the great and new Paradox which I have undertaken to demonstrate in this Treatise Wherefore in the entrance obstacles that are obvious and devious are to be removed And first of all they object the Text The Earth shall bring forth unto Thee Thistles and Thornes In the sweat of thy Face thou shalt eat thy Bread I will multiply thy Miseries and thy Conceptions In pain thou shalt bring forth thy Sons thy Husband shall rule over Thee Thou shalt die the Death And by consequence ye shall be afflicted with the Calamities of Diseases and old Age. All which things issued forth on Posterity from the curse of the Sin of Disobedience even unto the destruction of the World upon no account to be redeemed and by no act of sanctity to be expiated Because God had appointed a Law to Adam that he should not eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil the transgression whereof hath defluxed as into original Sin So also it stirred it up into the perpetuity of a Curse from our first Parents equally on all their Posterity These things have been thus diligently taught hitherto Whereunto under the peace and censure of the Church I will humbly sub joyn my own Conceptions First therefore I negatively affirme the contrary because the Words of the Text do not precisely containe any Curses except on the Serpent and Earth but not at all on Man Whom if he with whom there is no successive alteration or change had cursed he had truly and alwayes cursed like the Evil Spirit For it is a foolish thing to believe that God should now curse Man whom presently after Sin and without the intervening of contrition or act of repentance he forthwith blessed with much Fruitfulness gave him the whole Earth and placed all living Creatures under his Feet Yea in the midst of the Curse uttered or brought upon the Serpent he replenished the femal Sex with his blessing saying The Woman shall bruise thy Head I will put Enmities between Tree and the Woman and between thy Seed and her Seed The which seeing it is not understood of the Seed of Man it promiseth the Messias the Saviour of the World to come of the Seed of the Woman So far is it that he had there cursed Man In the second place I deny that a Law was given and by consequence also a contradiction or opposing of a Law For it follows wheresoever there is not a Law Transgression nor Disobedience doth not interpose and by consequence a Curse doth not there befall But I prove that there was not a Law by the very Words of the Text And he commanded him saying Of every Tree of the Garden eat Thou but of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil Thou mayest not eat The Word he commanded Seemes to include a Precept and so also a Law Yet that one only Word obtains no more the force of a Law or Precept for the affirmative of every Tree of Paradise eat Thou than for the negative Thou mayest not eat For it included not a Sin although he had not eat of every Tree of Paradise And therefore it did no more contain a Law for the forbidding of one Tree than for a Liberty of all the other Trees Therefore the Text contained a fatherly Liberty for the affirmative and likewise for the Grant as also a fatherly Admonition of Caution for the Negative no otherwise than as if a Country-man being expert of the way shall say to a Traveller If thou shalt go that way thou wilt Perish and die the Death So the Admonition of the Creator thou mayest not eat and in whatsoever day thou shalt eat thou shalt die the Death do shew not a Law but a Persuasion and Wish But the transgression and Act of the despised Admonition doth indeed contain a Sin but not of Disobedience and Disobedience as much differs from a despised Admonition as a Law doth from an Admonishment it self The Prohibition therefore thou mayest not eat sounds as an Admonition to wit least he should eat his own and posterities Death by an unextinguishable Guilt because that Death was placed in the Apple but not in the opposition of eating And therefore that Death from the eating of the Apple was natural being admonished of but not a Curse threatned by a Law For the threatnings of Death which was unknown to Adam could not terrifie the same Adam And therefore threatnings had been void but not an admonition For Adam had not as yet seen a dead Carcase and the which before he saw living Creatures was ignorant of their Names And much less could he know what Death should be And least of all by far could Eve know what it should be to die in Paradise Therefore with our first Parents Death was as yet a non-Being and unknown but of a non-Being and of that which is unknown no Conception answereth and there is no fear at all Therefore neither hath God foretold Death for the threats of Terrour or a Law but from his meer goodness That when they had eaten of the disswaded Apple they might know that God had not made Death but themselves for themselves Neither doth the Text in Chap. 3. hinder these things Because thou hast eaten of the Tree whereof I had commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat c For the Words do manifestly declare the goodness of the foregoing Admonition but not a Law For the Word I had commanded is the same which before in the second Chapter and he commanded him saying signifies an Admonition only and not a Law Otherwise under an equal original Sin they had been obliged from eating of every Tree of Paradise which none of a sound mind will ever affirme For the great Sin was in a suspition of deciet falshood and fallacy of God and that they gave more credit to the Serpent than unto God and that they despised a fatherly and kinde Admonition But there was not Disobedience because a Law was not given It was indeed an Act against Gratitude Love towards God and a due and rational Obligation Therefore God cursed them not because they by eating had contracted the Penalties of Diseases Death and Miseries on themselves for a Punishment But God speaketh not of Diseases after the Fall Because it was sufficient once to have foretold Death to come while he admonished them that they should not eat In the next place the crafty Serpent assaulted not the Woman as being the weaker but because the Admonition was given unto Adam from the Mouth of God but signified unto the Woman onely from the relation of the Man And therefore God first requires an account of Adam First of all it doth not containe a cursing of the Man that the Earth should be cursed in its Work and should bring forth Cockle and that he should in the sweat of his face eat his Bread all his Life But they containe a remembrance of the loving Admonition that went before the
Fall Again neither do these Words sound of a Curse that the Woman should be thenceforth obedient and subject to her Husband although therein the intent of the Creator doth clearly appear to wit that he had appointed the Woman to be the head top and ultimate Creature above the Man But now by reason of a double Sin that she ought to be subject to her Husband But that signifies rather a deserved Punishment than a Curse Even as a Superiour is not cursed who is laid aside for an Errour committed But whereas it is said In Pain shalt thou bring forth thy Sons the Text expresly confirmeth the mistery of the Paradoxal Position For from thence it manifestly appears 1. That Eve was not created nor appointed as that she had brought forth in Pain Wherefore this Message is not decleared unto her for a Curse But there is set before her eies how much Calamity she had caused unto her self that she should hereafter conceive and bring forth after the manner of Bruits in Pain For it is not to be doubted but that Bruit-beasts are not guilty of Sin yet do they bring forth in Pain Not indeed that they have sinned in Adam as their Father or that they are partakers of his Sin because they had brought forth in Pain whether Adam had sinned or not Neither also is it agreeable with divine goodness that Bruit-beasts should bear an undeserved Punishment while as they from a Faculty of Nature and from an appointment of Creation do bring forth in pain 2. If Bruits bring forth in Pain a likenesse of Conception and bringing forth in Bruits and in Woman after the Fall is denoted which Likeness seeing it was not before the Fall therefore this Text strengthens the Position 3. If Eve had not eaten the Apple and consequently from the Apple the concupiscence of the Flesh from the tickling of a corrupt Seed verily she had brought forth without Pain Where the Text promiseth a Virginity in conceiving and bringing forth and so a perpetual Virginity appointed in propagating To wit that she had conceived and brought forth her Womb being shut For what other thing is this than that which others think to be the Curse of Eve is in very deed only a commemoration of the good lost through the copulation of Man of Seed and of the concupiscence of the Flesh in the Flesh of Sin after the manner of Bruits henceforeward The hope I say was lost of conceiving by the holy Spirit after that she had conceived by the will of Man as every Mother in Sins doth For otherwise if Death had been of the punishment of a broken Law and not from the concupiscence of the Flesh there should be every day as many new Deaths as there are Transgressions or God should not make so much account of his Commands of the Decalogue as of the Admonition of the caution or avoiding from the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil For he would not have those Laws to be alike seriously observed which he would not have to be chastised with an equal Punishment Therefore it being as yet supposed that there had been a Law concerning the denyed eating of the Apple even as there is a Law of forbidden Worshipping of Idols Adultery c. But these Laws are not punished with a continued unpurgeable Impurity on Posterity in such a manner as the opposition of that eating is From hence therefore it most easily appeareth that original Sin was not so much from the force of disobeying a command as from the effect of a defiled divine Generation being changed into a beast-like one For else there is not an equality of distributive Justice nor therefore a conformity in the goodness of God whether we have respect unto the ingratitude of our first Parents or next unto the disobedience against a Law Because the first disobedience should pay a punishment derived on all even on the innocent Posterity rather than any tenths or hundreths afterwards and than innumerable and far more great or haynous Sins Indeed I think that there is the same rule of Justice with the same Lawgiver of every command preceptively and defensively given and pronounced that the breaking thereof ought alwayes to draw after it an equal Fault neither therefore to be punished in all the Posterity and those that are innocent and then that none of Mortals nor any one of them had been sufficient for the original punishments of their Ancestours and a hundred-fold of Deaths to wit if Death had taken its original effectively and immediately from the opposing of a Law or the unchangeable God had not appointed his future Commands to be alike observed as at first if Death should not have its root in Nature the application of which root had been onely from man Therefore If Death should be immediately from God alone from the curse of Sin Now God had made Death and so by Faith we should believe a Falshood In the next place if Death had proceeded from a Curse and had been from a supernatural Root So also neither should our Death find natural Causes in us or our Death should not be of the same kinde with the Death of Adam Yea which is far more absurd our Death should not proceed from the same primitive Beginning from which the Death of our first Parents began And by consequence our Death should not be the effect of original Sin And so unless Death do happen from elsewhere than from the punishment of a Law and the curse of Sin that is unless the Adamical or Beast-like Generation of the Flesh from the Concupiscence of the Flesh and its Copulation doth naturally containe Death in it like unto Beasts in very deed Innocent Children should pay an undeserved Punishment Again if Death should be immediately caused from a Curse or from Sin should not the Text unfitly say On the same Day thou shalt die the Death while as it should not say Presently in the same Moment thou shalt die For a Curse doth not want twenty four hours that it may operate as neither likewise doth Sin require an interval for the Guilt and deserved Punishment of the same which was expresly seen while an impure Man endeavouring to vindicate the reeling Cart wherein the Arke of the Covenant was carried from a fall payed the Punishment of his boldness by sudden Death But seeing Death consisted in the procreation of forbidden Seeds and of the Concupiscence of the Flesh it presupposeth the eating of the Apple and its Digestion And therefore those Words On the same Day thou shalt die the Death or shalt be made Mortal also thou shalt suffer punishment by Death doubled in thee and thy Posterity do strengthen the proposed Truth of our Position But there is no original Sin accounted of from the first afterwards or unremissibly derived on all Posterity but that which from the eating of the Apple thenceforth defiled the whole Nature because it tranferred the Propagation of mankinde on the Flesh
of Sin of which God saith My Spirit shall not remain with Man because he is Flesh But that Sin if it hath not been sufficiently searched into by Predecessours I will add freely what I conceive For indeed in this History of Genesis do concurr together 1. The Sin of Distrust or suspicion of an Evil Faith of Deceit Fallacie or Falshood in God For Eve saith to the Divel Least perhaps we die And so she doubted that the Death admonished of would of necessity come unto them And likewise the Sin of a despised Admonition and that they more trusted unto the Serpent than to God neither was there disobedience where there was not yet a Law 2. An act of eating of the Apple not so much forbidden as admonished of bewarying of it 3. An effect of the Apple being eaten For in the midst of Paradise there was a Tree whose Property is said to be of Life Least he eat and live for ever and there was another Tree whose Property was that of the knowledge of Good and Evil unto whom there was not another like but the other Trees except these two served onely for nourishment The property therefore and effect of this latter Tree was to stir up an itching concupiscence of the Flesh or madness of Luxurie But it is called The Tree of the knowledge of Good Lost and of Evil obtained For they knew not that they were naked and they were without shame that is without the Concupiscence of the Flesh like Children because they wanted Seed 4. A carnal Copulation concurreth From thence at length a certain beastlike frail Mortal Generation contrary to the intent of God who was unwilling that Man should conceive in Sins in Sins hath my Mother conceived me not indeed that all Mothers afterwards should eat of that Apple but because presently after the Apple was eaten all Conception should not be made but by the will of Blood Flesh and Man And so that from thence should all Flesh of Sin necessarily proceed Therefore while the immediate Cause of corrupt Nature and Death is ascribed unto the Sin of disobedience Or while the immediate Cause of corrupt Flesh is attributed unto the Sin of suspected deceit in God they are faults in arguing of not the Cause as of the Cause For in speaking properly the very Corruption and Degeneration of the Flesh of our whole Nature hath not issued from the Curse as neither immediately from Sin accompanying it but from these only occasionally and as it were from the Cause without which it was not but our Nature is rendred wholly corrupted and uncapable of Eternal Glory by reason of the causalities of concupiscence and brutal Generation effectively and immediately causing a withdrawing of virgin Chastity and all hope of generating from the holy Spirit afterwards and from Eve as a Virgin And therefore original Sin is defluxing altogether on all Posterity because after the Virginity of Eve was taken away the race of men is not possible to be generated but by the will of Man Flesh and Blood the which otherwise God had determined to be generated by the holy Spirit It is therefore an undistinction of Causes and its unapt application of Effects unto their proper Causes which hath not heretofore heeded 1. Why that Apple was with so loud a voice forewarned of that they should not eat of it 2. That they have esteemed that to be a Curse which was not 3. That they have ascribed original Sin unto one Disobedience as the most near and containing immediate Cause 4. That they have thrown an unexcusable Death on the Curse and Punishment of a broken Law For although a grievous Sin hath concurred with an original declining of the Generation intended by God together with an impurity of the Flesh the corruption of Nature by carnal copulation Yet the corruption of Nature the degeneration of Generation as neither Death have proceeded from the original Sins of our Parents their distrust c. as from an immediate Cause but from the effect of the Apple being eaten as a new Product of necessity Naturally depending thereon that is Death hath proceeded from its own second natural Causes existing in the Apple Even as a total Corruption of Nature hath issued from thence because both are supported by one and the same Root of necessity But the Causes of these natural Causes were by accident co-bound unto the Sins of Distrust c. in the Unison of eating For the very guilt of the Sin of suspition of an evil Faith or bad trusting of Deciet and a Fallacy of God remained expiable by our first Parents after the manner of Sin to wit by Contrition and Acts of Repentance after the manner of other Sins But not that therefore whole Nature ought to be depraved that a Death and Misery of every Body ought to enter and perpetuate it self on all Posterity even although they should have guiltless Souls For God doth sometimes punish the Sins of Parents upon one or a second Generation But it is no where read that he hath chastised the Sin of the Grand-father on all his Posterity afterwards who had acted evilly for five thousand Years before For that pain of Punishment exceedeth the love of God towards Man whom he so greatly blessed presently after Sin It exceeds I say the Rules of Justice if the Punishment of him that is guiltless in that Sin be refered unto his Ballance And moreover I think that if God out of his goodness had not admonished our first Parent of Death If he should eat of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil But if the Devil from his proper and inbred Enmity had translated the Apple from that Tree under any other Tree and that both the Sexes of Men had eaten of the Apple that the Concupiscence of the Flesh and Copulation had equally succeeded and so although that had happened without any Sin yet that the Generation following from thence from the necessity and property of the Apple being eaten had suspended the intent of the Creator who would not that the Sons of God and Posterity of Eve should be conceived from the holy Spirit after her Virginity was corrupted And so Death a Disease and the very Corruption of Nature and Beast-like original Inversion thereof had been and yet not from Sin Because the Apple contained a natural efficient Cause of Luxury For how unaptly do these agree together Death proceedeth from the Sin of an infringed or broken Law and so from a supernatural Curse And those Words of the Text uttered after the eating of the Apple and before the banishment out of Paradise Least he stretch forth his Hand unto the Tree of Life do eat of it and live for ever For against the Curse of God no Creature is able to resist From hence therefore it becomes evident that the Apple contained the natural Cause of a defiled Generation and of their own Death and that the Tree of Life did likewise contain naturally a conserving
