needs no proof but appears sufficiently manifest from the natural and sometimes the immature end of Animals Vegetables and Minerals which we see every day by their corruption when the Body being dead the Spirit must undergo the same fortune that is the vertue that enlivened it is annihilated but because the prime Opificer would be admirable in all his works of his meer goodness and love to Mankinde who from the beginning he predestinated to be the Instrument of his Glory and to whom he subjected whatever was admirable in the Creation for his Commodity I say he gave certain expedient Remedies whereby he might not onely purifie and perfect the things created but also preserve and arm himself against the assaults of mortal corruption Knowing then that the two parts of Man were one created in another to wit the Spirit in the Body and that the Body would be continually infected by corruption and by sensuality drawn and allured to intemperance which infers the true corruption and weakning of all the members he foresaw that the Spirit inhabiting like a Guest in the Body could not be exempted from its contagious depravation and we ordinarily see That Men given to excess of intemperance and sensuality accustom themselves to ill manners and take liberty in all corruption both of Minde and Spirit neither regarding Love nor Fear to God Honor or Respect to the World nor Piety to themselves nor Charity towards their Neighbours So that it is impossible if they be thus bound to inquinations in death but their Spirits must undergo punishment as they have participated of pleasure Seeing moreover all mankinde by the fall of our first Parent obnoxious to death and thence every Man inevitably to incur total destruction and perdition he mitigated or rather redintegrated this Misery by an admirable Remedy far exceeding our capacity for knowing Man by his Spirit and his Body to participate of Heaven and of Earth the Remedy also he made to partake of Heaven and Earth which is competible solely to our onely Lord Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ who descended from Heaven into the Earth and by a mystery incomprehensible by us and common sense was miraculously made Man without the abdication of his God-head because our health could not come from Earth alone corruption reigning there but it was necessary that the Water should come from above where the Fountain of purity is he therefore came down that he might dwell in us and with us and conclude us within the terms of justice and temperance regenerating us to newness of life by the mutation of our Spirit and Body and mortifying in us our corruptions and sins and restoring us to the study of purity of vertue which could not have been effected save by him alone the extream of both Natures for he is God-Man that he might conjoyn superiour with inferiour things which were dis-joyned by the incomparable distance of life and death purity and corruption The Earth doubtlesly received this inestimable treasure far exceeding its merit by a medium that cannot be comprehended from which he again ascended into Heaven by the Water of purification and Fire of the Spirit without accidents and corporal passions though he deposed not his Body but retained it incorruptible and glorious having acquired immortality by death who shall again descend from his Fathers right-Hand into the Earth after the Universal conflagration to renew the World and make a Separation betwixt the good destined to life and the evil condemned to death See now how well the Omnipotent Father the Father of all compassions consulted for Mans good to whose Body joyned with his Soul he gave an equal Preserver whom he sent from Heaven that he might be born on Earth and whom by the light of Nature we ought to seek Seeing Man was therefore endued with Reason and Judgement that he might acknowledge and comprehend his great gifts but Man created heavenly for the indagation of this benefit as too forgetful of his birth lays out that noble and divine Light within him in searching out frivolous and transitory vanities and not in the pursuit of solid wisdom and verity Briefly he had rather follow the inclination of his Terrestrial Geniture then Divine and Celestial Wisdom which he neglects as a thing indifferent and casually sent to him from above Wherefore the Root of Mankinde is as it were extinguished before it grow out except some few who have had better Stars and more favourable Aspects in their Nativity they desiring the possession of transitory goods more then the attainment of Divine and precious Gifts which our fecund Mother Nature hath publickly and in all places fixed for the conservation of life hurt rather then helped by their abundance immerged in mortal corruption And it is apparent That those that are of a higher Spirit though they look upon the fulgour and splendor of those Mundane Riches as no way despicable yet they will not rest in this surface but seek to Divine Vertue occluded in the Centre which hath indeed been cause of great errors both in Medicine and Philosophy to such as destitute of true light groape at and in the dark pass by both Recalling then my mind to the clear light by whose guidance we may attain that salutary and best remedy which God ordained particularly for the conservation of mankinde and for the obtaining of Celestial benediction I shall endeavor with all humility and requisite sincerity not as a Divine but as a Disciple of Wisdoms followers to adumbrate my conceptions in a rude style which the lovers of verity may accept gratefully if they finde them rational and pleasing I say then that all understanding communicated to any man from man alone is uncertain and confused because man is ordinarily loaden with ignorance and slow resolutions but that which he receives from the univerial Light is clear and immoveable For to know absolutely is to understand a thing by its first causes and there is no certitude in second causes till we come to their original wherefore we cannot know the Nature of a Species unless we foreknow its Genus neither can we know the Nature of Microcosmes which are almost infinite unless we first find out the Nature of the Macrocosme that gives them being Man likewise cannot be known without the precedent cognition of the world whose effigies he is nor yet the great world unless we know whence and how it was made For how shall one know a man whose principle is nothing but a small deformed mucilage or how shall a man know him that is born unless he know those that begot him and here I mean not the second but the first Parents to wit heaven and earth and unless a man understand the first creation of these how shall he know them as an Embryo in a womb which is nothing but the congregation of a certain humour which is afterwards formed to the example of its parents and so in progress till it become perfect so
