in the entrance of the wind-pipe as before the Organ or Instrument of smelling Snivel I say and not water was necessary because this would presently hasten drop by drop into the bottom But the inward parts ought to be moyst least through a continual in-breathing of Air they should chap or cleave asunder Therefore a certain distributive virtue ought to accompany the continual moysture such as is that which dispenseth the Spittle I say a moderate and slow or gentle moysture ought to be borrowed out of the masse of the juyce Latex in healthy persons but when as the Keepers are ill affected they do continually weep out part of their own nourishment which they ought to assimilate to themselves To wit it being diversly altered in the form of water or also of a transparent or thick Muscilage according to the variety of passions whereunto the Keepers have hearkened But the restoring of the Keepers from weakness is very difficult and that of the vvind-pipe more dangerous or destructive than that of the Nostrils because it threatens a Consumption doth alwayes gape and is molested with a plenteous Air. At length it never satisfied me that the snivel of the nostrils although not much unlike to the snivel of Coughs in colour tast and aspect should be the same with that which is expectorated from the inward pipes of the Lungs For I could not perswade my self that the same snivel should proceed from two Bowels so diverse For if
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
not Spiritual substances of a proper Name but only the living vital lights of Soulified Creatures The which notwithstanding are Created by God the Father only and are dispensed according to the requirance of Seminal dispositions I knew thirdly that every frail and Sensitive Soul did issue from the seeds occasionally and dispositively only and therefore that it did partake of nothing of likeness or unity with the Mind of man For although both were Created by God yet that they were both divided a sunder no otherwise than as a frail or Mortal Being from a future Immortal one or as Light that is to perish by blowing out from a substance which should be the shining Image or likeness of the God-head I knew in the fourth place that in the seed of Man dispositions and hopes lay hid unto such a frail or Mortal Soul no less than in the seed of a Dog unto a living Whelp Fiftly I knew that the Sensitive Soul even as I have proved concerning long Life in the Treatise of the entrance of Death into humane nature arose in us from sin and that it doth naturally remain afterwards through a successive coupling of the Sexes neither that the Mortal mind could be made by nature Man or any natural means 1. Because it was a Substance 2. Because that it was permanent or durable and therefore 3. That it could never be made from a perishing Being 4. That the mind therefore ought to be made of nothing after the manner of all Substances without the aid of Co-operating nature 5. And that therefore the Sensitive Soul before sin was not in us as neither necessary Next I knew in the sixth place that forthwith after transgression the mind was fast tied to the Sensitive Soul Because that in a Body subject to Death there was nothing more near or more a-kin to the mind wherein it might sit and that therefore the mind had sunk it self into that cleer and Vital beginning as in an Inn and had been annexed to it by God even unto the Period of Life For I have therefore beheld so many foolish madnesses fallacies defects errors and Treacheries of men yea and all madnesses which might utterly deny all the use of the Mind and might make its totall absence rather than its presence to be Suspected Seventhly I knew that the Mortal Soul forthwith after the fall did so over-darken the Mind in its Inn and over-spread it being idle and as it were detain it Sleeping that it did Govern not only corporal actions but it did for the most part so dim or blacken the very presence of the mind it self that it is able to do nothing at all readily in this Life as though it were no longe belonging to its own right For there is a Law in our Members resisting the Law of our Mind Lastly I felt or perceived a contrary or contentions disquietness sprung up which endeavoured to excuse the liberty and burden of sinning For howsoever the mind doth continually breath forth a vital beam into its vicaress the sensitive Soul because it is that which never keeps holiday is wearied or sleepeth nevertheless it seemed to be so servile to the mortal Soul in its faculties that it is unable to enjoy its own understanding freely but to yield to the mad will or pleasure of the sensitive Soul Wherefore I being easily seduced through the deformities of Diseases readily descended because I saw that Serpents and some Simples yea even our hous-hold excrements did every way alter the use of the mind indeed the powers and functions of these to become wholly oppressed and mad and that we who were constituted in so great a majesty under the image of the Divinity did become far more miserable than Beasts For I was incited hereunto because it did not seem agreeable to 〈◊〉 or possibility that any Poysonous frail Being and that which is unlike to the immortality of the Mind could Spurn against the Image of God that it should loose all right and Prerogotive at the will of a mad Dog and that the Power of the meanest thing should be enlarged beyond the excellency of a Being which is infinite in duration hereafter For it seemed that that ought not to be capable of suffering by a frail or Mortal thing whatsoever should by it self be immortal But moreover the mind of a prudent man is be-set for the most part by foolishness because almost every one doth labour in his own point of giddiness For whosoever loveth that which is not to beloved is ennared and who so keeps not a proportion of suitableness between things that are to be loved now he herein beholds plausible things as pleasing with an affection of madness For so Eve beheld the apple as beautiful and therefore as pleasing she presently took that apple and ate And that thing is so usual that the holy Scriptures say that the number of fools is infinite For I have gone head-long into these-fallacies of errors because I as yet knew not what the necessity and bond of the combination of the mind and of the Sensitive Soul was For indeed because the mind was now connexed unto the mortal Soul it stood bound to this by the right of an Inn so that although the mind were of it self not capable of suffering yet because they were both combined by a conjugal bond and bride-bed of unity so as that the mortal Soul did enjoy the sole Life of the immortal mind it was altogether necessary that as oft as the mortal Soul did suffer any thing by frail or mortal hurtful things or things hostile unto it it should consequently also suffer that very thing through an equality or likeness of wed-lock a conjugal unity and social right of hospitality Not indeed that therefore frail things should obtain a power over an immortal Being which is supereminently above it and of a diverse station but God would have the mind thus to suffer as it being hindered by the discommodities of its Inn it should be deprived of its own liberty of ampleness and should hearken to the straights and anguishes of its mansion For the immortal life of the mind is communicated to a mortal Soul Seat and Inn which life notwithstanding as otherwise every thing received is received after the manner and capacity of the receiver is made mortal in that which is connexed with it or in a mortal light And the which may therefore also be oppressed by mortal things that the Life may be wholly blown out and then the mind being deprived of its Inn is not indeed extinguished or annihilated but is compelled to depart by reason of an untying and annihilating of the bond Whatsoever therefore the mind seemeth to suffer under Life it self indeed remaineth safe but it doth not freely exercise its Offices because feeling or perceivance is in the middle of the Bond. For truly I have constantly considered the light of the Sun married as a husband to the Splendour of the Glo-worm so
the sick doth thereby feel himself well Lastly In the Third place That they do not draw out the Disease by Sweat Vomit or Stool but do unsensibly resolve in whatsoever part the Disease is entertained Nature being busied about the rest I have perceived also That such Laxatives do not electively bring forth Humours which are in themselves feigned but seeing we are nourished by none but one onely juyce the blood therefore also we intend the driving forth not of the blood but of Diseasie excrements do resolve whatsoever forreign thing is implanted within the Inne of Life but not vital things unless they are taken in an undiscreet dose or frequency Otherwise they onely have respect to excrements Nature affording her aid within to this end And chiefly seeing they are from God as well by Creation as the endowment of knowledge they have received the ends of their Ordination onely for a good purpose Therefore I perceived that Paracelsus had erred who teacheth That Laxatives do not otherwise operate but as the Laxative Medicine by calcination and a supervening moisture should be resolved together with the Humours like Calx vive For first of all he that proclaimed War against the Humorists now again acknowledgeth Humours Then also his assertion is wholly ridicvlous Yet the lesse if either Laxatives should be taken being first calcined or might have been calcined within or the ejections should ascend onely unto a treble of the things taken For what of calcination have the leaves of Sena in them Doth not Asarum by boyling cease from making Laxative And thus far is ignorant of a Calx I have furthermore perceived That Chymistry doth give more powerful and absolute operations and that there are those things prepared by the same which before were not For neither was the Oyle of Tiles or Bricks formerly in the Oyle of Olives as neither the spirit of Salt in Salt or of Vitriol in Vitriol c. For by the fire they assume an Acrimony as Honey Sugar Manna Dew Earth c. Other things do thereupon lay aside their corrosion as the juyce of Citron Scarrewort Frogwort Water-Pepper c. They erre therefore who do equally judge of the Spirits by the concrete Body For truly although Spices and sweet smelling things do persist in distilling yet the seminal virtues of the concrete Body do for the most part perish through the fire and are made another thing For some things their volatile parts being separated do become an Alcali or fixed Salt a Calx Ashes and Glass which things were not before in the composed Body For I perceived that there was nothing in the concrete Body which did not issue from its seed For the Fire seeing it is the death of things if it doth not totally destroy the seeds of things yet at leastwise it notably transchangeth them Therefore in one thing a preparation doth transchange the whole matter as in Magisteries but elsewhere by reason of a sequestration of some things it onely changeth sharpeneth destroyeth or consumeth the things which are left Thirdly In the next place by things adjoyned now and then the things themselves together with their adjuncts are diversly transchanged by the Fire and become neutral as Glass which is no more Ashes and Sand. Often times also without the fire adjuncts do pierce the root of the mixture and that especially a ferment coming between and then a neutral concrete Body is constituted For so of Rie-bread and Honey Ants are bred of Honey and Dew Eeles of Basil and the hoary putrifaction of a Stone Scorpions of a Calf being strangled and Dew Bees But those things which are mixed by fusion onely do oft-times suffer themselves to be reduced into their former Being For so although Glass be no longer Sand yet from thence by Art yea and through the oldness of putrifaction by continuance the same Sand is found because it is as yet alwayes materially in it not thorowly changed because without a ferment I perceived therefore that many volatile things being joyned to volatile things by reason of a mutual action with each other are transchanged into a certain third thing In the next place that volatile things are fixed by fixt things and in this respect do pass over into a new Being after another manner fixed things being joyned with fixed things do remain in their antient Being I perceived also that Mineral Remedies being changed into the nature of Salt I do not understand those which are seasoned by an adjoyned Salt do carry with them their seeds yet exalted into a degree These things Paracelsus hath sufficiently taught concerning Hematine or sanguine glassie Mettals wherein although the whole Mettal be resolved into a strange disposition which is that of a Magistery yet because the running Mercury is straitway drawn out from thence whatsoever hath truly assumed the nature of a resolvable Salt is not the Mercury or inward and immutable kernel of the Mettal but onely the Sulphur thereof Wherefore those Hematines or Magisteries do perfect admirable operations in the Remedial part of Medicine I perceived therefore that the Hematines of Sol and Lune or of Gold and Silver although from the purity of their Balsame they might comfort yet that they did contain some strange thing in them in respect of us I perceived I say That the crudity of Saturn or Lead was solvable through the fatnesse of fixed Salts to be sometimes destroyed piece meal by the Fire alone and so that the parts of the composed Body were divided and the crude Argent-vive permitted to run the fugitive Sulphur overcoming in the Saturn doth draw unto a volatilized fixed one unseparably joyned And the which the sublimation of the Saturn doth chiefly dispatch In the expression whereof there is no difference of colour or substance between that which is elevated with that which resideth Whence also the causes of Heat Fusion and Softness deeply or inwardly residing after the calcinements and reducements doth not refute the Fusion and wonted Softness without the Fire There is the same cause of the sweetness of Saturn For the most sharp calcined things if as in Lead they are tempered by a concourse of Vitriolated things they are dulcified or sweetned with the properties of Sal Armoniack resolved and of Tartar being putrified The Symbols or resembling Marks of all which things in all their examinations especially in distilling separating of Lead into Salt fugitive sulphurous coloured fat parts with the sharpness of Roch-Alume are discerned by a quick-sighted and industrious Chymist not without great delight I perceived I say That there are Planetary virtues in Mettals if they are reduced into the nature of a Salt or Sulphur yet that ought to be done without the remainder of every adjunct wherein not every Boaster could go to Corinth For after that I knew how to unloose bodies by things agreeable to their radical Principles then at first I began with a comfortable weariness to deride my blockish credulities whereby I in times
in other Professions but that in the Art of healing alone men have been hitherto so stumbled through deaf Principles wherein notwithstanding Charity towards our Neighbour hath been penally commanded For all things have remained most obscure many things most false and those things which might chiefly conduce unto the scope of Curing untouched For there is no where a tractable acuteness but on every side a great dulnesse So that from what hath been said before there is none but may easily gather that whatsoever hath been hither to diligently taught according to the Doctrine of the Pagans and against a mutual Charity was the Invention of the evil Spirit Therefore indeed the stability of Paganish Theorems hath remained through the perswasion of the Devil which speculations notwithstanding through their easinesse onely at the first sight ought to have been suspected by any one of a sound mind Therefore nothing more hard inhumane and fuller of cruelty hath been received now for so many Ages among the Arts of Mortals than that Art which under a con-centrical subscription makes fresh experiments by the deaths of men The Professors whereof while they presume that themselves do keep the keys of knowledge they neither enter the passages themselves nor admit others who are willing to enter in but do drive away all by all wiles and subtilties Alwayes learning and never coming to the knowledge of the Truth according to the Apostle Oh Jesus my light my life my glorying and the helper of my weakness and corrupt disposition who in they own matters dost easily find out a passage with whom that is easie which with mortal men is as it were impossible Thou who hast made me to undergo all adversities I offer unto thee my calamities and the oppressions of justice Nevertheless thou hast always comforted me with thine unvanquished right hand afford me thine hand that if thou vouchsafe not to snatch me out of the deep pit of so many tribulations at least wise that through thy strength I may not sin against thee and that they may repent who have hated me undeservedly and that they who adore thy Power may acknowledge in me that thou alone art God the helper of the oppressed and the undoubted hope of them that trust in thee Let them be cloathed with contrition and find favour with thee and that I wretched man may sing forth the praises of thy greatness after this life For the rottenness of this Age is such that thy judgement being hidden the hypocrisie of mighty men professeth Faith in deceit and collects their wickedness under the shadow of Piety But in so great a tempest of my miseries unto the miseries of mortals and the defective errors of Physitians before the view of my mind I have attempted under thy command to record in writing That as hypocrisie hath trampled on me and my fortunes so I likewise know and that primarily that the father of lyes hath introduced the cup of ignorance and the bane of charity and health into the Paganish Schools lucre strewing the way under the beaten stormy path of Tritons For every young beginner that is to come shall admire with me that nothing hath been so unskilfully handled as those things which concern the life of mortal men For truly according to Thomas a Kempis it is all one with the Devil so he may render thee uncapable to serve God whether that be by true things or things appearing Therefore it sufficeth him so he shall but frustrate man of health and cut short his life wherein he might serve God if so be he shall make him a despiser of Divine aid by the appearing Doctrines of Pagans For the Schooles have written a thousand Volumns concerning the temperature and strife of qualities in the next place it hath been much and long interpreted by the Successors of Galen about these trifles and they have daily relapsed into new centuries and patcheries And at length they have squared unto those qualities feigned and excrementitious humours which should so wholly govern man as well healthy as sick that they should be chief over humane affairs as though the conditions manners healths appetites instincts inclinations slips or mis-deeds strengths valours defects events of fortune yea and the deserved punishments of loss or damnation and the adoptions of eternal life of mortal men should depend thereon A horrid surely and intollerable thing that these toyes have stood so long and that from things not existing and never to be and the which by the asserters themselves are accounted for excrements so serious and pernicious Fables have been co-feigned and believed And so that by the Schooles themselves scarce any thing hath been ever narrowly searched into which under such Principles may in very deed be truly true and good In the mean time I grieve I testifie it again not indeed that I have obtained the light of Truth from a long compassion towards my Neighbour but that it hath behoved me to lay open these Errors That is I grieve that the Devil hath deceived the Schools and will deceive them as long as they shall suffer themselves to be deluded by Paganish Fables and to be separated from the Schools of Truth But that that thing may be manifested I will by a Prologue declare it by the way and as it were by a positive demonstration For truly God made not Death And that is of Faith Therefore man became mortal from another thing than from God And seeing the scope or bound of most Diseases is Death it self because it is that which is nothing else but an extinguishing of life therefore a Disease and Death are Diametrically opposite to life Whence it follows that every Disease doth immediately act on the life But nothing is able to act on the life unless it be applyed unto it and well mixed with it But a Disease the enemy is not applyed unto the life promiscuously unless it shall besiege a part of the life and so shall sit totally or partially in the very life it self Which being done that part of the life besieged or overcome doth retire from the vital Air and the which being thus vanquished and become degenerate is made hostile unto the life as yet remaining or as yet constituted in its integrity Hence it necessarily follows that every Disease as it finds matter in the Organical or instrumental Air of life whereby it most immediately and inwardly riseth up against the life it self so in the same vital light it finds an efficient cause And so a Disease being thus instructed or furnished with matter and an efficient cause is entertained about the life Neither is it of concernment the while whether that contagion of a Disease be drawn from occasional Causes or in the next place be bred within in the Archeus through the errour of Life At leastwise it is sufficient in this place that the Life it self is on both sides the principal object for the hostile disease But seeing the Life it self
