faculties but two distinct parts viz. the inferior or outward which by peculiarity of appellation he denominates the Soul and the Superior or inward which he entitleth the profundity of the Soul or Spirit in which he affirmeth the Image of God to be comprehended since therein is seated the Kingdom of Heaven and therefore the Devil can obtain no access unto it And to each of these parts he hath assigned several acts and proprieties mutually distinct each from other But alas this holy man expungeth that simple homogeneity of the Soul wherein she ought principally to express the similitude of the Deity or at least hath hitherto denied the Image of God to be propagated and diffused through not onely the whole man but even through the whole Soul Verily the ears of my Faith are not easily open to this Doctrine of the Duality of the immortal Soul nor the alterity of those two parts especially when in her essence the Soul ought to resemble the Image of the most simple Divine Nature I should much rather assent that the minde of man doth carry the resemblance of the most immense Godhead in the most simple unity and indivisible Homogeneity of spirit under the symbol of immortality of indissolution and identity beyond all connexion or alterity Wherefore my assertion is that the glorious Image of God is neither separate nor separable from the Soul but the very minde is the very Image of God fully so intimate to the Soul as the Soul is to her self that is the Image of God is the Soul of the Souls essence and for that reason that no sober head can conceive or express any the least analogy essential betwixt the supream increated Ens and the soul of man since the nature of Divinity is wholly incomprehensible and the most subtile thought can never finde any character of identity and unity with God impressed upon the minde whereon the similitude should be founded Sufficient it is that the minde is a spirit dearly beloved of God homogeneous simple immortal created after the Image of the immense Deity a single Ens to which death can adde and from which Death can detract nothing that is proper and genial unto it in the essence of its simplicity And in regard the Soul in the primitive constitution and destination of its essence is participant of beatitude therefore is damnation supervenient to it by accident besides the originary decree of Creation by reason of a succeeding defection This Semideity the Soul thus nobly enriched with science when once enfranchized from her prison the body doth then for ever suspend all use of memory and no longer makes use of the tedious induction of Reminiscence intuition of place or duration but being single in that homogeneal simplicity comprehendeth all things For which reason should any Memory remain to the Soul after her flight from Earth it would of necessity be not onely frustraneous and useless but burdensom when it must eclipse her transcendent actual intellection And from Reminiscence must arise the same inconvenience since that can never be invited into act but by the circumambages and complex discourse of Reason and therefore it possesseth no room in Eternity where in the full prospect of verity without being subject to declination defatigation or defect the soul standeth exalted far above the necessity of Recognition The inference is that the Soul must be constituted in beatitude understand in her primitive destination without the conjunction of the forementioned Ternary of Faculties and so in that analogy cannot resemble the Image of the incomprehensible Deity for the sole representation whereof she was created Yea upon a more intimate scrutiny I do not finde the Memory to be any singular and distinct power of the Soul but onely the bare manner of recognition For such who have shallow memories to relieve this infirmity do by the help of the imagination Vicegerent to the intellect contrive for themselves an artificial memory and that far more retentive then otherwise their natural memory could have been Moreover the Will also taketh an eternal farewel of the Soul in death why because it is not essential but accidentally advenient to the Soul Since God so soon as he had finished his Creation of man constituted him in the absolute power of his own Free Will which in sober truth according to my apprehension doth plainly import that the Will is not by any peculiar manner essential to the Soul from the first of her Creation but onely annexed to her by way of concession or trust as a talent to the hand of a servant to this end that man might have free power to choose what path best liked him to unravel his life in Otherwise I deny not but in the whole scene of things there can be no one more pernicious then a free and unregulated will as being that onely which introduceth all variance and discord betwixt God and man This faculty therefore must be for ever exiled from the beatitude of Eternity for the liberty of willing being taken away the will it self doth also of necessity perish and of what use can the power of Volition be when there is no longer remaining any occasion to will And on this basis the Schoolmen found their doctrine that in Heaven the will is confirmed or rather wholly evacuated by death that is the beatified Souls in Paradise have no power to will nor will to will but what is conform to the will of the highest and those who are compleat in Charity and Glory retain no power of willing any thing which is not of Charity The Will therefore expires when the liberty of Volition is dissolved and by sequel the Will can be no essential but temporary and caduce power of the Soul since it cannot be of use or advantage to that Soul which in the consummation of beatitude and highest fruition hath suffered an utter evacuation of desire and hope when it can no more be deduced into act but must be a bare optation which cannot be admitted in the state of bliss where is a full satiety and abundant possession of all desiderable good Sufficient let it be for us by the power of Volition in this life to thesaurize or make provision for the life to come Now after this transitory power of Volition is abolished in the next life there springeth up and manifesteth it self a substantial Will in no respect an alien to the intellect and essence of the minde and therefore having a being absolutely distinct from the accidental and variable Will For as the Imagination is aliened in Phrensies distracted in perturbations of the Animal Faculty and eternally suspended at the disunion of the Soul and body even so is the power of Free Will for ever abrogated by death And thus I came to beleeve that the Image of God in man is seated in the spiritual substance of the Soul and not in the ternary of its Faculties In a word the
our will and operate not in conformity to the diâ—… ates of reason have deeply impressed upon themselves a certaine Character of revenge and hence is it that at the approach of the assassine the bloud whose fountaine death had sealed up begins a tumultuation and ebullition in the veines and violently gusheth forth being as in a furious fit of anger enraged and agitated by the image or impresse of revenge conceived against the murderer at the instant of the soules immature and compulsive exile from the body For indeed the bloud after death retaines a peculiar sense of the murderer being present and enjoyes a certaine though obscure kind of revenge because it hath its peculiar phansie and for this reason not Abel himselfe but his innocent bloud cries loud in the eares of divine justice for revenge This also is the cause why the Plague is so frequent a concomitant to seidges and why the beleaguered see the revenge of their dead acted upon their enemies by the surviving Magick of their friends bloud for the magicall spirit of the inward man in the heat of the encounters sallyes hath conceived a character and impression of revenge and sometimes the defendants especially th common Souldier being by want and other extreame miseries reduced to desperation and man and wife conjoyned as well in death as life falling into the cold armes of the grave bequeath heavie imprecations and maledictions to the surviving Officers who engaged them in the calamity and might had their charity been but halfe so weighty as their wealth have relieved their famine by which earnest curse there are more strong and durable impressions engraven on the sidereall-spirit of the dying man chiefly of a great bellyed woman which survive the funerall of the body This posthume spirit call it Ghost if you please immediately after death taking a vagabond progresse in the lower region of the ayre applies it selfe to the contrivement of such spirituall means of revenge and ruine as lye within the sphear of its activity and having once designed the way most readily advances to execution And Plagues of this originall are most fatall aswell in the universality of contagion as destruction sparing no sex age or constitution but impartially blasting all as if immediately shot from the quiver of incensed Divinity But our pen is tender and feares to divulge the mysterious cause why such spirituall plagues scorne to obey the empty and frustaneous help of corporeal remedies for to reveale the reciprocall connexion of mumies the concordance of their interchangeable and cooperating faculties might prove unsafe and offensive to vulgar heads in regard of the whole Nectromancy of the Antients was originally founded on this basis For the same reason also God in the Levitical Law severely prohibited the suspension of the bodies of Malefactors upon the Gibbet expresly commanding their remove before the Sun went downe upon them You will answer that Camp-plagues are generated from the odious and unwholsome nastinesse of the Souldier and from the unburied excrements of men and entrails of beasts polluting the ayre with putrid and malignant vapours but to this erroneous opinion we oppose the example of Coriars Tanners and such who imploy their industry in the sordid manufacture of glew made of skins dissolved by putrefaction for all these are observed for the most part so farre are they from being obnoxious to the infection of the Plague to enjoy the blessings of health and longavity so conspicuous and admirable is the finger of Divinity in the spirit of the Microcosmé Doe you desire to be informed why the blood of a Bull is toxicall and poysonous but that of an Oxe though brother to the Bull safe and harmelesse the reason thus the Bull at the time of slaughter is full of secret reluctancy and vindictive murmurs and firmly impresseth upon his owne blood a character and potent signature of revenge But if it chance that an Oxe brought to the slaughter fall not at one stroke of the Axe but grow enraged and furious and continue long in that violent madnesse then he leaves a depraved and unwholsome tincture on his flesh unlesse he be first recalmed and pacified by darknesse and famine A Bull therefore dyes with a higher flame of revenge about him then any other Animall whatever and for that transcendent excandescence his fat but by no meanes his blood lest