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
the assisting and co-operating Work-man of all Diseases an angry Parent and revenger For he saith that the unknown Star Zedo is the immediate and containing cause of the Dropsie So he affirmeth that to the Consumption Gout Apoplexie c. doth belong their own peculiar yet unnamed Star and unto every Epilepsie or falling Evil it s own proper constellation But in his Paramires he affirms the three first things to be the immediate causes of all Diseases that is all things confused Let him explain and excuse him that will for I have not dedicated my life to the interpreting of others dreams Therefore have I seriously searched into Nature and the particular kindes of Diseases and it hath happened unto me no otherwise than as to all others before me until that the Doctrines of all Authors being cast off I had seriously implored the Divine Grace For then I suddenly knew that unto every Disease hath happened its own matter which may nourish a Vulcan proper to it self within the which although he doth sometimes imitate the courses of the Stars yet that the enforcing cause thereof did not depend on the Stars For all Seeds do possess as it were their own Common-wealth especially their own vital light whereby of their own proper vertue they do shew forth a proportionable resemblance of the Stars Be it a ridiculous thing that the Consumption or Dropsie although they may be stirred up more severely and mildly under diverse starry positions are caused or made by the motion and light of the Stars the which do after another manner generate by a manifest occasion through so clear a collection of filths and the which being removed Health doth also follow without leave of the Stars The exposition of which Doctrine by me thou shalt read in the Book of the Plague and elsewhere But the matters of Diseases with their seminary Vulcans from the first even unto the last I have prosecuted with all their duplicity and interchangeable courses in respect of humane life The Almighty grant that so much as he hath bestowed on me I may nakedly refer unto his Honour and the profit of my Neighbour and that he may bestow another more able than my self on the world For Paracelsus hath framed divers Books concerning long life to have chosen death for himself that he would by a Divine priviledge have comforted his own old Age by his Elixiâ— of propriety but not by Remedies prescribed by him for long life who died in the 47th year of his Age. So great boasting therefore and unconstancy of this Man have hitherto made me a little careful In the mean time many difficulties have long since held me in doubt about the three first things until that I having obtained help from God knew that Woods and Herbs were to be distilled without any Dead head For I did long ago wonder that out of the coal of Honey no ashes and by consequence neither the salt of ashes could be had Which things afterwards I willingly through an universal resolving of a Body beheld For it was sufficient for Paracelsus to have forsaken all things involved under doubting who in a slender draught had drunk down anothers Invention and had not yet converted it into nourishment and making it his own of robbery hath he striving to flie unto a Monarchy slipped out of his Nest before he had sufficient feathers For he snatching unto himself the glory of the Invention hath well pleased himself in dispersingly repeating one and the same thing often although in the mean time he made little progress in things of his own For it is a ridiculous thing and like a Fable that Sulphur should be distilled sublimed reverberated calcined resolved in us and that from hence divers Diseases should be caused only indeed by the boldness of the Man without a Pledge or Surety of greater authority than himself For he knew not nor durst to draw Diseases into an open profession or publishment he being not yet sully committed hereunto by his Inventer It is also a childish dream that salt is distilled sublimed calcined circulated and doth undergo other torments in us or that Mercury doth sustain these strict examinations in us and for every interchangeable course of variations that it doth of it self alone bring forth other Diseases pains and defects and that others again be infolded with its other two fellow beginnings or masked with divers degrees and doses They are also trifles that Mercury by reason of the highest circulation of its subtilty might be the cause of all sudden death which we have known to be constituted by its causes to cure and prevent For first of all eight ounces of venal blood are daily blown away in nourishing without a Dead head pain and defect yea without feeling while they pass thorow and whereby they pass thorow But whatsoever hath once been dedicated unto expulsion in the shew of Water Mercury or Sweat or whatsoever hath been once reckoned unfit for nourishing or the offices of nourishment being now once performed is designed for scattering or blowing away that is never afterwards distilled sublimed calcined or circulated in us For the works of Nature are too serious because they do ultimately respect God For Nature doth not play at Ball that it should again receive excrements into favour being once rent from the commerce of Life It never returns into the same point because it proceeds and never keeps Holy-day In the next place if any watry liquor be a hundred times re-distilled it shall not therefore be the sharper or subtiler but rather by degrees the Seed of its middle life being worn out it passeth more and more unto the simplicity of an Element For rain water which now falleth down from above is not more subtile or fine than that which rained in the beginning of its Creation But if any watry thing should exhale by our luke-warmth and should obtain a sharpness through dreamed returns that should not be the fault of subtilizing of Mercury but of an adjunct Surely I wonder that so great a Chymist hath not known that the venal blood is not circulated nor that it doth bear the circles of subtilizings in us and that it doth not persevere in us above one only course of the Moon and the which tribute of feeble blood a Woman doth therefore pay Because she is she which ought to abound with very much blood as well for an increase of the Young as for the sucking of Milk But that Paracelsus might the better overshadow his own Fiction he supposeth that one of the three first things being separated doth presently assume from a Microcosmical Nature an actuality in that which is casual to any and one Being of those which are infinite a thousand Seeds whereof being collected into one it did contain and therefore that by reason of a monstrous and strange Nativity a hostile thing is for that very cause in us and is made the cause of Diseases And so that there are
nativity wherein the Lord took on him the Form of a Servant But how much he departed from that former and proper or natural dignity of his humane nature wherein he was conceived in the Womb himself sheweth Because he who came forth into the World the Womb of the Virgin being shut and the bolts of dimensions being contemned presently prostrated himself to the ordained condition of Death and willingly felt every necessity of a servile nature For both Adams in their beginning were immortal For the first Adam ought to be preserved by the Tree of Life But the second did wholly contain the Tree of Life in himself Both of them indeed chose to dye before a possibility to live For the former chose it from a Vice but the second from Charity The Tree of Life therefore and wholsomness of the place of Eden had vindicated Adam in his antient vigor from Death until that a number of years being finished he as happy had departed translated without death unto the Country of Glory Moreover it is of Faith that Adam never tasted of the Tree of Life and that lest he should eat of it he was cast forth of Paradise who ought to dye the death Yea he being now banished out of the Garden of Pleasure was of so perfect a constitution that he had lived unto some thousands of Years who was immediately formed by the hand of the Almighty without the commerce of Nature and had far exceeded the age of Mathusalem from the voluntariness of his own nature but that through the continued mourning and grief of one Age he had cut off the thred of a most Long Life from himself The Death therefore of Adam is not to be bewailed as otherwise Paracelsus badly perswaded himself because that the vital Spirit and knowledge of Long Life had fallen at once together with him For those are contradictions to enjoy Long Life from Knowledge and likewise to be Immortal from the forming of the hands of God and the suffrage of the Tree of Life also after sin to have retained the gift of Long Life by reason of his most perfect and noble constitution of Life and Body From whence the Spirit of a flourishing and abounding Life being at length translated on Posterity its vigor by degrees declining through a passing over of Generations the injuries of Life and Diseases and through the rottenness of Years the Curse co-operating manifested it self as a Magnum Oportet or a thing of great necessity The which having once entred into the Bowels of Mortals presently took possession of the same For the Life of those which at first was by the Tree without Death presently also without that Tree languisheth as being enrouled in a short term of Time and underwent an increase state or height declining and cessation after the manner of other things For so indeed Death through the perswasion of the Devil stablished it self into its Empire For Poysons that were harmless under the Tree of Life were afterwards supported for a Medicine of Destruction For I think that the Conditions and presence of the Tree of Life were hidden from Adam Else that he had extended his hand unto this sooner than unto the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And although the Tree of Life which the bounty of the Creator hath of late discovered may be so prepared that it may proceed unto the first constitutives of us with a refreshment of the decaying faculties yet I do not understand it to be that which is read to have been implanted in the Paradise of Pleasure whereunto no mortal man shall ever stretch forth his hand But ours is a shadowy one and the Vicaress of the other To wit the which hath nothing excellent and famous unless that under a retainment of properties it be reduced by Art into such a juice which may be able by its least parts to co-mingle it self with the solid parts Neither indeed doth our Tree of which I as the first do treat contain a non-sufferance unsensibleness of the pain of Diseases and an uncapacity of Death as the other did And moreover although the Tree of Life of Paradise should at this day be present with us yet it should not cause immortality Because the condition of the receiver is changed For indeed man is become composed by the bond of another generation of corrupted Nature and of another Long Life wherein the immortal mind hath no longer immediately sustained in it all the actions of Life but a frail or mortal sensitive Soul succeeded exercising the Vicarship of the mind and providing for the necessities of Life it self being like the flame slidable and extinguishable every hour CHAP. CX Short Life THe Air which is the former in the Seed ascending by degrees unto its Maturity at length conceives the Light or essential Form of its own Species which is made immediately by the Father of Lights and is of a proper name Life For as many things as differ in their particular Kinds which are involved in Darkness so many also ought the Forms to be under the species of Light For if a thing is what it is by reason of the Form in diversity from any other things whatsoever But the Form of living Things except the Mind and Life are Sunonymals there must needs be as many Lives as there are vital Forms Therefore the Light of Life is by it self every where simple and specifical but not fiery because vital formal and essential But that the Light of Life is hot or cold it denotes that the Life hath not married Heat or Cold but accidentally so that Heat or Cold proceeds from Life but not Life from Heat or Cold Life therefore cannot be otherwise understood than under the Conception of Light And neither Light is more demonstrable from a former Cause than the Forms of things themselves and whatsoever issues immediately out of the Bosom of the Almighty A vital Light therefore by its species wants a proper name We may indeed make a fiery Light to be given unto us for great necessities but it is not in the Power of the Artificer even immediately to produce a vital Light from himself Which thing the Chymists say The Artificer cannot introduce a substantial Form The Generater indeed is the begetter and producer of a vital Air forasmuch as he contributes Matter after the likeness of himself and Dispositions thereof in order unto Life but is in no wise able to produce Life or an ultimate perfect Art In Diseases also sometimes the Light of Life ascendeth unto the degree of Fire Because the Archeus from a threatned distinction or nothing of difference strikes out a fiery Light Not that the Archeus produceth this Light as he that generates his Like But the Archeus through Fury presseth together the moist Hay and it is enflamed the which being dry comes not so to pass After another manner also Woods by a co-rubbing and Iron by striking against it do conceive the fire