Predicaments through the ignorance of which or one only point heathenisme hath overwhelmed the Schooles of Medicine with the contagion of blindness And all curing hath been believed to be subject unto naked qualities excesses of degrees relative respects and actions For from hence they have feigned Contraries to be Remedies of Contraries and no Disease to be mitigated by the goodness of Nature the mildness of Medicines and by the appeasing and repentance of the Archeus that was first disturbed but only by fighting skirmishing and war to be reduced into a mean or temperature of the first qualities So that seeing they think every Disease to be a Disposition likewise that all Remedies ought to be a naked Disposition or they are deceived in their position whence it follows that the taking away of the stone out of the Bladder shall never be able of it self to import a cure of the sick For truly seeing it is a Remedy onely privative whereunto an appeasing of the Archeus belongs but it is not a Disposition contrary to the Stone And much lesse a prohibitive of the foregoing matter which they suppose of necessity to be supplied from elsewhere uncessantly to flow thither nor to cease the Stone being taken away by the knife to wit if the Disposition generating the matter whereof shall not first cease Therefore according to the Schooles He that is cut for the Stone should be cured onely for a little space to wit as the Impediments of Functions are taken away otherwise produced and cherished by the Stone being present and also as the disposition mentally interposing is secondarily casually and by accident obliterated But the mattter is far otherwise For truly a seminal Disease is a creature which made and found out its own matters and its own Idea's in us after sin by an hereditary right of the Archeus neither had he it originally in Nature And therefore the root of Diseases ought totally to be unknown to all Heathenisme And seeing an essential definition is not to be fetched from the Genus of the thing defined and its constitutive difference even as I have taught in the Book of Feavers by reason of the manifold perplexities of Errors and ridiculous positions but altogether from a connexion of both Causes which are Beings in Nature and therefore that the primitive and Ideal cause of Diseases hath stood neglected hitherto It follows also that the definition knowledge essence and roots of a Disease have remained unknown And finally that curings have been instituted by accident with an ignorance of the universal disposition of internal properties their efficacie and interchangable course Truly I know as a Christian that a Disease is not a Creature of the first Constitution because it is that which hath taken its rootes from sin in the impurity of Nature which afterwards in their own spring have at length budded in Individuals For neither were created poysons Diseases as long as they were without us but then when the Archeus of the same was made domestical unto us through the forreign disposition of its middle life it raised up seminal Idea's in our Archeus even as Fire is struck out of a Flint Then I say Diseases are made unto us the fore-runners of Death from an occasional poyson Diseases therefore do continue with us when they have their provoking occasions subsisting in our Nature until neither their occasional matter be wasted away or at least until the Archeus be rid of his own perturbations or of his office For Diseases indeed came on us by Sin and afterwards in Nature now corrupted by Sin the ferments and ready obediences of matter waxed strong and so they pierced into the number and catalogue of Nature and even unto this day do most inwardly persevere with us after a singular manner Yet alwayes distinct from other created things in this that the created things of the first constitution have a proper existence in themselves but diseases neither are nor are able to subsist without us Because they proceed as it were from a formal light and the vital constitutive Beginning of us And therefore the natural Archeus and a Disease do pierce each other because they have a material co-resemblance But the Schooles when they heeded that Diseases do never exist without us supposed that our Body was the subject of Inhaesion of Diseases and consequently that Diseases were only accidents and therefore to be stirred up from an elementary distemperature because they apprehended them in a most prompt and rustical sence also for that cause they hoped that they should sufficiently and over vanquish Diseases by Heats and Colds And therefore they likewise decreed that every refreshment aid and help which nature being informed did require of the Physitian was not to be administred in shew of a refreshment in peace and tranquility but herein onely to prevail and that wars strifes contraries and discords were to be appointed whereby the hostile elementary qualities being cobroken in us they might by constraint return into a mediocrity of temperature that so they may restrain the injuries of Nature now corrupted by contrary injuries and subdue them by revenging Which thing surely they have thus judged nor have otherwise understood because that they knew no other action than that which from a superiority of the agent rules over the patient But surely those things do not savour of an help neither is the Law of Christ by whom all things were made conformable to those Lawes of the Schooles And so as elsewhere more largely either Christ is not the parent of Nature or an adversary to himself in Nature or such Heathenish speculations of healing are rotten The Schooles therefore have not considered that the matters of many Beings do not consist but in a strange Inne whereunto they were appointed Wherefore by reason of their different kind of manner of existing they thought a Disease to be a meer accident but predicamentally seperating the matter which a Disease might carry before it from a Disease As if an Embryo should be an accident because it is no where but in the womb Indeed it pleased the revenger of sin that Diseases with their matters as well that occasional as that equal and inward unto them should not subsist but in those whose the Diseases and offence should be and that without respect of the Being of one unto another For neither have the Heathenish Schooles ever considered as neither the Moderns who have been established on Paganish Beginnings that this relation of existence came unto them from the condition of sin and the procreation thereof from the Archeus sore shaken with perturbations Because such thoughts never entred into Heathenisme neither is it a wonder that the Gentiles knew not the force of Transgression although they do deliver by the Fable of Promotheus and Pandora that they learned something from the Hebrews Yet it is a wonder that they were ignorant that a Disease before it should be made ours ought to proceed from the
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
that the Life is the immediate mansion of a Disease the inward subject yea and workman of the same But seeing Life is not essentially of the Body nor proper to the Body but that a Body without Life is a dead Carcass and a Disease is in the Life Of necessity also every matter or mansion and efficient Cause of a Disease doth not exceed the Limits of Life That is of necessity every Disease doth inhabite within the Case of the Archeus who is the alone immediate witness executer instrument as also the inne of Life but Apostemes Ulcers Filths Excrements c. Are only either the occasions of Death and Diseases or the latter products of the same raised up into a new scene or stage of the Tragedy Neither surely is it therefore a wonder that together with the Life all Diseases do depart into nothing if the Life be the immediate subject and mansion of Diseases But I long since admired that no Physitian hath hitherto known in what the essence of Diseases should shine But that they have wandred about Elementary qualities Humours Complexious Contrarieties and Dispositions Neither that indeed they have once observed that as filths are not Diseases so neither are Diseases in filths but that they live only in the Life it self and being included in the same do so arise grow and perish that seeing they are no where out of the Life they ought to be the intimate and domestick Thieves of the Life These things be spoken of the proper receptacle of Diseases Furthermore seeing a Disease is without controversie admitted to be a Being existing in us as in an inne and doth enjoy its own and singular properties and different Symptoms A Disease of necessity is not of the number of accidents because an accident is not of an accident combined with it and distinct from it self in the whole Species For truly sharpness or bitterness is not a property of whiteness blackness lightness or heat But every one of them do stand by themselves Wherefore if a Disease be a Being and not an accident if in the next place it produceth from it self not only alterations diverse dispositions weaknesses c. But moreover doth generate substances degenerating from the ordinary institution of their own nature of necessity also it ought to consist of matter and its own internal or seminal efficient Lastly seeing a Disease is internal as to the life it self it also follows of necessity that the matter of a Disease is Archeal and its efficient cause is vital And that I may speak more clearly every Disease is of necessity an Ideal efficient act of the vital power cloathing it self with a Garment of Archeal matter and attaining a vital and substantial form according to a difference of the slowness and swiftness of Ideal seeds which things indeed have been hitherto unknown by Mortals and those things which follow are as yet more largely supported with this position God made not Death and so far is he alwayes estranged from Death that he refuseth to be called the God of the Dead First of all also although Death doth sometimes invade without a Disease yet for the most part Death follows Diseases so that none doubteth but that that Death is the daughter of Diseases or the second Cause whereby and by means whereof the Life is extinguished That is Death is present but seeing God is not in any wise the Author of Death to wit by whom Death entred into Man who else was immortal and that no more or by a stronger right in the beginning of the World than at this day A Physitian must diligently enquire from whence Death doth causally invade from the beginning and even unto this day that it may from thence be manifest from whence a Disease hath drawn its integrity For truly although it be sufficiently apparent that Death doth contain as it were a privation or exstinction of Life so neither in it self or for its existence it doth not require any substantial form and much less a vital one But surely a Disease as such doth not bespeak a privation but a Being truly subsisting acting by an hurtful act of Life and ensnaring the Life So also it behoveth a Disease to consist in the form of its own thingliness which the Life can receive into it and be informed by it But seeing a Disease arose from the same Beginning as Death did neither is God ever the Author of Death It by all means follows that God is not the Author or Creator of Diseases neither therefore although a Disease hath a certain substantial form Yet it hath not Life nor a vital Light but what it hath borrowed from the Life it self to wit so far as it glistens in the Light of our Life or in that of Cattel But not that a Disease doth require or hath begged a vital Light from the Father of Lights for the being of its seed the which in it self is rather to be named a deadly or mortal thing and altogether estranged from the goodness of God the Creator Therefore although God alone doth create all the forms of all things and the Father of Lights doth give every essential form to wit a vital substantial form and so also the formal substance without any mutual competitor yet that hath not place in Diseases in the forming of which indeed man alone is chief Because the Life of Man alone containeth the second Causes of Diseases and Death Therefore because the Creator God denyeth that he made Death therefore also a Disease For a Disease standeth in the Life of Man and therefore all its quiddity or thingliness depends on the Life of man and that not only Seminally even as otherwise it is proper to all the seeds of any things whatsoever But besides also formally so that the Life of the Archeus or his Flesh and Blood are and do remain the whole formal Cause of Diseases or the effective Cause of the formes of a Disease For he who from the beginning refused to have effected Death or Diseases will never at length thence-forward be willing to have made Death nor Diseases For the Father of Lights will not give his Honour of Creating formal Lights unto any Creature except the Mortal formes of Diseases whereof as neither would he be called the God of the Dead Therefore Man remains the workman of his own Death who the day before was immortal as also of his own Diseases as if he were the Creator of Death So indeed that whereas God hath made vital Lights Man Createth Diseasie Obscure and deadly Idea's or Shapes and such an Idea doth as much differ from a vital Light as a black heat doth from Light Therefore the formal act of Death and Diseases sprang from the action of original Sin and shall so spring even unto the end of the World For the same Cause which in the beginning of the World made Death or the same second natural Cause which gave a natural entrance of Death into
humane Nature The same Cause also doth wholly at this day make Death and a Disease For it is repugnant with the Glory of the Creator not to have made Death from the beginning and afterwards when it was made by Man for him to have assumed to himself the Glory of knowing how to make it as if he ought to have learned that thing from Man But what hath been already spoken concerning Death that is by an equal right to be understood concerning Diseases Because that seeing Death and a Disease have issued from the same piont of their original therefore if God be said to give Diseases or Death it is not that now he will be the Creator of those things whose Fabrick he before wholly refused But he is permissively called the Author and Prince of Life and Death Because as he is the true and alone Author of Life and therefore doth govern it and suffer it at his Pleasure So he permits that this man doth yield or depart and the other Man fall and that second Causes do happen as well directly as irregularly whence Man dieth or a Disease groweth But the Creation of a Disease as of a Being subsisting from a seminal matter and efficient and of an Ideal and deadly evil never proceeded from God For while he had placed it in the will of Man that he might remain without Death or the same day to die the Death by the same step also he put it into Mans hand to frame Death and a Disease it self as a fore-runner and preparer of Death The entrance of Death into the nature of Man being considered even as I have elsewhere explained it by a remarkable Paradox doth most exactly prove that a Disease doth nor only consist in the vital part of Man but also that a Disease it self is bred by a seminal Idea out of the Archeus himself But I will briefly prove that thing From the concupiscence of the Flesh arose the flesh of Sin and therefore also a mortal Archeus in that Flesh and from thence by consequence also the Archeus forasmuch as he is vital acts in the flesh of Sin every action and produceth every formal hurtful and deadly act which God hath refused to do and hath suffered Man to stamp on himself the Causes of Death and Diseases Yet Man is not therefore a Creator although he maketh formal acts to himself or the substantial formes of Diseases or the hurtful ones of Life For truly that was granted unto him by virtue of the Word That on what so ever day he should eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil he should die the Death and should make guards-men appointed for his own Death And that from the very Nature of Death it self necessarily brought forth in the flesh of Sin The act therefore which is of the Essence Exsistence and Subsistence even as also of the propagation or fruitfulness of the contagion of Diseases doth altogether depend in the Life from the Life by the Life within which it is also enclosed Surely miserable are Mortals and most exceeding miserable are the Sick who have hitherto hired Physitians at a great and dear price who know not what a Disease may be from whence it may arise and in what it may consist and subsist But I admire that before me the more Antient as neither Modern Physitians have smelt this out because their sacred Anchor being for the most part in the hope of a Crisis and concerning Crises's they have devised very many things to excuse their own Ignorances For truly a Crisis or judicial sign in Diseases proveth nothing besides the Archeus if they believe their own Hippocrates who saith that Natures themselves are the only Physitianesses and helpers of Diseases For the Moon doth not make Crises's causatively but the Archeus alone who follows the Harmony of the Moon