we should easily finde them derived from those infected fumes that obscure the light of our sanity and thence desume a manifest sign of what is wrought within us for a sound Man because of the internal clarity of his natural disposition hath a cleer and lively coloured aspect but a sick Man from the first onset of his disease is pale and plumbeous his native vigour perishing and decaying and all these mutations proceed from the fumes of sulphureous and excrementitious Adustion and Inflammation which extend themselves thorow all the members and by mediation of the pores infect the whole Body This paleness may also proceed from Nature feeling her self aggravated with a disease and thereupon revoking all the pure and good Blood inwards that mustring up their forces she may better oppose her enemy or sustain his assaults and upon this occasion the external parts are destitute of their clarity and in this conflict the external parts remain as it were dead like Earth tend to obscurity because Earth wherein this battle is begun is naturally black as on the contrary Fire is by Nature clear and white The Earth then on its part being spisse and obscure begets blackness and sulphureous fuliginous and smoaky Adustion begets obscurity wherefore both cause corruption destruction and ruine and besides these two nothing in the world procures universal ruine neither is any inferiour Body exempted from these evils save Gold and precious Stones which Nature hath brought to what perfection she can And so Death is to other Bodies a perpetual enemy seeking how to destroy them but Nature as a careful Mother how to preserve her works who hath armed two potent and nimble Champions to help them and withstand the Adversaries fury one whereof is Fire the expugner of sulphureous Adustion the other Water the expeller and driver of Terrestrial dregs And as Nature is ingenious and subtile in all her operaâ—â—ons so is Art indued with equal subtilty and industry And there 's no other way to Separation instituted by Nature from the beginning but these two which Nature her self hath trodden from the non-age of the Universe whose first seeds void of form and confusedly mixed in a Chaos were dissolved in Water and by the Spirit of God the first Mover moving upon them divided and distinguished whence the Separation of light from darkness proceeded as also of distinct forms from confusion of generations from barreness and of death from life and if things in the first commixtion were thus confused as impure with pure Excrements with Substance Earth with Heaven and life with death all were without action power essence and life and the whole confusion useless An Artist therefore considering this and observing That nothing can exert its vertue till the confusion of its purity and impurity be separated he takes Water and Fire for his Helpers and follows Natures copy whose operations he should observe with all curiosity especially in generating Metals which are by so much the perfecter by how much they are more digested in the bowels of the Earth This sentence is then irrefragable That Water and Fire are the sole general and principal means of Separation but the composition of things being various and one thing yielding with more ease then another we must also act variously upon them yet so as not to vary from the plain path that nature has delineated For adustion and unctuous Sulphur making a body inflammable and infective may be extracted one way out of one body and terrestrial feculency another way in others Calcination and Sublimation were invented to purge adustion but Distillation and Dissolution to remove terrestrial feculency and Descension for the conservation of weak and easily inflammable bodies and all these are either effected by fire as Calcination Sublimation and Descension or by water as Distillation and Dissolution But because both the Books of ancient and modern writers speak at large of these things I shall not further labour in their explication because I can adde nothing new nor yet any ornament or facility to them it may suffice if I adde any thing definitively and known to my self in general and that is that Calcination is invented for your overcoming of hard and rebellious things and for continuity and valid and firm composition which hinders division and admits not of easie separation and hence four conveniencies arise the combustion of impure and stinking Sulphur the easie separation of superfluous and extraneous earthiness the fixation of the internal Sulphur and more prompt dissolution For it is natural to fire to consume those adustible parts which are not of the essence of a substance to facilitate the division and rejection of terrestrial excrements to fix radical Sulphur and to multiply salt in bodies which alone doth afterwards admit dissolution by water I say therefore that Calcination agrees onely to bodies that because of their continuity scarcely yield for spirits and volatile things which flye away by fire cannot be calcined unless some fixing thing be added which is repugnant to their nature Seeing there is no other end in Calcination then to extract salts wherein the better part and secret vertue of bodies