thirst after But now I being constrained by the Reasons and Letters of many moderate wise Men out of divers Kingdoms and States here and there who perswaded me that I was devoutly engaged by the pledge of Health to commit all the Writings of my deceased Father unto the Press and to annex thereunto when and after what manner he closed his Day Also in what State or Condition he left the aforesaid Writings And moreover to supply those things which were lacking for the vindicating the Life of Man-kind from many Errors Torments and Destruction It is That which hath extorted from me to leave all other things and thorowly to review the aforesaid Writings which being finished I gave up my self to hearken to their Calls I suspended my former purpose discoursing in plain and most simple Words the following Narrative in my Mother Tongue according to the tenour of the fore-going Dedication of my Father the which I also imitate by following him in the very same intent thereof The Death of my Father happened on the Thirtieth Day of the Tenth Month December of the Year one thousand six hundred forty four at the sixth hour in the Evening when as he had as yet a full use of Reason and had first required and obtained all his sacred Solemnities and Rights His Life it self was his Disease which remained with him seven Weeks beginning with him after this manner He at sometime returned home in hast on foot at Noon in a cold and stinking Mist which was a cause unto him that when he endeavoured to write a small Epistle of about fifteen lines or did indulge himself with too large a discourse his breathing so failed him that he was constrained to rise up and to draw his breath thorow the nearest Window whereby a Pleurisie was provoked in him at two several times from the which notwithstanding he restored himself perfectly whole yea the day before his Death he being raised upright as yet wrote to a certain Friend of his in Paris there being among other these following words Praise and Glory be to God for evermore who is pleased to call me out of the World and as I conjecture my Life will not last above four and twenty hours space For truly I do to day sustain the first assault of a Fever by reason of the weakness of Life and defect thereof whereby I must finish it The which accordingly followed after that he had bestowed a special Benediction or Blessing on me the which I esteem for a great Legacy I do not here more largely extend the property of his Disease by reason of the straitness of time seeing that I am besides to make mention of him in my Compendium from all things unto the one thing the which I endeavour God willing it to publish in a short time A few days preceding his Death he said unto me Take all my Writtings as well those crude and uncorrected as those that are thorowly expurged and joyn them together I now commit them to thy care accomplish and digest all things according to thy own judgement It hath so pleased the Lord Almighty who attempts all things powerfully and directs all things sweetly Therefore attentive Reader I intreat thee that thou do not at the first sight wrongfully judge me because I have taken care to have the more Crude Writings Printed as being mixed with the more Digested ones those not being Restored or Corrected Know thou that the desire of promoting this great and laborious Work hath been the cause thereof at length thou maiest experience that the desirous Reader was to be by all means satisfied no less in this than in the aforesaid Writings and then thou wilt judge that I have well and faithfully performed all things seeking nothing for my own gain the which shall more clearly appear by this my Preface I call God to witness that my Desire unto whom it is known doth extend unto the help of my Neighbour Wherefore read thou and read again this Writing and it shall not repent thee for ever for I tell thee in the height of truth that I have published these things from pity alone as taking good notice that men by reason of their own Imaginations are so little careful of or affected with the safety of an Eternal and Temporal Life Stop your antient in and out-steps enter ye into the Royal path Eternal dismiss ye those innumerable by-paths which I my self have with exceeding labour and difficulty thorowly beaten in seeking whereby I might come unto the knowledge of the Truth endeavourm in the mean time to find out the ordination of all created things and their harmony and that by all the more internal and external means which I was able to imagine I then bent all my Senses whereby I might make my self known unto Wise men so called hoping at length to find some Wise Man not learned according to the common manner in all places where I should passe thorow which I might call Nations of whatsoever profession or condition they were I spake to them according to their desire that I might joyn in friendship with them by discourse and according to my abilities I imparted unto them the whole cause by this and other means I touched at many clear fundamental Knowledges and Arts all which I heare advisedly pass by And when I understood all and every of them to be onely the esteemed workmanship of a great Man I discerned that by how much the more a thing was absurd vain and foolish or frivolous by so much the more it was exalted and respected or honoured the which servitude I perceiving became voluntarily averse thereto as being one who did prosecute plain simplicity I descending ascended unto essential and occult or hidden properties and for my aid the understanding of some Latine Books seemed to be desired to this end I read over diverse times the New Testament in the Latine Idiome and the Germane that by that means I might in a few days not onely understand the Latine stile but also that in the aforesaid Testament I might find the perfect and long wished for simple one onely and Eternal Truth and Life which the one thing to wit God doth onely and alone earnestly require and is averse to all duallity or plurality So also whatsoever God hath created he created all of it in that one and by that one thing otherwise he had not kept an order And by how much the more I knew this amiable free and one only thing in all things and did enjoy it I addressed my self to a quiet study I was outwardly cloathed with simple or homely raiment and for the more inward contracting of my mind as also for curing thereof I acted many things known to God alone as also for the preservation of my health and increasing of my strongth I lived soberly for many Years together I also abstained from fleshes like as also from Fishes Wine and Ale or Beer and that so far that I
fortune come suddenly unlooked for Famagusta had been destroyed Therefore let the Reader know that the Eastern Marriners were wont on the day that they do observe such Windes to take a great Knife wherewith they make the Sign of the Cross in the Air and do utter these words In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word and suddenly all the Whirle-winde and tempest seperates it self and ceaseth For I have seen this experiment twice And on the second time while I returned out of Cyprus into Italy For neither do I finde any thing of Superstition therein but that the Knife must have a black handle And so I can determine of nothing certainly Thus far he A wonder at least That this divelish tempest should cease and the Devill spare the whole City perhaps for the sin of one sinner Moreover about Blas this is as yet considerable If in the great heat of Summer thou holdest a burning Candle about the hole of a Window there is no foot-step for the most part of mooved Air to be perceived but throughout the whole winter however small the hole be a troublesome Winde breatheth and that continually But since there is not a greater quantity of air let us now take the air for its Magnall or sheath being constrained by reason of cold than of that which is rarefied by reason of heat there seemes not to be a stronger reason of this than of that to stir up the Winde Therefore there is a twofold Motive locall Blas in the Air one indeed which stirs up the Windes and so includes a violence or swiftness from a native power or motion But the other which followes as for an alterative Blas for co-thickning or rarefying in the air But since this is almost universall by reason of Summer and Winter it also sends forth a certain slow flowing of the Air. And although cold may equally condense the Magnall and the Air be in this respect unmoved by reason of an alterative and violent windy Blas yet seeing in the opposite Coast of the Sphere the Magnall or sheath in the Air is generally made thin onely by reason of heat the Air in the Northern Coast must needes partly go back be knit together and so occupie the lesse room and partly be gently driven forward by the rarefying and rarefied Magnall of the Air that co-toucheth with it from the other half of the Orbe And this is the cause of the Question proposed to wit of the slow and uncessant flowing in the Winter Air which we do experience through a Chap be it never so small also the Winde ceasing But not so in the Summer-time For the Magnall being once made thin through heat the air stands unmooved amongst us CHAP. XV. A Vacuum or emptiness of Nature 1. The true definition of the Winde 2. The undistinct sincerity of former ages 3. Whither the Authours invention tendeth 4. An examining of the Air by an Engine like to a Hand-Gun 5. A Vacuum or emptiness in the Air is proved 6. A Vacuum is easier believed than a piercing of bodies 7. A Handicraft Demonstration by fire in behalf of a Vacuum and five remarkable things of it 8. A Handicraft operation concerning a sulphurated Torch or Candle 9. Subsequent Collections from both the Handicraft Operations 10. Pores of the Air are demonstrated 11. Opposite suspitions are taken away 12. Inward heat and inward fire being shut up together in a Glasse how they act diversly into the Air. 13. That it acts more strongly by the pressing together of its smoak than by the enlarging of heat 14. Of what sort the sense or feeling of the Air is 15. A new end of the Air. 16. That the fire lives not by the air but onely is choaked through penurie 17. Vacuities or emptinesses in the air are needfull 18. That every thing hath hated pressing together made by its guest by the lawes of self-love 19. A Vacuum being an impossible thing with Aristotle hath now become a requisite thing in nature 20. That there is given in the Vacuum of the air a middle thing between a body and an accident and so a neutrality 21. What the great Magnall may be 22. How the Blas of the Stars is communicated without Species or particular kindes 23. The tristes of the Aristotelicks concerning the Winde 24. A ridiculous multitude and plenty of exhalations according to Aristotle 25. The Opinion of Galen touching the Windes is hissed out 26. The Opinion of Galen concerning Quicksilver badly from Diascorides and worse copied out 27. The nature of rarefied air for the confirming of a Vacuum 28. While the air is commonly thought to be made thin it is indeed pressed together by reason of the extension of of its Magnall or Sheath 29. The body of the air hath its just extension under cold 30. Why in a hotter Climate the favours of the Heaven are the greater 31. The Magnall is proved to be increased and diminished but not the air to be properly rarefied or condensed IN the beginning of the Blas of a Meteor I have defined the Winde by a true definition that is by its constitutive Causes Seeing that a thing without or besides the containing of its Causes is nothing and every thing produced doth naturally shew an originall and essentiall respect unto its own producer which is inward to it Therefore a naturall Winde is a flowing Air mooved by the Blas of the Stars And that for distinction from a prodigious or monstrous Winde raised up by the malice of evill spirits Hypocrates calls the Winde a Blast and saying that all Diseases are from blasts he reckoueth up his To Enormon or forcible blast among the chief or first causes of Diseases For such was the plainness and candour or simplicity of former times wherein because they being more blessed there was not yet such knowledge nor cruelty nor frequency of Diseases For all things were not granted to Hypocrates For it hath well pleased the Almighty since Hypocrates to have also created his Physitians He made known indeed to Hypocrates that there is in us a Spirit stirring up all things by its Blas which Spirit he afterwards by a microcosmicall analogie or the proportion of a little World compared to the blasts of the World and restrained into the order of a blast whether they were partakers of life or indeed did contain the causes of death and destruction Lastly he left it undecided whether they being stirred up from the Heaven they should shew the suitable proportions of the Heavenly Circle or at length were stirred up by a sublunary law For the race or descent of the vitall Spirits had not yet been plainly made known For none had hitherto learned by experience that the matter of Gas was water and so it had not been as yet known that the windes of the World did wholly differ from the vitall Spirit From the knowledge of the windes handed forth by me in the