For the Moon measureth dayes hath more regared unto the proof of the actions of the Archeus than unto causality For the Moon is alwayes on the fourth day in an opposite place to that which she was in on the first day Therefore also the Archeus hath opposite powers or faculties who doth imitate the Harmonious motions of the Moon So also on the seventh day c. I conclude therefore for the knowledge of a Disease that a Disease hath either a Fewell or an excitement only from the occasional Cause or doth arise from a voluntary and proper motion and perseveres in its own contagion of a seed as while an Epilepsie or the falling Evil is once con-centred or the Gowt hath taken root doth indeed awaken of its own free accord as oft as it listeth Even as also the Disease ceaseth for two or three dayes or more and again returns at set Periods although the occasional cause in the mean time be alwayes present and so after a hurtful solutive Medicine being taken although it be expelled a few hours after yet the Archens being thereby defiled rageth and is obedient to the drunk contagion of the venom So also ready inclinations and hereditary Diseases Proper or Natural unto some one whole Family are co-bred with us Because they are Con-centred in the Life it self and are as it were the Characterical marks and imprinted seales of hurtful Diseases CHAP. LXVIII I proceed unto the Knowledge of Diseases 1. Medicine is the most occult or intricate of Sciences 2. Therefore the ignorances of past ages are excusable 3. In what thing Diseases may inhabit 4. The rise or original of Diseases 5. Whence a Disease began 6. Why a Disease is immediately in the Being of the first Motions 7. Why the essence of Diseases hath been unknown 8. A Disease hath married a vital Being 9. After what manner all seeds do issue from the invisible World 10. The rise of Efficient Causes and the property of seminal Idea's 11. All the seminal Beginnings of things are from an invisible Idea 12. How a seminal beginning receives its compleating 13. The Ideal power of seeds is declared by their ranks 14. Although Death and a Disease began from the same Beginning yet they differ in that a Disease hath Idea's but a Death not 15. The Schooles will laugh at Idea's But the Author carps at the ignorance of the Schooles 16. He proveth their ignorance at least by one Example I Have already oftentimes nor in vain asserted that Arts and Sciences have hastened unto a pitch but that the art of healing alone if it hath not gone backwards at leastwise to have stood at a stay and to have whirled round about the same deceitful point Hence also I have conjectured that the knowledge of Diseases and a Medicine depending thereon was to Man most difficult On which so many flourishing wits have for so many ages vainly bestowed their endeavours and that thing I do not hereby conjecture to be from a contingency or events alone to wit because the knowledge of Diseases hath even hitherto stood neglected But because in respect
of the Causes it is wholly invisible and unpassable Wherefore although I tax the ignorance of the Schooles I will not have that to be done by me for a little vain glories sake as neither from an intent of reproaching the whole Body of the faculty Because it is that which hath not transgressed against me but only from a desire of teaching Mortals Not indeed that I perswade my self that the goodness of God doth envy this doctrine for the health of Man while as even from the beginning of the World he hath dispersed his gift by some throughout the ages of the World the holy Scripture also do most greatly commend the Physitian But that most through a sluggishness of diligent searching and a readiness of credulity have stifled in themselves that endowed or gifted Light And so the Devil being the builder it hath alwayes been super-structed on the false Principles of the Heathens Therefore Medicine the most difficult of Sciences by reason of the invisibility of Diseases and deceit much increased by Heathenish Theorems hath not been penetrable by any acuteness of Wits which difficulties the invention and knowledge of so many Simples and preparations appropriations and applications of remedies fetcht from thence according to the varieties and speedinesses of sliding occasions hath increased in every of which they are on both sides the invisible actors of their own tragedy The which Diseases unless any one shall perfectly know or hath obtained a super-excelling remedy truly he shall spend his weapons at the effects but not at the roots themselves Therefore the gate of healing hath even from the Cradles or non-age of the World remained shut which my Talent received hath commanded me to open for of boasting hereof it hath notably shamed me God is witness wherefore I ought first to free the Hinges and Bars from rust that I might set open the Doores to those that are willing to enter Therefore I ought to expose the one only and golden Key hitherto hidden in the Arches of the Archeus unto the Fire of the Art of the Fire and Light of Truth That any one may enter into the secrets of the Court so far as shall be granted him from Above First of all I do not name a Disease a Diathesis or Disposition but the very wandering or erring Being which is stamped by the vital Archeus himself I do not therefore behold a Disease as an abstracted quality And that thing I thus perswaded my self of in times past that like Life it is a Being proper unto the Life it self It being the reason why a Disease doth with so swift a pace pierce into the Life by reason of its co-resembling mark Wherefore the Apoplexie Leprosie Dropsie or Madness as they are Qualities in the abstract with me are not Diseases But as the Apoplectical Leprous Maddish c. Being contains the very Scope and Causes of the Diseases in it Truly a Disease begun from Sin For in the integrity purity of our Nature and vigour of Innocency there was no Death and much less a Disease For Death was threatned not a Disease but that they were understood concomitantly as to future times Therefore a Disease doth in its own Nature oppose the Life no otherwise than as Death it self and the powers thereof the which therefore we call vital Because through the spending of those a lingring or sudden Death happens We believe by Faith therefore that Death and every infirmity hath entred into Man by Sin and that through the concupisence of the Flesh of Sin they were propagated on all posterity Therefore that neither could the entrance of Diseases and Death be learned by Heathenisme Because it was reasonable that all the ranks of sicknesses should be rooted in the same concupiscence of the Flesh whereby Sin entred For as concupiscence in the conception doth not Sin before a consent which fashions an Idea of plausibility So it must needs be that every Disease arising in the Flesh of Sin doth consist in a strange Image or seminal Idea of corrupt Nature I have gathered also that it was suitable that the Being which under a concupiscible pleasure consented and sinned should primarily also be strucken with Diseases So indeed that it should not only fail or faint through external violences but should experience the revenges of Sin in the Flesh by its own proper exorbitances to wit that the Archeus himself the governour of the Flesh of Sin should by the same liberty of his own passions frame erroneous Images to himself which should be unto him as it were for a poyson Indeed that from the delights of the concupiscible part from passions which are the storms of the wrothful part and likewise even through voluntary disturbances he might stand subject unto his own Ruine which he should stamp on himself Which Images or Likenesses indeed as being the seeds of Diseasie Beings should be thenceforth wholly marriageable unto him in the innermost Bride-bed of Life This indeed is an hard saying in the ears which are not accustomed to hear beyond trifles heats and dirt Wherefore if any one doth admire at so great an efficacy of the Archeus being Ideated and of seminal Idea's as to produce Diseases and Death it self He doth not yet know that the natural beginning of all things doth altogether depend on the Ideal part in every seed Wherefore let him consider that as the Light being united for truly in sublunary things there is scarce any thing more spiritual than Light because it is that which pierceth solid Glasse yea also place it self doth enflame Woods and Houses So also that every Idea is a Light as well forasmuch as it is stamped by the Spirit the partaker of a vital Light as in that it is lightsome from the property of its own essence Otherwise Idea's themselves as they are conceived are nothing besides the Lights of a vital Soul reflexed on its own cogitations and the which therefore are not conceived but in a lightsome Spirit in which they receive the figure of the thing conceived That is they are there made an intellectual Idea it self Therefore although cogitation it self be a meer non-being Yet every thing conceived doth from the very right of its nativity consist of a matter conceived and of a vital Light intelligibly reflexed on it And seeing the Imagination is the Ape of the Understanding although it doth not transform it self into the thing conceived after the manner of the Understanding yet by conceiving it transports this thing figurally into it self and seales the conception thereof and decyphers a certain seminal Idea of the thing imagined together with light efficacy and every manner of operation And that wholly under its greatest Unity and Simplicity So that if in fructifying seeds and those continuing the perpetuity of the universe these things do appear to happen and to operate by a Light with great efficacy wherefore shall we be ignorant that these do not otherwise come to pass in Diseases Especially
while the same things are engraven by a stronger apprehension For things conceived do teach us that from passions or perturbations which are non-beings true real actual Images do arise no otherwise than as the thoughts of a Woman with Child do stamp a real Image how strange and forreign soever it be Wherefore thus indeed the Phantasie brings forth poysons which do kill its own Man and afflict him with diverse miseries So that as those Images do primarily proceed from the imaginative power whose immediate instruments the Archeus himself is So it is altogether necessary that he which toucheth Pitch should be defiled by it That is it behoveth the Archeus himself primarily and immediately to conceive and put on that new Image to be affected with the same and by virtue of a resembling mark or Symbole other things depending on him according to the properties of that hurtful Idea And that Ferment being once decyphered in that aire which maketh the assault is a Disease which forthwith diffuseth it self into the venal Blood the liquor that is to be immediately assimilated and next into the similar parts and into the very Superfluities of the Body according to the property even of that its own Idea for from hence the Diseases of distributions and digestions What if Idea's are formed in the implanted Spirit of the Braine or inne of the Spleen by imagining which also in Bruits are the principal Blas and Organ of all Motions It nothing hinders but that the Archeus himself implanted in the parts may frame singular and now and then exorbitant Idea's not unlike to the imaginative power for so the Spittle of a mad Dog Tarantula or Serpent and likewise the juice of Wolfesbane Monkshood or Nightshade do communicate their Image of fury on us against our wills Wherefore likewise nothing hinders the chief or primary instrument of imagination from forming in-mate seminal fermental poysonous c. Images unto it self Whatsoever doth of its own Nature by it self and immediately afflict the vital powers ought for that very Cause to be of the race and condition of those Powers For otherwise they should not have a Symbole Passage Agreement Virtues or Piercing into each other as neither by consequence an application and activity For seeing the powers or faculties are the invisible and untangible seals of the Archeus who is himself invisible and untangible those powers cannot be reached and much less pierced or vanquished by the Body because those powers however vital they are yet they want extremities whereby they may be touched whence it follows which hath been hitherto unknown that every Disease for it glistens in the Life because it is of the disposition of the vital powers it ought immediately to be stamped and to arise from a Being which was bred to produce seminal Idea's And seeing nothing among constituted things is made of it self originally of necessity the powers as well of Diseasie as vital things do depend either on the Idea's of the generater himself whence hereditary Diseases or of the generated Archeus But that that thing may the more clearly appear in the seed of Bruites and Man there is a power formative after the similitude of the generater Because it is that which seeing it is dispositive and distributive of the whole government in figuring its activity is contested by none The seed therefore hath a knowledge infused by the generater fitted for the ends to be performed by it self for the seed which in its own substance is otherwise barren is made fruitful by an Image stirred up in the lust To wit the imaginative power of the generater doth first bring forth an Idea which at its beginning is wholly a non-being but by arraying it self with the cloathing of the Archeus it becomes a real and seminal Being And that as well in Plants as in sensible Creatures For in vegetables a seed proceeds from an invisible Beginning for truly there is a virtue given to a plant of fructifying by a seed and so it hath an analogical or proportionable conception which formeth a seminal Idea in propagating borrows its fruitfulness and principles of Life from it but not Life it self even as elswhere concerning Formes therefore a seed borrows knowledge gifts roots and dispositions of the matter espoused unto it for Life from a seminal Idea to wit the cause of all fruitfulness And they who a little smelt out that thing in times past have said that every generation doth draw its original from an invisible World The thrice glorious Almighty by the naked and pure command of his own cogitation and conceived Word Fiat or let it be done made the whole Creature of nothing and put seminal virtues into it durable throughout ages But the Creature afterwards propagates its gift received not indeed of nothing as neither by its own command but it hath received a power of Creating its own seminal Image from God of tranferring or decyphering the same on its own Archeus This indeed is the seminal virtue of Man Bruits and Plants But not this beast-like conception is in plants nor is stirred up from lust for it is sufficient that it happen after an analogical manner whereby the Antients have agreed all things to be in all which manner by a similitude drawn from us the Sympathy and Antipathy of things do shew for they feel a mutual presence and are presently stirred up by that sense unto the unfolding of their natural endowments Because they are those things which else would remain unmoved but a sense or feeling cannot but after some sort have an equal force with an imaginative virtue The which I have elsewhere profesly treated more at large concerning the Plague But now my aim is not to Phylosophize concerning Plants but only of Diseases It sufficeth therefore that the imagination it self so called from the forming of an Image doth stampe an Idea for whose sake every seed is fruitful And seeing that in us that imaginative power is as it were brutal earthly and devillish according to the Apostle therefore it is subject unto its own Diseases and can stampe an Image in the Archeus it s own immediate instrument Hence it happens unto us that every Disease is materially and efficiently in us For whatsoever is bred or made that wholly happens through the necessity of a certain seed and every seed hath its this something from an Idea put into its spirit but a Disease is a real Being and is made in a live Creature only Whence it follows that although a Disease doth oppose the Life as the forerunner of Death yet it is bred from a vital Beginning and the same in the Life to wit from the flesh of Sin Notwithstanding Death and all dead things do want rootes whereby they may produce And so seeing Death bespeaks a destruction or privation it wants a seminal Image wherein it is distinguished from Diseases Life indeed is from the Soul and therefore also the premised character of the first constitution