the humane blood in the unguent be subdued and overawed by this exotique tincture of the Bulls blood is an ingredient wholly necessary to the composition of the Armary unguent where the weapons which made the wound are not besprinkled with the blood of the Patient For if we expect a perfect cure from the dressing of the weapon truely the mosse and other its fellow ingredients will prove insufficient to worke a cure when the weapon is not distained with blood effused from the wound Since there is required a more violent and efficacious namely a taurine impression and an aëreall communication of florid honey And thus have wee to the satisfaction of the most incredulous and prejudicate made it out that the admirable efficacy of the Unguent ought to be imputed not to any auxiliary concurrence of Satan who could performe the cure without the use of honey and Bulls blood but to the communion of Naturall qualities by the energy of the posthume Character of Revenge remaining firmly impressed upon the blood and concreted fat Our Adversaries will whisper and secretly exult that the power of our Magnetical Unguent could have hardly been supported but by Analogical Arguments drawn from the abstruse operations of Witches from the impostures of Satan and the spiritual magick of the invisible world which is a science onely imaginary of no solid concernment or weight in the ballance of reason and a dangerous if not damnable error Nevertheless not any sinister obliquity or perversion of truth nor any indirect design in us by specious similitudes to impose upon the weaker credulities of the illiterate but the gross ignorance of others and the deplorable condition of humane fragility which by the propensity of our vitiated nature more readily inclines to evil more nimbly apprehends evil and is more familiarly instructed by evil then good hath compulsively directed our pen to observe this method in the explanation and probation of our thesis However what we have represented in this scene concerning Satan and his familiar Zany the Witch affords no encouragement or ground for others to hope a perfect conformity or resemblance of the power of our Unguent with that of Witches for neither the spiritual faculty of the Vnguent nor the ecstatique phansie of the blood are excited by the manuduction or impulsion of Satan The mark we shot at was that there is inhabitant in the Soul a certain Magical Virtue infused by the primitive bounty of her Creator naturally proper and of right belonging to her by that just title that Man is the image and
Helmont accompanied with his excellent Notes candid Animadversions and opportune Enlargement HElmont though dead is now reviv'd Your Pen Like Aesons Bath instill's fresh youth agen Into his pale and elemental Clay His Tomb By your fair Midwifery becom's a Womb From whose now re-impregnate sperm He Buds forth into a second Infancy Your Sheets new swath him Sir where he appears More vigorous in this youth then in his years We 're now convinc'd that Sympathies combine At distance that dispersed Mumies twine That Nature on one string like coupled Beads Her Rosary of twisted Causes threads Since what of those he first asserted true Gathers new strength and Argument from you Those active Flames which thaw'd your Brain do thence Espouse his widowed Earth with Heat and Sense Those Spirits which that publike Mint o' th' Blood The Liver back retails to th'purple Flood Still through their azure Limbecks and entrust New Sap and Verdure to his wither'd Dust. Sure when the Soul of Helmont shook away The Frippery and Luggage of her Clay She seem'd to steal into your Brest and there To fix herself as in her second Sphere Yet lest two inmate Souls both so immense They cannot be unactive chain'd in Sense Or close immur'd in walls of Flesh should rent Uncircumscrib'd the brittle Tenement They virtually diffuse themselves and come Into this Book by an Effluvium Within whose Pages they 'l joynt Tenants dwell As in some nere to be demolisht Cell And when the Wardrobe of your Dust shall be Dispers'd themselves into more Dust then ye This to your Names from Times impressions safe Shall stand at once both Urn and Epitaph Thom. Philipot OF THE MAGNETICK CURE OF WOUNDS 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Summary 1. FAscination Sympathy and Magnetisme differ 2. The Sympathetick Unguent one the Magnetick another 3. Mumie what 4. Philosophy immediately subject to the reprehension of reason onely 5. The difference of Law and Philosophy 6. From an ignorance of the Cause Magnetism ascribed to the Devill 7. Who the interpreters of Nature 8. Why Chymicks only fit to unridle the mysterious oracles of Nature 9. He is tacitely guilty of pride who from an ignorance of the cause beleeves a Naturall effect to be Diabolicall 10. Who are the Devils Flatterers 11. Magnetisme no new invention 12. The Armary Unguent 13. The intention scope ingredients and manner of the application of the Unguent good 14. The Unguent why not unlawfull 15. Nor superstitious 16. Superstition what 17. Why the manner of the Unguents operation unknown to the Censor concludes nothing against it 18. Magnetisme what 19. Some effects of the Loadstone 20. The Magneticall cure of otherwise incurable diseases perfect 21. Milk burned dryes up the breasts 22. Vitrioll destroyed by Magnetism 23. Mumie operates from Italy as far as Bruxels 24. The Carline Thistle in the shadow attracteth wonderfully 25. The same numericall disease may change subjects 26. From Magnetism flowers follow the Sun 27. Mumiall Philtres how they may be magneticall 28. The secret mystery of the blood is the Chymist's Loadstone 29. Herbs how and why magneticall 30. Asarabacca and Elder magneticall 31. An implicit compact the refuge of the ignorant 32. Sympathy praesupposeth sense 33. The Mumie of a dead brother long since impressed upon a chaire yet magneticall 34. A Saphire in magnetisme rivals the Unguent 35. A Saphire by the touch of one Carbuncle cures many others 36. Why the grand Praelates of the Church wear caerule rings 37. Man hath a magnetick virtue 38. A Zenexton or Amulet against the Plague 39. Necessary it is that one and the same Accident passe from subject to subject 40. Magnetisme a coelistiall quality 41. A thiefe or murderer and an honest man or woman yeeld the same mosse 42. Whence and what the seed of the mosse 43. The fruit of the aër 44. The mosse a production of fire 45. In the mosse also is the back of the magnet the scope being changed 46. God in miracles follows the course of Nature 47. God by reliques approves the Magnetisme of the Unguent 48. Supernaturall Magnetisme warranteth naturall 49. A lock of the mosse worn in the forehead is defence against a sword but of the stole of Saint Hubert against the biting of a mad dog 50. A lock neatly inserted into the forehead is a praeservative during life from the biting of a mad dog 51. Pepper degenerateth into Ivy. 52. How we are to judge of persons 53. Paracelsus the Monarch of Secrets 54. Every thing hath its peculiar heaven 56. Whence every naturall inclination 57. Whence diseases are astrall in man and portend foule weather 51. Whence diseased men have a foreknowledge of tempests 59. What causeth the flux and reflux of the Sea 60. Whence the winds are stirred up 61. The heavens doe not cause but onely denounce future events 62. Every seminall Entity hath its own peculiar firmament and the virtue of its influence 63. The Vine not the stars troubleth the Wine 64. Antimony observes an influence 65. The Loadstone directeth it selfe but is not attracted to the pole 66. Glasse magneticall 67. Rosin magneticall 68. The power of Garlick over a Loadstone and why the same over Mercury 69. The power operative on a distant object is naturall even in sublunaries and magneticall 70. Every Creature lives suo modo by the peculiar information of his own essentiall forme 71. What the Unguent can attract from the wound at distance 72. Every Satanicall effect is imperfect 73. Why Satan cannot cooperate with our Unguent 74. What may be called the will and phansie of the flesh and of the outward man 75. A twofold Ecstasy 76. The ecstatique virtue of the blood 77. Corruption educeth that dormant virtue into action 78. The essences of things not subject to Corruption 79. The designe of Spagyricall putrefaction 80. The Cause of Magnetisme in the Unguent 81. The heart attracted by treasure magnetically 82. The originall of Necromancy 83. What man is in the notion of Animal and what in the notion of the Image of God 84. How an Eagle is invited by the magnetism of a Carcase 85. How the blood in the Unguent is allected to its treasure and why Eagles flock together to a Carcase magnetically 86. Sensation Animal and Sensation Naturall different 87. The effects of Witches impious 88. The power of the Witch is Naturall and what that power is 89. Where in Man the magicall power is seated 90. Whether man hath a dominion paramount over all other Creatures 91. Why a man is indowed with a power of acting per nutum 92. The magicall faculty of man what 93. This magicall activity lyes ambuscadoed in man severall wayes 94. The inward man the same with the outward fundamentally but materially diverse 95. What is the Vitall spirit its science and endowment 96. In a Carcase extinct by a voluntary death there is no inhaerent spirit 97. The division of spirits according to the doctrine of Physicians 98. The Soule operates