of eternal Life that is a Superiority over the necessities of Death At length if death had happened from a Law from the Punishment and Curse of Sin it should be false that God had not made Death because in very deed and immediately Death had proceeded from God and not from a natural Cause or that of Nature corrupted And by so much a stronger right where the same Person the Almighty Creator is the Law-giver like as also the Executer Last of all Sin is a mental Being or a Non-Being which cannot produce a real and actual Being And therefore Death at its Beginning had not proceeded from natural Causes even as at this Day Death doth arise in bruit Beasts equally as in us and therefore Death in its Beginning had been different in the whole kind from that at this day And therefore the Text should speak that which is ridiculous God made not Death if by reason of disobedience he had cursed Nature that it should die It is therefore of necessity that the Death of Man in its Beginning began and was made from second Causes altogether natural whereby we die at this day Also at this day Death hath reciprocally invaded through the natural Causes of defiled Nature even as in times past in its Beginning Indeed although Adam became Mortal from eating of the Apple yet his Death happened not but naturally some Ages after and from Old Age as from second Causes Far therefore be a Law an opposing thereof Sin a Curse in the original of Death appearing so many Ages after from second Causes speaking as it were in our presence Therefore every and the total Cause whereby Man hath immediately framed Death for himself is to be seen in the Position For although we are now Mortal yet we die not when we will and when we desire Because Death proceeded not from the Will or from Sin but from the Apple Neither indeed because Death it self was in the Apple as in a mortal Poyson but there was in the Apple the Concupiscence of the Flesh an incentive of Lust a be-drunkening of Luxury for a Beast-like Generation in the Flesh of Sin which Flesh carried with it the natural Causes of Defects and necessities of Death Wherefore it is likely to be true if the Serpent had not been able to obtain of Man that by Sinning he should eat of the Apple that he had cast an Apple cropped from thence unto the Root of some lawful Tree that by this means the Enemy of our Life might rejoyce to have introduced Death And that thing is sufficiently gathered from the Text which doth not say If thou shalt eat of that Tree but he saith In whatsoever day thou shalt eat thou shalt die the Death As if he should denounce that that danger of Death to come was fore-ordained For for this purpose the World was created and the Instruments of Generation were given unto Man because the Corruption of Nature the necessity of regeneration in a Saviour and the virgin Purity thereof was foreseen Let therefore those brawlings cease whether Eve ate an Apple or indeed a Fig. For the Text calls an Apple That which is pleasing to the Eye but a Fig doth not so allure by the sight of it And that one only Tree was of that Property whereof then there was not the like nor at this day is there another read to exist among created Things Finally the Words of the Text I will multiply thy Miseries and thy Conceptions so far off is it that they do signifie the Indignation of God and much less his Curse Yea rather they denote his love toward the devoted Sex For truly there is none which knows not that by how much the Life of the devoted Sex shall be the more miserable by so much also that it is nearer to the Son of Man for otherwise tribulations which God sendeth on his Saints and Martyrdom it self should by an equal right be Curses I will add last of all that as the Works of the Flesh are devillish So the Text I will put Enmities between the Seed of the Woman and thy Seed doth fully or plainly confirm this Position For first of all the Woman of whose Seed God there speaketh is the God-bearing Virgin which as a Virgin hath left no other Seed an Enemy to the Serpent but the Sons of Light the Sons of God and those who are renewed by the holy Spirit who have no Enmities with the Eggs of any creeping thing but only with the Sons of the Devil and Darkness forasmuch as they keep the Seeds of Sin Therefore the Text there promiseth a future Regeneration in the God-bearing Virgin calling those that are not renewed the Seed of the Devil because they are Adamical Flesh Therefore those things being heeded which I have already above demonstrated original Sin doth not properly expect a quickning or the moment of hecceity For although the Soul cannot be guilty of Sin before it be Yet seeing original Sin is in the Contagion of the Flesh it self is presently in the supposition of the concrete or composed Body after the manner of its receiver and assoon as there is a sexual mixture of the Seeds according to that saying For behold I was conceived in Iniquities before the coming of the Soul because in Sins my Mother hath conceived me For Sin is in the same point wherein Death consisteth the which indeed is in the very mixture of the Seeds For Death is immediately in the Archeus but not in the Soul which thing the sometimes mortal indisposition it self of the Archeus proveth from whence the conception is made voide which before now was in its whole hope vital And although the impurity of the material thing supposed be before the Flesh thereby generated and therefore also before the Soul yet there is not properly Sin unless the Soul â—all put that on There is therefore a far different infection of original Sin than of any other Sins whatsoever which require a consent of the Soul For other Sins the Soul it self committeth but original Sin defiles the Soul not consenting because the Thingliness or Essence of that original Sin is the very Flesh of Sin For neither therefore is it called the Soul of Sin but the Flesh of Sin because the Soul is defiled by the Flesh But the Devil not from elsewhere than from himself Therefore Man admires mercy but not the Devil Therefore from the good pleasure of the Creator the Apple did carry in it not only the Concupiscence of the Flesh but consequently also the generation of Seed but there was not therefore a Faculty in the Apple of propagating the sensitive Soul The Arbitrator of the World in creating would oblige himself to create every living Soul in every soulified Body when corporeal Dispositions had come unto the bound of enlivening For therefore the Apple presently after it was eaten disposed the Arterial Blood unto a Seed and from thence into a sensitive Soul And that thing was
Life and Soul of soulâ—fied Creatures For in that those Words did differ to say Let it be made and to make For in the sixth or last day Adam was formed But on the seventh day God rested At length he afterwards translated Adam from the Earth into Paradise and deliberated to make Woman of the Rib of the Man but not of his Reins Thigh or Belly Therefore on the eighth day that it might be the Beginning of a new week for a new and super-natural Generation of an off-spring to come Wherefore it may be collected that Woman being wholly an Out-law ascended into a new heap of Choiceness as being a Vessel of Choiceness or Election But we may after some sort conjecture of the quality of humane generation in Eve a Virgin before the Fall by the most glorious Incarnation of our Lord For indeed the Father unto whom every name of Paternity is singularly and solely due and whom his Son as a Father doth alwayes adore hath indeed alwayes generated his Son from Eternity who yet is not read to be the Father of his Incarnation The which thing I even reverence for a vast mystery and the rather after that I understood the insinite goodness of the same as well from the first virginal conception of Creation as in the restoration by the regeneration of Man Indeed the Father Almighty would that the glorious incarnation of Christ should be conceived of the Person of the holy Spirit the which it self to wit therefore was not generated but proceeded from eternity from the Father and the Son For the Spirit of God had caused a humane conception of off-springs in the Arterial Blood of the Heart of the Virgin Eve it being the Image of the Divinity with all its free Gifts without the pleasure of the Flesh But the Mind being thus in the garment of Arterial Blood conceived in the Womb of the Virgin in a humane Shape had took an increase and full maturity from thence For he who the Womb being shut and the Gates being closed came into the World and unto his own also out of the Case of the Heart wherein he was conceived was by a foregoing consent brought unto the Womb of the Virgin and kept even unto the maturity of his Body For he piercing all Members was brought into the Womb For therefore our Lord's Incarnation happened altogether besides the order of Nature now accustomed For 1. The Incarnation of the Lord happened not first in the Womb but in the very Sheath of the Heart of the Virgin 2. Of the most pure and most lively Blood of the Heart but not of the Seed of the Virgin For truly the God-bearing Virgin in that singular respect was not only cleansed from Original Sin but was conceived altogether free from Sins to wit that she might be so much the more void of all Seed than a Child that is newly born For Seed is composed of a mixture of Venal and Arterial Blood or from a co-mixture of Bloods which mixture was no manner of way not so much as materially in the conception of the Son of God who was conceived not of Bloods nor of the Will of the Flesh or of Man but of God alone and born of a Virgin 3. He had not a Man to his Father nor a masculine Matter from whence he should be made which thing surely confirms that a feminine Matter was the more excellent governess or deputy and alone fore-elected from the Beginning 4. He fore-elected the most chast and unspotted Virginity of a Mother which he formed with a divine Hand 5. He was materially conceived onely and of most pure Arterial Blood To wit whereinto the seal of the holy Spirit inspired an humane Mind and a most pure Image of it self made or framed by his Father God 6. That conception was brought from the Heart into the Womb of the Virgin with a piercing of Dimensions 7. Lastly He exspected an increase and just maturity of Nativity as it were in the celebration of a Sabbath Furthermore that the knowledge of Good and Evil signifies nothing but the Concupiscence of the Flesh the Apostle doth manifestly testifie calling it the Law and Desire of Sin From whence to wit the first Bruital and Original Sin the fewel of the other Sins hath immediately issued and is hereafter to endure for a continued Seed of Mortals In the 8th to the Romans God sending his Son into the likeness of the Flesh of Sin hath also concerning Sin condemned Sin in the Flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us Original I say because it is the Beginning of the original of a humane Generation whereby all contagion of Impurity is derived on Posterity and Death became natural unto Man even as unto Beasts So that although the eating of the Apple did contain a note of distrust and ingratitude and the which also is a Companion unto every Sin Yet therefore even every Sin afterwards ought with the same Punishment of necessity also to descend unto Posterity unless the unwonted transgression of a loving Admonition should not so much consist in the disobedience of eating or abstaining as in the horrid Distrust of doubting and confidence of Faith given unto the Devil And so that the generation of the Flesh of Sin which is an effect of the Concupiscence of the Flesh hath of necessity defluxed into Death even unto all Posterity For it pleased the Lord of things to insert in the Apple an incentive of the Concupiscence of the Flesh to wit from which he was able safely to abstain by not eating the Apple therefore diswaded from For otherwise he had never at any moment been tempted by the Flesh or his genital Members the which I will hereafter shew to be therefore called the North in the holy Scriptures Therefore the Apple being eaten Man presently from a natural property of the Apple conceived the lust of being luxurious and from thence was made an Animal Seed which hastening into the previous or foregoing Dispositions of a sensitive Soul and undergoing the Law of other Causes reflexed it self into the vital Spirit of Adam which therefore like an ignis fatuus or foolish fire presently receiving an Archeus or ruling Spirit and animal Air I say a houshold Thief it conceived a Power of propagating an Animal and mortal Seed ending into Life At the arrival whereof at length the immortal Mind putting off the Rains of the Life and government of the Body substituted the sensitive Soul as its Chamber-maid From hence therefore we are conceived born and do die after the manner of Beasts For the day before the immortal Mind acted all in all and was the very immortal Life it self in the whole Body because it was solely and wholly immortal in the whole Body But that very so great Beauty of Nature was presently vitiated in our first Parent after that he was cloathed with the similitude of a bruital generation For then the immortal Mind being moved
something concerning the first Intent of God in Man At length in the last place the Sophistical Atheists do oppose themselves by the Text of Genesis That God overthrew the World by a Deluge Because the Sons of God had chosen and taken Wives of the Daughters of Men which were fair and because these had generated Gyants being strong and famous Men in their Age And that thing is there reckoned for much Wickedness the which notwithstanding literally is seen to be none in the Words of the Text after that Matrimony was now established and lawful Yea especially because Concubine-ship was a good while after dissembled in the Law the which by reason of that Impurity especially they named the Mosaical Law but not the Law of God For truly the Text doth not mention the Sin of David but in the Death of Uriah the Adultery of Bathsheba and the proud numbring of the People Wherefore they are wont to refer this Text of Genesis unto the religious Sons of God and the free Daughters of Men. But it hath seemed a vain thing to me to have fled unto a single Life and monastick Vows and Evangelical Counsels while as a plurality of men was required from the Command Increase ye and be ye Multiplyed and Replenish the Earth which Words indeed did excuse Concubine-ship Then in the next place seeing Virgins are far more prone unto a single Life Bashfulness likewise unto Chastity and Monastick Vows than Men The Floud had rather happened from the Sex being inverted or turned on the opposite Part and it hath been Written because the Daughters of God had taken the Sons of Men for their Husbands And moreover neither can there be any thought or project of keeping Chastity probably taught which had then separated the Sons of God from Virgins nor any Apostasie in those Ages which had provoked the Indignation of God unto Floud Yet if that be so the which I can in no wise through a Dream perswade my self of at least-wise it is from thence proved in behalf of my Position that Chastity alone doth distinguish the Sons of God from the Daughters of Men and that therefore the deflowring of Virginity hath procreated Original Sin But seeing that before the Floud there was no promise of a single Life or Chastity and that a Monastick or Monkish Life came not as yet into their Mind so long as Multiplying stood in a Command and Blessing I have conjectured under a humble censure of the Church that the Sons of God were the Posterity and begotten of a Man and a Woman having the true Image of God but that the Daughters of Men were Daughters procreated by the Sons of Adam and Nymphs the Satanical-birth whereof God alwayes very much abhorred But there was an incredible Multitude of these in the Desart one whereof was sent unto B. Anthony Also in the Dayes of Constantine a live Satyr was carried about to be shewn and afterwards was shewn being seasoned with Salt So once there were also diverse Monsters drawn out from the Ocean which spake were instructed in divers Arts and therefore rational they also lived among our Country-men Indeed rational living Creatures were conceived as well in the Waters as in Wildernesses from a detestable Copulation Seeing therefore the first Monsters had begotten Off-springs by the Sons of Adam of the Female Sex they distinguished the Sons of Adam by the name of the Sons of God and these kind of Monsters they name the Daughters of men And these Nymphs Heathenism thence-forward after the Floud named Dryades Nereides Naides c. The which seeing they were fair to look upon and men had taken them to be their Wives God from so great a Filthiness and destruction of the humane kind which the Text cals much Wickednesse in every Season or Age abhorring them determined to wash away the World with a Deluge From that Copulation of Monsters and Nymphs they generated strong Gyants and those famous men of their Age and the which