utmost of Three Hundred Years because they are those which some living Creatures do daily of their own accord reach unto but man very seldom and that not but in some unwonted places But why Long Life may be extended with so great a largness it comes to pass because it is on both sides received after the manner of the Receiver For the Modern Tree of Life should now no longer render me capable of the least Dignity or term by reason of the light of my Life being depraved by many storms the thred whereof they have cut off while it was as yet in the Flax. He shall fullfil thy desire in good things and thy Youth shall be renewed as the Eagle For neither is it said as of the Eagle because the former Youth of an Eagle is not restored But the Eagle is renewed no otherwise than as the Serpent puts off his skin and the Stag his hornes although in the mean time they do not cease to wax old under that renovation So that the Eagle hastens into grey Feathers Therefore I thus speak of Long Life not indeed which may be extended even unto the last day according to the rashness of Paracelsus as neither do I speak of a sound Life which is plainly free from Diseases but of that which under some certain kind of Protection of the Faculties doth for some good while enlarge the bound of Life Which meanes if they are administred unto a Child and strong Infant are to bring the same unto the aforesaid term if he proceed to use the same What if at length certain Climates do protract the Life shall that thing be denied unto a Medicine unto which there is a natural endowment of Long Life For oft-times he which is constrained to use Spectacles in the fiftieth Year doth afterwards again of his own free accord see clearly in the eightieth Year of his Age. Why shall not that therefore be done totally by Art which happens in the Eyes from a voluntary vigour But I have alwayes supposed that whatsoever was once Natural to wit in Nestor doth not resist a possibility of Nature Neither also doth it move me that Arch-Physitians have found this place untouched and dumb and therefore also have left it Because the Schooles do long since despaire to be wise beyond Galen who notwithstanding like an Apothecary doth substitute one thing for another and indeed hath set forth ridiculous Books of Preserving Health as for Long Life For he encloseth this in straight crooked athwart and circular rubbings to wit he acting great motion and being a great Circulater in these things which are of his own Invention even as an ignorant transcriber of others For as oft as he faileth from whence he may copy out serious things he so discovereth the wonderful poverty of his wit that he hath seemed to have doated throughout some Books in a figural friction or rubbing And therefore none of his successors hath hitherto counted the Books of Galen of Defending Health worthy of a Commentary or hath attempted to lift them from the ground but rather by a successive Interpretation every one hath bound that Doctrine of Galen unto the obedience of the huckstery of the Kitchin and Diet. For so through the craft of the Devil Long Life hath wandered into defending of Health and from thence into the Kitchins The Art therefore of some Years is Short and the Life Long if we must have respect unto the Hope of Life which the loose Doctrine of the Heathens hath neglected CHAP. XCII The Enterance of Death into Humane Nature is the Grace of Virgins The Index of the Contents 1. Why it is Treated of Death before of Life 2. A final Cause is not in Natural Things as neither is it the first of Causes 3. Some Absurdities of Aristotle 4. The Author prostrates this Treatise to the Censure of the Church 5. God indeed made Death for bruit Beasts but not for Man 6. What may be denoted by the Etymology of Death 7. The Devil could not make Death for Man 8. Man prepared Death effectively for himself 9. Of what sort the Immortality of our first Parents was 10. By what means Immortallity did stand in Man 11. Why the Mind is not capable of Suffering 12. The necessity of the sensitive Soul 13. The eating of the Apple did contain in it the second Causes for a necessity of Death 14. The inward Properties of that Apple 15. Man before the Fall wanted a sensitive Soul 16. The Mind Imprints its Image in the Seed 17. A chain flowing from the eating of the Apple 18. To what end the Author hath written this Treatise LIfe was indeed before that Death could be therefore although Life be before Death in Nature and Duration yet for this Treatise the Enterance of Death into Man's Life doth precede Life because I might not treat of Immortal Life such as it was from the intention of the Creator before the Sin of our first Parent but onely of the Length of Life or of the prolonging of Life whose end because it is closed terminated and defined or limitted by Death Death ought to be first determined of by its Causes as the remover of the bound of Life Truly I have not studied to imitate Aristotle in this thing who teacheth That the End is the first of Causes For I have elsewhere plentifully demonstrated that Aristotle was plainly ignorant of whole Nature Wherefore that his Maxime as well within as out of Nature is false Because if we speak of God the First Mover the Arch-type of all things and of the invisible World be it certain that with him there is not any Priority of Causes but that they all do co-unite into Unity with whom all things are onely one Likewise seeing whatsoever is made or generated in Nature is made or generated from a necessity of the Seeds and so that Seeds are in this respect the original Principles and natural Causes of things and do act for ends not indeed known to themselves but unto God alone From a necessity of Christian Phylosophy a Final Cause hath no place in Nature but onely in artificial things And therefore also from hence is verified what I have elsewhere sufficiently proved That Aristotle hath understood nothing less than natural things and that he hath deceived his Schools by artificial things And he is wholly impertinent in this place because he hath reduced artificial things under the catalogue of natural Causes Yea in more fully looking into the matter Aristotle remaines alike ridiculous For truly a builder before the bound or figure of Houses made out of Paper doth presuppose a knowledge of the Place an attainment of Meanes in the next place of Lime Bricks Stones Wooden and Iron materials a computation of which Meanes doth go before a Figure of the Houses And so neither also is the Final Cause if there be any the first of Artificial Causes in the Mind of the Author Therefore it is a
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
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
not for Man a fatherliness of his Mind but in God alone and therefore his original Generation and Propagation was reserved in the Power of God the Creator And especially while as its knowledge of it self is wanting to the Mind which is immortal and infinite in Duration whereby it may represent it self to it self to wit that it may decypher a sealed similitude of it self in the Seed Therefore indeed neither can the immortal Mind ever bring the Seed of Man unto that which it self shall never have in it self to wit out of it self to decypher the Image of God For Man is so made the Image of God that he is the cloathing of the Deity the Sheath of the Kingdom of God that is The Temple of the holy Spirit Man therefore being essentially created into the Image of God after that he rashly presumed to generate the Image of God out of himself not indeed by a certain Monster but by something which was shadowily like himself with the Whoredom or Ravishment of Eve he indeed generated not the Image of God like unto that which God would have therefore unimitable as being Divine but in the vital air of the Seed he generated Dispositions careful at some time to obtain a sensitive discursive and motive Soul from the Father of Lights the Fountain of all Paternity yet Mortal and to Perish into which nevertheless he of his own goodness inspires ordinarily the substantial Spirit of a Mind shewing forth his own Image And so that Man in this respect endeavoured to generate his own Image not but after the manner of Bruit-Beasts by the copulation of Seeds which at length should obtaine by request a soulified Light from the Creator and the which they call a sensitive Soul For from thence hath proceeded another Generation conceived after a beast-like manner mortal and uncapable of eternal Life after the manner of Beasts a bringing forth with Pains and subject to Diseases and Death and so much the more sorrowful or full of misery by how much that very Propagation in our first Parents dared to invert the intent of God Therefore the unutterable goodness forewarned them That they should not tast of that Tree And otherwise he foretold That the same Day they should die the Death and should feel all the Root of Calamities which accompanies Death Deservedly therefore hath the Lord deprived both our Parents of the benefit and seat of Immortality To wit Death succeeded from a conjugal and bruital Copulation Neither remained the Spirit of the Lord with Man after that he began to be Flesh Furthermore because that defilement of Eve shall thenceforth be continued in the propagating of Posterity even unto the end of the World From hence the Sin of the despised fatherly Admonition and natural Deviation from the right way is now among other Sins for an impurity through an inverted carnal and well nigh bruital Generation and is truly called Original Sin that is Man being sowed in the Pleasure of the Concupiscence of the Flesh shall therefore alwayes reap a necessary Death in the Flesh of Sin But The knowledge of Good and Evil which God placed in the disswaded Apple did contain the Concupiscence of the Flesh that is an occult forbidden Conjunction diametrically opposite unto the State of Innocency which State was not a State of Stupidity because he was he unto whom before the Corruption of Nature the Essences of all living Creatures whatsoever were now made known according to which they were to be named from their Property and at their first sight to be essentially distinguished And moreover S. Hildegard unto the Moguntians or those of Mentz saith Adam was formed by the Finger of God which is the holy Spirit in whose Voice every sound before he sinned was the sweetnesse of all Harmony and of the whole musical Art So that if he had remained in the State wherein he was formed the weaknesse of mortal Man could not have been able to bear the virtue and shrilness of his Voice But when the Deceiver of him had heard that Man from the inspiration of God had begun to sing so shrilly and that hereby to repeat the sweetness of the Songs of the heavenly Country he counterfeited behold how far now Man hath departed from thence with his hoarse Voice the Engines of Craft seeing his wrath against him was in vain he was so affrighted that he was not a very little tormented thereby And he alwayes afterwards busily endeavoured by the manifold Devises of his wickednesse to invent and search out that he may not only cease to interrupt or expel divine praises from the Heart of Man but also from the mouth of the Church These things she It is a devoted Opinion of mystical Men That Birds do sing Praises unto God I under a humble correction do think otherwise For if that should be true they should sing all the year neither should they cease assoon as the lust of generating is fulfilled which argument is serviceable unto our Position For truly seeing the Males only do sing but not the Females That from a common Nature Adam was the more leacherous and incontinent and from his Sex more lustful than Eve whose Chastity therefore being beloved of God seemeth proper to that Sex Man therefore through eating of the Apple attained a knowledge that he had lost his radical innocency and that instead thereof he had made an empty exchange of the sordid Concupiscence of the Flesh For neither before the eating of the Apple was he so dull or stupified that he knew not or did not perceive himself naked but with the effect of shame and brutal Concupiscence he then first declared that he was naked For the sacred Text is every where so chaste that the most High would not name the Concupiscence of the Flesh it self at least-wise by a proper name yea nor also accuse of it while he forewarned of the eating of the Apple for a necessity of Death that that brutal Concupiscence might not be made known unto Man even so much as by name And therefore neither would he have Concupiscence to be named in Genesis by reason of the prompt perfidiousness of that People but he called it innocency lost from a gotten shame the which he would afterwards have to be weighed in the Church by its own circumstances And so that therefore he presently translated Adam after his Creation from the Earth into Paradise and for that Cause also he formed the Woman in Paradise least she whom he had made and appointed to remaine a Virgin should behold the copulation of Bruit-beasts in the Earth For in the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth and every Creature contained therein But he made and formed those things materially by the passive and commanding Word Let it be done to wit he spake that Word and all things were created But in six dayes space after he made the Forms of things created and all things were orderly made into the
Life and Soul of soulâ—fied Creatures For in that those Words did differ to say Let it be made and to make For in the sixth or last day Adam was formed But on the seventh day God rested At length he afterwards translated Adam from the Earth into Paradise and deliberated to make Woman of the Rib of the Man but not of his Reins Thigh or Belly Therefore on the eighth day that it might be the Beginning of a new week for a new and super-natural Generation of an off-spring to come Wherefore it may be collected that Woman being wholly an Out-law ascended into a new heap of Choiceness as being a Vessel of Choiceness or Election But we may after some sort conjecture of the quality of humane generation in Eve a Virgin before the Fall by the most glorious Incarnation of our Lord For indeed the Father unto whom every name of Paternity is singularly and solely due and whom his Son as a Father doth alwayes adore hath indeed alwayes generated his Son from Eternity who yet is not read to be the Father of his Incarnation The which thing I even reverence for a vast mystery and the rather after that I understood the insinite goodness of the same as well from the first virginal conception of Creation as in the restoration by the regeneration of Man Indeed the Father Almighty would that the glorious incarnation of Christ should be conceived of the Person of the holy Spirit the which it self to wit therefore was not generated but proceeded from eternity from the Father and the Son For the Spirit of God had caused a humane conception of off-springs in the Arterial Blood of the Heart of the Virgin Eve it being the Image of the Divinity with all its free Gifts without the pleasure of the Flesh But the Mind being thus in the garment of Arterial Blood conceived in the Womb of the Virgin in a humane Shape had took an increase and full maturity from thence For he who the Womb being shut and the Gates being closed came into the World and unto his own also out of the Case of the Heart wherein he was conceived was by a foregoing consent brought unto the Womb of the Virgin and kept even unto the maturity of his Body For he piercing all Members was brought into the Womb For therefore our Lord's Incarnation happened altogether besides the order of Nature now accustomed For 1. The Incarnation of the Lord happened not first in the Womb but in the very Sheath of the Heart of the Virgin 2. Of the most pure and most lively Blood of the Heart but not of the Seed of the Virgin For truly the God-bearing Virgin in that singular respect was not only cleansed from Original Sin but was conceived altogether free from Sins to wit that she might be so much the more void of all Seed than a Child that is newly born For Seed is composed of a mixture of Venal and Arterial Blood or from a co-mixture of Bloods which mixture was no manner of way not so much as materially in the conception of the Son of God who was conceived not of Bloods nor of the Will of the Flesh or of Man but of God alone and born of a Virgin 3. He had not a Man to his Father nor a masculine Matter from whence he should be made which thing surely confirms that a feminine Matter was the more excellent governess or deputy and alone fore-elected from the Beginning 4. He fore-elected the most chast and unspotted Virginity of a Mother which he formed with a divine Hand 5. He was materially conceived onely and of most pure Arterial Blood To wit whereinto the seal of the holy Spirit inspired an humane Mind and a most pure Image of it self made or framed by his Father God 6. That conception was brought from the Heart into the Womb of the Virgin with a piercing of Dimensions 7. Lastly He exspected an increase and just maturity of Nativity as it were in the celebration of a Sabbath Furthermore that the knowledge of Good and Evil signifies nothing but the Concupiscence of the Flesh the Apostle doth manifestly testifie calling it the Law and Desire of Sin From whence to wit the first Bruital and Original Sin the fewel of the other Sins hath immediately issued and is hereafter to endure for a continued Seed of Mortals In the 8th to the Romans God sending his Son into the likeness of the Flesh of Sin hath also concerning Sin condemned Sin in the Flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us Original I say because it is the Beginning of the original of a humane Generation whereby all contagion of Impurity is derived on Posterity and Death became natural unto Man even as unto Beasts So that although the eating of the Apple did contain a note of distrust and ingratitude and the which also is a Companion unto every Sin Yet therefore even every Sin afterwards ought with the same Punishment of necessity also to descend unto Posterity unless the unwonted transgression of a loving Admonition should not so much consist in the disobedience of eating or abstaining as in the horrid Distrust of doubting and confidence of Faith given unto the Devil And so that the generation of the Flesh of Sin which is an effect of the Concupiscence of the Flesh hath of necessity defluxed into Death even unto all Posterity For it pleased the Lord of things to insert in the Apple an incentive of the Concupiscence of the Flesh to wit from which he was able safely to abstain by not eating the Apple therefore diswaded from For otherwise he had never at any moment been tempted by the Flesh or his genital Members the which I will hereafter shew to be therefore called the North in the holy Scriptures Therefore the Apple being eaten Man presently from a natural property of the Apple conceived the lust of being luxurious and from thence was made an Animal Seed which hastening into the previous or foregoing Dispositions of a sensitive Soul and undergoing the Law of other Causes reflexed it self into the vital Spirit of Adam which therefore like an ignis fatuus or foolish fire presently receiving an Archeus or ruling Spirit and animal Air I say a houshold Thief it conceived a Power of propagating an Animal and mortal Seed ending into Life At the arrival whereof at length the immortal Mind putting off the Rains of the Life and government of the Body substituted the sensitive Soul as its Chamber-maid From hence therefore we are conceived born and do die after the manner of Beasts For the day before the immortal Mind acted all in all and was the very immortal Life it self in the whole Body because it was solely and wholly immortal in the whole Body But that very so great Beauty of Nature was presently vitiated in our first Parent after that he was cloathed with the similitude of a bruital generation For then the immortal Mind being moved