consist to which that corruptive adustion adheres which in sublimation we suffer ro evaporate and flie away as useless that the remaining substance may be better freed from terrestrial dregs and easier educed by fire to purification and stability It is true also that sublimation requires some intension of fire but that happens then chiefly when the things to be sublimated are more profoundly mixed with the dregs of some other fixed body that they may more pertinaciously hold their terrestrial impurities and this kind of sublimation is most secure save when we work upon subjects that have their dregs naturally more fixed Descension hath a two fold use one is to extract Oyl out of vegetables without combustion the other to cleanse fusibles bodies before they be made volatile and these are the three kindes of separation made by fire now we shall speak a little of the other two Distillation and Dissolution made by water and the former of these is made by inclination and straining that the limpidity of bodies may with water come forth into the water of dissolved vegetables for that same that 's made by an Alembick appertains to the order of sublimations which is effected by elevation and not by ablution And though some account this for an indifferent and but a mean way yet I say it should not be rejected but much esteemed as that principally which Nature uses in her operations and which she establishes as the sole medium for the separation of terrestrial impurity by which also many things are brought to the height of their perfection being by this kind of distillation elevated and sublimated to their purity Whence some Philosophers have call'd it a secret sublimation The second operation by water to wit dissolution is effected by moist and moderate heat as Horse-dung Saint Maries
Bath the smoak of boyling water or by infusion in water or else by inhumation in moist places and the end of all these is one to wit the reduction of the things calcined into water that by this liquefaction the terrestrial matter may by straining settle in the bottom of the vessel but this subtile practise and all of the like kind should be reiterated for if any would by continual calcination separate the more simple parts of the compound and reduce to salt what hath the essence of salt he thereby creates much loss for the intemperate and continual violence of the fire will sublimate and evaporate a great part of that which is with such labour sought so that nothing will remain but a small quantity of the soluble matter with a great deal of dregs and besides that matter may by long abode in the fire be made into glass it is better therefore to flie to frequent reiterations then violate nature by the excess of any precinitancy I found such an inconvenience once in calcinating common Chrystal which while I desired to purge from its excrements and by long ignition to reduce to its true essence I found both it and its excrements made into glass and thence useless for my purpose for though Chrystal be clear lucid and transparent yet in Calcination it first emits black and then violaceous fumes as also stinking and sulphureous odours which sufficiently attest its excrementitious earthiness as also white fumes following after the true Homogeneity of its substance which remains clear and fluid in small quantity till it become true chrystalline Salt yea by the duration of these last reiterations its ingrateful sent is changed into a most delicate one like that of violets-powder By these reiterations of Calcinations two more conveniences do yet arise One is that the thing calcined by assuefaction to the fire brings stability and subtilty to the Medicaments as I said before The other that a body often dissolved acquires easie penetration and ready ingression as also more potent strength to change the state of the patient from sickness to sanity from weakness to vigour from declination to restauration and perfect health and these are the ordinary ways of all separations which have no other scope then the purging of pure substances from excrements and elevating of their terrestrial grossness to a fiery purity and from imperfection to perfection Which Hermes hints at when he says that earth must be separated by fire and the subtile from the gross which he says must be done with great care and animadversion For when he speaks of the preparation of the universal Spirit after its terrification and opens the way to the preparation of all individuals he would signifie that there is something in this earth which can scarce be retained and conserved and this is a light and volatile spirit which is kept by the temperament of fire But on the contrary it will easily flie away with the separable and more copious volatile part if in the operation temperate fire and a good method be not used with much patience where the Artist should observe this rule with all diligence that there are three distinct Sulphurs whereof two are separable to wit the external which perishes by Calcination and Dissolution and the internal which vanishes onely by decoction and the third is fixed which is properly the Sulphur of nature and the proper subject of its substance whereunto Philosophers give the name of Agent Fixed-grain or Element of fire As to the external Sulphur it is that first volatile and adustible water for it is plainly extraneous and the first nutriment of fire but the internal is more rooted in and united to the substance and therefore yields not save to intent and continued heat and therefore it assumes all colours before it egrede beginning first with black which is the prime sign of earthiness adustion and corruption and the antecessor of putrefaction and corruption and then passes through other middle colours till at length it put on whiteness which is the airy colour and then ascends to a fiery colour or redness in which the power of art and dominion of fire is terminated and beyond which there is no progress Which thing the Poets fabulously concealed under the unconstant form