of Quality but all the Predicaments are found in every particular disease Since indeed it may be lawful to accommodate names to things but not things to names The Heliotropian or Solisequous Flowers are wheeled about after the Sun by a certain Magnetism not for his heat whose comfort they may long after for in a cloudy and cold day they imitate the rhythme of the Sun nor for his light are they the Lacqueis of the Sun for in the dark night when they have deserted him they face about from the West to the East You will not account this Diabolical in regard you have another subterfuge at hand namely the harmony of superior bodies with inferior and a faculty attractive purely celestial and no way communicable to sublunaries As though the Microcosm unworthy this heavenly prerogative could in his blood and moss observe and correspond to no revolution of the Planets I might here with pertinence discourse of Philters or amorous Medicines which require a Mumial Confermentation that the affection and desire of the minde may be forcibly drawn and rapt on to one determinate object But on a sober consult with thought it seems more advised to supersede that theme when I shall first have mentioned this one observation I know an Herb commonly obvious which if it be rubbed and cherished in thy hand until it wax warm you may hold fast the hand of another person until that also grow warm and he shall continually burn with an ardent love and fixt dilection of thy person for many days together I held in my hand first bathed in the steam of this love-procuring plant the foot of a Dog for some few minutes The Dog wholly renouncing his old Mistress instantly followed me and courted me so hotly that in the night he lamentably howled at my Chamber door that I should open and admit him There are some now living in Bruxels who are witnesses to me and can attest the truth of this fact For the heat of a mans hand warming and resolving the plant I say not a bare simple and solitary heat but excited and impregnate with a certain effluvium or emanation of spirits natural doth peculiarly determine and individuate the vertue of the plant to himself and by this ferment communicated to a second person doth by Magnetism allect the spirit of that person and subdue him to love I omit the cures of many diseases which the Arcanum the mystery of humane blood doth Magnetically perform For unless the blood yea the very sanies or purulent effluxions from Wounds and Ulcers the Urine and that subtle effluvium which by insensible transpiration evaporates through the pores of the skin did continually exhaust and carry with them some part of the vital spirit and unless these had also some participation of vitality and conspiracy with the whole body after their remove from the whole concretum Undoubtedly the life of man could not be so short For indeed this is the cause of our intestine calamity and that principle of death we carry about us ambuscadoed in the very principles of life The Herbs Arsemart or Water Pepper Cumfry Chirurgeons Sophia or Flixweed Adders tongue and many other of the Vulnerary tribe have this peculiar endowment that if when cold they are steept in water for an Oke felled when the North wind blows will grow verminous and rotten if not instantly sunk under water and then applied to a Wound or Ulcer until they grow warm and after buried in a muddy uliginous Earth when they begin to putrifie they then operate upon and draw from the Patient whatever is evil superfluous and hurtful to him And this the Herbs perform not while they grow in the earth nor so long as they remain in their primitive and pristine form for necessary it is that the grain be mortified that it may bring forth fruit but in the putrefaction of their Corporeities for the Essential virtues being then as it were released from the prison and impediments of the corporeal matter do put forth and freely execute that Magnetism which otherwise had lain dormant and enchained and according to the contagion and impression received from the wounded or ulcerated part powerfully suck out much of the remaining evil though seated deeply and at great distance in the body If any one in gathering the leaves of Asarabecca shall pluck them upward they will perform their operation respectively and purge any third person that is wholly ignorant of that positional traction by vomit onely but if in gathering they be wrested downward they then will purge onely by stool Here at least can be no suspect of superstition for what need I here to mention any thing of Imagination when your selves concede that by the power of imagination nothing can be acted upon a third object especially where that third object is utterly ignorant of the position which the decerpent used Will you again take hold of the sacred anchor of ignorance and accuse this secret of an implicite Compact with Satan But herein lurks no vain observance chiefly when the decerptor shall have the assument being wholly inscious of the position pluckt off the leaves either upward or downward Doubtless besides Asarum and the extremities or clusters of Elder no other Cathartick Medicines are enriched with this propriety for they in what position soever collected from the plant do ever operate univocally that is either constantly upwards or constantly downwards according to the destination of their gifts But in Asarum in the integral plant there sensibly appears a Magnetical propriety and so it doth variously endow its leaves according to the sense of their decerption That not onely plants but also almost all created Entities have a certain adumbration of sense or obscure sensibility they largely declare as well by Sympathy as Antipathy which presuppose and cannot consist without sense maintained amongst themselves which satisfactorily to manifest shall be the subject of some succeeding lines A second Fit of the Gout surprized a Noble Matron of my acquaintance after the first paroxysm had gone off and left her and thenceforward the Gout by an unwonted recidivation and periodical recourse infested her without remission for many moneths together But she not apprehending whence so violent and unexpected a return of the disease had happened to her at length she rising from her bed as often as the fury of the fit by intervals somewhat remitted reposed her self in a Chair wherein a brother of hers many years past and in another City cruelly tortured with the Gout was wont to sit she instantly found that from thence the disease did awake and afresh invade her This effect likewise is on no pretence whatever to be ascribed to Imagination or doubt since both these were much yonger then the effect But if it hapned that any third person subject to the Gout sate in the same Chair to him there succeeded not any reincrudation of the disease For which reason
conclude all the brain is consumed and dissolved in the scull by the continual irroration and imbibing of which precious liquor I mean that of the brain the scull acquires such virtues which we have discovered to be wanting to the other bones I have sufficiently known the customes of contradicents For when they have nothing more of moment to alleage against the thing disputed of they become the more contumelious break forth into reproaches and fall foul upon the person of him that is their adversary in opinion Wherefore it may be some or other will exclaim that Magnetism is some new fangle invented onely by Paracelsus but that he was a lewd dissolute and ignorant fellow And again if there had been any such excellent virtue in nature it could not have remained in darkness and undiscovered to so many ages and its revealment have been suspended till the advent of Paracelsus As concerning the reproaches and scurrilous subsannations of many shower'd down upon the head of a man that was the Ornament of Germany I answer that they are empty vain and below a sober thought and do no more then render the assertor of them more indign and contemptible then before as one that earnestly endevours to condemn not onely the living but the dead also For there is no reason why I an unequal Orator who have undertaken the Encomium of no man should fall upon the praise of him for those things which his own monuments hold forth to the world concerning his learning wisdom and divinely infused endowments but I come directly to ballance the invective arguments themselves This Objection therefore is barren of any thing but pride since it insolently dares to assume the condemnation not onely of the living and dead but even of God himself namely that he ought not to have infused the knowledg of so divine a secret into Paracelsus but some other person some Jesuite perhaps nor to have manifested so great a consonancy and harmony of Nature in the days of Paracelsus but much earlier in the infancy of the world But I beseech you why came Ignatius Loyola so late and in the evening of the world to be the founder and establisher of a Society so useful and profitable to the whole world Why did he not spring up and appear many ages sooner Alas wretched man whither doest thou hurry thy self by presumption Is not God the free and unconstrained giver of his own benefit and doth not he delight himself in an undeserved donation of it Himself has vouchsafed to bequeath us a touch-stone by which we may give infallible judgment of the persons of men namely that we shall know them by their works But what the works of Paracelsus were and how much greater then all expectation of Nature and the mordacity of malevolent tongues his own Epitaph by the most illustrious and most reverend Prelate the Bishop of Saltzburg appensed to that well deserved Monument of his doth in despite of envy sufficiently declare THE Epitaph of PARACELSVS Engraven in stone at Saltzburg in the Hospital of Saint Sebastian on the erect Wall of the Temple COnditur hic Philippus Theophrastus insignis Medicinae Doctor qui dira illa vulnera Lepram Podagram Hydropisim aliaque insanabilia corporis Contagia mirifica arte sustulit ac bona sua in pauperes distribuenda collocandaque honoravit Anno 1541. die 24 Septembris vitam cum morte mutavit HEre entombed is Phillipus Theophrastus a famous Doctor of Physick who by his wonder-working Art took away those mortal wounds the Leprosie Gout Hydropsie and other incurable contagions of the body and ordained his goods to be distributed and given to the poor In the yeer 1541. on the 24 day of September he made an exchange of life for death Paracelsus therefore is so far from having deserved ill in that he hath revealed Magnetism unknown to Antiquity and in the room of that study of Natural wisdom which with great barrenness is taught abroad in publick Schools introduced another more solid and real one which by the Analysis and Synthesis the diacritical resolution of heterogeneal and syncritical conjunction of homogeneal bodies is made probable and brought home to a familiarity with our sense and yeelds a more wealthy harvest of knowledg that thence he hath rather by a just title won the denomination of the Monarch of secrets from all his predecessors unless with those that malign him we as ignorant Judges discommend all his good actions and disparage those benefits he accumulated upon pious uses I am thus a man i. e. this is the prerogative of my humanity all things appear cheap and light in the ballance of my reason that pretend to a dominion over my belief by no stronger title then that of Custom onely Since there is nothing that enshrowds our mindes in a greater mist of error and seduction then that we are conformed to Custom out of an easie and ungenerous credulity submitting our assent to rumor and the dreams of the multitude We are therefore gallantly to attempt the emancipation of our faith from the tyranny and pedantism of popular tradition to pursue the liberty of our intellectuals and to enjoy not enslave the habilities of our judgment You may again plead that in Sublunaries there is no influential virtue that can be paralleld to the impressions of Superlunaries but if you shall stumble at this stone you will at the same instant fall upon the reprehension of all those learned men who have taken the direct path to Philosophy since they have rightly observed to us that in inferior bodies there is an inference or tribute delivered down from superior and reciprocally an analogy or resemblance of inferior in celestial bodies Do not Herbs Animals and diseased men foreknow and presage the future mutations of times and seasons Are we not to expect so much the harder Winter by how much the deeper cave or lodging the Frog hath scraped in the earth to harbor himself in the succeeding Winter For from this ground proceed the Meteorical Auguries not indeed that those prophesies of weather arise from the too early and yet future motion of the stars in regard it would then follow that that motion must cause this presagous sensation long before its own contingency Far be it from a sober head to dream so palpable an absurdity For the firmament does onely denounce future events but has no hand in their Causation But indeed every single created nature contains its peculiar heaven within the sphear of its own dimensions and holds within it self the rotation or revolution of that heaven dependent on its seminal Entity in whose spirit which comprehends the Caelature or Idea of the whose in landskip there is comprised its own peculiar heaven and moreover it s own ascendents Nor is there why you should conceive that we by this doctrine stagger and demolish the Fabrick of Astrology but rather that we elucidate and render it more