therefore Heathenism long worshipped as Gods and Heroes For otherwise there seem to be frivolous reasons of the Floud according to the Letter To wit because men were married with women and these had generated Gyants that were strong and famous men of their Age. Therefore the Text ought to contain the Indignation of God and a suitable Cause of the Floud The monstrousness is not only in the Figure and Forming of their Body even as in the beginning of Degenerations but their Deformity being by degrees withdrawn and diminished the monstrousness stood in the sensitive Soul the which an immortal Mind did not accompany however outwardly they were Animals using Reason At least-wise it is manifest from the aforesaid Text that the true Posterity of Adam were not Gyants but of the Stature of Christ the Lord and framed by the same Statuary But the Copulation of diverse Species hath alwayes been execrable in the sight of the Lord least Man should follow it by imitation The Law therefore forbad that many Seeds should not be sown in the same Field nor that Webs of Linnen and Wollen should be combined To wit it being mindful of that most Ample and much Wickedness for which God ought to destroy the World But the co-mixture of those Men before the Floud with Nymphs was so usual and ordinary and likewise the copulation of Faunes with Maids that a few only being excepted and saved into the Ark the whole Stock of Adam was defiled and therefore passed by in silent Therefore God decreed to destroy every living Creature that he might likewise extinguish the guilty rational Monster For besides a few which the Ark shut up there was not he who had not contracted a consanguinity with that devilish Progeny For the B. Prophetess Hildegard writeth for she is the Prophetess of this Book which was canonized in the Synod of Trevirum or Triers unto the Clergy of Triers For very many People arose from the Sons of Adam who had a forgetfulnesse of God so that they would not know themselves to be Men From whence they by shamefully Sinning lived according to the manners of Beasts except the Sons of God who separated themselves from those same Men and their Loves of whom Noah was born These things she who acknowledgeth the Sons of God in both Sexes and clearly approveth of my Interpretation of this Text. For Satan had tried by this Mean to overthrow Mankinde and to hinder the immortal Soul that there might not be He from whence the Son of God should be born Therefore there was need of the Floud not only for the Correction of Sins but for the Salvation of the whole humane kind For otherwise Cham had not been saved by the Ark for he was now wholly perverse from Atheism Wherefore I interpret the Text yet under the humble Censure of the Church to wit that the Sons of God who did bear the Image of God in their immortal Soul and in their Body Took the Daughters of Men which
it is certain That the Heaven hath received no other Law since Transgression because the Earth alone hath undertaken all the Curse on it self For from hence I have sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere That the Heaven is free from our sins neither that it playes the part of a revenger of iniquities But if some places are subject unto Death and certain Diseases that is not to be attributed unto the circulation or whirling of the Heavens blind influxes of the Stars But it is altogether proper unto the dispositions of the Earth For although Eastern Provinces may seem the more fruitful or happy that is not to be attributed to the Heaven Seeing that in a circle every part subjected under the same circle is alike Oriental or Easterly Otherwise a Circle should not want a Beginning End and Extremity of parts Therefore there is an inbred goodness in the soil and the fertility of the ground is holpen by the continual cherishment of the Stars and a perpetual familiarity of visitation Truly under the circle of the Sun Climates have an ordinary and equal heat and so that as many fruits as by ripening do ascend unto a degree of perfection by reason of heat are there more happy the which otherwise through want of heat are not alike perfect But the heat of the Sun hath respect unto Fruits but not to Long Life which is of no less length of continuance in Cold Mountanous and Northern places than else where under the Hot or Torrid Zone Surely the favours of the Soyl do not depend on the Stars as neither the prolongations of Life The Stars are daily wheeled about and do daily almost equally affect the Climates of the Earth which are under them but they do every Year receive their Winter and Summer according to the access and recess of the Sun In the mean time the Tracts of the more adjoyning Lands do far vary from each other They are therefore the particular gifts of the Soyl but not of the Heaven which therefore keep a stable goodness as it were Provincial to the same Tracts of Land In the holy Scriptures indeed The Land of Promise floweth with Milk and Honey being fruitful in Wine Corn Pulse and rich fruits of the Tree And likewise scarce requiring dunging and the toyles of Labour And then I see other Coasts of the World to owe and pay the Tribute of the Land of Promise For from both the Poles continual Rains do steep the Earth that the promised Soyl may without the trouble of Rains take unto it self its due Water and that Aegypt may repay the favours of the Soyl of Heaven with a double usury of fruits For Seas and Rivers strivingly hasten unto those places with a speedy course Yea and from beyond the Tropick of Capricorne Nilus brings down his melted Snows through Aegypt unto the Mediterranean Sea as it were a Yearly Tribute of Nature that may water the more fruitful Countries if not with Rain at leastwise with Dew and the blackish cloudy Waters of Nile and that the Vapours being lifted up from the Sea throughout the Soyl it may most plentifully repay a plentiful Dew round about And so that the whole World seemeth readily to serve those more fruitful Regions Under the Aequinoctial Line it Rains many times every Day because the Tributary Waters do not reach thither But they are supped up in the Countries which God in times past appointed unto his own People but now unto Barbarians by reason of Transgressions fore-monished of by the Prophets He therefore blessed the Land of Promise for the People of Israel from the beginning but for Reasons foreknown to himself from Eternity and the which he fixed stable into Nature Yea he not onely appointed the Tribute of the whole World unto these Lands but unto most of them he added Reasons Idea's Seeds and Gifts whereof the more intemperate Climate are destitute Nor all that for any other ends than because it so well pleased him for his hidden Judgements But these things do not make for the consideration of long Life for in Is-land Men are found to be of a Longer Continuance of Life than in Palestina Phaenicia Aegypt c. Oftentimes also in Mountainous and rough Hills Older Men are met withal than in a pleasant Champion To wit that we may know that the Prince of Life hath granted a long continuance of Life unto so miserable places and to a singular tract of Land which he hath denied unto whatsoever the most pleasant and wealthy Countries Nature therefore is subject unto the Soyl even for a stability of Life For we measure a Diseasie and short Life from Endemicks Doth happily an Endemical Being breath out of the Lands wherein Life is prolonged No surely And it is sufficient that a place doth want malignity that a continuance of Life may be attained so far as is from the nature of the Place Lastly Fountains are either without Savour or Mineral they not being those which may have positively a long continuance of Life But as being those which unsensibly mow down the daily Superfluities or growths of oily Dregs and in this respect Life is not untimely taken away by and by Neither also doth much and a sweet temperature of Air prevail hereunto For truly in the rough Hills of the Forrest of Arden of Scotland and Spain in our Champion a longer Life doth for the most part occur than in Aquitane For Hieres is a Valley nigh Apulia environed with Mountaines being fruitful in the sweetest Fruits where the most sweet Station of the Spring is almost continued Yet having Inhabitants of a shorter Life being deformed with a pale Countenance so that it hath crept into a Proverb of those that were Sick and Recovering Thou seemest to us to be a Stranger come from Hieres For the pleasantnesse of Fruits takes up the suspition of a Mineral Endemick Also not onely Mountainous Colds do extend the Life but Old Age is frequent among the Aethiopians Let therefore those places be fit for Long Life which being not polluted by any Endemicks have moreover not unwholsome Waters nor the which are infamous for a stormy Wind. CHAP. CIV The Radical Moisture THe Schooles with one Voice promote the Radical Moysture of Life For they declame That from it and in it we live and that that onely being consumed we die For they who together with Aristotle attribute all things to heat as to an active Principle do not say That the Radical moisture is the Beginning as neither the Inn of Life unless they derive the Primateship on Heat in the moisture But the moisture hath more pleased others From whence they being sore afraid through the sloath of a diligent search least they should erre they will have our Life to depend on and be prolonged as well by moisture as by heat without distinction And so they denominate it not indeed heat but composedly Radical heat or the first-born moisture That indeed the first-born or original
But if it listeth us to enquire into the cause hereof It is certain that Eve after the eating of the forbidden Apple made her self subject to the itch of Lust stirred up and admitted the Man unto copulations and from hence that the conceived humane Nature was corrupted and remaining degenerate thenceforward Through the Cause of which corruption Posterity are deprived of an incomparable purity From whence there is place for conjecture that Eve did by the Member through which she became subject unto many Miseries testifie among posterity a successive fault of her fall and bloody defilement in Nature For the part wherein the Image of God ought to be conceived by the holy Spirit became a sink of filths and testifies the abuse and fault of an unobliterable sin and therefore also suffers Because In sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy Sons in manner of bruit beasts because henceforward thou shalt conceive after the manner of bruits For so that Curse hath entred into Nature and shall there remain And by the same Law also a necessity of Menstrues For before sin the Young going forth the Womb being shut had not caused pain Wherefore it is lawful to argue from the Premises That the incomparable Virgin-Mother of God the Ark of the Covenant never admitted into her any corruption and by consequence was never subject to Menstrues as neither to have suffered womanish discomodities Because she was she who by the good pleasure of God hath the Moon and the Properties of the Moon subjected under her feet Unto Whom next unto God be Honour and Praise CHAP. CIX Life IF I must at length Phylosophize of Long Life I must first look into what Life is and then what the Life of Man what immortal and Adamical Life is afterwards what a Sensitive and Short Life is what a Diseasie what a Healthy Life what the Life of the World and what Eternal Life is To which end it is convenient to repeat some Lessons from my Premises First of all therefore Life is a Light and formal Beginning whereby a thing acts what it is commanded to act But this Light is given by the Creator as being infused at one onely Instant even as Fire is Struck out of a Flint it is enclosed under the Identity and Unity of a Form and is distinguished by general Kindes and Species But it is not a fiery combustive Light a consumer of the radical moisture It is as well Vital in the Fish as in the Lyon and as well in the Poppy as in Pepper Neither also doth heat fail in us by reason of a consumption of the radical moisture Neither on the other hand doth moisture fail through a defect of heat but onely through a diminishment and extinguishment alone of the vital Powers and also of the Light The Fire Light Life Forms Magnal Place c. are neither Creatures not Substances as neither comprehended in the Catalogue of Accidents Neither therefore do I distinguish the Form in vital things from their Life the mind of Man being on both sides excepted To wit there is a certain Life which is mute or dumb and scarce appeareth such as is met with in Minerals The which notwithstanding do declare that they live and perform their Offices by their Marks and remarkable Signs of vital Faculties And then there is another Life which is a little more unfolded or manifest Such as is in the Seeds of things tending to the period of their Species In the next place a Third Life is seen in Plants increasing themselves and bringing forth off-spring by a successive multiplying Next a Fourth Life is manifest in bruit Beasts by Motion Sense and a voluntary Choice with some kind of Discourse of Imagination At length the Last Life is now obscured in the Immortal Mind and Substance and is after some sort unfolded by the sensitive Soul its Vicaresse The Life therefore is not the Balsam not the Mummy not in the next place the Spirit of the Arterial Blood although this Spirit be the Conserver of the Body Because the Life is not a Matter yea nor a Substance but the very expresse Form of the Thing it self Moreover I being about to speak of the Immortal Life of Men I will follow the Text For indeed because the punishment of the broken Precept was Death For Death came not from God but from the condition of a Law I say the Almighty made not Death as neither a Medicine of Destruction in the Earth And that must be understood onely in respect of Men For neither ought the whole Nature and Condition of the Universe to be bespattered for the Sin of Adam so as that Bruits are made subject to Death through the corruption or deviation of our kind For truly even before Sin Bruits ought to dye to wit some whereof the Lord of things had substituted for meat and fodder to others For they ought naturally to dye every annihilable Life and Form whereof were onely one and the same thing Indeed it was of necessity that those Forms should perish whatsoever do obtain their first or chief antecedent and subsequent dispositions from a corporal wedlock of the Seeds The Death therefore of Bruits was not worthy of the word Death which included an extinguishment and annihilating of a Light but not a separation of the same with a preservation of the Light separated Therefore it was the great God his good pleasure that he made Man into the nearest Image of the Divine Majesty as a living Soul nor subject unto death Therefore neither is it said that God made Death It is therefore believed that Adam before transgression was Immortal from the goodness of the Creator Therefore I knew that Adam indeed was Immortal before the transpression of a Law Yet that it was not natural unto him from the root of Life but for the Tree of Life's sake For otherwise the planting of this Tree in Paradise had been vain if Man could not have suffered the successive alterations and calamities of Ages That Tree therefore was created for the powers and necessities of Renovation renewing of Youth yea and prevention of Old Age For although the Body by Creation was not capable of being wounded nor subject unto Diseases yet it had by little and little felt the successive changes of Ages if its vigor had not been continued by the Tree of Life For neither is it to be believed that the Lord of things the Saviour of the World was of a worse constitution than our first Parent But that the Redeemer of the World died and so felt the Calamities of Ages that in his thirty second year he was reckoned fifty years of Age. That happened not from his Nature nor from the root of his Life For Death as also the rottenness of Dayes had no right over him but out of his infinite goodness whereby he had appointed himself a Surety for our Sins he would subject himself to miseries and so also to Death in his most glorious