of Proteus who turned himself into various monstrous forms that he might affright those that would captivate him This variety of colours proceeds from the internal Sulphur the true author and producer of all tinctures and varieties which are by Nature or Art observed in any subject These colours may be also distinctly noted in the decoction of the first universal Subject as I have above said That it produced them in my operations and first whiteness presents it self and then Natures Sulphur appears which Geber says is white without and red within for redness immediately follows this whiteness without all help save the continuation and augmentation of Fire whence one Philosopher said His Stone was a Gold-Ring covered with Silver I would briefly insert these few words about colours not that I would presume to teach the preparations and observations which I know necessary for the perfecting of that great and so much praised Philosophers Elixir but onely that I may shew the curious Disciples of learned Medea which induced by profound and ingenious inquisition seek to enter the secrets of these mysterious Physicks what Sulphurs must be rejected and what must be retained in all things I hope I shall spend that time well which I have substracted from my houshold-affairs if I restore any vigour or spark of life to that languishing part of Natural Philosophy which envious Men have buried in the Sepulchre of Calumny under the odious title of abusive Transmutation and falsifying of Metals though ignorance onely stop their eyes from discerning this true mystery which they load with opprobrious contumelies and injurious words grounding their malice onely on the malicious lies of impudent dullards who run about Cities sell smoak and obnubilate their false Sophistications under the coat of this fair Virgin deceiving the eyes of the too credulous Commonalty with their pigments and by their Syrenical and fraudulent Speeches precipitating curious Inquirers into Scylla or Charybdis CHAP. 4. Of the Spirits ascent into Heaven and descent into the Earth THe Almighty Creator of all things foreseeing from the beginning that infection and corruption growing with things compounded of Body and Spirit would move continual and intestine wars he opposed a remedy to this dissention whereby the one may be conserved and the other not destroyed and seeing the Spirit and Substance were included in a Body and the Body immerged in corruption it was impossible that corruption should act upon and prevail over the Body and yet the Spirit placed in both should be kept free and incur no danger but rather that with the Body it should yield to deaths Tyranny which alwayes intends Natures destruction and the prostitution of all individuals which thing
that is when it assumes a Terrestrial Body God also willed his own Son and our Redeemer in his assumed Humanity be as it were regenerated by and with the Water of Baptism and Fire of the Holy Spirit not that he needed any such purgation but because he was to converse with Men contaminated with corruption that he might in all things yield himself an example of Renovation and Purification giving Men a visible and ample Testimony That according to the Flesh he was of the same Nature with them not contaminated or corrupted but obnoxious to passion and equally mortal as they In like manner our fecund Mother Nature willed her first-born though pure in his Centre That he should be regenerated by Water and Fire that is by Separation of the Terrestrial from the fiery part the spisse from the subtile and the impure from the pure which Hermes also aimed at when he said That the Earth should be separated from Fire for what God hath conjoyned Man should not separate but onely the impure and gross from the subtile and pure by Fire And besides this Sense which first offers it self to our Intellects there is yet another more occult meaning for seeing by the Separation of Earth from Fire he means that that 's gross from that that 's subtile he seems to hint that we should separate the natural qualities of these two Elements by detracting the moist frigidity mixt with heavy Terrestrial things without which that cold cannot subsist and by putting on hot siccity which is of the Nature of Fire and consequently light and spiritual For which cause he adds That it must ascend from Earth to Heaven that is from imperfection to perfection for Paracelsus calls Fire the Firmament and as nothing can attain perfection unless it first depose its imperfect gross and mortal bark wherein this cold quality abounds the cause of all mortification as heat is of life so also prudent Nature observes this Rule That each subject should sustain and pass the obsure blackness of death and expect the cleer and candid renovation of life and immortality that is impassible essence whereon neither Fire nor corruption hath any power And assuredly the acquisition of this life by death is naturally exercised by all Creatures continually for all Sperm or Seed of Animals is mortified in some Matrix and of Vegetables in the Earth before any specification can be made But if this rule takes place in the members by how much may we more exactly observe and directly imitate it in the head and if the life acquired by mortification be of any duration how much more shall that be perpetual which is principal Jesus Christ taught these things by similitude of a Grain which he says cannot fructifie unless it first die signifying the mystery of his Resurrection which his Death should precede for he willed Death that he might rise to a glorious and perpetual Life therein not onely giving example to men but expressing the whole Idea of Nature That divine and learned Ermite Morienus Romanus who is often quoted by modern and natural Philosophers avers the same of the fixed Grain whereto Nature hath given power to perfect Metals for he saith Unless it putrefie and grow black it cannot be perfected and compleated but returns to nought I have taken liberty to say thus much that I may teach the