effluxion of Wounds c. and the Magnetick endowment of some consists onely in this that they can onely extract the pestilential Atomes from the centrals of an infected body c. Yea if you shall annex the sanation in our Unguent to your own Argument your own weapon will wound you For from thence that the genuine effect of the Unguent is to cure perfectly speedily without pain without cost danger and decay of strength Hence I say it results a manifest truth that the Magnetical virtue of the Unguent is simply natural and proceeds from God and not from Satan The reason thus if Satan did cooperate to this Cure according to your assertion the chrâ—…â—…ould of necessity be imperfect attended with great amission of strength an universal languor and enervation of the body manifest hazard of life a difficil and at best a tedious convalescence an alienation of the minde a laesion of some more noble faculty and success of some notable misfortune All which events as they are ever annexed to Diabolical cures so are they never observed to follow upon a cure wrought by our Unguent Our appeal lies to Experience for so many as ever received a cure by the Unguent will freely give in their testimony on our side Now Satan is no Oracle that delivers truths no Counsellor to good unless with design to insinuate his delusions the smoother and cannot but betray himself by this that he never long continues in the truth he so speciously pretended for always when he has been an instrument of any good constant to the hostility of his nature he in the close tempers his favor with a larger allay of evil And introth the same method would he according to the custom of his malicious friendship have observed in the Unguent had he been interessed as an Author or Fautor either as Principall or Accessory at least this remedy would then have failed and become evirate when the wounded patient is rescued from the jaws of death and reprieved from the Gates of Hell who otherwise tainted with the mortal contagion of sin would by reason of his dangerous wound have poured forth his soul together with his blood unless perchance you seek to evade by saying that Satan in that Crisis that punctilio of danger suffered a change of his cruelty into compassion devested himself of his essential and inveterate enmity and put on the good Samaritan nay fell not onely to commiserate but even dress the wounds of humanity and that he hath acquired some interest some jurisdiction over the wounded patient himself leaves doubtful and open to dispute in that he preserves him by the Magnetical Unguent whom he had rather should perish It may be that Satan is in your esteem now held a strict and punctual observer of his word and bargain and no longer a turncoate fraudulent dissembler and perjured impostor Besides we positively deny that your supposition can carry weight in the ballance of truth that the blood once extravenated continues uncorrupt and conserves its interest of vitality but rather that it is deprived of all community and participation of life and immediately undergoes some degree of corruption but that it obtains onely a Mumial vitality To this purpose conduces the corrupted and yet magnetical blood in an Eg. Wherefore I pass by the absurdity of your objection since it hath been so bold as to wrest the Magnet of the Unguent to another intention then that which the wise bounty of God in the primitive decree of his counsel ordained it unto The Positive Reasons of Magnetism more neerly brought home to our knowledg by Metaphysical and Magical principles OPportunity now invites us to discover the grand and approximate cause of Magnetism in the Vnguent First by the consent of mystical Divines we divide man into the external and internal man assigning to each distinct part the powers of a certain minde or informative principle for in this disjunctive acception there is a will competent to flesh and blood which properly is neither the will of man nor the will of God and our heavenly Father reveals some things to the inward man and some things are revealed by flesh and blood that is the outward man in the single and abstracted relation of Animal For how can the adoration of idols envy and other such branches arising from the root of Corcupiscence be justly listed amongst the works of the flesh since they consist onely in the imagination if to the flesh also there did not peculiarly belong an Imaginative faculty and an elective will Again that there are miraculous Ecstasies competent to the inward man is a tenet true beyond the dispute or haesitation of a Sceptick And that there are also Ecstasies in the outward man is unquestionable by the most impudent infidelity Yea Martin Delrio an Elder of the Society of Jesu in his Magical Disquisitions brings in a certain youth in the City Insulis rapt with so intense and violent cogitation and ardent desire to see his mother that as if transported by an high Ecstasie he saw her many leagues distant and returning again to himself perfectly remembred all things his fancy met with in this more-then Pisgah Vision and reported many signes to attest his real and presential visit of his mother Many such examples occur to our quotidian observance which in conformity to our purpose of brevity we with industry omit But that this desire did arise from the outward man namely from flesh and blood is most certain for otherwise the soul once disliged and enfranchised from the body can never unless by miracle be again reunited to it Therefore in the blood there dwells a certain Ecstatical power which if at any time it shall be excited by an earnest and ardent desire is able to transport and on the immaterial wings of fancy waft the spirit of the outward man to some determinate object though at vast distance removed but this Ecstatical faculty lies dormant in the outward man as in potentia in hability nor is it deduced into act unless first rouzed and excited by the imagination accensed and exalted by fervent desire or some other art equivalent to affection Moreover when the blood has undergone some gradual corruption then and not till then are all the powers of it which before lay lock't up in potentia and slept in an unactive hability awakened and called forth to action without any praevious excitation of the imagination For by corruption of the grain the seminal virtue otherwise drowsie torpent and steril springs forth into the act of fertility For since the essences of things and their principles of vitality know no obedience to the tyranny of corruption by the dissolution of the inferior harmony the separation of their corporal Heterogeneities they awake into a vigorous activity and freely execute the commission of their faculties And from hence is it that every occult propriety the compage of their bodies being by certain
the science of the aple is suspended and chained up in the leaden fetters of sleep hence it is also that sometimes our dreams are propheticall and that often God himself vouchsafeth to make a neerer approach and familiar visit to the sons of men in dreams or abstracted visions of the night for when the interior magick of the Soule stands unmolested and free from any disturbance of the Science of the interdicted fruit then and onely then doth the intelligence keep holy-day enjoy an halcyon Calme and freely diffuse its selfe through all its royaltie for thus doth it when it demergeth it self into the inferiour and subordinate faculties safely conduct and lead along those that walk in their sleep over such horrid praecipices where the strongest brained man awake durst not adventure to clime Whereupon the senior Rabbies of the Jews affirme that the Cabal was originally conceived in sleep namely when the science of the Aple was wholly consopited The intellectuall act of the Soule is ever clear enjoys a constant Jubile of calme serenity and continues in some sort perpetuall but so long as the principall Agent hath not transmitted its power so farre as the limits of Sense this kinde of action is not diffused through the whole man For we who are wholly imployed and taken up with the exercise of our sensitive Facultie together with our Carnall intelligence are perpetually oh misery worthy a deluge of teares distracted and impetuously hurryed away from the use and benefit of our more coelestial Magical science and held captives rather in the crepusculous and owle-light of congnition then in the Meridian of truth Nor do we the inhabitants of Aegyptian darknesse understand our own intellection untill there succeed a certaine mutuall traduction of the severall faculties a successive delivery of the image of the object from each to other and untill as it were certain angles of actions propagated by divers agents concurre and become complicated about the Medium Now Saran excites this Magicall power otherwise dormant and impeded by the Science of the outward man in his vassals and the same awaked into activity serves them in stead of a sword or instrument of revenge in the hand of a potent adversary that is the Witch Nor doth Satan adfer any thing at all to the perpetration of the murder more then the bare excitation of the somnolent power and a consent of the Will which in Witches is for the most part subject to his compulsion for which two contributions the damned miscreant as if the whole energy of the act were soly attributary to himselfe requires by compact a constant homage a firme and irrevocable oppignoration and devout adoration at least and frequently a surrender of the very soule into his possession When intruth this power was freely conferred upon us by God our Architect and is no more then purely naturall to man For those praestigious acts and impostures the effascination by the optick emission of the eyes the false disguises of Witches in borrowed shapes and other delusions of this kind are onely derived from the legerdemain of Satan and his proper acts And for this reason all the operations of this Montinbanco this Hocus-pocus are meerly ridiculous pageant delusions and counterfeit apparitions by the praesentment of formes that delude the sense because the God of mercies permits him not to enjoy any greater range of power but holds this mischievous Leviathan by a hook in his nostrils but