from its place descends that it may imprint a seal on the forbidden Seed for a common destruction Then although the sensitive Soul was not yet born yet every natural Disposition requisite for the obtaining that sensitive Soul from the Creator was forthwith present And seeing two Souls at once cannot perfectly preside in one only Plain or Region of the Body without discord no more than it is lawful to serve two Masters at once Therefore the immortal Mind hath departed into the innermost Parts whether that was by the Command of the Creator or grieving at the wearisomness of a bodily Impurity at leastwise it afterwards delegated the government of its Body on the sensitive Soul in which it is now bound because it is involued in it as long as we live For from hence we do afterwards for the most part wax of ripe years and live after a bruital manner But the Mind hath betaken it self into the Inn of a frail Soul and doth thereby inspire hereinto its free gifts although for the most part otherwise it sleepeth perhaps even as Coral doth now and then loose its Colour and again recover the same from whence the Body hath undergone every disorder of Impurity But the Wedlock of the mortal Soul being a forreign thing unto the ordination of the Mind is for an occasion why the Mind hath placed it self into the hidden Parts so as that the Matter or Controversie is as yet before the Judge or in dispute whether of the two hath chosen the principal Bride-bed and a Mind is not believed to be among Atheists because it by piercing hath so sunk it self into the depth of the mortal Soul because the Notions of the Mind do appear as yet to this day to be subject to the imagination do also so obey the Poysons of some Simples that the principality of the Mind seems to be sore shaken at the Pleasure and Command of Diseases which thing the Dotages of Fevers Madness in affects of the Spleen the Biting of a Mad-dog and Pricking or Stinging of a Tarantula have the more strongly perswaded in the behalf of Atheism for in the former immortal Life the Mind did by it self and immediately frame immortality and gave also a perfect knowledge of living Creatures and Herbs But afterwards in the brutal Filthinesse of generation the Image of God remained indeed safe in the Mind and its external Figure in the Body But so great a Corruption of it hath constrained the Mind to retire unto the innermost Chamber of the mortal Soul Therefore the Immortality thereof lived under the happy government of the Mind And therefore Diseases were banished with the declinings of Ages and the threatnings of Death And therefore before the Fall Man was dinstinguished from Blessedness in that he could Sin Fall and Die But in Glorification the Mind shall again immediately quicken the Body and transsume it into it self The Mind indeed before the Fall which did only shine upon the Body by its immediate Splendour shall forthwith after the Resurrection through a transchanging of it clarifie it by way of supping it up For therefore the state of the Faithful although throughout their whole Life also in Death it self be far more miserable than the primitive State yet it is more happy than that by how much it is a thing fuller of Majesty to be more like the Son of God Incarnate dead and glorified than to have lived with Adam free from Diseases and at length to be taken away without Battle because the retributions or repayings of Life are no way worthy of the Glory or Expectation of the Age to come Furthermore the sacred Text hath in many Places compelled me unto a perfect Position it making Eve an Helper like unto Adam not indeed that she should supply the name and room of a Wife even as she is call straightway after Sin For she was a Virgin in the intention of the Creator and afterwards filled with Miseries But not yet as long as the state of Purity presided over innocency did the will of Man overcome her For the translation of Man into Paradise did foreslew another Condition of living than that of a Beast And therefore the eating of the Apple doth by a most chaste name cover the Concupiscence of the Flesh while it contains The knowledge of Good and Evil in this name and cals the ignorance thereof alone the State of Innocency For truly the obtainment of that aforesaid knowledge did nourish a most hurtful Death and an irrevocable depriving of eternal Life For if Man had not tasted down the Apple he had lived void of Concupiscence and off-springs had appeared out of Eve a Virgin from the holy Spirit But the Apple being eaten Presently their Eyes were opened and Adam began lustfully to cover after the naked Virgin and defiled her the which God had appointed for a naked help for him no otherwise than as a Prince is for a help unto his Servants For so the Man prevented the Intention of God by a strange generation in the Flesh of Sin whereupon therefore followed the Corruption of the former Nature or the Flesh of Sin accompanied Concupiscence Neither indeed doth the Text insinuate any other mark of the knowledge of Good and Evil than that They knew themselves to be naked and that it shamed them of that their nakedness or in speaking properly of their Virginity being Corrupted Indeed their whole knowledge of Good and Evil is included about their Shame and within their privy Parts alone And therefore in the 8th of Leviticus and many Places elsewhere the Privy Parts themselves are called by no other Etymologie than that of Shame For from the Copulation of the Flesh their Eyes were presently opened because they had known that the Good being lost had brought on them a degenerate Nature Shamefulness Fowlness and an Intestine and unevitable obligation of Death sent also far away into their Posterity Alass too late indeed they understood by the unwonted Novelty and Shamefulness of that Concupiscence why God had so lovingly forbidden the eating of the Apple To wit it shamed them more of their Chastity being Corrupted and of the Warning transgressed than of their nakedness For Adam who had Judged of the Natures of the Beasts by their beholdance alone neither is read to have lost the same Knowledge could not be ignorant of the fowlness of his own corrupt Nature also And so that through the Shame hereof they had rather hide themselves than for their Nakedness sake Indeed so great was the confusion of so manifold a Shame that it wanted but little but that he should rush into madness the which is clearly enough to be known by the unfit answers of Adam For God called him and asked him where he was and he answereth by accusing his Companion and Help like unto him that he might excuse himself being not yet accused And by altogether a foolish Endeavour they offered their Nakedness which was known to their
Matrimony were in times past dissembled Yet Phinehas being neither a Judge nor a Prince from his very own zeal slew the Fornicator Zimri and the Harlot Cosby and by that famous act not onely diverted the wrath of the Lord from the whole People of Israel But also although he were a Man-slayer and Man-slayers were repulsed from Sacrifices Yet by reason of that simple Death the Priesthood was given unto him persevering in his off-spring In the next place the Potters field Akeldama called Acheldamah or The field of blood as long as it retained the name of a Field confirms the Position because indeed by a supernatural Miracle it so consumeth a dead Carcass inhumed in it in one onely day that besides a Sceleton of Bones nothing remaineth surviving which effect that it was supernatural I prove For otherwise if it should naturally happen that thing without doubt should be done by a corrosive force of the Earth and the which therefore should be wholly a corrosive Salt or at least-wise a certain Mineral vein co-mixed with very much Salt 1. But first of all That corrosion of the flesh happened not onely at Jerusalem as long as it was a Field where there might be a suspition of some Mineral growing but also its Earth being brought from thence the same thing happened in the burying-place at Rome for that cause called The holy Field to wit wherein that Earth scarce equalizeth the depth of one Foot 2. But whether we may suppose a corrosive Salt or next the Earth it self to be Salt yet seeing it is the property of Salt and a thing unseparable from Salt to melt through Water being poured on it Therefore long ago before so many Ages that substance of the corrosive Salt being melted by Raines Snowes and Hailes had wandred even unto the bottom of the sand and the rather at Rome where it found not its native place Wherefore also that faculty of corroding should cease nor should it continue safe until now 3. And so much the rather because the corrosion of Salts is by little and little satisfied and desisteth in gnawing 4. Lastly Such a corrosive of Earth is not any where found in the Earth whether thou shalt respect a Vein of Arsenick Orpiment or any other For all the activity of such Corrosives presently after a good while waxeth mild and is satisfied Therefore the property of that Field remaining after so many Ages doth clearly shew withal against the will of Atheisme that the Field being purchased with the price of the Life Blood and Death of the Saviour presently consumes the flesh of Adamical generation Because that for the consuming and renewing whereof by the body of Christ which was sold for thirty silver pieces paid for the price of that field the coming of the most glorious incarnation is believed to be directed from God as its onely scope The unsufferableness therefore of that Earth with the flesh of sin continually persevering now so many Ages however the Bowels of the Atheists may burst convinceth of an honour to be due to the Saviour or Son of God for ever In the next place a humane dead Carcass was alwayes buried for honour and desert yet in the Law it caused an impurity for a time Because neither did it pollute the Soul but the Body onely for the meritorious fact And that impurity did indifferently affect any one not as the dead Carcass was deputed to the Wormes for the Wormes by their co-touching are not read to have caused an impurity but because Adamical flesh is horrid in the sight of the Lord who indeed promiseth that he will raise them up at the last day as many as shall reverently receive the Eucharist For all indeed shall rise again by the finger of God to wit by a supernatural Virtue Therefore whosoever in rising again shall be changed are reckoned onely to be raised up again by the Lord Jesus to wit in as much as in a Body which they have attained by the Wine which buds forth Virgins they shall rise again partakers of the unspotted Virginity of Jesus I will raise them up again at the last Day What other thing I pray you doth that Promise denote but that the Elect shall rise again changed and raised up by the Lord not indeed in the flesh of sin but in the flesh of the Lord which they have partaked of by Baptisme and the Eucharist Therefore the horrid and damned flesh of sin doth besprinckle its touchers with no undeserved spot of impurity There is therefore a distinct diversity of Virginal purity The First comes to hand before the Fall of Adam and the which therefore did contain a certain Immortality from the suffrage or consent of the Tree of Life But the Second is of them Who were sanctified in their Mothers Womb the which in it self is also twofold For such a sanctification although it dismissed Original Sin and did restore the integrity of withdrawn purity yet because they were conceived by the Will of Man and by Bloods or of the flesh of Sin they were also Mortal But the most holy Virgin Mother presently after the seminal mixture of her Parents was preserved from the knitting and blemish of Original Sin before hec-ceity or the coming of her Soul But Jeremy and John obtained the same but after quickening In these two indeed there was a Remission of sin admitted but in the God-bearing-Virgin there was a prevention before sin could touch her Soul and therefore she was taken up with her body into Heaven but not John or Jeremy Next a Third Purity is in being born again of Water and of the holy Spirit which also happens two manner of wayes To wit Unto Little Children and Unto those of Ripe Years For in these Regeneration doth not onely remit Original Sin but also every grievous Sin But in little ones it remitteth onely Original Sin because it as yet finds no other But on both sides it leaveâ—â— Death and Flesh hastening into a dead Carcass because stirred up by 〈…〉 copulation Fourthly The purity of those is regarded Who have made themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of God its sake and that as yet in a two-way-journey For they have either from a Child devoted their Virginity to the Lamb and have observed it and therefore also they follow the same whithersoever he may go do sing the Hymn c. but all that after Death For otherwise they are of the flesh of sin and therefore are of necessity also guilty of Death and corruption But they who have lost their Purity through a proper Error and afterwards rising up again have vowed or observed chastity These although they are chaste yet are they not to be reckoned among Virgins But moreover after that a Matrimonial generation was constituted by the Lord Regeneration by the holy Spirit and Water doth not fore-require Virginity Fifthly The top of all Purity and Chastity is the Lord Jesus himself who was not conceived by a
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
to be sensitive doth not shew the unseperable Essence of an Animal And seeing otherwise the definition of every thing is from the Essence of the thing as they will have it but man according to his Essence was made in a full possession of Immortality and henceforth of an Eternal Duration according to his Soul the Schools could not believe that man by reason of a sensitive Soul alone was essentially an Animal Especially while they believed his Essence to depend on an Eternal Duration and an uncorruptible Soul or Form All which absurdities I acknowledge to have crept into and to have remained in the Schools by reason of the truth of our Position being unknown Even hitherto I have established the Position out of the holy Scriptures Now again the same by the Authorities of Fathers which matter B. Augustine hath seemed to have understood before others saying After what manner had it shamed Man of the Transgression of a Law when as his very Members had not known shame As if he should say His Members were stirred up unto the Concupiscence of the Flesh and acts of his Privie Parts presently after the Eating of the Apple Their Eyes were opened but for this they were not opened that they might know what might be performed by them through the cloathing of Grace when as their Members knew not how to resist their will And dost thou not blush at that Disease or that thou although shamefac'd dost confess that that Lust entred into Paradise And to impute it unto Husbands and Wives before Sin He who was to be without Sin would be born without the Concupiscence of the Flesh not in that Flesh of Sin but in the likeness of sinful Flesh As if he should say whatsoever is born from Copulation although it had been born in Paradise and before Sin would have been and is the Flesh of Sin Seeing that alone which is not born of Copulation is not the Flesh of Sin Whatsoever off-spring is born from Concupiscence or of the Flesh of Sin is obliged unto Orignal Sin unless it be born again in him whom the Virgin conceived without Concupiscence The Flesh of Christ drew a mortality from the mortality of his Mothers Body because she found not the Concupiscence of a Copulatresse For indeed as Original Sin is not derived on the Posterity any other way than by the Concupiscence of the Flesh So it must needs be that in the Apple was included the Concupiscence from whence the humane stock degenerated and was vitiated in generating For truly if off-springs could have been generated any otherwise than by carnal Copulation the Matrimonial act had been unlawful Whereunto this every-way convincing Argument serveth That act before the Apple was eaten was either unlawful and not thought of or it was lawful If it were unlawful now our Position is proved But if lawful therefore whatsoever I have above described out of Augustine is false Seeing therefore they had now actually felt the effect of the eaten Apple or the Concupiscence of the Flesh in their Members in Paradise presently it shamed them because their Members which before they could rule at their pleasure were afterwards moved by a proper incentive of lust At length how greatly Virginity hath alwayes pleased the Bridegroom of the Soul doth clearly enough appear out of divers Histories of the Saints And indeed in Cana of Galilee the Bridegroom having left his Bride followed the Lord Jesus and it is that Disciple whom Jesus therefore so greatly loved The same thing was familiar unto Alexius Aegidius and to very many others especially with poor Women-Virgins For indeed the infinite goodness from the proper motion of its good pleasure from Eternity created Man and fore-loved him with so great a love that he determined to co-knit his own Divinity unto him and to enlighten him with the Light which enlightneth every man that cometh into this World and to Adopt him for the Son of God giving him Power to become the Son of God by the new Birth which new Birth before Sin was not necessary Seeing therefore he requireth People to be re-born of God therefore before Sin they were all born of God which thing Lucifer with his own Spirits seeing through a long-since Pride of his Beauty and since his fall being wholly become Envious supposed that he was wiser than God who had raised up a vile creature unto that height wherefore he aspired to exceed God whom he had not yet seen and to throw him down from his Seat of Majesty Presently afterwards he after that he had paid the punishment of his Sins being more cruelly wroth saw also that Eve being a Virgin was by the onely Goodness of God without all desert and freely now appointed for the aforesaid Instrument of that Adoption and Mother of Men Therefore he endeavoured to hinder the Love of God through the Eating of the Apple Because as seeing that the Lasciviousness and Concupisence of the Flesh implanted in the same was Diametrically opposite unto Gods intention Therefore the Eating of the Apple was not forbidden unto man by a Law but by a fatherly Admonition neither is Original Sin from the Transgressions of a Law from the Eating of the Apple as being forbidden food but by Reason of the effect arising from the Apple and the properties inserted in the Apple After another manner the Transgression or Eating did offend onely in a Voluntary Act but not for Posterity unless Naturally and by the second Causes of a brutal Copulation following from thence otherwise in our first Parents impossible it had inverted the intention of Divine Generation Yea Original Sin fell not so properly on the guiltless Posterity as the effect of Generation the which indeed hath brought forth an Adulterous Beast-like Devilish Generation and plainly uncapable of the Kingdom of God and of Union with and Enjoyment of God By Reason of the Similitude whereof those that were born in Adultery were excluded from the Participation of Heaven But let us feign the opposite thing to wit that our Parents were conscious that there was a Law declared by God the Creator of the Universe touching the forbidden Apple and that upon such an account Death was foretold unto him and all his Posterity and undoubtedly came unto them but at least-wise an irregular Sin being so bold and so ungodly and cruel a Wickedness on all their Posterity could not be forgiven without a great note of Contrition Neither had God how Merciful and Good soever straightway so suddenly made that man fruitful with so great a Blessing and substituted the other living Creatures under his Feet he not being ignorant that neither of them did Grieve Repent Pray but only it shamed them and that they endeavoured as Fools to hide themselves from God and to cover their privy Parts with Leaves Therefore I collect from thence that on the same day not only Mortality entred through Concupiscence But moreover that it presently
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