younger sort how the Creator should be acknowledged by simple Creatures and because the vulgarity of Men begs this knowledge from remoter things acting as they do who seek the perfection of Sciences from the Scholars of the lowest Form whereas they should require it from the best Directors and Doctors I would excite them by these natural coneeptions that they would convert the principal endowments of their Souls to the search of the general principle and that in more exquisite things such as impart life and preservation to all mortal Creatures Mortification then necessarily precedes all entrance into life and principally in this Spirit the first-born of Nature when it assumed a Body for else no Man could separate it from Body which hinders its Regeneration to Life and Pacification of its Essence not as though by combustion and destruction it lost its Body in Death nor yet by Putrefaction but so that in Germination the Putrefaction of Seeds annihilates not that which is corporified in them for which cause in the Exaltion of Mercury or the Universal Spirit after the first degree which is made by Separation all that 's corporeal and spiritual becomes volatile because the sublimatory vertue therein overcomes the fixing faculty but the fixed part afterwards retains the volatile with it being helped by the action of heat which augmenting the power of the two nobler Elements destroyes the power of the two weaker which Hermes hints at in a certain Treatise by a plumous Bird detained with a Bird without Feathers And Nicholaus Flumellus by two Dragons one with and another without Wings But that I may not longer fold my self in these Daedalean Labyrinths see we not all Vegetables encrease and elevate themselves upwards by vertue of this volatile Spirit which as I said before would carry them higher towards the place whence it came whereto it hath an appetite but that it is detained by its proper Earth and corporal Mass wherein some fixed matter resides But lest some not sufficiently accustomed to Philosophical terms should think we contradict our selves I will here explicate my self I say then That I mean not by this volatile Spirit that which I before called volatile and separable Sulphur for that is rather the Author of Corruption then Growth but that most simple part of the primaeve vapour which never loses it s subtily whose Nature is to be elevated and tend to perfection for to sublimate is properly and Philosophically no more then to perfect and exalt matters from imperfection to perfection As therefore this Mercury hath an elevable so hath it a stable substance the first is naturally innate in it the second is in its centre or power yet it cannot compass its effect without the help of Art And that I may shew more plainly in what ways Nature proceeds in her operations I think it convenient to add a little about the causes and manner of Fixation Repeating therefore that indubitable Axiome I alledged in the beginning of this Book as perpetually observed in the Worlds Constitution to wit That all that hath life hath also some duration and that nothing is produced under the cope of Heaven which hath not some kinde of life in it I say that this Duration must be wrought by Conservation to Perpetuity for Perpetuation is the scope of Nature seeing it is the endeavour of every good Opificer to preserve the work of his hands till it be corrupted by the injury of time or the light of its life extinguished by the cold ashes of death to whose feet all things necessarily prostrate themselves by this inevitable law That whatsoever hath
consumes the Bodies there interred not that dead Bodies or the earth are his aliments but only the seats where he is fed and nourished This is the place where he is moved turned and twines without ceasing whereof Medea admonishes Jason where she says in Epist Heroid Ovidij Pervigil ecce draco squamis crepitantibus horreus Sibilat torto pectore verrit humum Lo here the Dragon with his horrid Scales Doth watch and hiss and plow the very dales Which Rythmes a French Author thus expresses Voy le dragon veillant de fureur sorcene Qui d'escaile crugaten a le corps entourne Dont le gosier sifflant fumee feu deserre Et qui par replis lors va baliant la terre De sa large poitrine en la poudre imprimant Les sineux siallons qu'il trace incessament Behold the scaly swelling Dragon lurking Who always listens with a watchful ear Who knits his brows and never shuts his eyes here But him that sees his cust tongues teeth afrights With horror whose wide throat emits such flames As do infect the Air with blackest fumes Behold his many twinings which he deep Impresses in the earth whilst he doth creep And plough the ground with his broad brest whilst he Returns in the same tract continually I adduce these two Considerations not onely to shew how Mercury must be sought but also to confirme that that which is fixable in it is nothing else but the enlivening essence which fixed in due manner perpetuates and keeps life in all things it enters by its purity expelling Excrements and by its perfection perfecting imperfect things The end of Fixation both natural and artificial is Perpetuation and Conservation which are effected by the Mediation of that Tincture which Mercury acquires by this Fixation for that Tincture is Life and Life is nothing else but that which opens and colours the Body with such a Tincture as shews it to be vital and perishes with its death Nature therefore colours Blood wherein life consists with a red Tincture and when the Blood is clearer and more lively red the Body is more sound fair and vigorous as on the contrary when the Blood is dense black adust with choler or changed into a false colour the Body is pained and sick within and by discoloration gives Testimony thereof without We may observe the same in Vegetables whose lively vigour consists in greenness which being changed we say it is turning or declining towards death The perfection also or imperfection of Metals is discernable by their colours Gold is indued