on the other side the Witch doth by the magick of her own naturall faculty perform reall and impious effects Since that by sin not the endowments of Nature but of Grace were obliterated in Adam no man disputes and that these gifts of Nature although they were not totally cancelled and lost yet remained eclipsed and as it were envelloped in the obscurity of a midnight sleep For as man from that unhappy moment wherein he forfeited his primitive Soveraignty became inevitably obnoxious to the same fate of mortality together with his fellow creatures so also were all his heroick and imperial faculties withdrawn behind a cloud and so oppressed with the opacity of fleshly lusts that ever since they stand in need of excitement and eduction from that Cimmerian umbrage And to the procuring and advance of this excitation abstracted Contemplations fervent and uncessant Prayers taedious vigils macerating Fasts and other acts of mortification are strong and praevalent conducements that by these spirituall antidotes the Lethargie of flesh and blood being subdued men may obtain this faculty renewed into its primitive agility and in a calme requiem of spirit offer up their addresses to that pure Essence which requires to be worshiped no other way then in purity of spirit that is in the zealous abysse of the Soule the profundity of the inward man To this purpose also mainely conduceth the practice of the Cabal which may restore to the Soule this her naturall and magicall praerogative and rowze it up from the slumber and inchantment of Carnality I will explain my self yet farther like a Mathematician by Examples and assume the very operations of Witches which although of themselves they are full of impiety and horrid mischiefe yet they grow upon the same root indifferently disposed to the production of good or evill fruite namely upon this Magicall facultie For it proclaimes not the majesty of Free-will or the tractate of it if we from thence collect argument concerning a thiefe an assassine a whoremonger an apostate or Witch Grant therefore that a Witch kill a horse in a stable removed at good distance there is some certain naturall power derived from the spirit of the Witch and not from Satan which can oppresse strangle and perish the vitall spirit of the horse Grant that there be two subjects of diseases and death and that one of these is the body wherein every disease takes up its quarters and because all Entities discharge their activities on this as the most passive and flexible men have conjectured that the other spirituall dominion was derived immediately from Satan but the other is the impalpable and invisible Spirit which is constituted in a capacity of suffering every disease perse in its own solitary nature The Spirit once invaded by any forreign hostility and subdued to the obedience of passion the body also cannot but submit to compassion and deuteropathy since every action is terminated in the body for the mind after once it is adliged to the body alwaies flowes downward as when the Palate is misaffected with paine the tongue alwaies tends thither on the designe of relieving it but on the contrary the body may often be assaulted and entered by the force of a disease and yet the spirit remain exempted from sympathy For there is a classis of diseases onely materiall which arise singly from a materiall tincture So various and numerous are the occasions of death that when we have taken the just dimensions of our
frailties we shall finde no ground left us to erect any structure of pride upon The act therefore of the praevious touch of the Witch is purely naturall although the excitation of this magicall virtue depend upon the auxiliary concurrence of Satan in as near an interest as if the Witch had cut the throat of the horse with a sword which Satan had put into her hands This act of the Witch is naturall and corporeall as the other praecedent act is naturall and sprituall For indeed man doth naturally consist no lesse of a spirit then a body nor is there reason why one act should be accounted more naturall then the other or why the body the courser part of man should be allowed a power of action but the spirit the more noble and coelestiall part in its relation of being the Image of God accounted idle unoperative and altogether devoid of any activity peculiar to it self yea the Vitall spirits in most exact propriety of language are the immediate actors of sensation motion memory c. but the body and dead carkasse cannot in any respect whatever owne those faculties wherefore every action stands more relatively and properly regardant to its Agent then to the body which at best is no more then the transitory lodging of the Agent And thus it is evidenced that there passeth a spirituall radius or gleame of magicall virtue from the Witch to the man or horse appointed for destruction according to that Axiome That no action can be done without a due approximation of the Agent to the Patient and a reciprocal unition or marriage of the virtues of each whether the admotion or approximation be corporeall or spirituall which by an example ready provided to our hand we can both prove and illustrate For if the heart which is the presence-chamber of the vitall spirit of a horse slain by a witch taken out of the yet warme and reaking carcase be empaled upon an arrow and roasted upon a broach or carbonadoed immediately the vitall spirit of the witch without the intervention of any other medium and anon the whole witch since not the body but onely the spirit is capable of sensation becomes tormented with the unsufferable pains and cruelty of the fire which truly could by no meanes happen unlesse there praeceded a conjunction or reciprocall intercourse of the spirit of the Witch with the spirit of the horse For the horse after strangulation retaines a certain mumiall virtue so I call it whenever the virtue of the vitall nectar or blood is confermentate with the flesh which is the originary implantate spirit such as is never found resident in bodies that are extinct by voluntary deaths in any chronique disease or other ataxy irregularity or disruption of the inferiour harmony that is the temperament of the body to which the spirit of the Witch is associated as joynt commissioner In the reaking and yet panting heart therefore the spirit of the Witch before it shall by the dissolution of the praecedent conspiracie or divorce of the united spirits by putrefaction have returned backe into her bosome is imprisoned and held captive and the retreat of it praevented by the arrow transfixed and by the torrefaction of both spirits together and hence comes it to passe that the witch is afflicted and throwne into a horrid agony in her sensative spirit This effect admits a change or double construction from the intention of the experiment For if revenge be the motive or incitement to the experimentator then is the effect unwarrantable and inconsistent with the charitable rules of Christianity but if an honest and conscientious designe to compell the Witch to detect her self to betray her to the justice of the Magistrate to procure security to our neighbour and our selves by the remove of so impious blasphemous and nocuous a vassall of Satan that the greater glory to God and peace and benevolence to men may redound from the discovery then undoubtedly the effect cannot be disallowed or condemned by the most rigid precise or puritanicall judgement We are not to conceive that all the spirit of the Witch sallyed forth and transmigrated into the heart of the Horse for so the Witch her selfe had perished falne into an eternall swoune but that there is a certaine univocall participation or identicall traduction of the spirit and vitall light of the Witch in an equall analogie to the Plastique spirit or sole delineator and architect of the most curious and magnificent fabrick of man which in every distinct emission of the geniture or seed is covertly ambuscadoed and propagated sufficient to the procreation of a numerous issue the originary spirit of the father yet remaining unimpaired and conserving its individuall integrity For in sooth that participation and inheritance of the vitall light is magical and a rich and fruitfull communication of the specificall essence by the fertill virtue of that benediction delivered by the Protoplast of all seminall formes Let all Animalls and Vegetalls bring forth seed and hence is it that one individuall seed produceth ten myriads of other seeds aequivalent and as many seminall spirits comprehending the whole specificall essence by the same mysterious way of traduction whereby one Tapor is lighted by the flame of another But what the proper nature of this Magneticall spirit and what the Magicall entity begotten in the wombe of phansie may be I shall more largely declare in the processe of our discourse For it becomes me to retreat from my digression and now to progresse in that path which directly leads to our intended scope Nor is there any pretence of reason why any should conjecture that this reaction or rebound of magicall power upon the heart of the Witch is only imaginary and a chimaera of licentious phanfie or a plainly superstitious and damnable imposture and delusion of Satan since by this token the witch is infallibly detected and volent nolent compelled to appear in publick which in one of our praecedent suppositions we have sufficiently demonstrated to be è diametro opposed to the intention of Satan for the effect holds constantly good and never failes to succeed upon experiment as having its fundamentall causalities laid in reason and the spirituall nature of the inward man but not at all built upon superstitious supporters Hath not many a murdered carcase by the operation of the same magneticall spirit suffered a fresh cruentation upon the Coroners inquest in the presence of the Homicide and very often directed the Magistrate to a just and infallible judgement of the crime although the blood before that minute stood congealed and frozen in its cold rivulets The reason of this life in death this plea of the grave and loud language of silent corruption which hath empuzled the anxious disquisitions of many subtile heads we conceive to be thus in a man dying of a wound the inferiour virtues which are mumiall for these are not subject to the restrint of