Meats Yea which is more The Blood which is avoided in or presently after delivery is not Menstruous through the defect of its condition because it is not superfluous from a fore-going course of the Moon And then also because it is not heaped up fleshy not aluminous or tart not staining linnen Cloathes nor separated from the whole nor banished unto the places of the Womb for expulsion For that bloud which is plentifully voided in time and after delivery and the which being retained a doating Fever doth soon after threaten death is indeed venal blood yet not the Menstrues of the Mother For it is left by the Young who seeing from his quickening he lived in his own Orbe had a kitchin out of himself in the Vessels of the Womb. Wherefore it hath taken to it self another property than that of the Mother and than that of the Menstrues For that guest hath indeed the shape of Menstruous Blood Yet being an adoptive of another Family and become a forreigner to the Mother it is seriously to be expelled surely no otherwise than as the Secundines themselves But being omitted and left behind it is corrupted and brings on death But seeing that in a Woman great with Child there is no Menstrues at all by consequence neither is that Young nourished but with the pure arterial blood of the Mother and afterwards with pure venal blood being also first refined in its kitchins Therefore the Schools are deceived who teach That the small Pox or Measels are due almost to every mortal man by reason of the tribute of Menstruous nourishment For they observed that there was seldom any smitten twice with that Disease and perhaps seldom excused from it Wherefore they searching into the common Cause from whence the Young should be nourished in the beginning have referred the Effect on the Menstrues But in all things they without the knowledge of things have mutually subscribed to each other and have slidden into Fables and Conjectures For first of all they have not considered that it is almost impossible for any one to be made free from that Disease if all are alike indifferently nourished with Menstrues And then because they should be afflicted as it were at one certain and appointed term of the Crisis I confess indeed that the Measels do spring from a Poyson and draw a Poyson with them infect the blood with their ferment and defile others that stand by but especially Children and that the internal essence of Poysons is not demonstrable by a former Cause and therefore we measure the Property of a Poyson by the Effects even as a Tree by his Fruits 1. Therefore The Poyson of the Measels is proper onely to humane kind 2. That Nature is prone to the framing of that Poyson 3. But that it is kindled about the Stomack and so in the Center of the Body 4. That the parts being once besieged with this Poyson do most swiftly repulse that Poyson from themselves towards the superficies of the Body 5. That the shops of that Poyson after that they have once felt the tyranny thereof being afterwards thorowly instructed with a hostile averseness and horror do with great fore-caution prevent or hinder the generation thereof even from the very beginning least they should even at first unwarily fall thereinto Therefore the Poyson is made in Man but not co-bred in him from the Menstrues But of what quality that Poyson may be cannot be described by name because it hath not a proper name out of its effects It is sufficient in this place that the Menstrues cannot be drawn into a Cause for the Distempers aforesaid At first therefore The Menstrues offends in its matter by reason of its abounding alone And then it undergoes a degree that the first may be wherein that blood is superfluous from the foregoing course of the Moon But a Second degree is as soon as it is separated from the rest of blood But a Third degree is while as designed it hath resided about the Vessels of the Womb. A Fourth is that which hath stuck some good while in the same place and hath entered into the way of death At length the last degree is while as it now hath slidden forth as a dead Carcass and into the Air. Therefore the Schooles offend while as by cutting of a Vein they are busied in succouring of Virgins who in respect of their Menstrues do feel an heart-beating or trembling without distinction For although the Menstrues of the first degree appeaseth heart-beatings or pantings by a revulsive blood-letting yet in the third degree of the Menstrues I have fore-told it to our chief Physitians to be a destructive Remedy Because that the Veines of the Arme or Hams being emptied I have observed the Menstrues to be drawn backwards from the neighbouring places into the Veins And truly those Veins which do not remain emptied but which are filled again by a communion of continuation So also after great heart-beatings and pauses of intermitted pulses or after most sharp paines of the sides following from the Womb to wit by reason of an aluminous Poyson of the third degree Virgins have suddenly died by reason of Phlebotomy by me instituted at unawares In the first degree indeed the abundance of venal blood is taken away But it is the less evil although a part of the barren blood be left surviving Truly I had rather to help Nature in her sequestration and expulsion than by drawing of undistinct blood to have weakened Nature Moreover that is to be noted That although I have distinguished Diseases by the Ranks of Digestions yet I have scarce made mention of the Menstrues Because the Menstrues is neither digested nor is it a superfluity of Digestion and so is of another condition For at first it offends with a good abundance and then with a burdensom superfluity presently after it is deprived of Life and becomes a Poyson yet it cures Swine which are inclining into the Leprosie even as Horses straightway which were contracted or convulsive from unseasonable Drink if they drink up but a small quantity of Menstrues And likewise the poysonsom and true Menstrues of another Woman being administred in a few drops hath presently strangled a Woman labouring with a Flux of the Womb. But the blood which is at length avoided in plenty in Fluxes of the Womb being drunk in a few drops stayeth those Fluxes Furthermore because Woman only the Ape perhaps excepted doth suffer Menstrues and although the Menstrues do accuse of an abundance alone yet that the Cow her Dug being dried suffers not Menstrues otherwise she flowes down with very much Milk denoting that the abounding of venal blood is indeed the material Cause but not therefore the final and the which therefore I have not reduced among natural Causes For that the Almighty alone encloseth all the final Causes of all things within himself who sweetly disposeth of all things according to the unsearchable Abysse of his own Judgements
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
to be after some sort like them the which transchangeth almost an infinite quantity of impure Mettal into the best Gold and by uniting it to it self doth defend it from cankering rust rottenness and Death and makes it to be as it were Immortal against all the torture of the Fire and Art and translates it into the virgin-Purity of Gold only it requires Heat The Soul therefore and Body are thus regenerated by Baptisme and the communion of the unspotted Body of the Lord so that a just heat of Devotion of the Faithful shall be present Let the Divine pardon me if I as being beyond my Last have spoken of Life eternal by way of a Parenthesis For I willingly confess that a regenerated Body is not belonging to my Employment I treat only of prolonging the Life of the World This only I have said that Baptisme doth bring with it a real Effect of Purity perceivable by Sense and that the holy-sacred Communion of the Eucharist hath something like it in earthly things whereby we may the more easily believe Regeneration CHAP. CXI The Occasions of Death I Have compared the Fire and Light unto Life because it bears something before it which seemeth to be vital For vital Forms are either the Lives or Lights of things Therefore there shall likewise be as many occasions of Death as there are withdrawings of Light First therefore the Light is blown out and likewise the Flame perisheth by pressing together which they call through defect of Air. But I have demonstrated that that happens through want of a new Magnal but not that the Fire is nourished by Air So also by the constriction of a strange Smoak So indeed in Vaults and Burrows Lamps are extinguished but the Light is blown out by the Wind or another Flame For oftentimes Candles are extinguished by a filthy or deformed Flame being stirred up by the Powder of Rosin or Gun-powder Lastly Fires die through want of Nourishment Death in like manner doth many wayes rush on us For either a live Body is suddenly dashed together or sore shaken by weight Also a speedy pouring forth of Blood from a large Wound pours forth the Life and blows out the Light of Life So an inordinate Prodigality of corrupt Matter Water or Wind being abundantly made likewise Baths Hunger loosening Medicines introduce an untimely Death Also by the pressing together of the Breath in Burrows of the Asthma of a Cord of drowning of Smoak and by the Symptoms of the Womb likewise by the Resolutions and Palseys of the Sinews subjected to breathing In like manner by Burnings Destructions Coalifyings Gangrenes and Congelations of Cold. Also by Poysons Alculies gnawing Things Escharrers Putrifiers or Things that trample upon us by a fermental Contagion Likewise by retained Excrements Obstructions and the denied Commerces of Parts Likewise through Defect of some certain Digestion an Atrophia and Consumptions of a Part or of the whole Body Also by over-pourings of the Blood within the Skull Breast bottom of the Belly by corrupt mattery Impostumes Pleurisies affects of the Lungs c. Likewise by displacings of the turning Joynts Contractures of the Parts apppointed for expurging of Filths At length by reason of a Feeble Decrepit and woren-out Death of the Seeds and Powers And also by reason of the more grievous Passions of the Mind and Enchantments Death therefore doth so many manner of wayes steal away Mortals whose Life notwithstanding is alwayes simple and single For therefore there is a diverse and differing Consideration of Life and Death for a Sword takes away Life Yet there is far different Speculation of preserving Life than of healing of Diseases by the removals and hinderances of the Cause For truly Causes are partly external as a Wound the Plague Scorching c. the healing whereof therefore doth not depend on the removal of their Causes For neither therefore is the Fire which had burned any one to be extinguished from the Hearth that he may be cured even as neither is the Sword to be broken that the Wound may be healed up But for the preservation of Long Life the contemplations and removals of external Causes do no less occur or come to hand than those of a vital Fewel For indeed although no Infirmities should molest yet Death should not for that Cause cease dayly to strew a way for its entrance For although health hath respect to Life as its Foundation yet Life doth not include health For a Blind Lame Gowty Person c. doth no less live than a Healthy or Sound Person What if Life ends through a Disease that is forreign and by accident unto the Life as a Sword contains Death but not but by Application Otherwise Death doth by it self respect Life but diseasifying Causes become Mortal only by accident or by their Application unto the Spirit of Life For from hence it is that the Impediments of Long Life are seriously to be heeded and diverted if we expect length of Life From the Beginning therefore the meditation of Life consisteth not without but in the Life it self To wit after what manner Life may be preserved in the Body For the sensitive Soul now forthwith after Sin as I have said drew the whole property of Life unto it self and became the bond of Life with the Body But seeing that very Soul is in it self Mortal it must needs be first of all that all the vital Powers co-aeval or of a like Age with the Life should be slideable and mortal From hence at length Death For a long continuance of Life therefore first a curing of Diseases is required as well of those which touch at the Life of the whole Body as those which have regard unto the Dammages or preservation of a Part and Functions and which in this respect do lay in wait for the Life For truly seeing there is a single conspiracy of the Members certain principal Powers cannot chuse but at length go to decay also the subordinate ones being only diminished Wherein I disagree from Paracelsus because he thought that every Disease was of necessity to be taken away by a Medicine for long Life Because that good Man was no less ignorant of a Medicine for Long Life and the use thereof than of the very Essence and Properties of Long Life And therefore his Arcanums do very much conduce into a healthy or sound Life or unto a removal of Impurities yet they do not any thing directly and primarily tend to long Life as unto their ultimate end Because that as the Life So the Tree of Life chiefly concerns the preservation and renewing or making young again of the vital Faculties implanted in the Arts. In this therefore the Arcanums or Secrets which are for the taking away of Superfluities differ from the Tree of Life That those indeed do cure Diseases even those which our parent Nature doth by her self never Cure To wit the Leprosie Stone Palsy Consumption of the Lungs Dropsie c. but
that I shall first satisfie thee what can be drawn from the Wound It is to be noted therefore that in a Wound there is made not only a Solution of Continuity or disunion of the part which held together but also that a forreign quality is introduced from whence the lips of the Wound being enraged they by and by swel with heat are apostemized yea and from thence the whole Body is in a conflict through Fevers and a various concourse of Symptoms For so an Egg whose shell is but even slenderly hurt or crackt putrifies whereas otherwise it might be preserved The Magnetism therefore of this Unguent draws that strange disposition out of the Wound from whence its lips being at length overburthened or oppressed by no accident become without pain and being no way hindred suddenly hasten unto a growing together Natures themselves are the Physitianesses of a Wound the Physitian onely the Servant thereof Neither doth the Medicine beget flesh in a Wound it hath enough to do if it shall but remove impediments Which impediments the one onely Armary Unguent or Weapon Salve doth otherwise sufficiently securely and plentifully expel Thou wilt Object That the Weapon Salve ought not rather to allure forth the forementioned strange quality than the natural strength and powers of the Veins and that the Blood seeing it is sound or uncorrupt in the Unguent ought to call to it the Health but not the indisposition of the wounded party even as indeed was written of the Carline Thistle I Answer that there are divers Magnetisms for some attract iron some chaffs and lead some flesh corrupt pus or matter c. but such is the favour of some Magnetisms that they extract onely the Pestilential Air c. Yea if thou shalt couple the effect of curing in our Ointment with thy own Argument thy own Weapon will wound thee For from thence that the Effect of the Unguent is to heal perfectly speedily without pain costs peril and loss of strength hence I say it is manifest that the Magnetical Virtue in the Unguent is from God in a natural way and not from Satan Because if this Satan should be a co-worker of the said Cure which thou affirmest the same Cure would be imperfect together with loss of Strength Weakness Dammage or hazard of Life a difficult Recovery or with a sensibility of some greater inconveniency and relapse of misfortune All which events as they are annexed to Diabolical Cures so they are far absent from the Cure of our Unguent As many as ever have been cured by this Unguent will give in their Testimony for us Satan is never a teller of Truth never a perswader unto Good unless that he may deceive thereby yea neither doth he long continue in the Truth For alwayes if he shall bring any thing of good to any one this Enemy under-mixeth somewhat more of evil therewith And surely he would according to his custome observe the same rule also in this Unguent if he were the Author or Favourer thereof At least-wise this Remedy would then fail when the wounded Person is recalled as it were from the pit of death who otherwise through the mortal contagion of Sin had through his dangerous wound soon poured forth his Life together with his Blood unlesse haply thou shalt say that Satan then takes compassion on us and that he hath now attained to himself a right or jurisdiction over such a wounded person himself leaves it in doubt to wit in curing him by the Magnetical Unguent whom he had rather should perish perhaps because Satan is now in your esteem a strict observer of his Word and Bargaine and no longer wholly a turn-coat fraudulent impostor and lyar Besides we deny the supposition also That the out-chased blood is perfectly sound or uncorrupt but rather that it being now deprived of a common life hath also entred into the beginnings of some degree of corruption onely that it obtains a Mumial Life Hitherto conduceth the putrified and yet Magnetical blood in an Egg. I therefore pass by the absurdity of thy Objection in that it hath been so bold as to wrest the Magnet or Attractive faculty of the Unguent according to thy own pleasure and not to that end for which it was given of God Positive Reasons of Magnetism more nearly brought home unto us by Metaphysical and Magical Science It is now seasonable to discover the immediate cause of Magnetism in the Unguent First of all by the consent of Mystical Divines we divide Man into the external and internal Man assigning to both the powers of a certain Mind or Intelligence For so there doth a Will belong to flesh and blood which may not be either the Will of Man not the Will of God and the heavenly Father also reveales some things unto the more inward Man and some things flesh and blood reveales that is the outward and sensitive or animal Man For how could the service of Idols Envy c. he rightly numbred among the works of the flesh seeing they consist onely in the Imagination if the flesh had not also it s own imagination and elective Will Forthermore that there are miraculous Ecstasies belonging to the more inward man is beyond dispute That there are also Ecstasies in the Animal man by reason of a intense or heightened Imagination is without doubt Yea Martin del Rio an Elder of the society of Jesus in his Magical disquisitions or inquiries brings in a certain young Lad in the City Insulis that was transported with so violent a cogitation of seeing his Mother that through the same burning desire as if being rapt up by an extasie he saw her being many miles absent from thence and returning to himself being mindful of all that he had seen gave also many signes of his true presence with his Mother Many the like Examples daily come to hand the which for brevities sake I omit But that that desire arose from the more outward man to wit from Blood and Sense or Flesh is certain For otherwise the Soul being once disliged or loosed from the Body is never but by a miracle re-united thereunto There is therefore in the Blood a certain ecstatical or transporting power the which if it shall at any time be stirred up by an ardent desire is able to derive or conduct the Spirit of the more outward man even unto some absent object But that power lies hid in the more outward man as it were in potentia or by way of possibility neither is it brought into act unless it be rouzed up by the imgination enflamed by a fervent desire or some art like unto it Moreover when as the Blood is after some sort corrupted then indeed all the Powers thereof which without a fore-going excitation of the Imagination were before in possibility are of their own accord drawn forth into action for through corruption of the grain the seminal virtue otherwise drowsie and barren breaks forth into act Because that