with a magnetical vertue which by the splendent fulgor of its tincture draws man's earth after it in which Nature spends all her forces but leaves the victory to Arts industry which by graduation to the haight which it adds to its natural splendor makes it far more fulgent insomuch that it 's called the Terrestrial Sun An Artist then may exalt the golden colour to the height of obscure redness by which augmentation imperfect Metals in a certain degree may by projection of this artificial Tincture be brought to the height of perfection so that we see this golden colour introduced by Nature into this Metal is onely the way to that redness wherein the completion of perfect Vertue lies for which cause this Metal though far excelling others can communicate no perfection nor conservation to humane Bodies as a thousand Jugglers and Sluggards in Physicks promise by their Sophistical Fusions and Phantastical Confections But if more curious Artists work upon this subject they may make it acquire such a degree of inseparable redness that by the excess of its heat it shall work miracles and yet it shall consume nothing but superfluities and shall conserve and multiply the substance of Bodies though Philosophers say That its heat as much exceeds our common fires as common fires do innate heat in Animals Paracelsus in his Treatise of Tinctures extols that highly which is extracted out of Gold by Spirit of Wine and attributes many singular Vertues to it as also to that that 's made of Antimony and Coral before which he yet seems to prefer the Tincture of Mercury which he says may by perfect Fixation be brought wholly to a Tincture so that it will penetrate Bodies because of its most subtile purity where I think he means not that vulgar but Philosophical Mercury wherein Art perfecting Nature hath wrought these two effects to wit perfect Tincture and compleat Fixation Tincture then in proper locution is the pure substance of things and Body is nothing but an Excrement which is also manifest in that Bodies after the Separation of their Tincture are useless without vertue and corruptible no otherwise then a carcase without life colour or motion Tincture may then be called the scope of Fixation it attaining by its permanency in fire a conservative faculty in those Bodies to which it is applied But the manner of attaining this degree of Fixation in which the Completion of the whole work consists is no other then that fugitive and light things be prudently kept in the Fire that they may be brought into assuefaction with it that they may endure most violent heat And for this cause good Authors commend Patience to their Disciples as proceeding from God but Precipitancy as from the Devil Take this for an infallible Rule That unless Calcination go before nothing can be fixed and that this should be done by conjoyning the fixable Spirit with something of a convenient Nature that may retain it in the Fire of Calcination that by this means it may accustome it to sustain heat by little till it can endure the ultimate augmentation of Fire which infers Fixation And the Reason why we must proceed with such discretion is because if we should too readily precipitate this operation the special Spirituality which is the Mother of this Tincture would flie away and leave the Body without any impression of the tingent Vertue so that a new Spirit must of necessity be given to this dead Head before the desired colour can be introduced which is one of the Secrets of this Chymical Art for it is the Spirit and no other thing that colours by mediation of Fire and this Tincture compleated and exalted in our Mercury should be elevated to the height of perfection that as Hermes speaks it may ascend into Heaven and when it hath sustained all mortal torments receive a new life that is after it hath passed the darksome straits of Putrefaction it may be elevated to a Resurrection by the Ablation of all mortiferous and corruptive Accidents And thus it will attain the height of perfection which is effected by Separation of Earth from Fire the subtile from the spiss and by Fixation of its purged part by gradual heat But that I may speak without ambages and doubts This ascent into Heaven which is the Sublimation and Exaltation of its parts to perfection cannot be effected unless Separation and Purification go before and
enervated both by reason of vacuity which it abhors above all things and also by reason of violent motion caused by such Purges And thus they rather procure Death then Sanity for Nature can no more endure violent motion then vacuity and she is very impatient of these two her sworn Enemies which attempt so evidently her destruction And for this cause common Medicine seldom cures obstinate Diseases by their Compositions as they commonly prepare them and if amongst many any one be cured this happens not because of Pills Boles and Potions but of the strength of Nature which is able to overcome the impure quantity mixed with these remedies and extract something out of their pure substance commodious for its subsidy or else because the poysonous quality of these excrementitious and corruptive things is rejected and expelled by Nature which is of that power that it carries with it some portion of the peccant humour which is like to it by attraction and sympathy And thus an extraneous Medicament impugning the Body moves Nature which provoked and prepared to resist this her Enemy rejects and violently impugnes what is contrary to her And now if a Medicament should always be convenient and not contrary to Nature it should be purged from its poyson that is from its excrementitious Mass Wherefore a Medick should first chuse such things as are convenient for and hold sympathy with Man's Body and free them from their impurities or at least chuse such as contain in them the general vertue or innate purity which Purification cannot be effected till the impure and noxious be separated and destroyed and the pure restored which lay buried and suffocated under the Excrements But it