Meteor is reckoned by the holy Scriptures among wise men Which square if Astrologicall Predictions shall through a rash boldness exceed they are not onely vain and conjectural but driven out of both Testaments of the holy Scriptures with the name of Sooth-sayers of Heaven So that St. Ambrose doth rightly compare them to Spiders Webs which indeed do serve to take flies and gnats ensnaring themselves but by a stronger living Creature they are most easily broken asunder So indeed these Predictions do catch onely those that are apt to believe and lesse firm in the faith But that they are vain in themselves and framed by conjecturall Rules I prove because they are supported with a double foundation to wit with none at all and by a false one that which concerns nothingness is that they will have attributed to the Seven Planets the figure inclinations strength or valour wit fortunes and death of him that is born Seeing God hath appointed the Stars onely for signes seasons dayes and years but not for the causes of Predictions And so if those Predictions do contradict divine appointment for that very cause they are null and false Secondly because it is not yet agreed among Astrologers hitherto concerning the Scheme or order of the Heavens To wit whether Mercury and Venus are carried in particular Orbs beneath the Sun according to Ptolomy and all the antient Judiciaries Or whether they are rowled about in like or equall Circles round about the Sun Which thing the Optick-Tube or Glasse hath thus searched out therefore the Aphorismes of Predictions supported by that foundation that those two Planets are alwayes lower than the Sun do fall to the ground And then if two of the Planets Venus being the greatest or chiefest Star except the Sun be carried about the Sun and they are of so great power in judgements and so near to us those spots or Stars in the Sun or most near to it shall likewise be of far greater authority to refell all the Aphorismes of the Antients And the Stars which have lately been found to be moved about Jupiter shall conjecturally convince of the Rules of Almegistus whether they were written from a foundation That in the mean time I may be silent touching the opinion of Copernicus which at this day doth not want its followers and those of no small authority although they do presse their consent under silence which opinion notwithstanding once breaking forth will ruine all apparitions in the Heaven and Predictions Fourthly the point of nativity is uncertain and seeing that the Stars do vary in every point Every prediction is of necessity uncertain I being sometimes deceived in my younger years have attributed very much to the significations of the Stars but when I could not satisfie my self that by the remarkable accident of him that is born I could finde the point of his Nativity which is plainly necessary if those accidents do any way proceed from the Stars at length in behalf of a great Nobleman I described or wrote down his accidents to wit That in the eleventh year of his age a Wife of six years was married unto him he having obtained the degree of Knight of the Garter having travelled far even to the nineteenth year that he had received a wound in a Duel that his right thigh was broken by chance in a Coach the precise houres being adjoyned with very many observations of things The Countrey where he was born being added on the ninth day of the fourth month called June and the houre between seven and ten in the forenoon of the year 1604. I my self went to the most skilfull Judiciaries the Question being also sent away into other Countries with a promise of 600 Crowns to him who could divine or tell the point of his Nativity to us known from the aforesaid accidents At length none touched at the true point but he that came nearest did differ as yet the space of seven points above half an houre from thence There were in the mean time Standard-defenders who denied that such a point was between the seventh and tenth houre by which such accidents could be signified but indeed that point was found to be presently before the fifth houre in the morning yet in the truth of the matter he was born at London I being present seven points after the ninth houre Solar or according to the Sun and not horologiall or according to the Diall or Clock Afterwards therefore I with a notable repentance lamented my aptnesses of belief Moreover touching the falseness of the foundation of Predictions it as yet more clearly appeareth For indeed they themselves do confess that their Eccentricks or things not having one and the same Center c. to be meer fictions and almost impossible to save or preserve their speculations which soundeth that they are ignorant of the Orbs or Circles of the Heavens and the carryings of the Stars And so these absurd fictions being supposed it s no wonder that many near akin to them do follow I have known a remedy whereby otherwise the young would stick in the birth for the space of a day and houres and that drink being taken the Woman brings forth presently after a quarter of an houre and so the point of Nativity is deceived and likewise Herms's Scale of Empsuchosis or quickning but this Remedy I have written else-where to consist in the Liver and Gaul of an Eele being dryed and powdered Lastly the falshood doth more appear for they say that Saturn is a cold and dry melancholy Planet and therefore envious and stirring up to thefts and treacheries plainly evill because of the nature of the Earth But that Mars because he is hot and dry not the Sun is evill cholerick a Warriour murderer and cruel because of the nature of the Element of fire But that Jupiter and Venus are of the nature of Air merry sanguine good even as the Moon and Mercury being cold and moyst are of the nature of water and phlegme And so also therefore of a middle nature But a moderateness agreeth to the most hot Sun not a humour nor an Element Wherefore either the Sun shall languish by reason of injury or the feigned powers of the Elements are badly attributed as causes of the properties of the Stars whose property it is not to change but to give an alterative Blas to these inferior Bodies Wherein many falshoods come to hand For first of all they do causatively â—ink evill within the Heaven Secondly That the qualities of the Earth are evill or naught Thirdly They place the fire among Elementary Bodies Fourthly The Stars also even the two Elements which God had made were not to be good 5. They falsely compare the Stars in their causative property to Elementary qualities 6. Therefore they do falsly attribute to the Stars a causall virtue of fortune wit c. with respect to the first qualities Wherefore since there are in the judiciall part of Astrologie so great nakednesses
saltness is a volatile and salt Spirit which being co-fermented with Earth doth at length in part assume the nature of Salt-peter The venal bloud also doth by distillation afford this salt spirit plainly volatile and not any thing distinguishable from the spirit of Urine Yet I have considered that they both do differ in this essential property that the spirit of the Salt of venal bloud doth cure the falling-evill even of those of ripe age the spirit of the salt of Urine not so Therefore it is manifest that in the Venal blood a salt and volatile spirit is contained But after what manner all the venal bloud may be transchanged by the ferment of the heart into spirit without a diversity of kind as much as may be said I have explained in the Treatise of Long Life Because otherwise Natures are not to be demonstrated from a former Cause as neither the operations of Ferments because they are essentiall causes for the transmutations of things Therefore the vital spirit is saltish and therefore Balsamical and a preserver from corruption and that not so much by reason of the salt as in respect of a light conceived in its own Salt And so neither can air be made the addition or nourishment thereof For although the Aqua vitae be easily assumed into vital spirit yet this is not oylie and combustible but the spirit of wine onely by the touching of a ferment doth easily ascend wholly into a saltish volatile nature forthwith assoon as it looseth its oylie or enflamable property Even as I have taught by Handicraft operation in the Treatise of Duelech To wit after what manner at one onely instant Aqua vitae may be truly changed into a yellow gobbet or lump not inflamable which thing doth more evidently happen to Aqua vitae by a saltish vital Ferment Therefore the Spirit of Wine is straightway snatched into the heart without delay or by a further digestion through the Arteries of the stomach and restoreth the strength because it is by small labour perfected in the heart yet we must not think that the vital Spirit is soure because the Spirit of Salt-peter is pleasingly sharp and is made at length of the Spirit of Urine Because the Spirit from whence Salt-peter is coagulated in the Earth was not soure or sharp while it was the Spirit of Urine Therefore the vitall Spirit is Salt not soure for that which is sharp out of the stomach is an enemy to the whole Body being nearer to the Spirit of Urine than to Salt-peter and it is as yet much more divers from the Spirit of Salt-peter by the adustion and co-mingling of the adjunct with the thing extracted But they do easily perceive the saltness of the vital Spirit who have had some stupid member which by degrees receiving touching doth suffer pricking and stingings which are the true tokens of saltness Indeed the saltness of the Spirit may be known but the light of the same proceeding immediately and fountainously from the Father of Lights doth drive away all further search of mortall men Furthermore that the whole venal bloud is a meer Salt it desires not more strongly to be proved than because the whole venal bloud is in Ulcers the dropsie Ascites c. homogeneally made a Liquor by an immediate degeneration For the venal bloud is intensly red but it growes yellow while it is made arterial bloud because redness waxeth yellow when it is as it were dissolved by a volatile Salt It is as yet a dead thing whatsoever I have spoken of hitherto The vital Spirit performs the offices of life But the famous top of life is not proper to a Liquor or exhalation as they are Salt things And that the life of things may live it ought of necessity to have a Light from the Father of Lights Therefore it behoveth that the Spirit or vital Skie or Air be enlightned with a Light simply vital not indeed universal but specifical and individuating Nor also with a fiery burning enfiaming light and conspicuous by concentred beames But it is a formal light of the condition of a sensitive Soul In which word the descriptions and further diligent searches of mortal men are stayed to which end imagine thou that Glow-worms have a light in their belly a little before night as also bubbles of the Sea have a night brightness and very many things which through purrifying do proceed into the last matter of Salts yet vital and that which is extinguished together with their life Suppose thou a certain a like light to be in the spirit of life which as long as it liveth shineth and when it forsaketh the eyes of one dying they appear horny and made clean And that light is now and then extinguished the material vital Spirit being as yet safe in the Plague poyson sounding c. yet thou mayst not think that the like essence of light is in us and Glow-worms that indeed lights do differ onely in the tone or tenor of degrees But in very deed there are as many particular kindes of vital lights as there are of Creatures that have life And that is an abundant token of divine bounty that there are as many particular kindes of Lights which are comprehended in us under one onely notion and word and that there are as many vital differences as there are Species of vital things because that those lights are the very lives Souls and Forms of vital things themselves yet I except the immortal minde while I treat of frail lights although it self also be a certain incomprehensible light and so by the same Lights themselves is the alone and every distinction of particular kindes Therefore the Father of Lights delighteth in the unutterable abundance of generall kindes of Lights with a far greater bounty than in fashioning almost infinite varieties in one onely humane countenance For there is with himself a certain Common-wealth of Lights and a Legion of unmemorable Citizens a certain likeness whereof he expresseth by the Forms of vital things in the sublunary World Therefore the vitall Spirit is arterial bloud resolved by the Ferment of the heart into a salt Air and enlightned by life which light is in us hot of the nature of the Sun and is cold in a Fish neither doth it ever aspire unto any power of heat wherefore our heat is not a consumer of the Original moisture even as concerning long life seeing fishes have not hitherto escaped death Neither could the first men who before the floud saw a thousand Solar years have had more radical moisture by ten fold than us unless they had had all things ten fold more extended which is an impertinent thing For truly it is probable that Adam being formed by the hand of God obtained the most exceeding perfect Stature of the Lord Jesus Christ neither to have exceeded the same Lastly Fishes should naturally be immortall under the frozen Sea seeing their radical moisture should not there evaporate by heat