incorporeal Gas which is therefore straightway comixable with our Archeus Therefore that Gas refresheth those that are affected in their womb with its smell but not the oyl not the tincture milk or floure of Sulphur But after what sort thou mayest know that Gas of Sulphur to be distinct from the watery vapour thereof kindle a sulphurated torch or candle in a glass bottle thou shalt forthwith see the whole bottle to be filled with a white fume and at length the flame to be stifled by the fume Afterwards keep thou the bottle most exactly stopt with a cork and thou shalt see a sulphur to be affixed unto the sides of the vessel and in the superficies of the water if there were any in the bottom But if indeed after some daies thou shalt put the same enflamed torch or bottle into the neck of the candle the flame is forthwith extinguished by reason of the condensable Gas of the Sulphur no otherwise than as the odour of an Hogshead putrified through continuance stifles the flame of a sulphurated candle But Hippocrates perfumed all the wine which he gave in the plague after this manner He perfumed the pot or cup of a narrow neck with a candle of burning sulphur he powred in wine to the filling of the pot a third part full and stirred the pot being exactly shut by shaking it a good while together upwards and downwards until the wine had drunk up all the Gas of the sulphur into it self For medicines to be hung on the body and Amulets or preservative Pomanders had not yet been made known But he supplyed external medicines that take away weariness or faintness in the room thereof by anointing the body with Greek Wine wherein he had boiled the most fine powder of Sulphur But he besprinkled the same fine powder being dryed in the Sun on those that were in a sweat and commanded it to be applyed with rubbings But the Pest since it never wants a Fever and that the Grecans saw the remedies of Hippocrates they began first to call the Pest and then every Fever 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a fire Not indeed by reason of a remarkable and necessary burning heat of Fevers although it so pleased Galen For truly they called the beginning cold rigours and horrours Pyâ— or a fire as well as a burning Causon For Hippâ—crates lightly ground Sulphur with water on a Grind-stone and being again dried he kept it for his uses But he gave twenty four grains of Sulphur with salted and hot wine that he might provoke sweats But he first made the salt to crack in a glassen pot and presently afterwards he melted it by increasing the fire for else salt containeth in it excrementitious filths which at the first cracking fly away the salt cleaving asunder and leaping a little These Spirits do easily putrifie through continuance and subject the salt to a fear of contagion for they are very forraign to the salt the which although they fled away a good while before the fusion of the salt yet he made a melting of the salt that whatsoever forreign thing was contained in the salt might be consumed by the fire For indeed he saw that presently after the invasion of the Pest the appetite was prostrated and then also that fermentally putrified and burntish impurities grew in the stomach from whence arose the headach vomitings loathings doatage the drowsie evil c. which would hinder the cure of the plague Therefore he took the common balsam of the salt of fleshes which might overthrow the fermental putrified poyson and putrefactions by cleansing them away together with a conâ—â—â—ing of the strength and he gave the wine being salted hot but not luke-warm 〈…〉 restrain the loathings of the stomach and mightily provoke sweats and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sulphur that it might kill the plague as it were with its odour because salt cleanâ—â—â—h preserveth from corruption and Sulphur restrains poyson But he prescribed this sweat for three daies space at least yet oft-times he extended it unto a weeks space but they did sweat twice every day and at every turâ— for the sixth part of a day if they were able on the first daies more and on the after succeeding daies less For in time of sweating he took away all drink but the term of sweating being finished he fed them with Barley-Cream and for drink they had Greek Wine pitcht wherein were a few grains of the aforesaid salt and Sulphur But he laid the leaves of Assara Bacca being steeped in vinegar upon the Bubo unto the soals of the feet and palms of the hands which after every twelve hours he commanded to be buried because they stink greatly It came to pass afterwards that Greece be sprinkled their grapes divers times with the Brine of the Sea before they were carried to the Press For Hippocrates perswaded that thing that so together with it Inâ—ects might be driven from the grapes Hence it is that the Wines of Greece are salted even unto this day the reason of this use being unknown Unto great Buboes in the groyn and marks he applyed hot Towels tinged in rich wine wherein as I have said he had boiled Sulphur Furthermore he reserved a secret to himself through the sight whereof he attained to himself divine honours But it was the flesh of a Viper or or Snake which he cleansed for the utmost part of the tail and the head being cut off he stript off their skin casting away the bowels together with the gawl he reserved only the Heart and Liver but he drew out all their blood with the vein running down the back-bone But he boiled not their flesh after the manner wherein it is put into Triacle but he exactly bruised the same together with the bones and aforesaid bowels and dryed them in a warm Oven until they could be powdered which powder he sprinkled on hony being sufficiently clarified and boiled until he knew that fleshes in boiling had laid aside their virtue as well in the broath as in the vapours But he added unto this Electuary the Spice of his Country for to cloak the secret and therefore neither was it made manifest by the Angel But the cure contains a mystery that as Death crept in by the Serpent it self also ought to be vindicated by the death of the Serpent For Adam being skilful in the properties of all Beasts was not ignorant also that the Serpent was more crafty than the other living Creatures and that the aforesaid balsam the remedy of death lay hid in the Serpent Wherefore the Spirit of Darkness could not more safely deceive our first parents than under the Serpents skin For perhaps they hoped that they should escape the death sorely threatned by God by the aid of the Serpent Hippocrates used also wine that was pitched Wherefore it is worthy our consideration that Spain is seldom afflicted with the plague not because sins or filths are wanting where there are almost no Jakes's It s a
of a Disease to owe an unseparable respect unto the hurting and things hurting of Functions So indeed that these Essences of Diseases should be included therein Because they have thought that the whole hinge of healing was rowled about contraries when as otherwise it is wholly by accident if in Diseases Functions are hurt otherwise whoever was he who denied a Disease not really to be present in the silence of a quartane Ague the falling sickness madness and Gout When notwithstanding no hurting of Functions is seen who is he which doth not now and then observe in a person recovering greater hindrances of actions and weaknesses than in the flaming beginning of Diseases It hath therefore alwaies seemed a blockish thing to me for a thing to be essentially defined by later and separable effects And seeing a Disease is primarily made by the Archeus which maketh an assault yet by an erring one certainly the action hereof shall be much nearer into the faculties themselves than into the actions of the same especially because as long as the faculties are as yet in one that is in recovery as it were vanquished and sore shaken there are indeed impediments of the faculties present likewise a hurting and suppression of actions yet no Disease surviving And seeing that I have elsewhere sufficiently demonstrated that both causes in natural things do not differ in supposition from the very thing it self constituted Therefore if a disease should be the cause of the hurting of an action as the constitutive difference of the same it should also of necessity be that a disease it self is not any thing diverse from an action being hurt which thing is already manifest to be false It should also be false that the cause and the disease should by the one onely title of the hurter of an action be undistinctly comprehended or the Schooles do badly decree that the hurter of action is the cause of a disease it self But the hurting of the action should be the disease and the action hurt the symptome it self for that is also a devise too childish For First A Disease should be a meer being of Reason mentally arising from a disposition of the tearms of the Cause unto the Effect To wit of the Hurter and the thing Hurt And then an Error is discerned in the definition of a Disease delivered by the Schooles To wit That a Disease is a Disposition primarily hurting an Action Because it is that which should define the Cause and not the Disease it self or the Effect of the Cause Thirdly If a Remedy ought to remove that it self which hurteth the Action that shall either have a singular Monarchy whereby it may call forth and shake off the Hurter it self or the Remedy shall joyn it self to Nature her self and that so most unitingly that their forces being conjoyned and they being now as it were one united thing doth set it self in an opposite term against the Hurter it self But the first of these is not true Because the Remedy should be as forreign unto Nature as is otherwise the Disease it self by reason of a particular direction and arbitriment of motions despised by our Archeus For if it ought to help it should have a power superiour to man's Nature in such a manner that it should obey neither the Lawes of things causing Diseases nor bringing Death And so it should expel the Cause which bringeth the Disease as well from a dead Carcass as from a languishing person Neither likewise hath the later place Because if the Remedy should be united to nature radically and by an unitive mixture it should have a priviledge above the condition of nourishment A hurting therefore of Action it self doth not fall into the definition of a Disease Especially because a Remedy doth not respect so much the occasional Cause as the internal efficient Cause of a Disease it self Whence that Maxime is verified That Natures themselves are the Curesses of Diseases as the Effectresses thereof They indeed do on both sides confound the Disease with the Symptom to the destruction of those that are to be cured seeing curing is seated oftentimes in the removal of the occasional Cause but never in the removing of Symptomes And because the removal of the occasional cause is thought to be an eduction or drawing out of matter nothing but solutives and diminishers of contents have flourished hitherto whereas otherwise a removal of the occasional cause doth more respect a correction or pacifying of the immediate efficient than a pulling away of the occasional matter Because after correction even without a removal of the occasional matter a cessation and unhoped for rest yea and also a cure do for the most part by and by happen The which in a sympathetical cure doth frequently come to hand and manifestly appeareth The Schools therefore have been deceived by artificial things and because they have thought that all generation is begun from the privative point of corruption They have not known that that which now flows in the material seminal Beginning of all things whatsoever hath already for that very cause it s own real Being although an unripe one and that it is hereby this something in it self and distinct from any other thing and that it doth by a natural generation attain only a maturity and illustration in its top or perfection by reason of a new formal light of acting Neither indeed doth the seed therefore differ from its constituted Being by the efficient internal cause and matter but only by an individual alterity or interchangeable course of the perfection of a formal light even as elsewhere concerning the birth of Forms For the Seed which at first had need of an exciter this formal light being obtained is afterwards for the moving of it self The Schools also do now and then consider a Disease even as if it were a neutral product proceeding or issuing forth through an activity of the cause and a reluctancy of our nature But I know that as well the formal Agent as the Patient in a Disease are strangers unto us in that act To wit I know that the Falling-sicknesse is no lesse really in us at the time of its silence than when it shall be in its full fit I know also that a Disease is a real substantive Being but not a relative Being not a naked disposition of the Agent and thing striving unto the Patient as of extreams unto a mean or middle thing Neither lastly that it is a conformity of proportion or disproportion between extreams Although this respect of forming a relation between the Beings of Reason be nearer than the effect produced I know further that every natural Agent is born to produce its like except that which acteth by a Blas but the power or faculty as well that locally motive as alterative because it wanted a name it seemed good to me to have it called Blas in the Beginnings of the Physicks or natural Phylosophy So the Heaven generates Meteors not
Fevers For I have seen some hundreds cured of divers Diseases by some Simples hanged on the Body without any removal of the occasional matter To wit Nature being busie about the rest Thirdly the fits of Diseases are oft-times ended the occasional Cause being present and remaining but it is altogether impossible for that to be while the containing and internal matter of the Disease is present In the next place there are Diseases which have no occasional Cause whose own connexed matter is neverthelesse excussed or struck out about the time of their period even as fire out of a flint They not having I say any other occasion of them besides Ideal impressions such as is the Gout falling-Evil Madnesse Asthma c. To wit whose perfect Cure consisteth in the removal of the seminal Character and incorporeal Ferment not likewise in the sequestration of any matter For so a certain odour being drawn thorow the nostrils hath strangled many without a material vapour or moist sent unto the Paunch However therefore they may strive with me they shall discern and confess with me that hitherto none hath come unto the knowledge of Diseases and that there hath been blindness in Healing hitherto Give leave to the truth It hath therefore been sufficient for me to have demonstrated that Diseases do lead their Armie into us by unknow Seminaries and invisible Beginnings according to that antient Maxim That every direction of Sublunary things depends on an invisible World Hence it hath come to pass that although Diseases have oftentimes been silent and have wholly ceased to be under the uncertain Cures of experiments yet nothing hath been hitherto acted from a fore-knowledge of the means and ends in Diseases of nature standing or sitting Because also they do very often of their own voluntary and free accord hastily run unto the end of their race But in Diseases of nature laying along or prostrated nothing hath been heard hitherto besides the despaires of incurable Diseases and the Lamentations of miserable men What things therefore have been assayed before touching the nature of a Disease let them be Prologues unto those things which remain to be by and by spoken concerning Diseases Where I shall professly touch at or reach the causes of all Diseases in the point of Unity Here only handing forth by the way that Diseases do now issue into depraved and impure nature plainly after the same manner wherein they at first began to be framed and issue And the Schooles will not deny that that thing lay hid to the Heathens and their followers Last of all new Diseases have lately happened unto us and antient ones do hereafter scarce any longer answer unto the names and descriptions of our Ancestours Because they have put on strange signes and properties whereby they go masked and deceive Physitians under the precept of the Antients For I conjecture that from thence there will be almost the greatest destruction of Diseases and so also that from hence the mercy of God will be so much the nearer unto Mortals For it hath pleased the most High to have sent Paracelsus in the forepastage who might propose unto the World the more profound preparations of Medicines so far as it was lawful But at this day afterwards he hath vouchsafed also to open the knowledge of Diseases Wherefore I shortly expect another to come whose Schollar I am not worthy to be For neither therefore hath the most High permitted my self to hope for the coming of the same man who hath sent me before as the publisher of his Praise For truly with him every Disease shall equally find its own remedies under the Stone or Harmony of unity together with the speculative knowledge of Diseases and Remedies I intreat the thrice most great and excellent God that he would preserve the same man from the vanity of arrogancy and from sudden Death sorely threatned unto him by hateful men CHAP. LXIII The Dropsie is Unknown 1. At length the Author shewes that there is the same ignorance of the Dropsie as of other Diseases 2. The Distinctions of Names used by the Schooles 3. He must first strive with the Schooles about the difference of occasional Causes 4. The hurtful ignorance of the humour Latex 5. The Errour of the Schooles is shewit with the finger 6. A cruel Remedy 7. A ridiculous Opinion 8. Some absurd Concomitants 9. A History 10. Absurd Anatomy 11. Some remarkable Histories 12. The Root of Grasse is examined 13. A Stumbling of the Schooles that they may fall 14. The Author answers by Eighteen Arguments 15. The occasional Cause is meditated of 16. The occasional cause is proved 17. Paracelsus is taken notice of 18. A most secure Remedy of Mercury described by Paracelsus 19. Some remarkable things 20. The Dropsie is described by its Causes and by Nineteen Positions 21. An Objection of Paracelsus is refuted 22. The poysonous furie of the Archeus of the Reines 23. A Maxime is preserved 24. The carelesness of the Schooles are to be admired at 25. The Author narrowly searcheth into some hidden things 26. The examination of a thing or matter which seems repugnant unto Science Mathematical 27. The difference of the Latex from the Urine 28. The use of the Kidneys being neglected hath brought forth the ignorance of the Dropsie 29. An Explanation of a new Question 30. The furie of the Reines is the Efficient Cause of a Dropsie 31. The manner of making in a Dropsie 32. It is prooved by a voluntary Cure 33. What the abstinence from Drink in a Dropsie may effect 34. Thirst doth in no wise dry up a Dropsie 35. After what manner the abstaining from drink hath cured the Dropsie 36. All thirst ariseth from the the Reines but not from the Liver as from the slender Veines according to the Schooles 37. The ignorance of Causes hath rendred the Dropsie neglected 38. The Vanity of Hydragogals or Medicines drawing out Water 39. A Remedy of the Dropsie 40. A remarkable thing concerning Briony 41. That the government of the Reines hath hitherto remained unknown 42. A Definition of the Dropsie by its Causes and manner of making 43. An examination of the Tympany 44. A History hath proved to the Nostrils what hath been said 45. The vanity of Carminating Medicines 46. Why Paracelsus perswadeth Dungs 47. Mercury is commended 48. A Bastardly and new Dropsie 49. The preparation of Precipitate and of the Arcanal or secretous Remedies of the Dropsie 50. Universal and pacifical secrets do as yet more powerfully operate I Have made a Treatise concerning Feavers and seeing that no seldome Dropsie is the Metamorphosis of malignant Feavers it seemed meet to me to subjoyne the Treatise of the Dropsie to Feavers yet afterwards when I saw that the Dropsie was solved or loosed by the Reins or Kidnyes I doubted whether the Dropsie were rather to be considered after the Treatise of the Disease of the Stone or whether by way of example I should subjoyn it to the