that something assumes an ideall entity as its ultimate forme and complement Which perfection once obtained the Spirit which before was purer and more refined then the aethereall aër becomes subtilitated like light and assumes an ambiguous or midle nature between Corporeall substances and incorporeall But it is sent ambassador whithersoever the Will directs it or thither at least whither the innate infallible science of spirits doth command it according to the intentions and scopes of the taskes to be performed the ideall entity therefore being now ready prepared for its journey becomes a light understand it in some latitude of sense and shifting off corporeity confesseth no restraint or circumscriptive laws of places times or dimensions And this refined and exalted semisubstance is neither the Devill nor any effect nor any conspiration of his but a certain spirituall action of the inward man plainly and purely naturall and haereditary to us This mysterious wisdome who ever entertaineth with that solemnity of judgement and praeparation of nature and unpraejudicate thought which becomes the gravity of a mind greedy of magnalities shall easily understand that the materiall world is on all sides governed regulated and coerced by the immateriall and invisible and that all corporeal created natures are placed at the footstoole of man as being subordinate to the regality of his will And this very thing truely is the Cause why even the mumie the fat the mosse and the humane blood namely the Phansy naturally existing in them in the Unguent should domineer over the blood of a Dogge of a Horse c. shed upon a piece of wood and buried in a pot of the Unguent Yet we have not said enough concerning the Magnetisme of the Unguent We shall therefore now pursue a hint which we started in our praecedent lines That the Magnetisme of the Loadstone and other inanimate Creatures is performed by a certain Naturall sensation the immediate Authrix of all sympathy is a truth unquestionable For if the Loadstone direct it selfe to the Pole it must have a certain knowledge lest it become subject to deviation and error in its direction and how I beseech you can it have that requisite knowledge if it be not sensible of its owne locall position In like manner if it convert to iron placed at great distance and neglect the Pole of necessity it must first know the situation of the iron Wherfore the single Magnet is endowed with various senses and also with imagination nor will it be enough that it be provided of sensation unlesse we also adde the provokement and goads of occult friendship and Philauty or selfe-love and so that the Loadstone is endowed with a certaine Naturall phansy by the power of whose impression all Magnetismes in the whole Catalogue of Creatures are performed For by one phansy it is directed to iron and by another to the Pole for then is its virtue diffused onely through a small space of the aër to the object near at hand but that Phansy is changed when it praevents an abortion restraines the impetuous flux of Catarrhes or hinders the falling downe of the intestine in a rupture and by a third phansy different from both the former doth the Loadstone attract any thing of glasse melted by fire for any the smallest fragment of a Loadstone injected into a good quantity of glasse while it is in decoction of green or yellow turns it into perfect white For albeit the Loadstone it selfe be of a deep though something shadowed sanguine tincture and be wholly destroied and consumed by the fire that dissolves the glasse yet notwithstanding while it retaines any relict of its vital essence it exhausteth the tincted liquor even from the candent glasse and devoureth the tincture of it and thus we discerne that the attraction of the Loadstone is not determined onely to iron but also extends to that aerial part which otherwise could not without great difficulty be divorced from the body of the glasse and to this purpose is it commonly used by Glasse-makers The phansy of Amber delights to allect strawes chaffe and other festucous bodies by an attraction we confesse obscure and weake enough yet sufficiently manifest and strong to attest an Electricity or attractive signature for married to the mumie of our bodies it appears superiour to the humane Magnet draws counter to it and by that interest entitleth it selfe to the dignity of a Zenexton or preservatory Amulet against contagion But Amber mixed with Gummes its imagination being then transplanted attracteth the Venome and bullets out of wounds for the pleasure and desire of attraction is varied on either side that is according to the various contemperation and allay of the humane mumie and of the Gummes But alas What wonder can it be unlesse amongst those who being ignorant of all things foolishly admire all things that inanimate creatures should be inriched with an imaginative faculty when that infinite Essence who is all life and the very Soule of Uitality hath created all things in perfection and so praevented all expectation of deficiency and inutility in the least peice of his handy-worke nor can the subtilest Curiosity finde out any one peice in the innumerable list of Creatures wherein the reflex of his Divinity is not conspicuous for the spirit of the Lord fill's the whole earth yea this expression that he comprehends all things carries the emphaticall and significant force of the word Doe we not beleive that there was a large stock of malignant science ambuscadoed into the forbidden fruit and that our unhappy Protoplasts together with the aple swallowed downe that science and received it into the very entralls and profundity of their nature and doth not this science praesuppose a phansy peculiar to it For thus some simples induce an Amenty or short alienation of the reason others cause a constant madnesse or Maniacal fury not by a distraction of the brain or a dissipation of the Animall spirits for then the strength and vigour of the maniacall persons would of necessity suffer impairement and decay which never happens but rather on the contrary they become much stronger and almost invincible but indeed by the exotick and distractive phansy of those peculiar simples introduced which over-masters our phansy and subdues it to full obedience sometimes only pro tempore as in periodicall deliriums phrensies c. and sometimes for ever as in Lunaticks and Maniacks or Bedlams Doth not the rabies or madnesse of Dogges by this meanes transmigrate into men the Maniacall phansy of the Fury beeing transplanted into the slaver or salivous froth of the doggs tongue which soone conquers and triumphs over the blood of any Animal into which it hath insinuated it selfe through any the most slender puncture of of the skin for then the primitive and genuine Phansy of all the blood in the wounded body surrenders up its inferiour power becomes subordinate and compulsively assumes the Hydrophobical phansie of
transcendeth the manner and method of intellection in those who have not yet confessed their dust Lastly in man is situate the Kingdom of God that is the very Deity it self by whose perpetual splendor all things are collected into the unity of verity The Image of God therefore is primarily in the minde of man whose very essence is no other then the very Image of God Which Image falleth not under the comprehension of the most subtile thought nor can be expressed by any the most significant words in this vale of ignorance in regard it is the mirror of the incomprehensible Divinity and hence also is it that the soul while immured in this cloyster of flesh cannot reach the knowledg of her own nature but must remain a stranger to it self But in the Cortex or shrine of the Minde the sensitive and vital Form this Image of Divinity is visible by reflexion as being relucent in the Faculties yet suffering a great allay of splendor from the opacity of the body because obumbrated by the cloud of brutal generation and infected with mortality and pollution by the inquination of our nature faln from its primitive purity by reason whereof the body hath not received the Image but at second hand borrowed onely the Figure of the Deity But alas the miserable Minde devolved into outward darkness as it hath divorced it self from an unity with the Light uncreate and infringed the originary energy of this Image of Divinity so also hath it lost the primitive light of that Image by the bold appropriation of it as justly proper to it self by the title of merit so that ever since the fall it can understand will or love no object besides it self and in order to it self For the damned shall arise from the dead unchanged because their bodies in the resurrection shall receive their determinations from their souls which since they appear with all their depraved affections reflected onely on themselves after a corporeal manner they shall not in the resurrection represent the Image of God being as it were suffocated within them unless in that corporeal similitude derived from Adam the Protoplast by the means of generation that is they shall have no more of the Image of God then what is weakly and darkly reflected in the figure of the body Lastly the Soul understand onely such as is excluded the New Jerusalem being once faln by the horrid Cataract of death upon the privation of those assistant Faculties the Imagination Memory and Will doth for ever after understand will and love all objects by a blinde apprehension addicted onely to it self For it knoweth its own immortality becometh sensible of its damnation and with secret murmurs complaineth of it as an act of high injustice done upon it Because all the bent and scope of its love is onely to defend its excuses for sins secretly to recriminate upon the hand of Justice by palliating the guilt of Crimes as if committed in the days of ignorance and innocence with great fragility of nature many crafty wiles and treacherous invitements of our three Adversaries the World Flesh and Devil and the defect of Grace sufficient to encounter such forcible temptations and that an eternal punishment as far beyond all patience to endure as all flux of time to end cannot according to the laws of Justice be due for a momentany transgression And at this it burneth with blasphemous rage and furious hatred against God chiefly because it is too well ascertained that the judgment can never be reversed by any replea of error nor the arrest taken off by any reprieve till the impossible period of eternity all hopes of evading the uncessant scourge of Gods wrath being for ever cut off in despair Thus the impossibility either of evasion or cessation being as long lived as Eternity the Caitiff soul plunged in a deluge of desperation that shall never know an ebbe from the first minute of her disunion from the body passeth into an abyss of horror where shall be no piety no compassion no consolation no relaxation and no redemption or revocation To which sad truth we may adde that since the intellect doth naturally transform it self into the idea of the object understood which the ancient Ethnick Philosophers well knew and elegantly blended under the parabolical fiction of Proteus that is into the full similitude of those cursed Devils and Spirits created for revenge that are ever objected unto it Hence is the Soul contiually possessed with an high hatred of God and his blessed Army of Saints and Angels together with desperation malediction damnation and the vindictive tortures of those infernal executioners O may the Mercy of Omnipotence upon the sole motive of his own infinite goodness and clemency vouchsafe to break those snares laid in all the paths of our life to precipitate us into this misery that must finde neither remedy release nor end Amen FINIS * Plutarchus in Ep. ad Phavâ—…rinum de Frigore Primigenio * In sua dâ—…ssertatione de Metâ—…odo Veritatis in Scientiis investigandâ—… p. 10. The breath of God by an easy Metaph. * Gen. 2. ver 7. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. * In â—…amiâ—… Blas Humanum nuncupato 17. * Lege Guidon paâ—… 2. Chirurg par cap. 9. Ambâ—…os Paraeum lib. 18. cap. 28. Joh. Andr 〈◊〉 Cruce de vulnâ—…r tract 2. l. 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 Fallop de Vulner c. 14. Jero Fabric ab Aquapendent l. 2. c. 24. Sâ—…mert l. 5. part 〈◊〉 sect 1. cap. 9. 18. * Consule Agricolam lib. 3. de Natura Fossilium p. 212. Fallop lib. 4. de Aquis Medicat cap. 8. Dioscorid l. 5. cap. 68. 19. * Ad sinem tract Butlâ—… 20. 21. * Hinc corpus Paris i. e. Naturae universae elâ—…gantissimè depingitur hirsutum propter rerum radios radii enim sunt tanquam Naturae crines sive villi atque omnia seâ—…è vâ—…l magis vâ—…l minus radiosa sunt quod in facultate visus est manifestissimum nec minus in omni virtute operatione ad distans Quicquid enim operatur ad distans id etiam radios emittere rectâ—… dici potest c. Fâ—… Bacon de sapient veterum fab 6. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. * Non raâ—…ò quasi sympathia quadam occulta integrae familiae eodem tempore inficiebantur Imò vidimus non nullas familias longissimè à se invicem dispersas in diversis locis habitantes eodem ferè tempore exitialissimis hujus tyranni spiculis gravitèr afflictas â—…ere deletas fuisse Diemerbroeck de Peste cap. 4. Ita etiam Evagrius Histor. Eccles. lib. 4. cap. 28. resert in Peste Antiochena certas familias prorsus interiisse salvis manentibus interim reliquis Urbis incolis Causa verò dependet ab arcana quadam dispositionis similitudine quam inter se habent quae apta est ad pestem râ—…ipiendam 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. * In
the Exotick Tincture from whence in excess of time comes a Binsical Death i. e. from the sole disease and exorbitancy of the minde the Magical virtue of the Dog being excited and exalted above the non-excited but somnolent Phansie of the Animal By the same mysterious traduction in all respects is the Phansie of the Tarantula impressed upon man by a slender thrust of his sting and the wounded suffering an immediate alienation of their reason fall into a violent fit of dancing and capering high levoltoes onely the poyson of the Tarantula differs from that of the mad dog in this particular that this operateth by a magical power excited and so by magick truly and without the favor of a metaphor so called but that acteth by a magical power non-excited and somnolent as the same difference is undeniably manifest in Monkshood Aconite c. deleterious plants which are speedy and inevitably destructive in very small quantity in regard no Animal endevours to secure or defend it self against the biting of a mad dog since the magical power of his excited phansie being diffused is binding and obligatury against which neither the teeth nor horns of any beast can make the least prevalent resistance which cannot be affirmed of the Venome of the Tarantula In the outward man therefore as also in all his fellow Animals the Magical power is latitant and as it were consopited nor is it capable of excitation onely in man though we confess with greater facility and to higher atchievements but even in many other Animals consorted with man at the Creation Again it sufficeth not that the Spirit of one individual maintain and observe this law of concord and monomachy or duello with the Spirit of another individual but moreover there dwells a certain universal or mundan spirit in the whole world i. e. in all things within Trismegistus Circle which we Christen the Magnum magnale which exsisteth the universal Pander of all sympathy and dyspathy the invisible Mercury or common Intelligencer and the Promotor of all natural actions and by whose mediation or convoy the Magnetism is as by the most convenient vehicle transported and wafted to an object at vast distance This is made good by an autoptical demonstration for if upon the miniking of a tuned Lute you place a slender straw hanging with a doubtful extremity i. e. equilibrated in the aër and at convenient distance in the same room strike the minikin of another Lute when there succeeds a consonance in the eighth note you shall see the straw to tremble but when the notes concord in an unison then the minikin of the untouched Lute impatient of delay will quaver caper for joy echo the same aër and by a nimble subsultation throw off the offensive straw What will you impute this effect to Satan and make him the Fidler Now you shall never observe the straw to rebound from the string though all the strings of the other Lute be unanimously strongly and neer at hand plaid upon for it is not the bare and simple tone that compels the untouched string to quaver for then every tone would cause the same effect but it is onely the universal spirit the Common Mercury inhabiting in the middle of the universe and being the faithful executor and adjutor of all natural actions transports promotes and causes the Sympathy But why tremble we at the name of Magick since the whole action is Magical nor hath any natural Agent a power of activity which is not emergent from the phansie of its peculiar form and that magically too But in regard this phansie in bodies devoid of voluntary election is onely of a determinate and limited identity therefore have some vulgar heads erroneously and dully imputed the effects of such restrained bodies not to the phansie of them but a Natural propriety out of an ignorance of Causes substituting the effect in the room of the Cause When indeed every Agent doth operate on its proper object by a praesensation or distinctive foreknowledg of it whereby it is directed not to discharge its activity rashly and at random but onely on its own peculiar object For the diffusion or emission of activity necessarily succeeds the sensation of the object and the effect results from an excitement of the phansie by transmitting of the ideal entity and conjoyning it with the radius or gleam of the passive entity And this in our dialect hath ever been the Magical action of natural bodies yet in most accommodate language and just propriety of denomination this Magical and phantastique activity belongs principally if not solely to Creatures ennobled with a power of election I shall muster up the Creatures and guide our disquisition through every Classis of them All formal proprieties flowing from the forms of the three universal principles Sal Sulphur and Mercury or the salt Unctuous fat and liquor whereof every body is composed and into which it is by corruption of the corporeal harmony again resolved and the Mercury or liquor is so often diverse and differently qualified as there are different species of compound bodies which same variety of impregnation we are to conceive also of the other two Sal and Sulphur All specifical proprieties I say are derivatory from the phansies of these forms which in regard they are very corporeal and deeply immersed in the bosome of Elements therefore are they called Formal and occult proprieties out of a gross ignorance of the forms which in another and introth more Philosophical acceptation are Magical effects produced by the phansie of the said forms but we confess less noble and more corporeal yet abundantly satisfactory to those ends which by the primitive destiny of their Creation they regard To this series belongs the subductive virtue of Cathartick or Purgative the somniferous faculty of Hypnotick or dormitive medicaments c. Besides these there are other nobler Proprieties taking their original from the phansie of the forms of the whole Compositum and these are diffused through and inherent in the whole Compositum by reason of the Form of it such are the Magnetism of the Loadstone the virtue of Tinctures and all specifical and appropriate Medicaments which are occasioned by reason either of the whole homogeneous neixture or the particular form of some integral part but not of any single or divided principle such as these are naturally inherent in the trunck leaves root and fruit of plants and not in any one of the three principles diacritically separated from the compage or conjuncture Thus also Antimony while it remains in its primitive form and native integrity is enriched with noble and excellent qualities which it could never aspire unto in its solitary and divided principles But these are also closely enshrowded in Corporeity and therefore the natural magick lies covertly ambuscadoed and obscure in them and hath been thought wholly attributary to Nature by an unjust and unadvised distinction of Nature from Magick opposing the
finger of the weakest prayer And this kinde is most frequent among Christians and even such who profess themselves the most perfect in our days and on this presumption they dare any thing and beleeve Religion to be no more but an engine of mature policy to coerce the people with the terror of Laws the obligation of Faith and the penalty of Hell For these impose heavy burthens on the shoulders of others which themselves touch not with one of their fingers drain the purses of their disciples prostitute Heaven for money to dying men and continually intrude themselves into secular affairs in regard they opinion that Religion cannot subsist without State-policy My highest wish should be that they had once though but in a moment tasted what it is to understand intellectually that so they might perceive sensibly as it were by the touch the immortality of the Minde I confess I have not invented rules or a method whereby I might be able to illustrate the intellect of another man I protest therefore justly that such who ever study making disquisitions concerning truth but can never attain the knowledg of it in respect being puffed up with Learning they have no Charity do foster secret Atheism But this one mystery I have learned That the minde doth not at all understand by the mediation of the Phansie nor by figures and images unless the miserable and afflicting discourse of Reason be annexed but when the Soul comprehends her own nature Reason falls off from her and the image of her self fails her by which she might represent her self to her self therefore the Soul can by no means apprehend her self by the discourse of Reason nor by Images For after that I had known that the verity of an Essence and the verity of the Intellect were one and the same I certainly knew that the intellect was a certain immortal Entity far removed from all frail and perishable things The Soul indeed is not perceived yet we firmly beleeve her to dwell within us not to be idle not to be weary nor afflicted with diseases Therefore sleep madness and ebriety are not symptomes of the immortal soul suffering exorbitancy but the attendants of life and onely passions of the sensitive Faculty since bruits also frequently endure the same passions For just it is that the immortal Being owe these disturbances to her adligement to caduce and mortal things For as the minde inhabiteth within us and yet is not perceived by us So neither are her continual and