some plaâ—sible or timorous conceit with a desire or turning away doth go before And presently after there follows an appetite of the conceits with desire or fear Which things in this place I have thus enlarged that the power of a similitudinary or likeâ—ous creation of the Divine Image may bring us into the likeness of creating a Divine â—ove in the mind To wit while it self by its own motion not by a beam only of it self dispersed into the mortal Soul even as in Women great with child hath already been related to be done and by its own proper wishing is carâ—yed totally inward into the love of God Ah I would to God we might be led thither CHAP. XLVIII The Asthma or Stoppage of Breathing and Cough 1. The Pores of the Lungs and Sinews do lay open as long as we live 2. Nothing rains down from the Head to the Lungs 3. That Remedies are badly applyed to the Head in an Asthma 4. What the Vulcan the corrupter is 5. By what errour sweet Remedies and Lohochs or Ecligmaes were brought in 6. What was said is proved 7. A censuring of usual and ordinary Medicines 8. They have not distinguished the Remedies of the Conghâ—and Asthma 9. Aâ—twofold Asthma 10. The catamity of the Femal Sex 11. The heedlessnesse or rashnesses of the Schools 12. Vain experiments or attempts 13. The activity of the Womb in an Asthma 14. How the Womb ruleth and is ruled 15. An Enemy in the Womb. 16. They have erred in distinguishing 17. A Woman twice suffers every Disease 18. A sub-division of the Asthma 19. The Asthma hath been hitherto unknown 20. Why Physitians may hear that which they would not hear 21. A History of an Asthmatical Consul 22. A History of a young noble Man a Hunter 23. A A History of a Canonical Man 24. A History of a Monk 25. A History of a Citizen 26. A History of a Man of Sixty years old 27. A Searching out of the nest in a dry Asthma 28. Why its nest is in the Duumvirate 29. Why an Asthma is an Epilepsie of the Lungs 30. The quality of an Asthmatical Poyson 31. A History of a Countess 32. The place of the Poyson in the Consul was divers from that in the Hunter 33. How the Seeà and Fruit of an Asthma do differ 34. Why it suddenly invadeth 35. Why a dry Asthma is without suspition of a Defluxion 36. Remedies are not to be applyed to the Head 37. A censure or judgment of Remedies 38. A Paragraph or Summary sentence of Paracelsus concerning an Asthma 39. In what the deceit of Remedies may be 40. Remedies proper to an Asthma 41. The causes of a Womb-Asthma are by accident 42. A History of that which went before 43. A Doubtful Asthma between a dry and a moist one 44. Crafts which cause a moist Asthma 45. A moist Asthma from Endemical things drawn in 46. A History of an Asthmatical Man who was presently choaked 47. An erroneous judgment of the Lungs grown to the Pleura 48. Anatomy being founded on bad principles is oft-times childisher a mockery 49. From whence death and suddain choaking is 50. Things worthy of note about the Asthma of him of sixty years of age 51. It is proved from burtful things often eaten 52. That that Asthma was from the Spleen 53. The reason of the Schools concerning a climbing motion in an Asthmatick person is rejected 54. A fourfold vapour 55. An examination by the rule of a false supposition 56. A privie shift 57. Some considerations for the questions proposed 58. A reason drawn by conjectures 59. Confirming signes 60. A moist Asthma 61. It differs from its companion the Cough 62. From what causes it may arise 63. A promiscuous Asthma 64. An appropriated Remedy as well for the moist as the dry Asthma 65. Concerning the Cough from a distillation or pose 66. Why the Snivell doth varie in the running down of a pose 67. Some Observations 68. That for a Cough Phlegm doth not descend out of the Head unto the Lungs 69. A judgment or censure of the deeper Remedies 70. A History of a Snorting old Man 71. The Authors opinion 72. Of what sort the decision of the Question is 73. Both the Keepers do hasten to the Proof together with a Histery of 〈…〉 Latex 74. How much and how far the use of a Cauterie may answer 75. 〈…〉 applying of drying drinks 76. A consideration of Ecligmaes 77. A co 〈…〉 of the fume of Sulphur unto drink BEcause an Asthma or stoppage or difficulty of breathing hath been translated unto the trifles of a Rheum or Catarrh and the affect hath not been known and scarce healed hitherto Therefore I am constrained to write particularly concerning the Asthma To which end somethings out of those that have been afore alledged are to be repeated To wit that the Lungs is passable with pores or little holes as longas wolive no otherwise than as all the Sinews are The which is especially manifest in Opticks if one eye being shut the apple of the other seemeth to wax great But in death they are shut which otherwise in those that are alive are passable and the light of the eyes of dying persons doth visibly perish because the Optical or eye pores being shut the visible Spirit ceaseth and leaveth off to issue thither This my thing Hippocrates already knew in his age and therefore he declared the whole Body to be perspirable or breathing thorow and compirable on breathingly solding together And then I suppose it hath been already sufficiently demonstrated that nothing falls down from the Head into the Wind pipe â—r Lungs the which notwithstanding is frequently and plenteously spit or reached out by the Cough so that neither is there an entire place for a feigned Distillation or Catarrh But whatsoever the Cough casts forth that that is made in the Pipes of the Lungs through their proper vice Therefore that they have erred hitherto by reason of ignorance of the part commanding making or committing and receiving and by reason of rash thoughts of the matter and manner of making It is no wonder therefore if there hath also been nothing done in curing Because Remedies have been applyed to the Head that it might not make or not send matter or that matter might not of its own accord slide into the Lungs which was never in the power of the Head but is constantly made in the possession of the Lungs themselves And therfore the sick have remained without cure because all the care of Physitians was conversant partly about the Head which is guiltless in this Disease and partly about the preventing and more easie ejection of filths But not about the amending of that Vulcan the corrupter which of the good nourishment of the Lungs frameth the aforesaid Phlegms Indeed the ignorances of the former causes hath alwaies made the Schools to direct their intentions of healing unto the effect latter thing For when they diligently observed that
of Cony-catch'd their Money to be miserably forsaken that is deluded For they being disturbed of at vain experiments were amazed with me that so slow or fluggish help should be fetched from so many Ages Libraries when as in the mean time we have seen them ofttimes cured by poor old women or a Juggler or Fortuneteller Because the Schools are asleep at the complaint of the sick For they indeed hear the howling of sick but with the Levites they pass over into Jerichs and therefore they hear against their wills that which they would not hear To wit that unprosperous clientships of Diseases do happen daily unto them But neither do they therefore depart so much as a â—ailes breadth from their predecessours that they may once seriously deliberate concerning the life of their Neighbour committed unto them For to assent to or leane on old and blind guides hath turned into sloath therefore neither do they any more blush to decree as many Diseases to be incurable as they have not floaked with Bloud letting a Solutive Medicine Sweat Clyster a Cautery hot Baths drinking of Sharpish things that is with things that diminish the strength But now concerning the Asthma And first of all I will set down some known Histories But they who shall follow me shall the better and more successfully trace out the same A Consul of a great City of fifty years of age being a liberal drinker a strong man having slidden from a Ladder in a Ship on his shoulders and hinder part of his Head ere-while sounded returning unto himself he was well in health for eight Months space Afterwards he suffered a gentle Fever for some dayes he left his drinking because with the Fever an Asthma seazed on him every Fit for some dayes and nights did continually threaten Strangling But they end without a manifest Spitting outâ—vith reaching But the night foregoing the onset of the Asthma was without sleep unquiet with dryth of mouth a feverish Admonition a wonderful abundance of Urine and for the most part urgent with three Stools And then on the morning following as it were at one only Fit his breathing is at it were cut off with a broken Thred in Breathing as he lifts up his Shoulders and Arm-pits he presseth both his hands on the side of the Bed whereby he might the more easily and highly elevate his Shoulders His countenance looks red and his Eyes stand out And thus he passeth over some dayes and nights without sleep and doth continually struggle with choaking at hand At length the Fit being finished he is in good Health he Eats Walks Climbs Hunts. Rides and Journeyeth Yea neither remembred he that ever his head aked in his life or that his Breast was subject to a Cough There was a young Man of 24. years of age defiled with no Errour of Health or Life being Studious Noble and also employing himself in Hunting Hence indeed swift on Foot and in Running But this man coming to Bruxels three Leagues journey after a moderate supper with his Sister is first of all taken with an Asthma and for three whole dayes space he straues with Death through a fear of Choaking Labours and Sweats presently after he is restored without Spitting and being well in Health he speedily recovers his own home For full two years space after that he durst not lay down but sitting by the Hearth or Fire-side he passeth over the nights of those full years For if he layes down the Asthma doth presently awaken him being fast a-sleep also now and then the Fit threatens yea begins but doth not proceed also it more cruely afflicts him at one time than at another It is embittered at the set times of the Moon as also at the Seasons of the Air the which also therefore it fore-feels and presageth Likewise the Fit doth molest him more cruelly and oftner in Summer than in Winter Yea at this day it is more frequently and cruelly urgent on him than at its first beginning But in the dayes between the Fits he Walks Runs Rides Hunts and duely performeth other Offices of healthy persons but dares not to lay down by night He is worse in Mountanious places therefore scarce dares to spend a night at Bruxels Moreover for some hours before the Fit his Spittle becomes Salt he feels his Teeth and Gumms to be drawn together his Bowels also to roar with a great noise his Sides are pained on both sides and likewise he makes frequent and waterish Urine and the Paunch it self being more liquid is thrice or four times loosed Last of all as if a Snare were cast on him the Asthma presently layes hold on him and at every return threatens a choaking throughout the whole Fit At length a little before the end thereof he easily reacheth out four or five Froathy Spittings without a Cough and the Snare being as it were with drawn he is presently freed But a certaine Canonist a man of a middle and flourishing Age who is Asthmatical almost all the Summer and free at Winter doth measure a future cruelty of the Fit from the greatness of the foregoing Signs But at what Station he is pressed with an Asthma he itcheth throughout his whole body casts off white Scales and shews forth the likeness of a Leprousie He saith that his Mother laboured with the like Itching as also his Sister that she indeed thus died but that this was cured of her own accord after her second Child A certain Monk of the order of S. Francis being a Laick of Paula is busied in pulling down Houses or Temples And forthwith as oft as any place is Swept or the Wind doth otherwise stir up this Dust he presently falls down being almost choaked He is well indeed in his mind but his â—â—â—th being almost stopped he layes all along as ready to die and as long afterwards he layeth sitting And while in regard of his order and appetite he eateth Fishes fried with 〈◊〉 he presently falls down being deprived of Breathing so as that hoâ—â— scarce distinguished from a strangled man He saith that he felt the signs of the urgent Asthma which the other the Hunter sheweth and that he is the more assured of the future Fit and of its cruelty by the like fore-token of Sumptoms To wit while that Asthma doth voluntarily assault him and not from Meats or Dust A certain Citizen a wise and prudent man being by a Peer or great man openly disgraced and injured unto whom he might not answer a word without the fear of his utmost ruine In silence dissembles and bears the reproach but straightway after an Asthma ariseth the which did daily more increase on him otherwise in good health for two whole years space At length a little before his end a moderate Dropsie killed him in few dayes A certain Child presently from his Cradle strives with a quartan Ague for two whole years and beyond the hope of all through a crisis or judicial Expulsion and