of the Causes it is wholly invisible and unpassable Wherefore although I tax the ignorance of the Schooles I will not have that to be done by me for a little vain glories sake as neither from an intent of reproaching the whole Body of the faculty Because it is that which hath not transgressed against me but only from a desire of teaching Mortals Not indeed that I perswade my self that the goodness of God doth envy this doctrine for the health of Man while as even from the beginning of the World he hath dispersed his gift by some throughout the ages of the World the holy Scripture also do most greatly commend the Physitian But that most through a sluggishness of diligent searching and a readiness of credulity have stifled in themselves that endowed or gifted Light And so the Devil being the builder it hath alwayes been super-structed on the false Principles of the Heathens Therefore Medicine the most difficult of Sciences by reason of the invisibility of Diseases and deceit much increased by Heathenish Theorems hath not been penetrable by any acuteness of Wits which difficulties the invention and knowledge of so many Simples and preparations appropriations and applications of remedies fetcht from thence according to the varieties and speedinesses of sliding occasions hath increased in every of which they are on both sides the invisible actors of their own tragedy The which Diseases unless any one shall perfectly know or hath obtained a super-excelling remedy truly he shall spend his weapons at the effects but not at the roots themselves Therefore the gate of healing hath even from the Cradles or non-age of the World remained shut which my Talent received hath commanded me to open for of boasting hereof it hath notably shamed me God is witness wherefore I ought first to free the Hinges and Bars from rust that I might set open the Doores to those that are willing to enter Therefore I ought to expose the one only and golden Key hitherto hidden in the Arches of the Archeus unto the Fire of the Art of the Fire and Light of Truth That any one may enter into the secrets of the Court so far as shall be granted him from Above First of all I do not name a Disease a Diathesis or Disposition but the very wandering or erring Being which is stamped by the vital Archeus himself I do not therefore behold a Disease as an abstracted quality And that thing I thus perswaded my self of in times past that like Life it is a Being proper unto the Life it self It being the reason why a Disease doth with so swift a pace pierce into the Life by reason of its co-resembling mark Wherefore the Apoplexie Leprosie Dropsie or Madness as they are Qualities in the abstract with me are not Diseases But as the Apoplectical Leprous Maddish c. Being contains the very Scope and Causes of the Diseases in it Truly a Disease begun from Sin For in the integrity purity of our Nature and vigour of Innocency there was no Death and much less a Disease For Death was threatned not a Disease but that they were understood concomitantly as to future times Therefore a Disease doth in its own Nature oppose the Life no otherwise than as Death it self and the powers thereof the which therefore we call vital Because through the spending of those a lingring or sudden Death happens We believe by Faith therefore that Death and every infirmity hath entred into Man by Sin and that through the concupisence of the Flesh of Sin they were propagated on all posterity Therefore that neither could the entrance of Diseases and Death be learned by Heathenisme Because it was reasonable that all the ranks of sicknesses should be rooted in the same concupiscence of the Flesh whereby Sin entred For as concupiscence in the conception doth not Sin before a consent which fashions an Idea of plausibility So it must needs be that every Disease arising in the Flesh of Sin doth consist in a strange Image or seminal Idea of corrupt Nature I have gathered also that it was suitable that the Being which under a concupiscible pleasure consented and sinned should primarily also be strucken with Diseases So indeed that it should not only fail or faint through external violences but should experience the revenges of Sin in the Flesh by its own proper exorbitances to wit that the Archeus himself the governour of the Flesh of Sin should by the same liberty of his own passions frame erroneous Images to himself which should be unto him as it were for a poyson Indeed that from the delights of the concupiscible part from passions which are the storms of the wrothful part and likewise even through voluntary disturbances he might stand subject unto his own Ruine which he should stamp on himself Which Images or Likenesses indeed as being the seeds of Diseasie Beings should be thenceforth wholly marriageable unto him in the innermost Bride-bed of Life This indeed is an hard saying in the ears which are not accustomed to hear beyond trifles heats and dirt Wherefore if any one doth admire at so great an efficacy of the Archeus being Ideated and of seminal Idea's as to produce Diseases and Death it self He doth not yet know that the natural beginning of all things doth altogether depend on the Ideal part in every seed Wherefore let him consider that as the Light being united for truly in sublunary things there is scarce any thing more spiritual than Light because it is that which pierceth solid Glasse yea also place it self doth enflame Woods and Houses So also that every Idea is a Light as well forasmuch as it is stamped by the Spirit the partaker of a vital Light as in that it is lightsome from the property of its own essence Otherwise Idea's themselves as they are conceived are nothing besides the Lights of a vital Soul reflexed on its own cogitations and the which therefore are not conceived but in a lightsome Spirit in which they receive the figure of the thing conceived That is they are there made an intellectual Idea it self Therefore although cogitation it self be a meer non-being Yet every thing conceived doth from the very right of its nativity consist of a matter conceived and of a vital Light intelligibly reflexed on it And seeing the Imagination is the Ape of the Understanding although it doth not transform it self into the thing conceived after the manner of the Understanding yet by conceiving it transports this thing figurally into it self and seales the conception thereof and decyphers a certain seminal Idea of the thing imagined together with light efficacy and every manner of operation And that wholly under its greatest Unity and Simplicity So that if in fructifying seeds and those continuing the perpetuity of the universe these things do appear to happen and to operate by a Light with great efficacy wherefore shall we be ignorant that these do not otherwise come to pass in Diseases Especially
Stomatical and Aromatical things being Distilled Furthermore in as much as in fits of the Falling-sickness all Sense not likewise motion faileth Yet that doth not therefore argue that the sensitive Soul is not the Fountain of both For although all the intellectuall powers do fail and onely the Testimonies of a shaking and leaping motion do remain as long as that Eclipse endureth yet all those Powers are denoted or designed as issuing from the Soul into the Body as if they were proper to it But those Powers which it self hath planted in the Archeus implanted in the Organs are under an Ecclipse and are tumulted by the commotion of the Soul yet they subsist obscured because the Life is not taken away neither doth the Pulse therefore cease But in as much as an unvoluntary convulsive motion doth even still remain that is not to be attributed so much to the Soul as to the singular Life of the Muscles The which indeed I have elsewhere shewn as yet to persevere for some time after Death And that a Tetanus and strait Extension doth begin long after Death So that although the Life of the Muscles doth proceed from the sensitive Soul yet it obtains a certain peculiar Efficacy as also Station of place Therefore it is less wonderful or absurd for the Muscles to be therefore tumulted by their own Motion if on this side Death they have felt the common Life to be Eclipsed But in an Apoplexie and Swooning even the motion of the Muscles also doth plainly fail except the motion of those between the Ribs because then the sensitive Soul doth undergo a total darkness Therefore the Soul the directress of Life according to the divers Tragedies of its perturbations doth manifoldly dismiss its Guardians into the Organs placed under it But every Life seeing it is of the disposition of Lights descending from the Father of Lights it exceeds a humane Understanding And so by an unfit word the Father of Lights is called by the Schooles the Intelligible World who doth least of all fall under our Understanding For neither is the most Glorious Father of Lights and his whole Common-wealth wholy unknown unto us according to the Testimony of Truth to Nicodemus but also the Essence Thingliness Direction and Distribution of the vital Powers do exceed our Capacity For how astonishable is the privation of Understanding Memory yea or of Speech only especially Motion Sense Appetite yea and the integrity of Health remaining And how terrible is the fall of these at every onset of the Falling-sickness Swooning or drousie Evil And how much doth it exceed humane Industrie that so diverse Faculties do arise and inhabit in one Stomack Because so diverse Symptomes do bewray the same hurtings of the Faculties For all things do drive us unto the amazement of a Miracle or Wonder And therefore we being admonished by so many stormes on every side of our Ignorance and Fondness do confess that that one only sensitive Soul is the Fountain of Life also Life the Spring of many Powers and Distributress thereof as well in the healthy as in sick Persons Therefore also if we Physitians ought to lay the Ax unto the root of the tree we are intent for the obtaining of Universal Arcanum's or Secrets which may conserve preserve plant and build up the Life in the very Fountain of Life the Author of Death and Diseases no less than of Health For I now have regard to the frail Soul but not to the incorporeal and immortal Mind The which we believe to be Originally inspired alike and alike perfect in all And therefore Conditions Inclinations Domestick or Forreign Mild or Fierce Tractable or Teachable Humble or Proud are instilled into us by the Mortal Soul Wherein as in a Subject or Place locally disposing the Inclinations of varieties are unfolded which otherwise from the Mind or Image of God are naturally banished Therefore sleep was not in man naturally in respect of his mind but was afterwards sent into him by the Creator But before sleep was bred Sense Motion and Appetite were present Because the Mind as it was thenceforth Immortal it was also unweariable and had no need of Sleep or Rest Yet Sleep was sent into Adam before the Fall Not so much for that he stood in need of Sleep especially a few hours after his Creation as chiefly because by Sleep he was not yet made sore afraid of known Death threatned unto him for eating of the Apple Otherwise Sleep produceth from it self sluggish idleness and foolish vain Dreames and causeth the loss of almost half the Life Whence even at this day from the antient Sleep sent into Adam they have yet retained Dreams That the Old Men shall Dream Dreams the Young Men shall Prophesie And Night unto Night shall shew Knowledge For the sleepifying Power which was sent into the Mind before the Fall and the same also being after a sort free from the wedlock of the Mortal Soul would after some sort draw it into its Original Prerogative of Prophesying unless the darkness of the Soul sprung up and put in place did obscure the same But while I declaim the Stomack to be the Inne of the sensitive Soul and for that cause do dedicate the sink of Diseases to the Stomack I have indeed considered Occasional Causes near the same place to sit as well in the hollowness and bought thereof and being as it were strangers onely there to stick and likewise in the tent of the Bowel Duodenum which is the Prison deputed for the Jurisdiction of the Gaul and Pylorus and most troublesome to Anatomists for its composure of Vessels and Glandules as in the Archeal sheathes no less of that which is inbred as of that which is inflowing To wit that through the conspiring distemperature whereof the sensitive Soul is diversly disturbed and all the Vital Faculties the Chambermaids hereof to be co-shaken and so the same being weakened that an Army of Diseases doth arise as well those Radical or Chronical as those soon hastening as I long since have known being thorowly instructed by many Experiences So that I saw Hunger and unextinguishable Thirst to proceed not so properly from the sharpnesse of the matter provoking as from the very fury of the sensitive Soul For otherwise a Thorexis or Draught or Potion of generous Wine should not dissolve Hunger unlesse Hunger being as it were made drunk by appeasing should soundly sleep And therefore Thirst in Feavers doth not afflict but in its own Stations although the same matter yea and a more cruel heat doth presse more in their Vigour than at other times Now even as the Government of the Stomack hath been enlarged on So also it hath been shewn that the sensitive Soul doth there abide as in the first or chief Kitchin of the Meats and that the Life doth there Inhabit For truly the most potent Powers of transchanging and digesting do there exercise their Offices and therefore not onely Kitchinfilths are
But Herbes are gathered and Roots are digged up in a station wherein there is the more of vigor and therefore also presently after Sun-rising For things Injected are driven forth no otherwise than as a Snake from the Fire But Divines are wont to consume things Injected which are rejected in the Fire for a disgrace of the evil Spirit Those things indeed do thus rightly perish yet the relapsing returns thereof are not thus hindred Therefore things Injected which were expelled are more rightly involved and kept in Simples in any whereof there is an expulsive force With the like reason whereby Sympathetical Remedies do cure an absent Wound do these endowed Simples drive away things Injected do detain and restrain them that they are not Injected and do delude the vain endeavour of the Magitian The weaknesse therefore of an in-darting Being is deservedly suspected which cannot send in things that are to be cast into the Body because a certain hindering Herb is present and President Therefore the force which derives things Injected inwards is not that of the Prince of this World and of a most powerful Spirit But that of a certain Ideal and more infirm Being which doth so easily hinder all enterance for the future CHAP. LXXXII Of Things Conceived or Conceptions 1 The Spleen is the Seat of the first Conceptions 2. As well the Idea's of the Immagination as Archeal ones do issue from the Spleen their Fountain 3. Therefore also they smell of an Hypocondrial faculty or quality 4. The Plague alwaies begins about the Stomack 5. Of soulified Conceptions 6. Idea's from the Womb. 7. Madnesses 8. A mad Irreligion 9. The reality of Conceptions in respect of the Matter and efficient Cause 10. Presumption doth blind almost all mortal Men. 11. An occult madnesse 12. Diseasie Conceptions 13. Diseases of the Womb. 14. Womb Phantasies 15. An instruction of every Monarchy 16. A double Government in a Woman 17. The Womb is not ill at ease but from things conceived 18. The Female Sex is miserable 19. Diseases of the Womb differ from their Products 20. The Cure of its last or utmost Fury 21. A twofold Idea of things Conceived 22. The rise and progresse of a Feverish Dotage 23. The progresse of Idea's unto their maturities 24. The Entry of all good is in Faith 25. The flourishing of Passions MOreover a Diseasie Being is like unto things Injected the which I call that of things conceived For although this Being doth not come to us from without nor is nourished from elsewhere Yea neither doth Satan co-operate with it yet because it doth not much differ in its root manner of making and a certain likeness dâ—â—fects from some Injected things I have not unadvisedly referred things Conceived among Spiritual things Received Unto the clearing up whereof I have already premised many Prologues Wherefore I have already elsewhere demonstrated the Imaginative Power of the first Conceptions to be in the Spleen and that it is from thence extended unto the Stomack the companion of the Duumvirate and that also it is hence easily and originally in the other Sex extended unto the Womb. The Spleen therefore is as well the Fountain of Idea's Conceived in the imaginative faculty of a man as of the Archeus himself The Archeus hath his own and peculiar Imaginations proper unto him for whether they are the Phantasies of a true Name or onely Metaphorical ones it is all one to me in this place for the sake whereof he continually feels Antipathies and self-loves and from thence stirs up derived motions Surely the Conceptions of the Archeus doe forthwith attain the most powerful determinations in the aforesaid places Because they smell of their native place they are Hypocondriacal Qualities they bear the Monuments of the first and undistinct motions And although a soulified immagnation which is there delayed without the strength of impression or the inclination of any prejudiced thing may be at length made as it were sleepy undistinct and almost confused wherefore indeed times do seldome wax gray or old with carelesness yet those which in the very shops of the first Motions receive the deliberation of some Passion do also allure unto them the Spirits made old in the Brain do undergo the contagion of the place and are made and forged by the Judgement of a deprived Idea and do seminally bring forth affects co-agreeing with their Causes To wit those which are suspected of Hypocondrial madness confusion and disturbance For therefore we do all of us suffer every one his own anguishes of mind Yet the already mentioned Archeal imagination as it neither desireth the consent of the Soul so neither doth it exspect it and therefore it happens unsensibly and without our knowledge Therefore indeed the Plague whether it be made from a terrour conceived in the Soul or next from a proper Vice of the Archeus yet it alwayes holds its first consultations about the Orifice of the Stomack For the Idea's of the Archeus are most powerful also the most fierce ones of Diseases Because they being irrational do happen unto us without our knowledge and against our will and therefore also incorrigible and are for the most part out-laws and do therefore invade us after an unthought of manner I will now treat of soulified Conceptions because they are the more distinct and sensible ones whosoever they be which do as it were weaken insatuate and now and then enchant themselves with the perturbations of the first motions and the conceived Idea's of these they afford a fit occasion unto the aforesaid Causes And although this kind of Vice doth sometimes invade even learned and judicious Men produceth foolishnesses and crabbishnesses Yet it is more social unto a Woman by reason of the agreement and nearnesse of affinity of her Womb. Indeed the Womb although it be a meer Membrane yet it is another Spleen And therefore it doth as it were by a proper instinct of the Seed presently wrap it self in the external Secundines of the young as it were another Spleen As elsewhere in its place Not indeed that a Woman doth by this Vice of Nature forge execrable Hypocondrial Idea's for the destruction of others after the manner of Witches but they are hurtful onely to themselves and do as it were inchant and infatuate and weaken themselves For they stamp Idea's on themselves whereby they no otherwise than as Witches driven about with a malignant Spirit of despair are oftentimes governed or are snatched away unto those things which otherwise they would not and do bewail unto us their own and unvoluntary madness For so as Plutarch witnesseth a desire of Death by hanging took hold of all the young Maids in the Island of Chios neither could it be stayed but by shame or bashfulness sore threatned unto them after death Seeing therefore the Vice of things Conceived doth also touch men let the Reader be averse to wearisomness if it shall behove me to stay the longer in these things who