being none of my Profession to make Medicaments I will not further treat of this business but will return into the way whence I have a little swerved I say therefore Seeing there is no inferiour thing but that 's infected with Poyson immerged in Excrements and buried in Dregs that cause its mortification and hinder the liberty and action of its legitimate substance Nature is constrained by a certain necessity to make use of Separation which is effected by division of the pure from the impure the subtile from the gross and the salutary from the destructive part But because this admirable Agent works her operations in darkness labouring in bodies by a secret digestion she never exceeds simple perfection for hereto onely is her power extended whence corporal Elements being not able to conduce to the highest degree of their proprieties the Bodies wherein they are included Philosophers prudently endeavour to separate their substance from their corruptive Mass and after this Separation in Natures way to wit by Digestion and Sublimation to carry them to the highest degree of purity getting them by Regeneration a new form taking away their former Nature Qualities and Proprieties and changing their impure Bodies into Spirits full of purity their moisture and cold into dryness and heat practising and effecting this not onely in some species or simples but in the great Body of the World also which is our Universal Spirit for unless the Universal Nature of all things be renewed it is impossible to bring it to a state of incorruption Regeneration then is the first Fruits of Separation but as a Grain can of it self generate nothing unless it die and putrefie in the Earth so it is impossible any thing should be renewed or regenerated save by precedent mortification Mortification then is the first step to Separation and the onely tract to that end for as long as Bodies remain in their old Corruption and origine Separation cannot reach them unless putrefaction and mortification lead the way which also our Lord Jesus divinely taught saying Unless that a Man like a Grain of Corn die he cannot acquite life incorruptible not as if he meant that life incorruptible should be acquired by death corporal for then impious and wicked Men by dying would attain Beatitude with the Good and Just but he meant that the old Man should die that is mortifie and separate his old Corruption from him which he attracted from the Seed of his first Parents And this Corruption is properly intemperance and excess introduced by the eating of the forbidden Fruit by which Death entred the World and since which Man ceased not to die because afterwards the Earth and all it produced were infected by the Poyson of the fraudulent Serpent hidden in their Aliments whose enticements led Man to transgression and to the eating of Fruit wherein death was included And this corrupting Serpent is he that I call Satan who creeping and without ceasing going about the Earth mixes his Poyson therewith and with all things it produces to wit Animals Vegetables and Minerals with intent to infect the World with his Poyson and tyrannize over Man Upon this intemperance and excess in diet a privation of Vertue followed for Vice is nothing but a neglect of what is just and justice is a temperate desire and continual progress to good This intemperance then and excess must die in us because it generates all kinde of sin in us and stimulates us to malice and impiety and therefore we are injoyned to live soberly and shun gluttony and drunkenness the true Authors of all carnal lusts and that we fast often to extinguish those internal flames which move our Sences and burn our Blood to Corruption The Anatomists of Man know that Man is twofold the one Celestial and immortal the other Terrestrial and corruptible and the first is as a Sojourner the second as a Prisoner But here arises a great Question How it comes to pass that the heavenly Man can whilst buried in this putrid and corrupt Carkase conserve his essential purity for it is manifest That a Liquor though never so precious and excellent will lose its sapour and odour if it be long contained in a stinking Vessel and Man also though never so sound is subject to infection if he dwell in a pestilent House a heavenly Man is of himself good and sincere but as he is joyned to the Terrestrial to whom impurity and vices naturally adhere he can scarcely remain free from spots The depravation of this essential purity depends without doubt on the eating the forbidden Fruit or to speak more expresly on the intemperance of Aliments condited with pernicious and contagious Corruption for which cause this intemperance corruption must be mortified that the old Destroyer of Man may be restrained that that may be repaired by newness of life which makes us like our heavenly Father in incorruption And our Restorer Jesus hath taught us two ways to Regeneration one by the Water of Baptism and the other by the Fire of the Holy Ghost Water washes away the spots and Fire consumes and separates all impurity from the pure essence and as his precious Blood which is true Water indeed purges away our sins and saves us from that death which the mortal corruption