Excitation is as it were by a waking sleepiness by a Catochus and therefore is imperfect in regard of the manner Evil in regard of the end Obscure in regard of the Meanes and Wicked in regard of the Author Nor doth the Turn-coat-impostor suffer that the Witch should know this Power to be natural unto her self whereby he may hold her the more fast bound to himself or least the exercise of so noble a Power being stirred up should incline otherwise than to Wickedness therefore he commands the Rains himself neither hath the Witch known how to stir it up at her own pleasure who hath wholly prostrated her self to the Will of another Tyrant Also Man himself is able through the Art of the Cabal to cause an excitement in himself of so great a Power at his own Pleasure and these are called Adeptists or Obtainers whose Governour also is the Spirit of God That this same Magical Virtue is also in the more outward Man to wit in the Flesh and Blood Yet after its own and far more feeble manner yea not only in the external Man but also proportionally in Bruits for so the Book of Genesis minds us that the Soul of Bruit-Beasts is in their Blood and upon this account it deservedly enrouls the same out of the Bill of our Food and perhaps in all other things Seeing all particular things contain in them a delineation of the whole Universe and upon that account at least the Antients have seriously signified unto us that there is a God that is an All in All that the Magick of the more outward Man hath need of exciting no less than that of the more inward Man neither that Satan doth stir up any other Magick in his Imps than what belongs to the more outward Man For in the more inward bottom of the Soul is the Kingdom of God whereto no Creature hath access We have further taught that there is a connexion between things spiritually acting and that Spirits as they combate with Spirits as in example of the Witch So also we have shewn by Magnetical Examples and proper Reasons for the fascination and binding up of Soules that they hold a friendly correspondence even as concerning David and Jonathan c. Last of all we have endeavoured to shew that Man predominates over all other corporeal Creatures and that by his natural Magick he is able to tame the Magical Virtues of other things which predominacy others have falsly and abusively transferred on the authority of Verses or Charmes and Enchantments By which Hierarchy or holy Dominion we have sufficiently and over-sufficiently cleered up that those Effects whatsoever they be are wrought which those who not but too rustically and corporeally Phylosophize have referred unto the dominion of Satan It must needs be that those who were ignorant of all things that have been spoken should as yet doubt of many things therefore we determine to repeat all things First of all whereby those things may become the more clear which we have spoken above concerning the Duel of Spirits or their mutual friendly Conspiracy It is worth our labour to define the Weapons of Spirits and the Common-wealth of the same Wherefore we must seriously note the Example of a Woman great with Child who if she hath with violence of desire conceived a Cherry in her Mind the Foot-step thereof is presently imprinted on her Young in that Part whereon the great-bellied Woman shall lay her hand Nor is it indeed only an idle Image or Spot of a Cherry but that which flowers and grows to Maturity with the other Trees in their season to wit the Signatures of Colours and Figures being changed Truly high and sacred is the force of the Microcosmical Spirit which without the Trunck of a Tree brings forth a true Cherry that is Flesh ennobled with the Properties and Power of the more inward or real Cherry by the Conception of Imagination alone from whence we understand two necessary Consequences The First is that all the Spirits and as it were the Essences of all things do lay hid in us and are born and brought forth only by the working Phantasie of the little World The Second is that the Soul in conceiving generates a certain Idea of the thing conceived the which indeed as it before lay hid unknown and as it were Fire in a Flint So by the stirring up of the Phantasie there is produced a certain real Idea and a quiddative or some particular essential Limitation of a Cherry which is not a naked quality but something like unto a Substance hanging in suspense between a Body and a Spirit that is the Soul That middle Being is so spiritual that it is not plainly exempted from a Corporeal Condition since the Actions of the Soul are limited on the Body and the inferiour orders of Faculties depending on it nor yet so corporeal that it may be enclosed by Dimensions the which we have also related to be only proper to a seminal Being This Ideal Entity therefore when it fals out of the invisible and intellectual World of the Microcosme it puts on a Body and then also it is first inclosed by the Limitations of Place and Numbers The Object of the Understanding is in it self a naked and pure Essence not an accident by the consent of Practical that is mystical Divines Therefore this Protheus or transformable Essence the Understanding doth as it were put on and cloath it self with this conceived Essence But because every Body whether External or Internal hath its making in its own proper Image The Understanding knowes or discerns not the Will loves and wills not the Memory recollects not but by Images or Likenesses The Understanding therefore put on this same Image of its Object and because the Soul is the simple Form of the Body which turns her self about to every Member therefore neither can the acting Understanding have two Images at once but first one and anon another Therefore the whole Soul descends upon the Intellect or Understanding and the comprehended Image being as yet tender and forms this Knowledge of the Essence into a persisting Image or Ideal Entity or Beingness The Mind being defiled hath slidden into the Indignation of God and because the same mind was at once polluted the nobleness of its former Condition being put off Death found an entrance not indeed by the command of the Creator but from the degeneration of Man being slidden into filthiness and degenerate from himself by reason of the same Ideal Entity being now put on which Filthiness seriously and diligently springing up even in all particular Sins it is conveâ—ient to extenuate or consume by Repentance here or in the World to come This Entity therefore being as yet in the Understanding is but lightly imprinted neither doth it find a consistence any where but in a Woman with Child the which in us Men it doth not obtain but by the Will that is the Understanding doth alwayes procreate an Entity
joyned unto a new poyson For many as it were dispairing have thought that the strength of our nature doth thus run down unto its end in a short space But the Word of God hath a stable Government there is not any defect of these incorporated with the humane species but adhering onely unto individuals by accident and seeing every forreign adhering matter is subject to a separation and no strange thing is fit to be conjoyned pithily to the image of God in constitutive principles Therefore every forreign matter doth of necessity receive its birth increase ascent state declining and death and at length also of its own accord expecteth a restoration by further propagations For the seeds and species of the word are durable for ever Hence it follows that a forreign guest ought at length to depart from the fold whereinto it hath theevishly crept through a privy error Because the power of the Word-suffers a prescription by no seasons length of motions or daies as neither by the wiles of the enemy The flood indeed over-covered the earth because man had corrupted his way And therefore at this day also by reason of sins an infirmity hath made it self roome amongst us it groweth new daily and besides another is about to threaten us In the year 1540. under Paul 3. about Autumne a Tarantula first appeared in Apulid nigh Tarentum being a monster so called by the City like unto a spider but twice bigger The which afterwards remained in the species and from the land of Tarentum was now also transplanted into the Roman land For according to Daniel every monster growing up on the Common-wealth comes from the sea new flatterers are confirmed by this monster who befool or make men mad that are bitten by them and they trippingly dance with exceeding gladnesse as if they had done well in believing flatterers In the year 1550. in the sixth moneth called August the French first saw wheat which they call bedewed or honyed wheat it representing in its ear being as yet green a smoaked or red-herring in its smell but in its ripe ear nothing but a stinking black powder I wish not the cause of any popular diseases It is a stroak or punishment which steals from us a great part of victual for cockle or tares is sown against the more mighty Prelates the which I wish they knew and did foresee In the year 1556. The Scurvy first appeared in our sea-coasts being unknown to the ancients the which infects the gums and breath and legs because it â—lâ—o besiegeth the most inward parts In the same year there are men remarkably noted being admitted of in the Low countries subverting within and without those that rashly believe on them with a sweet contagion Not so long ago a camp-â—ever assaulted our countrey-men with a deep contagion killing without thirst and heat and they are denoted who under a shew of Piety spread new and suspected opinions among people in families But at leastwise nothing which is once hostile doth afterwards kill in its own kind because it is sent into us for a scourge and we being blind do not diligently search into the occasional cause deadly mean end and remedy For they at this day accuse the impuriâ—ies of Camps Fens houses together with the poverty of souldiers as the causes of unwonted sicknesses and among Physitians the whole preservative is conversant about this occasion As if indeed Camps were in times past purer whilst Plagues and unwonted Fevers not as yet were For I know that as oft as a Fever falls on the body from the pedigree of antient ones which actually suffers the Lues venerea or which at sometime had it and being badly taken away that that Fever forthwith associates it self with the poysonous sweepings or reliques of the Lues from whence it borrows poysons which began to be called a malignant and Camp-Fever and that it propagates it self by its contagion even on those that are free from the Pox And it is indeed of the Fever its father and the Lues its mother being a third monster divers from both parents as being from diseases distinct in kind From hence surely as well a Fever as the Plague have become masked and unknown For so the Lues proceeds to be dispersed in a feverish Chaos and is made to be of a common right For the unluckie monster of the Lues being unlike unto both parents is a treacherous poyson and becomes a striving imitater of the plague And by a new ferment of putrefaction it produceth the Plague it self to be more cruel then it was wont to be It is not therefore an absurdity that Camps at this day do stir up many sick souldiers more frequent deaths and those Fevers more malignant in contagion Neither do more ready infections undeservedly follow Camps than otherwise the more populous Cities because the souldier is a nigher object of the Pox than Citizens The Plague therefore finding a fewel for its spark doth easily return CHAP. 5. The Opinions of the Ancients THe Pest is in every age reputed for a punishment sent from the angry Gods Therefore Hippocrates names every blemish of contagion wholly in diseases Divine The Heathen do as yet to this day flee over to their Idols The gods of the Nations are devils But we Christians have recourse unto the one onely eternal Power and do implore the aid of Saints because God is glorious and wonderful in his Saints who by request obtain those things which our unworthinesses do deny us For there are Cities in the Neatherlands wherein the fellowship of Saints Patrons in the Plague hath for a long time hitherto kept the Citizens free as many of them as were sent for the succour and service of those that were defiled with the Plague For none that was sent by a head-fellow-Citizen and companion although he readily served him that was infected by the Plague was ever laid hold of by the Plague So it is The hairs of every ones head are numbred A leaf falls not from the tree without the permission of God much lesse doth any thing happen unto us besides the permission and fore-knowledge of God So it is true a certain Plague cometh from the hands of the Lord the which to avoid is impossible because it comes from him who cannot erre in arching Therefore I have decreed not to write any thing at all concerning this Plague as neither of the curing of a miraculous one For if a natural Plague be healed by a miracle that belongs not to a Physitian very many of us also are of opinion that the Plague is nor sent but from God without the concurrence of a second cause The Mahometans also with the Calvinists believe the Plague to be the lot of an unavoidable Predestination Neither therefore do they avoid infected places or bodies as neither any hurtful things being badly constant to themselves for truly a wild beast cannot hurt without the consent of the Lord and so in this respect he
filths of the digestions even into the uttermost coasts of the body otherwise in the last digestion very many griefs do offer themselves they being referred by the Schools among incurable ones by reason of one only fault of a remedy alone which accompanies and accuseth the defect no otherwise than as they are destitute of curing in the work of witches because remedies are neglected which may go into the root of the malady For truly those devilish discommodities do not lay hold so much on the body or the filths thereof as on the Archeus himself the which since he is as it were the clear image of the man it follows that while that Spirit is wrested aside in any Organ of its body the same member suffers the sumptoms of the Archeus And so whatsoever the Spirit suffers which is the Ruler of life and sense it must needs be that the body suffers but not on the contrary For neither doth he that is maimed in one leg therefore generate a maimed off-spring because the spirit is not defectuous For whatsoever the body suffers although the Spirit feels this same thing yet this is not drawn together unless the passion incline unto extremity that is that it is co-fermented within the root of life or implanted spirit even as I have elsewhere shewn concerning the convulsion in the Colick It s no wonder therefore if a Tartar of the blood be stirred up by the state or insisting urgency of the Archeus For who is he that knows not that indignation confusion a sorrowful message affrightful fear c. do presently take away an appetite of eating do stir-up sighs or tears and extend an unwonted fardle under the Midriffs to wit as the nourishment of the sixth digestion degenerates in the stomach namely where such passions are immediately framed This Tartar of the blood therefore being once become degenerate doth presently molest in manner of an Enemy And even as a dog being once mad pays the punishment of his madness with his own death So that Tartar being once banished and referred into the number of excrementitious filths doth never afterwards return into favour because whatsoever the Archeus once forsaketh straightway dieth and that which is dead doth no more revive nor strike a peace with the Enemy Therefore an earnest desire of revenge and indignation of self-love are radically co-bred in the first Fountain of Nature They do also more manifestly rise up in the more perfect subject and so in sensitive creatures do challenge to themselves the animosity and glory of a wrathful power Wherefore that Tartar of the blood being subdued by the plague doth no longer obey the Laws of Life but repenting of its former obedience arrogates to it self an unbridled liberty of fury and by so much the more cruelly molesteth us by how much the more confidently it hath once received the hidden counsels of the Archeus within which thing the Schools name to symbolize or co-resemble For then it is an houshold-Thief unto which the ways to the treasure and privy store-houses are known For how speedily do a few drops of corrupt matter under the scull kill and what cruelty doth not the blood chased out of the veins threaten how cruel is even but one only thorn in an Aposteme It s no wonder therefore that the Pest the most fierce of diseases doth presently bring forth its own product and if it shall not find â— seaâ— that it presently makes one for it self notwithstanding a hope of curing the plaguâ— remaineth because that Tartar and the Pest it s own Inn may be pufâ— away or disâ—â—ssed by a due banishment of sweaâ— The which understand thou as long as it shall remain in the shape of dissolvable Tartar For otherwise if it shall catch hold of a solid part the hope of life fails unless the part it self which is catcht hold of can forthwith be sequestred But Wheals black strakes or black and blew spoâ—s or tokens denote the Archeus to be affected for they are the superficial tinctures of the skin the which if they shall the more deeply lay hold of they do also cauterixe it and since they do immediately pierce the Archeus before others they stand in need of a most speedy remedy It is also worthy to be noted thâ—t an unsensible transpiration in the plague differs from sweat because Diaphaeresis or unsensible transpiration is the matter of the nourishment and so also of the Tartar of the blood being defiled but sweat is of the substance of the Latex But transpiration seeing it is continual it is also without sweat Hence it comes to pass that sweat doth most especially wash off and for that cause a dry transpiration is seldom sufficient for curing of the plague and therefore a plentiful rincing sweat is to be provoked that while the Pestilent Tartar breatheth the naughtiness of its poyson thorow the pores it may be partly washed off by the sweat and the delay of its departure be partly speedied Here a difficulty is manifest to be noted and not decided by the Schools to wit why some defects of the stomach are cured not by vomiting or stool but only by sweat because they consist in the Retents of the stomach being transchanged in the sixth digestion but not in the remainders of the Cream The Plague therefore for the most part begins in the stomach and there begets and infects the Tartar whereon as soon as the perturbations of the Archeus have made their assaults For every imagination of the desirable faculty hath its seat in the same place and there frames its Idea and chiefly about the orifice of the stomach the vital powers are concealed as I have elsewhere many times profeâ—ly demonstrated But because the Tartar of the blood is in the form of a mucky sliminess Hence the Idea of the Pest willingly buds forth into Glandules for the stomach and the Archeus thereof because it sends a continual society of imagining into the brain hence are Parotides or tumors behind the ears But it pierceth thorow the Diaphragma into the lungs and arm-pits and a perplexity of breathing doth arise But pestiferous odours being prepared in the stomach frequent vomitings do accompany them together with a pain in the head the which we having often experienced from the odours of burning coals to have vomited with headach and a dejected appetite But if they proceed unto the Liver Now there is a Bubo in the groyn CHAP. IX Minerals and herbs do imagine after their ownirregular manner VVHatsoever subsisteth by a real essence doth after some sort love it self Wherefore also it hath the sense of a friend or enemies that is of its own commodities and troubles wherefore a self-love resteth in the bosome of Nature But things do scarce ever remain in the same state without interchange Therefore they undergo somewhat but if they suffer and walk in the way of destruction verily it must needs be that they have a cause from whence they are