speedy adhering of Smoaks in our Pipes But they having gotten possession within they will not refuse it by Vegetables For they will scarce receive a healing Medicine unless by Secrets of the same Monarchy Wherefore I have not found any help from the Manna of a Nettle and likewise from Semper-vive boyled in the beestings or first-stroakings of Milk c. The which I with the leave of Paracelsus do thus maintain and they who shall be willing to make tryal I trust will subscribe with me CHAP. LXXXVI Things Suscepted or Undergone THe fourth kind of things Received I call things Suscepted such as are Wounds made by a Point or a Cut or Stroak by Darting Beating Casting Renting Biting Bruising Congealing Scorching or Burning or Straining Likewise breaking of a Bone Displacing Binding close Pressing together and in brief whatsoever things are immediately subjected unto the Chyrurgion For truly Ulcers which are bred not by a Wound rashly cured seeing they are nourished by an internal Principle they singularly have respect unto a Physitian And by so much the more evidently because any kind of Ulcers and how malignant soever are perfectly cured by Arcanums taken in at the mouth Therefore Arcanums being obtained the Chyrurgion being in penury will at sometime be idle who is to be occupied in manual labour only about things Suscepted or undergone But because the fulness of dayes hath not yet brought Arcanums into use hence there is a Liberty for Chyrurgions to invade the Physitian In the mean time I stay not in the difference between Diseases of the similar and organical members which is so greatly enlarged in the Schooles Because I measure a Disease by its Archeal and immediate Causes but not by the hurtings of the Functions Especially because all parts how organical soever do not depart from their homogeniety or sameliness of kind For neither do I judge it to be of concernment whether many Offices do concurre in one part or whether there be a particular defect of particular Offices Because the eye being thrust out a Disease doth not succeed but a Death of the power of Seeing And therefore an incarnating being introduced over it causeth an healing of the Wound but doth not restore the Death Neither likewise do I clash with my self although I have elsewhere said that all Diseases do arise and are nourished from seminal Beginnings But I will teach in this place that Wounds undergone by a Sword do operate in entering after the manner of artificial things Because the Diseases of things Suscepted are not so long as they are in their being made but after their being undergone For things suscepted have that thing peculiar unto them that by themselves they rather introduce Death than a Disease For it is by accident that a Wound doth cut asunder the fleshy part or the Heart it self or an Artery And therefore a Wound in its beginning doth threaten Death on the part whereon it is inflicted and Susceptions do alwayes savour of the nature of artificial things For Susceptions have first of all deceived the Schooles For they have argued after this manner A Sword woundeth that which is continual or holding together being divided is wounded But dividing is nothing but a relation of terms and yet a Wound is a Disease Therefore every Disease consisteth onely in a relation or at least-wise in a disposition or effect of that relation Which is to say That a Disease is either a Being of Reason or a Non-Being such as is the relation of Terms or that a real Being doth arise from the Being of Reason But I who do not destinguish Internal connexed Causes from the thing it self do call Poysons Foods a Sword c. Occasions I call a Wound an absolute or sore threatned Death of that which is continual But when they have brought their force into the Archeus so that this shall be wroth through things applyed unto himself I referre that which is imprinted by things Suscepted among Primary Diseases For as soon as a Sword hath divided that which held together the action of a violent occasional Cause being darted into the Archeus is present and this Archeus soon begins his tempests that is Diseases CHAP. LXXXVII Things Retained in the Body THe Treatise of things Received being finished I now proceed unto things Retained But in things Retained let it be sufficient once and seriously to have admonished of this That although they are onely the occasional Causes of Diseases yet I have been willing to distinguish of Diseases according to the things Retained that I might Retain the antient names of Diseases But that the Chapter whose Title is That the Knowledge of a Disease in its universality hath remained unknown hitherto is sufficient for a fore-caution of those things which are to be spoken of things Retained Whither I refer the Reader For truly all particular things which are Retained do stir up their own Invasions on the Archeus and from thence also the differences of Diseases But those are things Retained which are either taken into the Body from without or are bred as domestical things within by an internal inordinacy For seminal things whether they shall be forreign or homebred do on both sides stir up a memorable effect of their disorder on the Archeus Which thing is easie to be seen even in a simple Lacryma or Tear of the Eye Because it is that which by a healthy motion of the Spirit is wholly discussed or blown away without feeling or trouble The Spirit of the Eye being badly disposed it is wholly thickened waxeth clotty or is changed into a gnawing Liquor In the next place things Retained do not onely vary in their unlikeness of Form but also are changed by reason of the dispositions of the Body For the Body as it is more or lesse transpirable doth vary Diseases For some things retained are discussed neither do they leave behind them the Root of stirring up a Relapse Sometimes also they are forgetful of this bounty they leave an occasional matter and herewith oftentimes fermental adulterous impressions as off-springs which do stir up new Heirs or Products from themselves in the Archeus Because the inward pores also do sweat as the whole Body is transpirable and as liquid things are derived into a strange harvest The which because they are brought out of their own cottages they are therefore soon spoiled of their common Life are most speedily coagulated as I have said concerning the Tear of the Eye or do remain resolved into a liquid Poyson For so the matter of Coughs the Dropsie Pose Flux Pissing-Evil Apostems and Ulcers are bred For the retained curdlings of some things do stick the more stubbornly fast are slowly or never resolved or they do of their own accord think of a dissolving and melting or they leave an impressional symptome in the Archeus introduced for a perpetual remembrance of relapses For so the seeds of Diseases being ready to depart elsewhere do depart awry or
foolish thing to reckon a Being of Reason a Mental Being or a Non-Being among Natural Causes Moreover I had willingly hastened unto the bound which I have proposed unto my self concerning Long Life unless Death should cut off the intended thred interlacingly prefixing its priority as it were a Remora or stop The Paradox also whereof I had willingly detained among Secrets but that the Treatise of Long Life did require its right after Death whereby it hath naturally stablished an entrance into the Inne of Man Surely this Mystery of God is an unheard of Paradox and the which therefore I humbly prostrate unto the Censure of the Church But let it be in stead of a Proposition That God made not Death But that thing I first understand to be denied for Man onely For otherwise for bruit Beasts Death was already naturally ordained before Man was Created and indeed from the same Root whereby Death entred into Man For truly most Beasts live not but by the slaughter of each other In the next place Death doth not in this place signifie a naked separation of the Soul from the Body as it denoteth a meer privation as if the sense were That God hath not made a Non-Being which is called Death For such a Declaration or Proposition in the holy Scriptures should be ridiculous For the very Word He hath made and a denial thereof is the same and respecteth that he made and they were made And so a denial thereof bespeaks the absence of a positive and not of a privative Being and is equivalent to this Proposition God made Man without an Inclination unto Death Neither made he Natural Causes in him whereby he should be Mortal In the next place neither hath the evil Spirit made Death Because there is not a kingdom of Infernal Spirits in the Earth and much lesse was there in Paradise Neither can Satan by any means change Essences instituted by the Creator invert them abolish or slay those Essences which God hath made void of Death Death began in us from the evil Spirit indeed suggestively and excitingly after a manner plainly by accident and external Neither could he produce a Cause of Mortality in a Subject through the grace of the Creator uncapable thereof Therefore if neither God nor the evil Spirit have made the Death of Man efficiently therefore from a sufficient enumeration of parts Man alone made Death for himself and hath applyed Causes unto himself as a Positive Being From whence he hath become mortal and Death hath been made natural For what the Devil could not do man having a possibility but not a necessity of dying could do For he was in the possession of Immortality and he was able not to dye if he would because Death was unto him a free Contingent but indeed because the Body of Adam had need of the Tree of Life therefore in respect of his Body he was not absolutely Immortal and therefore also he stood in need of nourishment but he was to be Immortal from the free goodness of the Creator And he who had preserved Adam from Death by Grace and had given him the natural endowment of the Tree of Life had therefore defended the same Adam from any kind of Injuries Therefore Immortality in Man had been continued by the Tree of Life and he was therefore banished out of Paradise lest also after the Apple being eaten He stretch forth his hand unto the Tree of Life and eat c. For as the Apple included the Cause of Death so the Tree of Life contained a superiority of Life over the Causes of Death For it was not convenient for Man who had eaten his own Death not to Dye and to deride threatned Death and therefore he ought to be bannished in Paradise But Man was Immortal as his Immortal Mind did immediately perform all the Offices of his Body and give from it self an Immortal Life For seeing it knows no Death neither therefore is it subject unto the importunities of frail things it behoveth if it was to govern the immediate family-administration of the Body that it should after some sort communicate a like Immortality to its Body at-least-wise as to an excellency of the ruling Powers Although in respect of the nourishments of the Body Man had by little and little failed if he had not been supported by the Tree of Life Yea in speaking distinctly all plurality of his Powers was supt up into the Unity of his Mind And at this day the Mind is not capable of suffering through Duration and the Alterations of mortal Things because a mark of resemblance is wanting to these whereby they may immediately touch at or pierce the Mind Therefore that Death might make an access and entrance into Man it behoved that the Mind did first desist from its immediate and former Function of the Offices of the Body and that another Soul to wit a Mortal one Sensitive and Seminal being as it were the Band of the Body should enter The which indeed being far different from the Mind is begged in the course of Nature by the vital Air from the Father of Lights the giver of Life even as elsewhere concerning the birth of Forms and perisheth with the Death of Man For if the Seed of a Dog doth voluntary issue even into a living Soul exclusively Therefore it was meet that Man should be conceived without Seed and a manly Copulation or at leastwise that the Seed of Man should not be without the disposition of a seminal Life but to be limited by the common guidance of created Nature into a living Soul exclusively the manner whereof I will explain afterwards Furthermore that Death was placed in the eating of the Apple that is that the natural Cause of Death the producer after a dispositive manner of the sensitive Soul which otherwise Man had wanted was by the Seed and that indeed after the manner of Bruits and that the Mind thereupon hath forsaken the government of the Body as it were abhorring the beast-like Impurity thereby contracted shall be made manifest in following Treatises For from what moment of Time Man made a Seed within himself for the propagation of his own Species he delineated at leastwise dipositively by the same endeavour the Beginnings of a mortal Soul occasionally it being the covering and wrappery of the Mind that it might receive on it self the whole ministery of the Body For truly the Creator had already obliged himself unto the Seeds of things in Nature that as often as the Seeds of sensitive Cratures had come unto the bound of multiplying the Parent himself of vital Lights might infuse meet Souls into all particular Seeds the which I elsewhere in the birth of Formes have profesly prosecuted And therefore there was in the Apple a Faculty of producing a fructifying Seed and after a brutal manner containing a seminal dispositive Archeus of the Young and by request obtaining for it self a mortal Soul from the Giver of Life For on the
manifest how most nearly a single Life doth come unto the Primitive state of Innocency and so that also from thence we may learn that the intention of the Creator was in a single Life For now and then that word of Truth comes into my mind which requireth the state of little Children in those that are to be saved under the penalty of infernal punishment and that we must despair of Salvation unless we are made or become like unto them In whom notwithstanding I find a suddain speedy undiscreet and frequent anger stripes kickings lyes disobediences murmurings reproaches a ready deceit and lying in play an unsatiable Throat impudence disturbances disdaines unconstancy and a stupid innocency lastly no acts of devotion attention or contribution But yet those are not the things in little ones which are required for those that are to be saved under pain of an Eternal loss In the next place neither do little Children want their pride of Life and despising of others and especially their hatred of the poor also a frequent desire of revenge cruelty an itch of getting or attaining the concupiscence of the Eyes and are wholly and perpetually addicted to and drowned in self-love But neither are those the things required in them that are to besaved under Gods indignation But they want the concupiscence of the Flesh alone This indeed is the Mark which with so loud sounds it required for those that are to be saved Because it is that which was of a primitive intention in Creation And therefore from an opposite sense I argue That the chief fault of the Fall of the Apple being eaten was convenant about the infringement of that chast bashfulness that is that Original sin was scituated in the breaking of Virginity in the act of Concupiscence and propagation of feed But not in the very act of disobedience and despised Admonition and distrust of the truth of the divine Word For B. Hildegard also in the Third Book of her Life seemeth to have testified the same thing The Author saith She freed the Matron Sibylla of the City of Lausaâ—ium beyond the Alpes who required her help by a Messenger from a daily Issue of Blood by the subscribed Letters being sent unto her Thou shalt put these words between thy Breast and 〈◊〉 in the 〈◊〉 of him who rightly disposeth all things In the Blood of Adam arose Death In the Blooâ— of Christ Death is extinguished In the same Blood of Christ I command thee Oh Blood that thou contain or stop thy Flux And the Matron was cured by these written Words the which others have many times experienced Therefore Death was extinguished by the effusion of the Blood of Christ and the particiâ—â—â—â—on thereof in being born again that is by the offering up of Chastity to God the Father for those that are to be renewed in his Blood And moreover if we do well mind it is acknowledged that God hath loved women before Men in their Sex by reason of an inbred bashfulness Unto which Sex therefore he hath freely given Devotion as a gift of Nature whereby â—ere should be some kind of natural faculty and virtue proper to that Sex a Medium unto Salvation For the first Apostoless before the coming of the Comforter by one onely Sermon converted Samaria the head of the Israelitish Kingdom otherwise most stubborn Only the Women from Galilee being constantly although disgracefully serviceable adered to Christ at his Death and under all ignomiâ—â—y he being left by his disciples the witesses of so many Miracles and that at the first blast of adversity For the poor