it rush it self headlong into danger which should draw a hurtful poyson within the veins Therefore a solutive poyson while as yet it is detained and that in the Stomach it putryfies and defiles whatsoever was a-loof of deposed in the Mesenteries for better uses and draws the refined Blood out of the hollow vein instead of a putryfied treasure and by degrees defiles it with a poysonous contagion and dissolves it with the stinking ferment of a dead carcass For from hence is there a loss of strength by laxative Medicines and a disturbance of the Monarchy of Life without hope of cure thereby But that fury of laxative things endureth not only so long as their presence But also so long as the lamentable poyson doth burden the Stomach and Bowels with its contagion So indeed an artificial Diarrhaea or Flux ariseth which now and then persisteth even until Death and laughs at the promised help and attempted succours of astringent things Unto the second and third I likewise say it hath been sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere that the Elements are neither tempered for Bodies falsly believed to be mixt nor for the temperature sake of the same Bodies and much less for a just one and as to an adequate or suitable weight Therefore the Schooles presuppose falshoods yea and contend by sophistry For although Arcanums do cure a broken bone as well as Comfrey or the Stone for broken bones yet it is on both sides required that the fracture of the bone be reposed I likewise remember that a burstness being well bound up hath been cured beyond expectation because from the breaking of a bone some one had layen long on his Loynes Neither therefore doth it want an Arcanum Unto the fourth and also the fifth it sufficeth that the Arcanum or Secret doth wipe away the occasional Causes to wit nature being holpen supplying the rest Unto the sixth let the Schooles refrain their tongue For an Arcanum cures Diseases which they under blasphemy have maintained to be uncurable Which thing the Hospitals of those that were uncurable do testifie for me if they are compared with the Epitaph of Paracelsus But the seventh reproach breaks forth from ignorant Jaws to wit from the proper testimony of a guilty mind Unto the eight and ninth it is certain that the Exclaimers do grieve while they are beaten for from a sense of grief the Mouth speaketh reproaches But if of thousands of Alchymists scarce one doth arive unto his wished end that is not the vice of the art because the endowment doth not depend on the will of him that willeth and runneth But because it is not yet the fulness of time wherein these secrets shall be more common Be it sufficient for me that the signs do no where appear but among the obtainers of Arcanums that is Adeptists and that none of the Humorists hath ever come thither neither also shall come Therefore there is no place for reproaches against the truth of the science of healing but where there is no order and an everlasting horrour doth inhabit For Owles and monstrous Bats do shun the light of truth because they are fed with a great lie to wit that they have known how to cure Fevers without evacuation When as indeed they know not by both succours as well of a cut vein as of a loosened Belly how to cure Fevers certainly and safely for let them cure a Fever as they affirm Shall they not likewise for that very cause bring rest to the sick And afterwards safely take away that which they say doth remain which was not lawful so fitly to be done as long as they believe life to conflict or skirmish with Death and the Disease with health But they shun the light of truth under the Cloak of a lie thus ignorance dictating and gain thus commanding miserable men do defend themselves For Medicine is not a naked word a vain boasting or vain talk for it leaves a work behind it Wherefore I despise reproaches the boastings and miserable vanities of ambition Go to return with me to the purpose If ye speak truth Oh ye Schooles that ye can cure any kinde of Fevers without evacuation but will not for fear of a worse relapse come down to the contest ye Humorists Let us take out of the Hospitals out of the Camps or from elsewhere 200 or 500 poor People that have Fevers Pleurisies c. Let us divide them in halfes let us cast lots that one halfe of them may fall to my share and the other to yours I will cure them without blood-letting and sensible evacuation but do you do as ye know for neither do I tye you up to the boasting or of Phlebotomy or the abstinence from a solutive Medicine we shall see how many Funerals both of us shall have But let the reward of the contention or wager be 300 Florens deposited on both sides Here your business is decided Oh ye Magistrates unto whom the health of the People is dear It shall be contested for a publique good for the knowledge of truth for your Life and Soul for the health of your Sons Widows Orphans and the health of your whole People And finally for a method of curing disputed in an actual contradictory superadd ye a reward instead of a titular Honour from your Office compel ye those that are unwilling to enter into the combate or those that are Dumb in the place of exercise to yeild let them then shew that which they now boast of by brawling For thus Charters from Princes are to be shewn Let words and brawling cease let us act friendly and by mutual experiences that it may be known hence forward whether of our two methods are true For truly in contradictories not indeed both propositions but one of them only is true But now the Humourists while any commits himself to me for cure do possess him with fear to wit least they give up themselves unto an Authour of new opinions but rather that they go in the paths of Heathens that they may not through a novelty of opinion be accounted to have put their Life in doubt and that they rather trusting in an old abuse do enter into beaten paths Ah I wish those of another Life and of the intelligible World might return that they might testifie unto whom their death is owing Presently they who being now subtile Scoffers do seem to ask counsel for their own life should acknowledge that they do incurr on themselves the destruction and loss of their Life while they had rather commit their Life to plurality or the great number only by reason of the constancie of an old errour and abuse than that they are willing to be bowed unto the Admonitions of the truth As if War were still to be waged only with Darts or Arrows and Slings because that is the most antient kinde of Weapons But nevertheless neither are our Medicines so new that there are only the thousandth of experiences in them the which
that the Life is the immediate mansion of a Disease the inward subject yea and workman of the same But seeing Life is not essentially of the Body nor proper to the Body but that a Body without Life is a dead Carcass and a Disease is in the Life Of necessity also every matter or mansion and efficient Cause of a Disease doth not exceed the Limits of Life That is of necessity every Disease doth inhabite within the Case of the Archeus who is the alone immediate witness executer instrument as also the inne of Life but Apostemes Ulcers Filths Excrements c. Are only either the occasions of Death and Diseases or the latter products of the same raised up into a new scene or stage of the Tragedy Neither surely is it therefore a wonder that together with the Life all Diseases do depart into nothing if the Life be the immediate subject and mansion of Diseases But I long since admired that no Physitian hath hitherto known in what the essence of Diseases should shine But that they have wandred about Elementary qualities Humours Complexious Contrarieties and Dispositions Neither that indeed they have once observed that as filths are not Diseases so neither are Diseases in filths but that they live only in the Life it self and being included in the same do so arise grow and perish that seeing they are no where out of the Life they ought to be the intimate and domestick Thieves of the Life These things be spoken of the proper receptacle of Diseases Furthermore seeing a Disease is without controversie admitted to be a Being existing in us as in an inne and doth enjoy its own and singular properties and different Symptoms A Disease of necessity is not of the number of accidents because an accident is not of an accident combined with it and distinct from it self in the whole Species For truly sharpness or bitterness is not a property of whiteness blackness lightness or heat But every one of them do stand by themselves Wherefore if a Disease be a Being and not an accident if in the next place it produceth from it self not only alterations diverse dispositions weaknesses c. But moreover doth generate substances degenerating from the ordinary institution of their own nature of necessity also it ought to consist of matter and its own internal or seminal efficient Lastly seeing a Disease is internal as to the life it self it also follows of necessity that the matter of a Disease is Archeal and its efficient cause is vital And that I may speak more clearly every Disease is of necessity an Ideal efficient act of the vital power cloathing it self with a Garment of Archeal matter and attaining a vital and substantial form according to a difference of the slowness and swiftness of Ideal seeds which things indeed have been hitherto unknown by Mortals and those things which follow are as yet more largely supported with this position God made not Death and so far is he alwayes estranged from Death that he refuseth to be called the God of the Dead First of all also although Death doth sometimes invade without a Disease yet for the most part Death follows Diseases so that none doubteth but that that Death is the daughter of Diseases or the second Cause whereby and by means whereof the Life is extinguished That is Death is present but seeing God is not in any wise the Author of Death to wit by whom Death entred into Man who else was immortal and that no more or by a stronger right in the beginning of the World than at this day A Physitian must diligently enquire from whence Death doth causally invade from the beginning and even unto this day that it may from thence be manifest from whence a Disease hath drawn its integrity For truly although it be sufficiently apparent that Death doth contain as it were a privation or exstinction of Life so neither in it self or for its existence it doth not require any substantial form and much less a vital one But surely a Disease as such doth not bespeak a privation but a Being truly subsisting acting by an hurtful act of Life and ensnaring the Life So also it behoveth a Disease to consist in the form of its own thingliness which the Life can receive into it and be informed by it But seeing a Disease arose from the same Beginning as Death did neither is God ever the Author of Death It by all means follows that God is not the Author or Creator of Diseases neither therefore although a Disease hath a certain substantial form Yet it hath not Life nor a vital Light but what it hath borrowed from the Life it self to wit so far as it glistens in the Light of our Life or in that of Cattel But not that a Disease doth require or hath begged a vital Light from the Father of Lights for the being of its seed the which in it self is rather to be named a deadly or mortal thing and altogether estranged from the goodness of God the Creator Therefore although God alone doth create all the forms of all things and the Father of Lights doth give every essential form to wit a vital substantial form and so also the formal substance without any mutual competitor yet that hath not place in Diseases in the forming of which indeed man alone is chief Because the Life of Man alone containeth the second Causes of Diseases and Death Therefore because the Creator God denyeth that he made Death therefore also a Disease For a Disease standeth in the Life of Man and therefore all its quiddity or thingliness depends on the Life of man and that not only Seminally even as otherwise it is proper to all the seeds of any things whatsoever But besides also formally so that the Life of the Archeus or his Flesh and Blood are and do remain the whole formal Cause of Diseases or the effective Cause of the formes of a Disease For he who from the beginning refused to have effected Death or Diseases will never at length thence-forward be willing to have made Death nor Diseases For the Father of Lights will not give his Honour of Creating formal Lights unto any Creature except the Mortal formes of Diseases whereof as neither would he be called the God of the Dead Therefore Man remains the workman of his own Death who the day before was immortal as also of his own Diseases as if he were the Creator of Death So indeed that whereas God hath made vital Lights Man Createth Diseasie Obscure and deadly Idea's or Shapes and such an Idea doth as much differ from a vital Light as a black heat doth from Light Therefore the formal act of Death and Diseases sprang from the action of original Sin and shall so spring even unto the end of the World For the same Cause which in the beginning of the World made Death or the same second natural Cause which gave a natural entrance of Death into
humane Nature The same Cause also doth wholly at this day make Death and a Disease For it is repugnant with the Glory of the Creator not to have made Death from the beginning and afterwards when it was made by Man for him to have assumed to himself the Glory of knowing how to make it as if he ought to have learned that thing from Man But what hath been already spoken concerning Death that is by an equal right to be understood concerning Diseases Because that seeing Death and a Disease have issued from the same piont of their original therefore if God be said to give Diseases or Death it is not that now he will be the Creator of those things whose Fabrick he before wholly refused But he is permissively called the Author and Prince of Life and Death Because as he is the true and alone Author of Life and therefore doth govern it and suffer it at his Pleasure So he permits that this man doth yield or depart and the other Man fall and that second Causes do happen as well directly as irregularly whence Man dieth or a Disease groweth But the Creation of a Disease as of a Being subsisting from a seminal matter and efficient and of an Ideal and deadly evil never proceeded from God For while he had placed it in the will of Man that he might remain without Death or the same day to die the Death by the same step also he put it into Mans hand to frame Death and a Disease it self as a fore-runner and preparer of Death The entrance of Death into the nature of Man being considered even as I have elsewhere explained it by a remarkable Paradox doth most exactly prove that a Disease doth nor only consist in the vital part of Man but also that a Disease it self is bred by a seminal Idea out of the Archeus himself But I will briefly prove that thing From the concupiscence of the Flesh arose the flesh of Sin and therefore also a mortal Archeus in that Flesh and from thence by consequence also the Archeus forasmuch as he is vital acts in the flesh of Sin every action and produceth every formal hurtful and deadly act which God hath refused to do and hath suffered Man to stamp on himself the Causes of Death and Diseases Yet Man is not therefore a Creator although he maketh formal acts to himself or the substantial formes of Diseases or the