uninterrupted operations subject to sensation because if they were sensible verily they could not have been spiritual and meerly abstracted And although it appear to us that we understand nothing by the total sequestration and abstraction of discourses from all things corporeal which can fall under the comprehension of our sense minde and intellect and that in the very beginnings of our Contemplations yet really the Soul doth all that while act by her own insensible way and by an efficacy wholly spiritual which I thus understood The penitentiary very often doth not sensibly perceive the effects of his contrition and with groans deploreth that his insensility yet being asked whether he would willingly commit a sin would perchance answer that he had much rather die Insensible therefore is the operation of the soul in penitence and confession being the supernatural effect of Faith because the intellectual actions are derived from a higher principle and are clients of a more noble and indesinent Magistracy And on this ground Mystical Divines lay their Doctrine That the soul doth more effectually operate and in her operations more benefit her self in faith alone without discourse and cogitation then he who prayeth in a multitude of words and by tedious discourses exciteth compunction in himself But happy he who hath obtained that excellent endowment to perceive these insensile operations of the soul and by secret emanation to reflect them upon the operations and powers of the sensitive Soul since such frequently leave their impresses upon the whole after life and excite the memory in faith operating together with grace for the future The Libertines of Christianity and Atheists of the first Classis deride this Article of our Creed as if the Image of God in us were onely imaginary and it a meer traditional fiction that man was fashioned after the similitude of the Deity But other Atheists of the second and third sort beleeve not onely that we are created in the Image of God but feign also that in our nature there is an identity with the essence of the immense uncreated Divinity and that man doth differ from God in substance no otherwise then a part doth from the whole or that which had beginning from that which is non-principiate but not at all in point of Essence or internal propriety Which besides the Blasphemy doth comprehend very many and gross absurdities Since whatever once began is in that very notion a Creature and it doth tacitely involve an imperfection in God to be able to create extra se without the limits of his own nature any thing in substance equal to himself Since truly from Philosophy it is evident beyond doubt that all the parts of an infinite are infinite of necessity The Creature therefore cannot be in substance more infinite then it hath been in duration equal to its eternal principle and much less is the Soul of man a part of the Divine substance or essentially like unto it which in power magnitude duration glory wisdom c. in her self and of her self is a meer nothing If therefore she was not made out of God much less out of her self but out of nothing Infinitely therefore do they wander from truth who beleeve a quiddity of the Divine Image implanted in the Soul by an identity of substance when they are distinguished each from other by infinite disparity yea the soul would at length of her own accord be again resolved into that nothing from whence she began unless she were constantly conserved in being by the Divine goodness Seriously the damned souls might wish to be resolved into their primitive nothing which the Divine Justice doth conserve in Being The Soul indeed from the minute of her creation forwards to the future hath an eternal permanence not from her own essence but from her native eternity freely conferred upon her by the bounty and constantly conserved by the providence of her Maker Suffice it therefore that the Soul be a spiritual and vital substance and a luminous Creature And since there are many kindes and species of vital lights this light of the minde differs from all other vital lights in this that it is a spiritual and immortal substance but all other vital lights are not substances Formal though they be Forms substantial and therefore by the Chymistry of Death they are reduced into their ancient nothing no otherwise then is the flame of a Tapor extinct But the Minde differs
from Angels in respect it is framed in the similitude and representative figure of the eternal God for the soul hath that light and luminous substance from the gift of her Creation since she her self is that vital light but an Angel is not that substantial light nor hath he any light genial and inherent to his essence but is onely a mirror of the increated light and so in this particular falls short of the excellence and perfection of the Divine Image Otherwise an Angel since he is an incorporeal spirit were he luminous from the right of his own essence would express the Image of God more perfectly then man Moreover whatever God doth bestow more love upon that is more noble but he hath loved man much more then the Angels for not to the redemption of the Angelical nature did he assume the figure of a Cacodaemon as the thrice glorious Lamb of God the Saviour of the world assumed the nature of a Servant Nor can this Doctrine be staggered by the opposition of that The meanest in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater then John the Baptist For the Son of Man is not inferior in dignity of essence to the Angels though he was pleased to become a little lower then the Angels for in the calamitous condition of his life he was made a little lower then the Angels as also was John the Baptist. And for this reason an Angel is constantly called a ministring Spirit but is no where read a friend of God the Son of the Father the delight of the Son of Man or the Temple of the Holy Spirit wherein the thrice glorious Trinity takes up his Mansion For that is the majestick prerogative of the Divine Image which the Light Eternal doth impress upon every man that comes into this world In the year 1610 after a long weariness of contemplation that I might acquire some gradual knowledg of my own minde since I was then of opinion that self-cognition was the complement of wisdom faln by chance into a calm sleep and rapt beyond the limits of reason I seemed to be in a Hall sufficiently obscure On my left hand was a table and on it a fair large Vial wherein was a small quantity of Liquor and a voice from that Liquor spake unto me Wilt thou Honor and Riches At this unwonted voice I became surprized with extream amazement I walked up and down seriously considering with my self what this should design By and by on my right hand appeared a chink in the wall through which a light invaded my eyes with unwonted splendor which made me wholly forgetful of the Liquor voice and former counsel Then pensively returning to the Vial I took it away with me and attempted to taste the Liquor but with tedious labor I opened the Vial and assaulted with extream horror I awakened But my ancient intense desire of knowing the nature of my soul in which I had panted uncessantly for thirteen whole yeers together constantly remained with me At length amidst the anxious afflictions of various fortunes when yet I hoped a Sabbath of tranquillity from the security of an innocent life transacted in a vision I had the sight of my soul. It was a transcendent light in the figure of a man whose whole was homogeneous actively discerning a substance spiritual Crystalline and lucent by its own native splendor But enshrined it was in a second nubilous part as the husk or exterior cortex of it self which whether it did emit any splendor from it self I could hardly distinguish by reason of the superlative fulgor of the Crystalline spirit inshrowded within it Yet this I could easily discern that there was no sexual impress but onely in the cortex or shrine But the mark of the Crystal was light ineffable so reflexed that the Crystal Image it self became incomprehensible and that not by negation or privation since these are terms onely accommodate to our imbecillity otherwise then this that it presented a majestick Ens which cannot be expressed by words yet so finely that you could not have comprehended the quiddity of the thing beheld And then was it revealed unto me that this light was the same which I had a glimpse of twenty three yeers before And these things I saw by an intellectual vision in my minde for had the eye of my body once beheld this resplendent excessive object it would for ever after have ceased from vision and constaâ—…ly have celebrated a blinde mans holy day And thus my dream discovered unto me that the beauty of the humane Soul doth far transcend all conception of thought At that instant I comprehended thus much that my long desire of seeing my soul was vain and fruitless and thereupon I did acquiesce For however beautiful the Crystalline spirit did appear yet my soul retained nothing of perfection from that vision as at other times she was wont to do after an intellectual vision And so I came to be instructed that my minde in this somnial vision had as it were acted the part of a third person nor was the discovery sufficiently satisfactory to compensate so earnest and insatiate a desire of exploration But as to the Image of God impressed upon the Soul according to my slender capacity I confess I could never conceive any thing whether a body or spirit whether in my phansie or the most pure and abstracted speculation of my intellect which in the same act of meditation did not represent some certain figure under which it stood objected to my conceptions For whether I apprehended it by imagining an Idea probably correspondent to its essence or whether by conceiving that the intellect did transmute it self into the object understood still it occurred unto my thought invested in some figure For although I could familiarly understand the minde under the notion of an incorporeal and immortal substance yet could I not while I meditated upon the individual existence of it consider the same devoid of all figure yea nor so truly but it would respond to the figure of a man Since when ever the soul being sequestred doth see another Soul Angel or Cacodaemon requisite it must be that she perfectly know that these are presented to her to the end she may distinguish a Soul from an Angel and the Soul of Peter from the Soul of Judas Which distinction cannot be made by the sense of tasting smelling hearing touching but onely by the proper vision of the Soul which vision necessarily implieth an alterity or difference of figure Since an Angel is so far restrained to locality that at once he cannot possess two different places in that also there is included as well a figural as a local circumscription Thence I considered the minde of man figurated after this manner The body of man accepted under that distinct notion cannot give to itself the figure of a man and therefore hath need of an external Sculptor or Delineator which should be secretly ambuscadoed in