Women rejoyced in their reproaches so they might but follow Christ carrying his Cross upon his back Magdalen also first preached the Gospel of his Resurrection unto her own who did not believe and confirmed them in Faith who doubted and deserved to be the first beholder of Christ after his Death because she sought the same with the fervor of the greatest Devotion God I say hath heaped very many Diseases Adversities and Subjections on this Sex that it should be by so much the more like and nearer to his Son But the World despiseth Women and preferreth Men But in most things the Judgements of God are opposite unto the Judgements of the World so that also the World despiseth the Poor of whom Christ calleth himself the Father but not of the Rich. Then in the next place Christ calls himself in many places The Son of Man But seeing he had not a Man unto his Father therefore by an Antonomâ—sia he calls the Woman the Virgin Man by an absolute dignity of Name and worthy of or beseeming the Femal Sex as if for that reason the name Man ought thenceforth after sin to be proportioned and stands for the Woman in the more famous signification Shewing at leastwise that in thing the Mother-Virgin was after the sin of Adam the one onely Man such as the Divinity had espoused unto it self in the Creation of the Universe for the replenishing of the places laid waste by the Evil Spirit And that what Eve ceased to be through an infringing of Chastity that Mary the most glorious Virgin was to wit The one only Mother of those that are to be saved in the Regeneration of Purity But neither 〈◊〉 I undertaken a laudatory Oration in behalf of that Sex Only it is sufficient to have shewn that God hath loved the Femal Sex by reason of its love of Chastity For a Virgin thinâ—â— on the things of her God The Apostle also Commands Widows which are truly Widows to be honoured And in the old Law those were reckoned impure as many as even conjugally had known their Wives if they were not seriously washed and were to be driven from the Temple unless they were first duly rinsed He also violently fell by a sudden Death because such an impure Man although from a good zeal put his hand to the tottering Cart wherein the Ark of the Covenant the Image of the God-bearing-Virgin was carried Indeed on both sides the Truth being agreeable to it self doth detest and attest the filthyness of impure Adamical generation For the Impurity which had conceived a contagion from any natural Issue whatsoever of Menstrues or Seed and that by its touching alone is reckoned to be equal to that which should by degrees creep on a person from a co-touching of dead Carcasses and to be expiated by the same ceremonious right That the Text might agreeably denote that Death began from the Concupiscence of the Flesh lying hid in the fruit of the Apple Therefore also the one only healing Medicine of so great an impurity contracted by touching consisted in washing under the likeness whereof Faith and Hope which in Baptisme were poured into us are strengthened For as soon as Adam had known by Fratricide that the first-born of Mortals whom he had begotten in the Concupiscence of the Flesh had slain his guiltless and righteous Brother and fore-seeing the wicked Errors of
Mortals that would come from thence he then also well perceiving his own Miseries in himself certainly knowing that all these Calamities had happened unto him from the Concupiscence of the Flesh drawn from the Apple which were unavoidably issuing on his Posterity he thought it a discreet thing for him for hereafter wholly to abstain from his Wife which he had violated and therefore mourned in Câ—â—stity and Sorrow a hundred full Years Foolishly hoping that by the proper merit of that Abstinence as by an opposite to the Concupiscence of the 〈◊〉 that he should again return into his former Majesty of Purity But the Repentance 〈…〉 Age being finished probably the Mystery of the Lords Incarnation was revealed unto him Neither that Man ever could hope to return unto the brightness of his antient purity by his own strength and much less that himself could restore his Posterity from Death And therefore that Matrimony or Marriage was well pleasing and was presently after the Fall indulged unto him by God to wit because he had determined thus to satisfie his Justice at the fulness of times which should to the glory of his own Name and the confusion of Satan carry up Mankind unto a more eminent blessedness From that time therefore Adam began to know his Wife and to fill the earth by multiplying according to the Blessing once given him and a Law enjoyned him Yet so nevertheless that although Matrimony by reason of the great want of Propagation and otherwise an impossible coursary succession of the primitive Divine Generation be admitted as a Sacrament of the faithful Yet because at length it seemed by reason of necessity as it were by dissembling or connivance to be indulged Therefore the Comforter dictating it it was determined against the Greeks by the Church that the Priest by whose workmanship the Lords Body is incarnated in the Sacrifice ought to be altogether estranged from the act whereby Death and the impurity of Nature were introduced For the necessity of propagation hath indeed thus in times past excused the offence of a coursary succession in Generating For as Augustine witnesseth If the propagation of Men could have been made after any other manner the Conjugal Act had been unlawful Wherefore Bigamy or a Duplicity of Wives is not undeservedly expelled from the Bishoprick even as actual Wedlock from the Sub-deaconship For however it be a Sacrament yet it is unbeseeming the Sacrament of the Altar to wit by which the chastity of the first constitution and intention of the Creator are recompensed For God despised that blood should be offered unto him even in burnt-offerings and that Man should eat blood being mindful that the blood in which the sensitive Soul is had proceeded from the eating of the Apple But besides bruit Beasts are indeed afraid are angry do flatter do mourn do condole do lay in wait and those Passions Man from the sensitive Soul possesseth common with Bruits Yea also it shameth Elephants if they are upbraided with any thing that hath the less generously been done by them But no Animal or sensitive Creature perceiveth shame from a sexual copulation From hence its manifest that Concupiscence of the flesh is Diabolical onely to Man which in Bruits is Earthly and Natural If therefore both our Parents presently after the eating of the Apple were ashamed if they therefore covered onely their privy parts therefore that shame doth presuppose and accuse of something committed against Justice against the intent of the Creator and against their own proper Nature By consequence that Adamical generation was not of the primitive constitution of their nature as neither of the original intent of the Creator Therefore when God foretels that the earth shall bring forth Thistles and Thornes and that Man in the sweat of his Face shall eat his Bread even as was already proved above they were not Execrations but Admonitions that those sort of things should be obvious in the Earth and because Beasts should bring forth in pain should plow in sweat should eat their food with labour and fear that the Earth also should bring forth very many things besides the intent of the Husband-man therefore also that they ought to be nourished like unto Bruit-beasts who had begun to generate after the manner of Bruit-beasts And then if the Text be more fully considered it is told unto Eve after Transgression that she should bring forth her off-springs in pain For it undoubtedly followes from thence that before sin she had brought forth without pain that is as she had conceived her Womb being shut so also she had brought forth Therefore what hath the pain of bringing forth common with the eating of the Apple unless the Apple had operated about the conception or concupiscence of the flesh And by consequence unless the Apple had stirred up copulation and the Creator had intended to disswade it by dehorting from eating of the Apple For why are the genital members of the Woman punished with paines of Child-birth if the Eye in seeing the Apple the Hands in cropping it and the mouth in eating it have offended For was it not sufficient to have chastised the Life with Death and the Health with very many Diseases Moreover why is the Womb which in eating is guiltless afflicted after the manner of Bruits with the pain of bringing forth if the conception granted to Beasts were not forbidden to Man After the Fall therefore their eyes were opened and they were ashamed It denoteth that from the filthiness of Concupiscence they knew that the copulation of the flesh was forbidden them in the most innocent chastity of Nature and that they were over-spread with shame when their eyes being opened their understandings saw the committed filthyness But on the Serpent and evil Spirit alone was the top of the whole curse even as the priviledge of the Woman and the mysterious prerogative of the blessing upon the Earth To wit that the Woman but not the Man although he was now constituted for the head of the Woman should at some time bruise the head of the Serpent And so that it is not possible that to bring forth in pain should be a Curse for truly with the same mouth of the Lord is pronounced the Blessing of the Woman and Victory over the infernal Spirit And moreover to be subject to the Man was not enjoyned unto the Woman in stead of an Execution But it denoted in the mind of God humility chosen in a new Law and another method of living appointed anew by the Son of Man For the Son of Man humbled himself even unto death also to be extinguished by a reproachful death he called it to be exalted Therefore while the Lord depresseth the Woman under the power of the Man he exalted the same Woman in his presence and made her the more like unto himself After another manner because the Serpent should for the future creep upon the Earth The name of Serpent proveth that that was not
proper unto him from a Curse but from his being made creeping and that thing was sufficiently manifest to Adam For herein the Curse seized not so much on the Serpent as on the evil Spirit because the lying Impostor had hid himself in the most vile of creeping things on whose head therefore and not on the head of any creeping thing the Woman trod upon But because all Bruits which do generate by a long continued copulation were in times past reckoned impure and also forbidden from Man's use in Kitchins among which creeping Animals are not in the last place c. It containeth and likewise confirmeth the mystery of our Position To wit That the impurity of our Nature draws its rise from the Concupiscence of the Flesh And therefore the copulation in Beasts seemeth to be taken notice of in Beasts by God which was distinct and defiled with impurity In the next place also in the Law a Menstruous Woman and the person touching her were accounted to bring an impurity on every thing The which otherwise being now turned into a second and natural Cause ought to be plainly guiltless unlesse the Menstrues should by a Natural course derive it self from the same Causes from whence Death happened unto us And therefore also for this Cause it being plainly impure in the Law was reckoned a horrid thing with God But for that Woman alone doth suffer Menstrues before Bruits surely it doth not attest any Prerogative of our kind but rather every way a defect to wit that it is reckoned for a punishment of frustrated Chastity and referred into second Causes plainly from a notable Mystery of our Position neither doth it hinder these things that chast Virgins obey the Menstrues and that she is Monstrous who an opportunity being given is not Menstruous because Adamical Generation its self is constrained to carry no less the importunities of its own Nature than Death it self Yea seeing Chastity doth not excuse a Virgin from the Menstrues it is for a token that the Menstrues is not from a Curse nor from the punishment of Sin but altogether from Natural Causes no otherwise than as Death it self began from second Causes inserted in the disswaded Apple although hitherto unknown nor thorowly weighed The Menstrues therefore onely in Woman alone but not in Bruits doth accuse that the Transgression of the despised fatherly Admonition happened in the very privy parts therefore branded as it were with an unclean bloody Seal for a perpetual sign The which surely should not have place if a Sexual Copulation for the Propagation of man had not inverted the intention of the Creator rather than in Bruit-Beasts In this place a Paradox and impertinent consideration doth occur being interlaced as it were by a Parenthesis that Adam seeing he was created in the possession of Immortality God intended not that Man should be an Animal or Sensitive creature nor should be born conceive or live as an Animal for truly he was created into a living Soul and that he might be the immediate Image of God Therefore he as far differed from the Nature of an Animal as an Immortal being from a Mortal and as a God-like Creature from a Bruit The which is indeed more than in the whole Predicament And it is exceedingly to be admired and deservedly unworthy to be endured that the Schools of Christ do believe and confess these things and yet that even until now they draw the Essence of a Man Essentially from an Animal Nature because although Man afterwards procured Death unto himself and therefore may seem to be made nearer unto the Nature of Animal Creatures yet it stood not in his Power to be able to pervert the Species of the Divine Image Even as neither was the Evil Spirit of a Spirit made an Animal although he became nearer unto an Animal by hatred and brutal vices Therefore Man remained in his own Species wherein he was created For as oft as man is called an Animal or Sensitive living Creature and is in earnest thought to be such so many times the Text is falsified which saith But also the Serpent was more crafty than all the living Creatures of the Earth which the Lord God had made Because he speaks of the Natural craftiness of that Creeping Creature Again if the Position be true Man was not directed into the Propagation of Seed or Flesh neither therefore did he Aspire into a Sensitive Soul And therefore the Sensitive Soul of Adamical Generation is not of a brutal Species because it was raised up by a Seed which wanted the Original Ordination and Limitation of any Species And so that as the Sensitive Soul in Man arose besides the intent of the Creator and Nature So it is of no brutal Species neither can it subsist unless it be continually tyed to the Mind from whence it is supported in its Life Wherefore while Man is of no Brutal Species he cannot be an Animal in respect of his Mind and much less in respect of his Soul which is of no Species For a woman great with Child while by reason of sudden fear she changeth the Humane Young into a certain Bruit the mind indeed doth not wander into a brutal Soul but the mind departs and a Sensitive Soul begged of the Creator is substituted in its stead And seeing that it is promoted onely by the Idea of the Woman great with Child without an Original appointment therefore such kind of generated Creatures do most speedily die And the off-springs of Adam had likewise presently perished unless God had granted Matrimony unto him Wherefore in the Birth of Cain she truly said I possesse a Man from the Lord. Far be it therefore to have placed Man among Sensitive living Creatures Truly we must indulge Pagans who know not that thing but not equally Christians who too much adore Paganish Doctrine At least wise the Schools confesse that there is an ordinary Progress of Nature from not a sensible Creature into a sensible Animal but that the Life and Sense of Men is immediately iufsed by the hand of the Almighty They confesse in the next place that the Conditions of being living and feeling or perceiving in Man differ in their whole Condition from an Animal Nature because it follows the Faculty of the rational Form or Immortal mind But they shamefully believe that a Man aswel of the first Constitution as being now Divinely Regenerated by the Sacraments is an Essential Animal Fie let it shame man not to know that the Evil Spirit and whole Nature also are not able by any means or any way to change the Essence given unto him from the foreknowledge of the Creator but that he should continually remain such as he was created although in the mean time he hath cloathed himself with strange properties as Natural unto him from the vice of his own will For as it wants not an absurdity to reckonman glorified among Animals because he is not without a sense or feeling So