hurtful ones of Life For truly that was granted unto him by virtue of the Word That on what so ever day he should eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil he should die the Death and should make guards-men appointed for his own Death And that from the very Nature of Death it self necessarily brought forth in the flesh of Sin The act therefore which is of the Essence Exsistence and Subsistence even as also of the propagation or fruitfulness of the contagion of Diseases doth altogether depend in the Life from the Life by the Life within which it is also enclosed Surely miserable are Mortals and most exceeding miserable are the Sick who have hitherto hired Physitians at a great and dear price who know not what a Disease may be from whence it may arise and in what it may consist and subsist But I admire that before me the more Antient as neither Modern Physitians have smelt this out because their sacred Anchor being for the most part in the hope of a Crisis and concerning Crises's they have devised very many things to excuse their own Ignorances For truly a Crisis or judicial sign in Diseases proveth nothing besides the Archeus if they believe their own Hippocrates who saith that Natures themselves are the only Physitianesses and helpers of Diseases For the Moon doth not make Crises's causatively but the Archeus alone who follows the Harmony of the Moon For the Moon measureth dayes hath more regared unto the proof of the actions of the Archeus than unto causality For the Moon is alwayes on the fourth day in an opposite place to that which she was in on the first day Therefore also the Archeus hath opposite powers or faculties who doth imitate the Harmonious motions of the Moon So also on the seventh day c. I conclude therefore for the knowledge of a Disease that a Disease hath either a Fewell or an excitement only from the occasional Cause or doth arise from a voluntary and proper motion and perseveres in its own contagion of a seed as while an Epilepsie or the falling Evil is once con-centred or the Gowt hath taken root doth indeed awaken of its own free accord as oft as it listeth Even as also the Disease ceaseth for two or three dayes or more and again returns at set Periods although the occasional cause in the mean time be alwayes present and so after a hurtful solutive Medicine being taken although it be expelled a few hours after yet the Archens being thereby defiled rageth and is obedient to the drunk contagion of the venom So also ready inclinations and hereditary Diseases Proper or Natural unto some one whole Family are co-bred with us Because they are Con-centred in the Life it self and are as it were the Characterical marks and imprinted seales of hurtful Diseases CHAP. LXVIII I proceed unto the Knowledge of Diseases 1. Medicine is the most occult or intricate of Sciences 2. Therefore the ignorances of past ages are excusable 3. In what thing Diseases may inhabit 4. The rise or original of Diseases 5. Whence a Disease began 6. Why a Disease is immediately in the Being of the first Motions 7. Why the essence of Diseases hath been unknown 8. A Disease hath married a vital Being 9. After what manner all seeds do issue from the invisible World 10. The rise of Efficient Causes and the property of seminal Idea's 11. All the seminal Beginnings of things are from an invisible Idea 12. How a seminal beginning receives its compleating 13. The Ideal power of seeds is declared by their ranks 14. Although Death and a Disease began from the same Beginning yet they differ in that a Disease hath Idea's but a Death not 15. The Schooles will laugh at Idea's But the Author carps at the ignorance of the Schooles 16. He proveth their ignorance at least by one Example I Have already oftentimes nor in vain asserted that Arts and Sciences have hastened unto a pitch but that the art of healing alone if it hath not gone backwards at leastwise to have stood at a stay and to have whirled round about the same deceitful point Hence also I have conjectured that the knowledge of Diseases and a Medicine depending thereon was to Man most difficult On which so many flourishing wits have for so many ages vainly bestowed their endeavours and that thing I do not hereby conjecture to be from a contingency or events alone to wit because the knowledge of Diseases hath even hitherto stood neglected But because in respect
have seen the Children of Orphans to have cast up by Vomit the sharp Stake of an Harp it being drawn out by the hands of the Standers by To wit the four-footed Bench or Balk being furnished with its wheele and Strings But in whatsoever scituation the sharp Stake could be placed it was easily by twofold bigger than the Throat I have seen at Antwerp in the Year 1622 a little Maid who might vomit up perhaps two thousand of Pins together with Hairs and Filths in a heap or lump Another Virgin in the Year 1631. At Mecheline who we being present did Vomit up Wooden Sweepings shaved of with a Plain by plaining together with much sliminess unto the quantity of two Fists It is a frequent thing being seen in many places and admitted of by Learned men Yet the more deriding ones do stick at it because they cannot understand how things which are far more big do go forth thorow a small passage For some do excuse the matter so that although they may seem to be rejected by vomit yet they will have them never to be admitted within I say they esteem them the mockeries and bewitchings of the eyes while they issue forth to appear anew and do bring us tidings afar off Indeed they do admit of true things For Insects do live Mettals are melted and Woods do burn all things do by degrees voluntarily go forth or are drawn forth with the hand But others think that in very deed such things are cast within and darted into the Body but they know not the manner thereof Delrio with his followers do grant that they are brought within the Body and that they are in very deed such as they appear to be and therefore they refute the foregoing Opinion But as to the manner of enterance and utterance they affirm That those things are broken in pieces by the Devil into a most fine powder that they are restored within in the Body into their former integrity figure and conditions But while they issue forth they affirm them to be again beaten into fine powder and that in the instant time of their going forth and on this side the strait or narrow port they are again reduced into their antient Being to wit that Woods Needles Toads living Creatures are broken into powder and as often reduced unto their former habit and to revive For these men do deny that they do agree with the other in the foregoing Opinion while as notwithstanding they say the same thing with them for their utterance and enterance To wit that those things do not in very deed enter or go forth even as otherwise they seem unto the standers by seeing they enter or go forth whole but being first poudered They suppose the same bewitching of the eyes which do think things to be whole which are onely powders For Martin Delrio doth frequently suppose that indeed to infringe his own Judgements For concerning Magical Inquisitions in his Treatise of the making of Gold when as he had theevishly described Arguments word for word out of Geber and Bonus Ferrariensis he at length when as he declares his own Judgement doth forge 18 Contradictories Truly I believe that it is resistant with piety if a power which exceedeth Nature be attributed to the Devil To wit to make destroy and again to re-make and so often to reduce the same thing from a privation unto a habit whose dispositive seed had already come unto its end But those that are ignorant of Nature do presume that they are the Secretaries of Nature by the reading of Books but whatsoever lies hid unto them let it be either unpossible or false or juggling and diabolical As if Satan were above Nature and could operate things impossible to Nature I grant him indeed a forreign manner in operating 〈◊〉 but surely he as yet ought to be restrained within Nature Therefore I will shew that there is not plainly a need of the help of Satan that a certain solid Body be derived thorow a Passage far less than it self without the breaking of it in pieces Because that this also is certain That indeed all such Injections are immediately made by man but not by Satan For although the evil Spirit hath a motive Blas yet it is contrary to piety that he should be able to hurt the Innocent at his pleasure Which thing surely should come to pass if he should in all places Inject those kind of things according to his wicked will into the little ones I have seen I say these things to happen in the guiltless in pious Virgins and in those who have been singularly dedicated unto God Corn. Gemma concerning Cosmocriticks or Judicials of the World hath mentioned that he saw a piece of a brass Gun of three pound or fourty eight ounces the which a Maid a Coopers daughter had voided out thorow her fundament with its characters or letters together with an Eele wrapped up in his own skins or coverings But it is impossible for Nature to melt a powdered Mettal in us and for it to be detained in the Bowels for so great an interval of Moneths in his antient figure For an Eele together with his coverings to be so often bruised in pieces and to rise again from death And for pieces of Wood and Hide to be so often broken in pieces and again to be restored into their antient state For I have seen at Bruxels in the Year 1599 that an Oxe having taken three Hearbs vomited up a Dargon with his Tail like an Eele a Hidy Body a Serpentine Head he being no less than a Partridge The manner is unknown how Nature could do that The manner is alike unknown how Satan could do that They therefore gain nothing who refer the work of Nature unto the Devil But whether they do sin others shall see For it hath been at least-wise an invention of huge sloath to have referred all things which we do not comprehend unto the Devil Truly I find a very near or co-touching penetration of the dimensions of Nature although not an ordinary one Neither will I that the Devil be invoked to satisfie us in our questions through a rash attributing of Powers unto him There is a History of a Polonian a Countrey fellow being lately seen by the son of the Lord Ericius Pouteanus The rude man had attempted to open a Squinancy in his own Throat with a short knife the which he at unawares swallowed down and at length he with much corrupt pus and after many anguishes restored the same again out of the right side of the bottome of his belly and survived in health Likewise at Vilvord in the Year 1636 a country-man known to me being willing to fat a Cow gave her every day a pot wherein he had boyled pot-herbs with bran At length she becomes more and more lean daily and began to halt with her right leg the Cow being slain a short knife of his Wifes being wreathen into a box haft was
notwithstanding of Priofity if they are weighed in the Ballance of Truth they are onely the Atributes of Motions but never of Time or Duration because Priority Slowness c. do bespeak only an unseparable Relation unto the parts of Motions immediately following and slowness compares the swiftness of Motions with each other and therefore Priority Slownesses c. do not so much measure Time or Duration but only in respect of a dayly Motion For truly a humane and undistinct weakness hath through a certain sluggishness and dulness meted out all peculiar Motions with a diary or diurnal Motion Because they do not regard that the Priorities of Motions are not properly the duration of Time it self but rather a universal distance of a general Motion And although Duration it self of Time be and be present in all things yet that this is altogether a Stranger from the succession of Motions From hence therefore Time hath begun to be considered as it were a successive and frail Being by every instant Especially because the Schooles having imitated the blockishnesses of the Vulgar have at length accustomed themselves to confound Time with the Motion of the Heaven It 's no wonder therefore if the great Heroes or Worthies considering the thingliness of Time by such Beginnings have not been able to conceive of the same Because seeing it involveth an actual Infinite which one only thing is Eternal it is from it self of necessity not to be comprehended by that which is Infinite For Time is thought to succeed and to have parts because parts should follow themselves in Motions Seeing Time and Motion are unlike things and so far different from each other as a Mortal and Finite thing is from an Infinite For although Motion be made in Time Motion can be no more co-measured by Man through Time than Man is able to measure Man himself by God who is lives and is moved in God For if God would have the whole course of the Heaven for the future to be so unequally inordinate that no Motion could be made equal unto it should therefore Time also be in it self unequal Or should that cease to be which now is Yea if the Motion of the Heavens should cease as at sometime it shall cease shall Time therefore cease likewise Shall Now it self be no longer Now for what doth that belong unto Time which happeneth in Time For truly it hath its own free Being without Respect Reflexion or Reciprocation unto any other thing Indeed Time is not given unto us for a measure or that in it self it is to be measured but it hath a free Being in him from whence is all Essence For Example God is in every Creature For God is Good as he is all Good but not this or that Good but in as much as he is this or that Good he is not all or every Good and in such a respect he hath a Being in created Things For as God is one only Good in all things so in like manner also all Good is essentially this one true Good