plague of man shakes not dogs nor makes them nauseous For truly as well dogs as Wolves do without punishment devoure the dead carkasses that are not wel enough buried as also Pies and likewise Ravens Perhaps indeed an hungry dog will not eat that Laâ—d which was rub'd on the feet of his Master because it smells of his Master whom he dares not bite But the Germans call the root of the herb Butterburre or the gâ—eater Colts-foot the Pestilential root because as the Pest displays it self before a fore-shewing sign so the Butterburre sends forth its flowres before its leaves The Pest also propagates it self not so much by a seed as by an Archeal root They also relate that a Saphire of a deep Sky-colour or Citron-coloured Jacinth if it abide upon the painful member for a quarter of an hours space so as that the light from the opposite part of the Gem strikes the infected place and there collects its beams that the place touched on will wax black and blew within a quarter of an hour and that it is an infallible token of the plague But if the place shall in no wise assume a more wan colour that the sick person is free from the plague But I have always in doubtful cases made use of a powdered Toad and that boiled in a very small quantity of simple water in the form of a Poultess whereby if presently after the pain in the Escharre Carbuncle or Bubo in the groyn waxed mild I safely conjectured that the plague was present For I sometimes beholding a Mass of Prelates and Abbots and their fingers to be adorned with precious stones I conjectured that they were in times past obliged to visit those that were infected with the plague But that now also the Gems of Gems are born about their use being neglected and unknown the which I do conjecture CHAP. XVI The Preservation PReservatives according to the Ancients are two-fold For some ought to hinder the plague to come others also the plague being present that it proceed not to cut down But for the former they have devised as well Amulets or Pomanders without as Antidotes within But since the Schools have been ignorant of the very essential thinglinesse of the poyson and indeed that every Pest whether it shall be brought to us from without or next shall be bred within presupposeth the image of a poysonsom terrour therefore proper preservatives have never been known from a foundation Therefore among preservatives I consider 1. Least the spirit of the Archeus do conceive a terrour in us or that from a terrour he do not produce a terrifying poyson on himself or one brought on him within from else-where 2. That a fermental and co-resembling mummie being brought to us from without doth not infect the Archeus the internal ruler of our mummie 3. That whatsoever hath already in contagion become a partaker of the mummie be killed and departeth Therefore the least co-resemblance which it hath common with us is to be taken away Wherefore some light poyson is alwayes wont to admix it self with every Antidote to wit that hereby the application and approximation may be taken away that the Archeus may be preserved free from contagion or that he fall not down into the mumial nourishment and from thence frame a Tartar of the bloud to himself In this last patronage of safeguard antiquity hath been wholly vigilant but it hath not been incumbent about others because they were unknown Although this last preservation hath therefore become uncertain and without fruit because it hath rather respected the latter product or seat than the root or chief cause when as in the mean time a preservation from the effect fore-going conditions being supposed is fore-stalled as being in vain Therefore if we must treat of preservatives and antidotes to expel the poyson as is meet what things I have already explained concerning the causes processe and manner of making the plague ought to be firmly fixed in our mind The Pest therefore either enters from without and marks the place of its entrance from without because it primarily affecteth it or is attracted with the breath and there passeth thorow the Diaphragma or midriff and causeth a pressure and perplexities upon the very bought of the stomach and in the same place cloaths the matter which soon exhales from thence and becomes infamous in contagion And seeing that in nature every agent hath its beginning increase state declining and at length death it must needs be likewise that by how much the longer of continuance and powerful the corruption shall be by so much also the more dangerous or destructive it be rendred For the Pest beginning is increased with the diminishment and death of the man For I a good while believed that every curative remedy of the plague was also of necessity the preservative of the same because it is accounted a more easie thing to be preserved than to be cured Or whatsoever it performeth in the same kind which is the more difficult that it should also willingly do that which is more easie Wherefore I was greatly occupied in times past with the care of diligently searching into medicines for expelling of the poyson to wit whereon the whole satisfaction of my desire then depended But afterwards I diverted my mind to another belief and considered that healing remedies had rather regard unto the extraction or expulsion of the malady and that such remedies had not place in preservatives for the future To wit seeing that which as yet is not cannot also as yet be expelled or extracted yea not so much as extinguished For truly first of all a remedy against the terrour of the man imagining or of the Archeus is not in it self so much positive as negative and so the drinking of pure wine even unto mirth preserveth for the future because it so rules the imagination not onely of the man but of the Archeus that the power of forming images perisheth For so no man is poor or defectuous as long as he is cheerful from a drinking of wine And therefore the holy Scriptures declare that wine was made for cheerfulnesse but not for drunkennesse because it is a powerful preservative So that although the sturdinesse of a man excludeth the terrours from the imaginaion of the man yet a manly animosity cannot take away the terrour of the imagining Archeus for the aforesaid animosity or sturdinesse of mind admits of a combate from a contrary opinion of the Archeus but mirth or cheerfulnesse introduced by such drink neither admits of nor acknowledgeth an enemy as neither doth it undergo a strife but excludeth them But an exhilerating draught is more fit for the Pest to come than for it being present Therefore I grant also that the preservative and curative remedies for the plague as being present are of the same company and intention but not for a future one yet so that preservatives of the plague as being present do not serve
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
a disease 537 Death began from carnal lust 550 676 In divine things the Senses are to be cast off 310 13 What a Disease is 452 The difficulty of curing Diseases concluded from the Seat of the Soul 455 Of Diseases according to their occasional cause 565 Their division 566 How Diseases enter the Body 567 Most Diseases are centrally in the Stomach 261 10 Diseases concentred in the vital Spirit proved by dissection 485. Of the essence of Diseases 488 558 Hitherto unknown 489 171 145 A Disease is a real Being 947 Hunger no Disease 494 Diseases pierce the formal Light 496 A Disease begins from the matter of the Archeus 502 The product of a Disease differs from a Symptom 999 How a diseasie occasion augmenteth it self 521 Cure of Diseases not furthered by Anatomy 524 Diseases varie in respect of a six-fold digestion 620 What the ground of Diseases is 404 15 407 40 c. 430 3 448 60 238 21 269 Lunar Diseases their Symptoms 140 148 Diseases Produced by concupiscence 524 Cure of Diseases 446 The roots of Diseases from the beginning 1092 What the Dew is 68 23. What it abounds with 117 33 Decoctions censured 970 Defluxions of the Bladder ridiculous 856 Distilling without any Caput Mortuum remaining 404 18 Distilled waters of small force 970 Distillation of Vitriol 891 Distillation of Urine 847 Observations thereon ibid. Distillation unfolds natural Philosophy 692 Â 8 Of Diet its uselesness as to curing 451 9 c. Of the nature of Diuretickâ— 862 863 Of the dispensatories of the Schools 461 24 Thâ—ir hurtfulness ibid. 28 Illustrated by two Examples 464 43 Things externally applyed operate under the sixth digestion 479 48 A six fold Digeston 480 57 206 What a depraved digestion produceth 1104 Of the Retents of digestions 625 626 1003 The digestive Ferment what 201 206 What things help digestion ibid Of the threefold digestion of the Schools 203 703 16 There is as many suitable Ferments as digestions 206 2. From whence the force of digestion springs 207 21 Whâ—t helps it 703 17. The first digestion 207 The second digestion 209 21 22 The second and third digestion are begun at once 210 28 The third digestion where it begins 212 Digestion in the stomach not a formal transmutation of meats 215 48 When digestion may be said to be finished ibid. The fourth digestion its Seat 218 60 The fifth digestion ibid. The sixth digestion 219 67 Our digestions why attributed to the Planets 748 Supream of all digestions in the stomach 290 4 Death how it comes to â—e 649 8 After what sort death entred the Apple 657 41 Death followed sin 664 19 Death comes not from a dry habit of the Body 729 Death is from a decay of vital powers 730 Several occasions of Death 752 753 Drif what it is and what required thereto 595 Manner of making it 596 Dâ—atages observed 278 33 What drinks best in sharp sicknesses 454 22 24 The actions of the phansie from the Duumvirate 303 31 The power of desire in the Duumvirate 304 37 The Harmony of life from the Duumvirate 306 52 Fatness from the Duumvirate 308 59 The Duumvirate 337 Its Power Seat and Works 340 341 364 49 Vnderstanding is formed in the Duumvirate 275 Why the Spleen and Stomach are called the Duumvirate 287 26 Authority of the Duumvirate 296 The Dropsie Anasarcha whence 449 62 Its seat 515 Dropsie unknown 507 Not seated in the Liver 509 How stirred up 512 What the efficient matter thereof is 513 The Cure 521 A Bastard Dropsie ibid What abstinence from drink may effect in the Dropsie 519 Of Dungs and Toads in the Dropsie 519 520 Why drowned Bodies swim after a season 427 73 Drowsiness as well artificial as natural helped by Lixiviums 303 31 The vanity of drying up superfluities 440 42 Of drunkenness 449 63 Of being drunk with new Wine 122 23 Duelech of Paracelsus 833 Duelech is made of the Urine 836 837 Three Spirits concur for the nativity of Duelech 850 Its manner of making with an observation of the Fountains of the Spaw 851 What may be found in Duelech 861 Of the savour of Dungs 212 26 VVhere the Forment of Dung resideth 221 811 E. EArth why not reckoned among the primary Elements 49 16 11â— 44 What the Oxiginal Earth is â—0 3. 'T is Called the foundation of nature 4. ibid. It breaks forth to light in some places 51 5 The Earth is a fruit of the water 66 23 The various distinct Pavements of the Earth 94 5 The diversity of Soils in the Earth 688 3 In the last Soil the waâ—ers live 689 Of Earth-quakes 93 2 c. It is alwayes a threatner of punishments 102 33 Ear-wax good for pricking of the sinews 247 Eels bred by Honey and Dew c. 478 37 1026 65 Of the virtue of the Liver and Gaul of an Eele 304 46 An informative Similâ— of an Eg. 45 12 113 10 The prayse of Elecampane 703 10 Of the Elements 48 The two Elements Water and Air untransmutable 65 7 69 1 Their co-mixture no constitutive principles of bodies 134 24 Elements do not fight nor have contrariety 168 They Cannot destroy each other 1048 16 Electrum of Paracelsus against Inchantments 65 Elixir proprietatis and its prâ—paration 574. Elixir proprietatis not made without the Liquor Alkahest 813 Of the Embrio of a Bull-Calf its use 883 Of Endemicks 188 Endemical things are drawn in by breathing 189 7 The Progress of Endemical things 191 13 The Epitaph of an Emperour 528 Of the Ephialtes or night-Mare from what stirred up 299 15 Epilepsie whence stirred up 114 17 Erisipelas its Cure 475 29 114 17 Essence what it is 414 76 81 And in some things not so effectual when separated ibid. 78 Eve not cursed 654 13 Eve not appointed to bring forth in pain 654 14 Eve destowred in Paradice 666 33 Excrementitiousness whence caused 430 4 Extracts their invalidity 459 12 F. OF the infection of a dead Falcon. 1134 Fasting when easily brooked 24 51 Fever not cured by Phlebotomy 953 A Fever hitherto unknown 935 Thirst in Fevers examined 936 Drink allowed in Fevers 453 â—9 902 Caution about their food 454 24 Flesh to be shun'd ibid. Whence Cold and then hot 471 4 973 VVhat the Sunochus Diary and Hectick Fever are 978 Seat of a pâ—trid Fever 978 The occassional cause of Fevers twofold 979 980 986 The Cure 987 A Diary and Hectick affect onely the vital Spirit 973 Essence of Fevers discovered 1002 Feverish matter swims not in the Blood 956 The essence of Fevers not from heat 940 The seat of intermitting Fevers 948 The original of Camp-Fevers 1096 The poysonous Excrement in Fevers included in the Midriff 331 25 VVhat a Ferment is 31 24 c. By what continued 1124 Ferments being different do cause different operations 479 48 115 26 No transmutation without it 111 1207 2 Why commanded not to be used 111 1 Its properties c. 112 3 c. The
all things soon putrifie under the Equinoctial 141 54 What preserves against putrefaction 152 16 19 What solely promotes it 152 192 Pyrotechny commended 45. 11 What the Pylorus is 222 Of his Government 223 Of his Blas ibid. Of the diseases he stirs up 224 10 Of his shuâ—ting and opening 225 16 A sense of appetite in the Pylorus demonstrated 226 20 His rage and restauration ibid. The use of the Pylorus 228 With observations thereon ibid. The vice of the Pylorus cured 227 22 The four hot seeds usually pacifie the Pylorus 301 21 Q QVartans cured by odorous oyntments 114 17 By an Emplaister 988 1011 Seat of a Quartane 778 Examination of a Quartane 963 Quartane not cured by Physitians 307 57 812 Quick-silver truly prepared cures the Pox. 1094 What the Quellem is And where 94 5689 6 Its greatness 690 14 A Question propounded to all the learned 167,32 No such thing as a Quint-Essence 407 44. 414 79 R. WHat rain is 71 10 73 21 79 12 Of the Rain-bow 87 1. c. Of the radical moisture of the Schools 726 Radical moisture explained 729 Reason condemned 15. c. It is in bruit beasts 20 34 It makes a man unstable 21 40 VVhen reason faileth 715 Reason not â—t he Image of God 268 30 79 The Relâ—llum of Paracelsus 75 36 What it is 66 25 Powerful remedies are not of a foody substance 582 Remedies against Inchantments 605 The Reins do not stir up lust 305 42 How the Reins change the colour of the stone 248 28 Of the Revelation of several persons 1092 The Reins do not cause fatness 308 59 The errours of Physitians as touching rheums 432 15 Rie meal makes durable morter 247 Roses preserve their fragrant putrefaction 414 79 S. SAlt of Tartar volatilized perfects dissolutions 1002 1011 It abstergâ—th 1032 From whence is the first beginning of Salts 694 The vital Being is Salt 193 19 The various properties of Salts 473 22 Salt of venal blood cures the Falling Sickness 195 16 What the chiefest of all is 473 24 How Salt ariseth in Urine 842 The operations of Simple Salts 476 31. 480 The Gas of Salts is nothing but water 109 37 Volatile Salts their vertues 991 Hermaphroditical Salt of Metals 694 Sand not transmutable save only by the artificial hellish fire 52 14 The Sea less than the boyling Sand 690 14 What the true Sea is ibid It hath its motion in it self ibid. Saphire its power in the Plague 765 34 Why Church-men wear Saphirs 766 36 Why Saturns kingdoms are wished for 303 32 The Mercury of Saturn c. 478 40 Its distillation ibid. Against the Contemners of Science 989 The Schools ignorant of the diseases that arise in the sixth digestion 219 The Schools condemned of ignorance and sloath 474 28 c. Of blasphemy 145 78 The errour of the Schools about the first Mover 176 Scorpions produced from Bazil 13 113 Scurvy unknown to the Antients 109 When it first appeared 1092 How seeds issue from the invisible world 935 Seminal beginnings are from an Idea 436 Seeds act as appointed 164 16 No seminal disposition in the soul of man bâ—fore the fall 662 11 The four lesser hot seeds commended 427 75 The proportion of seed in a body is the 8200. th part 106 12 1125 How seeds are made 13 12 The difference betwixt a seed and ferment ibid. Hot seeds are of an easie conception 143 66 Seeds in their Original void of savour and colour 693. 2 Of Sense and Sensation 895 The Sensitive soul not generated by the mind 662 10 It differs from the mind 334 The knitting of the sensitive soul with the mind 251 The seat of the sensitive soul 283 284 285 It remains always in the vital Archeus of the stomack 286 18. 288 32 The sensitive soul is a vital light ibid. 20 Of the power of the sensitive soul when impregnated with the mind 354 13 14 In simples there is a perfect cure of all diseases 467 5 The natural power of some simples 307 54 The quality of the first sin 654 8 Sin hath nâ—â— immediately caused death 655 Â 656 Whence the continuation of original sin ibid. 28 Of the difference between actual and original sin 658 47 Why sleep was sent in before sin 563 Sleep not from a defect 337 1 When sleep is made 339 12 Snow on the mountains melts not 73 15 Soul of man not generated from his parent 662 12 Soul created by God 663 Its retreat in our first parents 664 A Treatise of the soul 342 Of the immortality of the soul 346 The seat of the soul not in the heart 292 13 Some defects of the stomack cured by sweat 1113 The ferment of the stomack to be regarded 453 22 c. Why though still moist yet putrifies not 479 Â 48 Twelve properties of the stomack 560 Some diseases inhabit in the life of the stomack 561 The stomack hath not its ferment in it self 267 11 Sharpness not the vital Ferment of the stostomack 208 131 What it is 210 29 The stomach doth not coct first for it self 216 52 The stomach first sensible of any defect 285 13 14 287 26 The stomach of the liver 20â— 20 The stomach of the gaul ibid Sobriety commended 452 16 Seat of diseases in the sensitive soul confirmed 559 The seat of the sensitive soul 555 Of specifical savours 473 25 Two savours one of the tongue the other of the stomach 474 27 Spleen the maker of seed 305 42 The scituation of the Spleen 540 It is the fountain of Idea's 606 Against black choler in the spleen 964 1056 The defect of the spleen is the cause of the Strangury in old people 1061 A double ferment in the spleen 1055 The spleen inspires a digestive ferment into the stomack 298 The spleen most enriched with Arteries ibid. Of the stomack of the spleen 299 13 Of the external spleen of an Infant 306 49 How the soul thinks intellectualy 23 48 It is substantial 144 70 Its power when freed from corporeal contagion 144 75 What the sensitive soul is 145 82 Soul acts in the body per nutum 780 97 784 The soul generates Entities 785 131 Soul sits in the Duumvirate 301 22 Sharpness is the specifical mean in the stomack 115 34 It dâ—ffers from all other sharpnesses 193 10 Stones and Rocks reducible into their equal weight of Salt 411 65 Whence the Strangury in old people is 855 624 What the Stars shew forth c. 122 21 How they operate 121 14 How they necessitate 123 30 The difference betwixt the Planets and the fixed Stars 125 40 How a wise man rules over them 126 46 The Stone in man not made by the intention of nature 250 5 Of the causes of the stone according to the Antients 705 1 Of their Intentions to cure and by what ibid. Their despair ibid. Why they have erred in the cure 706 12 708 Heat of the reins not the cause of the stone 707 An example