to be sensitive doth not shew the unseperable Essence of an Animal And seeing otherwise the definition of every thing is from the Essence of the thing as they will have it but man according to his Essence was made in a full possession of Immortality and henceforth of an Eternal Duration according to his Soul the Schools could not believe that man by reason of a sensitive Soul alone was essentially an Animal Especially while they believed his Essence to depend on an Eternal Duration and an uncorruptible Soul or Form All which absurdities I acknowledge to have crept into and to have remained in the Schools by reason of the truth of our Position being unknown Even hitherto I have established the Position out of the holy Scriptures Now again the same by the Authorities of Fathers which matter B. Augustine hath seemed to have understood before others saying After what manner had it shamed Man of the Transgression of a Law when as his very Members had not known shame As if he should say His Members were stirred up unto the Concupiscence of the Flesh and acts of his Privie Parts presently after the Eating of the Apple Their Eyes were opened but for this they were not opened that they might know what might be performed by them through the cloathing of Grace when as their Members knew not how to resist their will And dost thou not blush at that Disease or that thou although shamefac'd dost confess that that Lust entred into Paradise And to impute it unto Husbands and Wives before Sin He who was to be without Sin would be born without the Concupiscence of the Flesh not in that Flesh of Sin but in the likeness of sinful Flesh As if he should say whatsoever is born from Copulation although it had been born in Paradise and before Sin would have been and is the Flesh of Sin Seeing that alone which is not born of Copulation is not the Flesh of Sin Whatsoever off-spring is born from Concupiscence or of the Flesh of Sin is obliged unto Orignal Sin unless it be born again in him whom the Virgin conceived without Concupiscence The Flesh of Christ drew a mortality from the mortality of his Mothers Body because she found not the Concupiscence of a Copulatresse For indeed as Original Sin is not derived on the Posterity any other way than by the Concupiscence of the Flesh So it must needs be that in the Apple was included the Concupiscence from whence the humane stock degenerated and was vitiated in generating For truly if off-springs could have been generated any otherwise than by carnal Copulation the Matrimonial act had been unlawful Whereunto this every-way convincing Argument serveth That act before the Apple was eaten was either unlawful and not thought of or it was lawful If it were unlawful now our Position is proved But if lawful therefore whatsoever I have above described out of Augustine is false Seeing therefore they had now actually felt the effect of the eaten Apple or the Concupiscence of the Flesh in their Members in Paradise presently it shamed them because their Members which before they could rule at their pleasure were afterwards moved by a proper incentive of lust At length how greatly Virginity hath alwayes pleased the Bridegroom of the Soul doth clearly enough appear out of divers Histories of the Saints And indeed in Cana of Galilee the Bridegroom having left his Bride followed the Lord Jesus and it is that Disciple whom Jesus therefore so greatly loved The same thing was familiar unto Alexius Aegidius and to very many others especially with poor Women-Virgins For indeed the infinite goodness from the proper motion of its good pleasure from Eternity created Man and fore-loved him with so great a love that he determined to co-knit his own Divinity unto him and to enlighten him with the Light which enlightneth every man that cometh into this World and to Adopt him for the Son of God giving him Power to become the Son of God by the new Birth which new Birth before Sin was not necessary Seeing therefore he requireth People to be re-born of God therefore before Sin they were all born of God which thing Lucifer with his own Spirits seeing through a long-since Pride of his Beauty and since his fall being wholly become Envious supposed that he was wiser than God who had raised up a vile creature unto that height wherefore he aspired to exceed God whom he had not yet seen and to throw him down from his Seat of Majesty Presently afterwards he after that he had paid the punishment of his Sins being more cruelly wroth saw also that Eve being a Virgin was by the onely Goodness of God without all desert and freely now appointed for the aforesaid Instrument of that Adoption and Mother of Men Therefore he endeavoured to hinder the Love of God through the Eating of the Apple Because as seeing that the Lasciviousness and Concupisence of the Flesh implanted in the same was Diametrically opposite unto Gods intention Therefore the Eating of the Apple was not forbidden unto man by a Law but by a fatherly Admonition neither is Original Sin from the Transgressions of a Law from the Eating of the Apple as being forbidden food but by Reason of the effect arising from the Apple and the properties inserted in the Apple After another manner the Transgression or Eating did offend onely in a Voluntary Act but not for Posterity unless Naturally and by the second Causes of a brutal Copulation following from thence otherwise in our first Parents impossible it had inverted the intention of Divine Generation Yea Original Sin fell not so properly on the guiltless Posterity as the effect of Generation the which indeed hath brought forth an Adulterous Beast-like Devilish Generation and plainly uncapable of the Kingdom of God and of Union with and Enjoyment of God By Reason of the Similitude whereof those that were born in Adultery were excluded from the Participation of Heaven But let us feign the opposite thing to wit that our Parents were conscious that there was a Law declared by God the Creator of the Universe touching the forbidden Apple and that upon such an account Death was foretold unto him and all his Posterity and undoubtedly came unto them but at least-wise an irregular Sin being so bold and so ungodly and cruel a Wickedness on all their Posterity could not be forgiven without a great note of Contrition Neither had God how Merciful and Good soever straightway so suddenly made that man fruitful with so great a Blessing and substituted the other living Creatures under his Feet he not being ignorant that neither of them did Grieve Repent Pray but only it shamed them and that they endeavoured as Fools to hide themselves from God and to cover their privy Parts with Leaves Therefore I collect from thence that on the same day not only Mortality entred through Concupiscence But moreover that it presently
receive moneys but of the richer sort So that a Confessour constrained me to admit of the mony of a certain man that offered it least by doing otherwise I should bar up the dores against those who being fore-stalled with shame would not dare to aske further succours from my hands For he said The gifts which thou refusest give to him that is in need and the which if thou shalt not receive thou by thy pride withdrawest from the poor that which was to be his own I also gave willingly the medicines prepared by me but because I felt the greater joy while I was called by a Primate or rich man I being angry with my self and confounded refisted long and bestowed very much pains that I might pluck up the growing branch of covetousnesse bred in me Therefore I every where searcht out more of arrogancy and haughtinesse in my self than of a Godly affection Finally God cut of the means from me as well in the Church as among civil Potentates and so also ample fortunes seemed to be promised me by Radolph the Emperour but I had incurred the danger of my foul In exchange whereof he gave me a godly and Noble wife with whom I withdrew my self to Vilvord for seven years space I offerd up my self to the art of the fire and succoured the calamities of the poor I found and indeed I sound for certainty that none should be forsaken of God who with a pious affection and fitme faith performes the office of Physitian For although I was the silliest of all I seeingly discerned that God is Charity it self towards the miserable and therefore that from his own effluxing goodnesse of charity he alwayes bore a care over me For the inheritances of my wise were increased and ample partimonies of my family befel me for although I was subdued in suites of law by the malice of men yet I became a conquerer by some revisals so as that the mercies of God openly appeared toward an unworthy person And moreover he pressed down those that excelled in might who persecuted me unto disgrace and hidden death under the cloak of piety And the darts were reflected on their own strikers so that now it more shameth than repenteth them of their manifested crimes In the mean time I desist not to cure some ten thousands of sick persons every year by my remedies neither are my medicines therefore diminished I have learned therefore that the treasure of wisdome is not to be exhausted and I daily experience my yesterdays ignorance to be to day illustrated But in returning from whence I have digressed I find that they have not yet been able to discerne what defects respect a Physitian and what a Chyrurgion Which things if I may determine of I declare that onely things suscepted or undergone do touch at Chyrurgery The which in a section concerning a new rise of healing I have sufficiently explained But things suscepted are a wound made by piercing a cut or incision made by a fall biting bruise burning or scorching or congealing Likewise every swelling proceeding from a fall stroak c. Also a rent pulling asunder burstnesse breaking of a bone and displacing thereof As also contagions externally drawn being those of scabbednesse the kind of Anthonies fire called Herpes c. and no more But unto Physitians besides the internal defects of things retained it belongs to cure any Ulcers Apostemes and whatsoever external affects do proceed from an internal Beginning such as are the Cancer Wolf Leprousy Gout the disease Paneritium the Sciatica c. But at this day there is the more mild brawling between both Professions because most Physitians are ignorant of a method medicine and succours no otherwise than as Chyrurgions are And therefore although they joyn hands and so exhaust the purses of the sick party yet at length they hasten to the bound of despair And in the proposed question concerning the Plague they are unanimous enough For the Physitian refuseth the Plague to be of the diseases placed under him because it beares before it a Carbuncle Kernelly Glandules Sores about the groyne called Bubo's an Escharre bubbly Tumours and Tokens And at leastwise he condescendeth with the Chyrurgion because he promiseth that he will scrape together out of renowned and standard-defending Authours any the best Antidotes if not the curative medicines of external affects at least preservatives against the cruel poyson Yea if the Triacle of Galen doth not suffice which according to Andromachus conteineth only 66. Simples that is the last part of the name of Antichrist he promiseth to his herbarists that he will super-add very many more which are sufficient for the putting of the Plague to flight and that if they are not prevalent in a sufficient power of faculty they may at leastwise be able to strive with the Plague in multitude by their number But if the Doctour shall be hired from the City with a stipend least he should hurt or be wanting to his other sick patients by causing a fear thus he over-covers his own fear with anothers dread he ingeniously promiseth that he will shew by his pen that the affairs of the sick are cordial unto him So that he will also frame a book out of the most Famous Authors on every side which he promiseth to dedicate to community indeed under the hope of repaying a reward of his vain-spent labour unto the writer For in that treatise he promiseth that he will so distinguish of diet exercises to be performed avoyded and of meanes to be curiously examined besides remedies and preservatives out of all Authours that the very Plague it self shall upon the sight of that book of necessity become diseasy In the next place the Chyrurgion saith that the Plague as it is joyned with a Fever stands not to be ruled by his will or judgment But however successfully the matter shall sometimes prove unto him at least wise that for six weekes after he should be profitable to none with his sissers file knife or rasour or launcet What therefore shall he that is suddenly taken with the Plague do being left destitute by both forsakers Or what will the Magistrate do being deluded by his own stipendiaties Because they are they which respect nothing but gain the one only scope of their whole life The Physitian therefore will dismisse the sick unto the non-feared Pest-houses wherein there is as unlawfull a pleasure for a Physitian to kill as for a tormentor and souldier The Chyrurgion answers That there is a Mate known unto him who is without fear after that he hath notably drunk who although he hath not known how to open a vein for this is estemed the top among them neither is worthy of his family-service yet he hath oftentimes brought Simples out of a wood or mountaines and therefore that he is skillfull in some Simple which whether it be an Herb Shrub or tree or living Creature he hath hitherto refused to declare Yet he undoubtedly
breaths And the air being once drunk in he at length undergoes the laws of death and diminishment For before he breathed he lived onely and that by his own Archeus Almost all other created things do putrifie in a rock But the Toad is nourished and grows to maturity in a fermental putrified liquour within a rock or great stone From hence also it is conjectured that he is an Animal ordained of God that the Idea of his terrour being poysonous indeed to himself should be unto us and to our Pest a poyson in terrour For as it is sufficiently manifest from the aforesaid particulars that the Toad is most disagreeable unto our co-tempering and suiting so the Idea of terrour in the Toad is exceeding pestilential to the pestiferous terrour it self in us Since therefore the Toad is an Insect most fearful at the beholding of man which in himself notwithstanding forms the terrour conceived from man and also the hatred against man into an image or active real Being and not subsisting in an only and conâ—used apprehension even as hath already before been nakedly demonstrated concerning the Idea's of a woman great with child and likewise of a mad dog c. Hence it happens that a poyson ariseth from a Toad which kills the pestilent poyson of terrour in man to wit from whence the Archeus waxeth strong he not onely perceiving the pestilent Idea to be extinguished in himself but moreover because he knoweth that something inferiour to himself is terrified is sore affraid and doth flie For so in every war and duel from an evident dread of the enemy a hostile courage is strengthened But so great is the fear of the Toad that if he being placed with a direct beholding before thee thou dost behold him with intent eyes or an earnest look for some time for the space of a quarter of an hour that he cannot avoid it he dies through terrour The Toad therefore being slain after the manner of Paracelsus he dying without terrour is an unworthy Zenexton The Archeus therefore his courage being re-assumed casts away dread most especially when as he well perceives the bred poyson of his own terrour to be killed For a Zenexâ—on acts not after the manner of other agents no otherwise then as the poyson of the plague is altogether an unwonted poyson Neither doth a Zenexton act materially but the action of the same is spiritual and altogether sympathetical For truly the co-resemblance of activity wherein the reason of founding a Sympathy consisteth is in the poyson of terrour conceived as well in the Pest as in the Toad But even as the poyson of the Plague is irregular having nothing common with other poysons so also a Zenexton being exorbitant or rising high in the activity of a strange and forreign terrour is a manifest poyson to the pestilent image of our terrour together with a refreshment confirmation strength and resurrection of the Archeus which activity of a preservative amuleâ— surely the Schools could not contemplate of because they have not been able to contemplate that that of Aristotle not onely in the plague but also in other poysons is false Indeed the action of a Zenexton is from the victory of the Patient over the agent for thou shalt remember that the terrour and hatred in the Toad from man the agent overcomming indeed but in no wise operating are made imprinted actuated agents and those brought into a degree by the proper conception of the Toad which in the aforesaid Idea are as it were fugitive living creatures and therefore they restore the terrified Archeus of man and kill the image of the poysonous terrour Truly in single combats that are spiritual there is altogether a far different contention from that which is wont to be by appropriated corporal agents The which I have elsewhere demonstrated in removing the activities of contrarieties from the properties of nature A Zenexton therefore is of a magnetick or attractive nature to wit acting onely on a proper object while it meets with it within the sphere of its own activity It might seem a doubt to some why the image of hatred in the Toad is a remedy but why the image of hatred in a mad dog is a poyson the reason is in the adjoyned Idea of terrour in the Toad which brings forth an inferiority of poyson For the one exceeds the other in the sturdinesse of conceptions and therefore also of images For a mad dog is bold rash and his sealed image enforceth its obedience For neither is he mad forasmuch as he feareth but he feareth water as he hates living creatures But the Toad is an Animal that is most afraid of us and as from his inbred hatred towards us he is badly conscious to himself divine clemency so disposing it So the images of those conceptions mutually piercing each other and accompanying each other do confer a mark of the greatest pusillanimity or cowardise dipt in the venome of hatred Hence indeed the image of the pestilent terrour is killed by the image of the deadly hatred and our Archeus is beheld by the image of the cowardly terrour through the application of the preservative Pomander as it were in a glasse and doth well nigh reassume the superiority which before he had lost And therefore the Idea of terrour in the Toad hates and also the image of hatred terrifies the Toad from whence he puts on a poyson for our terror To wit by both means he kills the image of pestilent terrour in the Archeus There is indeed in spiritual things a primitive self-love seeing that every original single duel of sensitive creatures issueth not but from premediated conceptions but the Idea of every ones conceipt is formed in the imagination and puts on an Entity or Beingnesse for to do somewhat for the future For as the images of motions to be made do end into motions so also the images of the Senses are carried first inwards for further deliberations of counsels and they soon there degenerate into the images or likenesses of apprehensions passions or disturbances and from thence they are carried to do something in the body or out of it and they slide and grow according to the directions and inclinations of passions In this respect indeed such images do limit the vital spirits or the very operative part of the bowels according to an impression proper to themselves which thing most cleerly manifests it self in the poyson of a mad dog who if he were afraid of us as he is afraid of water would not do us violence neither would his biting be venemous unto us For the Spider Scorption c. are wrathful little Animals and the which if the strike us they lay up they anger of their own poyson in us or rather the poyson of their anger A certain hand-maid now and then are spiders not only the party-coloured ones of the Vine but also those black ones out of Caves and moist places and lived in health thereupon