Likewise God is every where present in all things and his Continuance or Duration is the Duration of all and every of things In like manner also the light of the Sun is a Being and something in it self because it enlightneth and heates yet without and on this side the Sun it is nothing After the same manner eternal Duration is Time in created things Because without and besides an eternal Duration it is a meer nothing privatively and negatively Wherefore as long as there shall be any created things Time shall never cease to be The Lord hath said Thou art my Son this Day have I begotten Thee Because Eternity is nothing but one only Now but one only To day I have begotten Thee from the Womb before the Day-Star was Christ was born from the Womb in Time and yet before Lucifer or the Day-Star was Because in Time there is no Priority or Succession Before therefore denotes a Priority of the Succession of Motions and an excellency of Dignity but not a Priority of Time Because from the Beginning even unto the finishing of Age it is nothing but one only Now For so The Lamb was sacrificed from the Beginning of the World and his death saves the dead before the Lords Incarnation as the Incarnation which makes blessed hath respect unto Motion Indeed it saves the Ancestours which precede according to the course of Life and in respect of Motions conferred among each other but not by the sight or beholding of Duration That the Lyon may not snatch them nor the infernal Pit devour them For those Prayers are for the deceased long after Death when as notwithstanding Souls do for the most part undergo their Judgment presently after expiration Wherefore such kinde of Prayers should be in Vain and made too late if Time should be successive The Church triumpheth in the Comforter her Guide therefore she hath known that all future things are in the same Now of time as if her Prayers had happened before the party died For the Wise Man affirmeth That God made all things at once but Genesis writing the History of the six dayes Work saith also that as many dayes were spent Which sayings should therefore contradict each other if Succession be granted unto Time All things therefore were created in six dayes space yet one only point of time remaining For so the Devil hath known future things in the succession of Motions as they being present in the one only Now of Time The Stars indeed are for Times that is for the successive changes of Times or varieties of Motions but not for the continuance of our Life the bound whereof is appointed by the Almighty But indeed Priority or Formerliness is most difficulty sequestred from Time For although we abstract Time from Place Motion and a Body Yet by reason of an opposite custom and the novelty of the thing it is very difficult to desist from Priority in Time no otherwise than as any one who is wont to cut Bread with his left hand that thing is troublesome for his right Hand to do although he rightly performeth many other things by his right Hand Yet therefore a difficulty and unwontedness of understanding doth not change any thing in things or oblige the Essence of Time that it may accommodate it self to our Errours For what doth a Priority it self of Motions in Bodies belong to Time Or what doth Priority hurt Time which is due to Motion alone If through ignorance it be translated into Time But because a Priority of Motions in order to Duration bespeakes an immediate respect unto another Motion to wit of dayes and years whereby we measure all other Motions therefore Priority is abusively derived into duration Otherwise surely it ought first to be manifested that that Motion of the day should therefore be Time because it happens in time which being proved then Priority might be referred unto Duration and not otherwise
a distinct animosity of Diseases in contention But the Filths being ripened they desist from adhering unto the solid Parts But to what end is there so great a commentary of critical Dayes I being a Junior wrote five Books concerning Critical dayes the which I afterwards committed to the Fire if it behoves a Physitian to be instructed that he may render a dangerous Disease harmless and may abbreviate a long one that is may cut it off that it be not spun out into a Crisis A Crisis therefore as it sounds of Judgment let it be the Judge and Accuser of Physitians and a testimony of Nature alone bearing the burden because a Crisis only happens where a slimie or tough Matter doth adhere or a noysome or hurtful Matter is enclosed and wisheth to be sequestred by an ultimate or final Maturity But as to what respecteth a Climacterical year or year of gradual ascent drawn from a production of the number of seven into nine to wit into the sixty third year of Life it is a blockish invention Because seventy Years are the Dayes of a Man c. Therefore among Christians they accuse the holy Scriptures of the imposture of Falshood and so it is an invention of the Devil who being an Enemy of our Life doth procure through the fear of Death to smite Old Men with astonishment before their appointed hour For otherwise what doth the production of a number into a number make or tend unto the course of Life Years indeed do hasten and run back into their own Harvests and Maturities Wherefore also the revolutions of Years and numbers of revolutions do rather respect an identity or sameliness of recourses than the Number or Life directly and they after no manner refer themselves unto a past number because all particular years do end into their own precise singularity neither do they reflect themselves upon a plurality of Years foregoing Among the rest some one doth sottishly betake himself unto the number numbering Truly as it is a pious and Christian-like thing to acknowledge our Life from the hand of the Creatour the Prince of Life So it is the part of Reprobates to have borrowed Life from the Planets and Numbers For although God hath from his own Will and good Pleasure disposed of all things in a certain space yet let it be a foolish thing to attribute a causality to Numbers If Plants had the Faculty of fructifying before the Stars were born and do grow or flourish by virtue of the Word it is a shameful thing for a Christian to have yielded the life of man and the powers of his Duration and Existence unto Numbers numbering Therefore a Clymacterical Year whether we respect the Numbred Recourses of the Stars or a recoursive Number or next the Number numbering is a vain prattle repugnant to the holy Scriptures which call our wretched Life from seventy unto eighty Years not by reason of Years past as neither by reason of their Number numbering but because necessities are increased in the Seeds they being so appointed by the Prince of Life But they boast of a Sabbathary Number because it is the Seventh Adde to this that is repugnant to the Fiftieth Year which is that of the Jubilee and wholly Sabbathary and so the Seventieth Year because it is seven times the Tenth doth more Sabbatize or rest than the Sixty third Year because the Ninth Year is the Nintieth or the Ninth Tenth which doth nothing belong unto a Sabbatisme or celebration of a Sabbath For if the Seventh day be Critical by reason of the positions of the Moon therefore not by reason of Number neither doth any thing of the Moon interpose which is common with the Clymacterical Number of 63 Years For Astrologers do will the 56 Year in Nativities of the Night by reason of a doubled coldness of Saturn surely a shameful one but the 63 Year in Births of the Day by reason of the ridiculous drynesses of Mercury and Mars to be most exceeding dangerous But these Men besides that for one half of Births at least they bid farewel unto a Clymacterical Year they contradict the Text The Dayes of a Man are Seventy Years c. In the next place they desist from Numbers while they call the Qualities of Elements unto their help and by doating do transferre them on the Stars If Death in the Vale of Miseries be the end of Calamities the Clymacterical Year ought to be the Fiftieth which is the Sabbathary Year and that of Jubilee God indeed hath distinguished the Week into Seven Dayes not by reason of a Mystery or Dignities of the Number but because he foreknew men would scarce be at leisure for him unlesse he had commanded it Wherefore he would have the seventh day at least to be due unto himself that we might wholly be at leasure at least once in the Week But not that a Number did contain a Sacred thing or Mystery but he testified the Indulgency of his bounty that of seven dayes he required even but one onely Go to if he hath consecrated the Seventh Number to himself why dost thou adde also the Ninth which is not consecrated unto him Why do ye marry a profane Number unto a sacred Number as thou sayest that thereby ye may frame a Clymacterical Year Is it lawful to have made Dayes sacred unto God when thou pleasest At length after who manner if Seven and Nine should have a Mistery in them wilt thou make it that the Number from the Product of Seven into Nine shall be holy Seeing that according to you nothing can be added to or taken away from the Species of Numbers but that the Species it self is continually changed God commanded ten days for unleavened bread before and after the Feast But what authority doth that afford for a Denary or the number of Ten. The Lord commanded that Dayes were to be vacant for himself wherein he had been bountiful unto them yet are they not therefore to be observed by us And therefore neither hath he addicted a holiness to Numbers Therefore that Doctrine containeth the future perfidiousness of the Jewes which things afterwards from the foolish frivolousness of Astrologers and melancholly or mad thoughts they have fashioned into Arts and Rules fitted to their vain pleasure or desire and some of whom I have Cured by Remedies for madness seeing such kind of obstinacy wants not its own madness Finally therefore it is manifest that Long Life which I treat of is not in respect of Duration or Time but of Motions issuing forth from the Beginning even unto the End to wit the Measuring whereof in the constancy of Duration is not Duration it self but another Motion such as is the Day which by its plurality onely measureth the longitudes or lengths of Life Wherefore the holy Scriptures do speak dis-joyntly In those Dayes And likewise they describe the contingencies of things by the Dayes of Men but not by the Successions of Times which Paganisme
God will have other Recognisances or knowing Considerations from Man than from an Angel ought he therefore less to rejoyce in the Divine good Pleasure but to proceed in praising him in an humble Adoration wherein all understanding of Wisdom and clearness of all Spirits are as it were supped up in a lively Center Through this reward therefore of Degrees the unutterable God hath since the Fall Crowned Man with Glory and Honour although degenerate and hath put other things under his Feet for neither before the Fall had Man ever aspired thither Therefore Man ought neither to have the knowledge of all things which Adam knew in his Beginning nor also of his own self if it ought to be a Desert For a Crown presupposeth a striving Desert and Victory For we cannot bring back an increase of Grace for Victory but by fighting Therefore I conclude that as we are constituted in the middle and sensitive Life we know have are or are able to do nothing but only by Grace Desert co-operating and the which Merit that God might confirm the Moments of Degrees in the adoring Understanding were to be presupposed Therefore he that is of innocent Hands and of a clean Heart worshippeth God in the Truth of Spirit and the State of that mortal Man is far more happy than was that of Adam being Immortal For that poverty of Spirit doth in truth know Wisely knowes Knowingly believes Confidently perceives or feeles Truly and confesseth Humbly that he is a meer subject of all Defects that is an unprofitable and evil Servant In this Journey the unutterable Kingdom of God meets Man the Ocean of Light which gives an un-asked-for cleaâ—ness of Understanding and much more royal things than the Desires of the Angels do wish for These things exceed the Phylosophy of the Heathens and of Modern Atheists So it is Understanding and Truth hath it self in this manner wherein our Phylosophy doth place its Alpha or Beginning The which if it shall not do long Life is unprofitable being unknown to so many Ages being neglected by so many Wits and even unto the end of the World known unto none but Adeptists alone CHAP. CII The Image of God THe Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom But the Fear of the Lord begins from the Meditation of Death and Life eternal But many with the Stoicks suppose the end of Wisdom to be the knowledge of ones self But I call the ultimate End of Wisdom and the reward of the whole course of our Life Charity or dear Love the which alone will accompany us when as other things have forsaken us And although the knowledge of ones self according to me be only a Mean unto the Fear of the Lord yet from this is the Treatise of long Life to be begun Because the knowledge of Life doth presuppose a knowledge of the Soul Seeing the Life and Soul as I have the second time said are Synonymals It is of Faith that Man was created of nothing after the Image of God into a living Creature and that his Mind is never to perish Whereas in the mean time the Souls of Bruit-beasts do perish into nothing when they cease to live The weights of which difference I have taught concerning the birth or rise of Forms But hitherto it is not sufficiently manifest wherein that Similitude with God our Arch-type or first Example is placed For most do place this lofty Image in the Soul alone I will speake what I judge yet under a humble Protestation and