of our earthly Parent introduced so Water dissolves and purges away those excrementitious impurities which corrupt all substances The Fire of the Holy Spirit consumes and separates the excrementitious impurity of sins and so the vulgar Fire blots out the impurity of Bodies which should therefore be mortified that it may be regenerated and this Mortification is that Putrefaction and Digestion which fits it to receive Separation and this Mortification is then wrought in us when the Sun of the Holy Spirit rises upon our Hearts and warms our Centre consuming by little and little the corrupt affections of old Adam After the same manner the Chymical Fire reverberating its flame about the Body that is to be purged burns and annihilates that that is of an extraneous Nature and that more or less as the impurity is more or less obstinate to Separation which is effected by Distillation This then is the right way which Nature observes in the Regeneration of all things which will have no laudable effect in Medicine unless they be gegenerated by Water and Fire But the same things after this second Nativity are most free in their vertues and actions whereas before their vital functions were buried in an excrementitious Mass and though the benign influences of Heaven had given them much vertue yet could not they exert it even so a Man whilst he is detained in the impure Prison of old Adam he can produce no good and laudable action But before I proceed further in the practical explication of these things I must return to my begun-order to wit that after I have given the definition of Separation and declared of how many kindes it is that now I may shew what these kindes are whence things proceed to be separated and whence this separative vertue arises And I have sufficiently demonstrated That there are in Bodies two parts the one is an Excrement the other substance the one accidental and the other substantial for substance simply considered is wholly pure and without Corruption but an Excrement wholly impure mixing it self with the substance and contaminating and subverting its purity The Generation and Formation of substance is sufficiently detected in the two first Chapters of this Book it now rests that I explain the Nature and Qualities of Excrements where I infer from the aforesaid Narration that nothing but Excrements should be separated supposing this for undeniable That amongst passible things in this sublunary World nothing is void and free from Excrements for when God separated the parts of the World he commanded That some should descend to the lowest Region as partaking of the grosness of the first matter and that they should there congregate amongst themselves and of this feculent Mass the Earth was formed which is nevertheless indued with some part of pure substance though diffused through its thick crassitude after that Phoebus had slain the monstrous Python swelled up with poysonous humours which was generated of the mud of the Earth that is when the innate siccity had imbibed the superfluous humidity by the operation of natural heat the Earth begun to feel the actions of this substance included in its brest which substance is that spirituous matter which is never idle but alwayes imployed about Generations and Vivifications which may here be properly called the Earth because the proper and vertuous substance of the Earth is that alone that by proper corporation generates all Bodies according to individual Idea's as I have described it in this Ode out of which I shall take what is convenient for my purpose L' esprit porte sur la face De ceste indigeste masse L' aen virounant tout auâ—our Feit separer la matiere Pesante de la legiere Et la noire nuict du jour Puis de l'humour a masse Le corps plus pesant fâ—oid Feit la roundeur compasse Que d'un serrement estroit L'eau ou l'air contrebalance D'un poids si ferme egal Que sans souffrir mesme mal Ne peur choir en decadence Puis versant l'ame an dedans Et les semences du monde La feit nurisse fâ—conde Du ciel des feux ardens When yet the world did in a Chaos lie The Spirit full of fiery heat did flie About the surface of this shapeless Mass And so fomented it that what erst was One lump without all form did now begin By Separation which was wrought therein By this same Spirit a multitude to make Of Bodies and likewise of forms to take A number almost numberless and now Light things ascend and heavy things below The centre seek to pass the day breaks out And all the ponderous reliques press about The centre where staying themselves they make Around terraqueous Globe which nought can shake Out of its place for 't is on every side Equally balanced and cannot slide Seeing no over-weight presses one part More then another hereto the Stars impart Their influences which by life and seed Make this great Nurse all things to keep and breed And seeing in this Universal Separaâ—ion that which is more fiery and subâ—ile chuses the higher Seat and â—hat which is gross and massy the â—owest it follows that Celestial Bodies â—re immortal as being most remote â—nd separate from all immund Dregs â—nd that they are crooked or excavated â—â—to rotundity because they flew up at â—nce for which cause also Nature desires a round form for eternal things aâ— being most perfect and indeficient anâ— on the contrary it follows that Terrestrial things must be obnoxious 〈◊〉 corruption and death because contrâ—ries are conjoyned in their compositioâ— to wit Elements of contrary qualitieâ— wherewith the impurities or dregs 〈◊〉 the first matter were mixed which weâ—â— not created pure as some imagine sâ—â—â— then all that proceeded from theâ— would be immortal nay more theâ— could have been no Generation in 〈◊〉 World for without contrariety 〈◊〉 qualities and impurities there 〈◊〉 been no alteration nor mutation 〈◊〉 forms but all would have had one faâ—â— without distinction all things wouâ—â—â— have remained equally pure and subtile and consequently without all ornamenâ— yea that I may speak freely there hâ—â—â— been neither matter nor World createâ—â— It was therefore necessary That the suâ—tile substance should be mixed with groâ—â— dregs for where nothing but purity 〈◊〉 there is no action because there can 〈◊〉 no action where there is no patieâ—â— seeing what is pure hath no power oâ— what is as pure nor impure over as impure But Nature being always occupied in separating the pure from the impure for the preservation of its essence and vital encrease hath this substance mixed with impurity for its sole subject which retaining the state and Nature of its Creation is not nourished multiplied or augmented save with the nutrition multiplication and accretion of Excrements which are not consubstantial with it but onely Companions and Sisters of its nativity And that these things are so such have experienced who by Divine Inspiration have