Subjection to the Censure of the Church It is thus The original of Forms being already after some sort known it is meet also exactly to enquire into the Mind of Man But surely there is no Knowledge more burdensome than that whereby the Soul comprehends it self yea and scarce is there any a more profitable one because the Faith doth stablish its Foundation upon the unperishable and un-obliterable Substance of the Soul I have found indeed many Demonstrations divulged in the Books about this Truth But none of them at all for what in respect of Atheists who deny the one only and constant Power or Deity from everlasting Plato indeed makes three sorts of Atheists The first indeed which believeth no Gods A second Sort also which indeed admitteth of Gods yet such as are un-careful of us and ignorant Contemners of small Matters Lastly a third Sort which although they believe that there are Gods and those expert of the smallest Matters yet they think them to be flexible through the least Dead or cold Prayer This sort is most frequent among Christians at this day even those who profess themselves to be the most Perfect and therefore they dare do any thing and believe Religion to be only for restraining People through the Fear of Laws the Obligation of Faith and Pain of infernal Punishment For these impose grievous Burdens on the Shoulders of others which they touch not so much as with their Finger they wipe the Purses of their own People they prostitute Heaven to sale to dying Men they every where offer themselves to be employed in Secular Affairs as if they would declare that Religion doth not subsist without the State It should be my greatest wish that they might taste at least but for one only Moment what it is intellectually to understand that they may feel the immortality of the Mind as it were by touching Truly I have not invented Rules or a Manner whereby I might be able to illustrate the understanding of another Therefore I deservedly testifie that they who alwayes study as enquiring after the Truth do notwithstanding never attain unto the knowledge thereof because they being blown up with the Letter have no Charity and do cherish hidden Atheism But this one thing I have learned That the mind doth now understand nothing by imagination neither by figures and likenesses unless the wretched and miserable Discourse of Reason shall have access to it But when as the Soul comprehends it self Reason and its own Image faileth it whereby it may represent it self to it self Therefore the Soul it never able to apprehend it self through the discourse of Reason as neither by Likenesses For after I had known that the Truth of Essence and the truth of Uderstanding are one and the same thing I knew the Understanding to be a certain immortal thing far separated from frail or mortal things The Soul indeed is not felt yet we believe it to be within not to be idle not to be tired nor to be disturbed by Diseases Therefore Sleep Fury and Drunkenness are not the Symptoms of the Immortal Mind being hurt but only the Pages of Life and Passions of the sensitive Soul Seeing that Bruits also undergo such Passions For neither is it a meet thing for an immortal thing to suffer by mortal Ones For as the Mind is in us and yet is not felt or perceived by us So neither are the continual and unshaken Operations thereof to be
moisture in us and the radical heat may be for synonymals But moreover all do with one consent presage that our Vital heat would never fail us if there might always be enough and to spare of that moisture and fodder Which moisture because they believe to be hereafter wasted by a necessary action of heat they finish the hope and Treatise of Long Life by a denial But alas with what pernicious blindness hath the Schoole of Medicine through thinking stumbled in all things It had also seen the Flame of a Lamp to be nourished with Oyl and that through defect hereof that also failed but that it was continued by the pouring on of Oyl Wherefore a plausible Invention smiled on them and therefore they drew that Invention into the History of Life Especially because they by sense took notice that heat was no less in the four-footed Beast and Bird than in a Man So greatly with the Patronage of Aristotle have they confounded heat under the Etymology of Life And then they presently drew out of heat the token of true and presential Fire Yet the Question remained under Controversie The Aristotelicks indeed attribute this Fire unto the Element of the Stars and contratrarily distinguish the sublunary Element of Fire in its species But others attribute it unto the Element of sublunary Fire And have about this and the other their own Arguments of Brawlings In the mean time the Schoole hath been wholly dumb about mute and cold Fishes and although it confessed that Fishes do live are moved and nourished no more unprosperously than four-footed Beasts yea although it knew that they are enriched with a far more fruitful race of Off-springs in the next place that they live a more healthy Life and notwithstanding that Fires and heats are wanting under the Sea especially the frozen Sea wherein in the mean time there was the greatest and most populous Common-wealth neverthelesse it would not forsake the embers of the vital spark drawn in from its tender years although it took notice that it was deluded through a Patronage of truth Wherefore the miserable Schooles flee unto Decrees or Authorities Therefore they would have Man Birds and also four-footed Beasts to be indeed in a Trine Number and that the Fish might be involved as a Fourth and consocial thereunto and be constrained under their large Doctrine That they might determine of an equal right concerning the Fish as absent in the participation of Radical heat But because the Soul comes as a Servant unto established pleasures and doth also administer Reason even for a non-Being at pleasure they have devised a privy shift and determine to wit That hot living Creatures are actually hot with a palpable Fire but that Fishes are onely potentially hot As if therefore Fishes should onely potentially live if the Effect doth not badly square with its granted Causes The Schooles I say do feign Heat to be the total Cause of an actual Life to wit they substitute an equivocal or doubtful Quality like unto heat but an irregular unnamed one because an unknown feigned and dissembled one to be received under the name of potential Heat For the Schools by imagining have abhorred to enter into the Depth of the Sea wherefore the Speculation of Fishes being left as barren because it was resisted by a plausible Devise they have well pleased themselves as it were wandring in a Dream in hot Animals with the Application of Lamps and Life Shall the radical Moisture thus be no longer with Aristotle Spermatick Froathy and Muscilaginous but now to let it be Oylie Fat and Combustible Shall thus therefore a Fat Belly which through much Grease shall afford Fewel for the radical Moisture be only of necessity Long-lived A Capuchin in our Country was Cold for almost an whole year at least-wise in both his Legs and Arms because he shall loose less of his Moisture he shall of necessity retain his Oyl the longer in his Lamp But at least-wise here a certain wan Stupidity of the Schools elsewhere by me demonstrated is adjoyned To wit that the Action of Heat especially if it shall not be kindled by a lively Flame doth indeed dry up all Moistures into a Sandy-stone and Coal but never consumeth them without the remainder of a residence even as is easie to be seen in us so that it is even a wonder that they have not hitherto observed that Consuming is not made in us by Heat alone But at least-wise there should be need of a torch in the Heart which thing also the Schools have not yet considered least otherwise the feigned and vapo rous fatness of the Moisture because it is that which in the Heart should be wholly Spiritual like Aqua Vitae should in a small moment and great breviary burn up all at once and cease to be For else without a torch neglected by the Schools the feigned History of Life shall badly square unto Fires built from the first-born Liquor which are on every side kindled at once However they shall say at least from one Absurdity drawn out of the Latex or Liquor of Life there are many Anguishes But let us freely feign that this idle Devise of the Schools might stand To wit that the Life is a certain Fire wasting the radical Moisture because it is Fat and doth thereby live and that Lean Persons alone are of a shorter Life But from whence is that Moisture in us Is it not from the Nourishment materially and from the vital Archeus efficiently Certainly our Lamp shall never be extinguished if the Power of burning or blazing Heat as they will have it be for the making of Oyl out of the Bread and Drink and if nothing of a Residence remaineth from the fatness in the Torch which may stop up and stifle that Torch To wit even as nothing at length remains from the Blood in Persons of ripe Years which may have it self in manner of a superfluous Coal And indeed in a Feast hath it not its abundance of Nourishments and heat the Workman of that fat Moisture resulting within from thence Seeing that Light proceeds from Light and an uncombustible Fire from Fire with no difficulty Why therefore doth the Man die For I find from the Positions of the Schools a perpetual Motion in the Theory but not in the Practick Therefore Fraud and Deceit do subsist in their Positions or at least-wise a shameful Rashness But they will say that after growth nothing is any longer applyed from the radical Moisture unto the solid Parts Therefore it must needs be that the true radical Moisture seeing it doth now no longer co-here to the Root therefore also the sound Parts do by degrees wax dry and so that the Fodder of the Heat failing the same Heat dyeth But first of all from hence is drawn that the Death of Old Age doth not happen but by reason of the dryness of the similar Parts When as a Stag of one Year old is dryer than a Man of
Spirit of the Salt of Urin not so From hence at leastwise it is manifest that there is a Salt and volatile Spirit in the venal Blood But after what manner the whole venal Blood may be homogeneally transchanged by the Ferment of the Heart cannot be explained by Words because Natures themselves are not demonstrable from a former Cause For the Operations of Ferments for the transmutation of things are essential but not the accidentary Propagations of Accidents for the causing of Dipositions only The vital Spirit therefore is plainly Salt therefore Balsamical and a Preserver from Corruption That although the Aqua Vitae doth easily pass into vital Spirit yet this Spirit is not Oylie or combustile like the Aqua Vitae but the Spirit of Wine only through a touching of the Ferment is easily wholly changed into a salt Spirit and forthwith looseth its inflamable Disposition Even as I have taught in the Book of the Stone in Man after what manner Aqua Vitae may by the Spirit of Urin be in one only instant coagulated into a subtile Gobbet or Lump The which concerning the volatile Salt of the arterial Blood may through the effective Ferment of the Heart be much more evidently proved Wherefore they who for some good while do undergo the beating of the Heart although they shall then drink abundantly and that much of the more pure Wine yet they are not easily made Drunk Because that by reason of an urgent necessity the Spirit of the Wine is most speedily attracted into the Heart and Arteries which are scanty in spirits and is suddenly formed into vital Spirit It restoreth I say the Strength or Faculties neither yet doth it then make drunk because it is no longer a stranger but being drawn into the Heart it easily becomes domestical and then is on every side dispensed through the Arteries For it doth not argue to the contrary that the Spirit of Salt-peter is sharp and that therefore the vital Spirit ought to be sharp For neither was the Spirit from whence Salt-peter was made in the Earth then sharp And therefore the vital Spirit is Salt and nearer to the Spirit of Urin than of Salt-peter the which by reason of Adustion and Extraction is alwayes a new Creature of its composed Body That Foundation therefore which is laid by the Ferment of the Gaul in volatilizing and making Salt this afterwards is perfected in the Shop of the Heart For the foregoing Digestions are as so many Dispositions unto vital Functions and Necessities for a Member being once stupified if Sense or Feeling shall return that surely is made with sensible Spurs and Prickings which are the tokens of true saltness But that the whole venal Blood is a meer Salt may not from elsewhere be more clearly deducted than that because in the Dropsy Ascites and in Ulcers it is homogeneally through a most easie Degeneration changed into a salt Liquor But a salt sharp Quality and subtile Matter was suitable to the vital Spirit if it ought to be sufficient for preserving of the Members The redness also of the venal Blood assumeth a yellowness while it is made arterial Blood because that which is Red through the tartness of Salt waxeth Yellow in its dissolving Neither yet hath the arterial Blood lost all its redness for truly a Part thereof ought to remain for the Nourishment of the solid Members It is a dead or invalid thing whatsoever I have hitherto said that the Spirit of Life is a salt sharp Vapour and made of the arterial Blood by the vital Members their own Ferments I will therefore Speak of the Life of the Spirit For seeing it ought to do its Duty with the Offices of Life it was not required that it should be in the shew of a salt Liquor or arterial Blood or that it should befool us under the likeness of a salt Exhalation but because it ought primarily to live and receive the Life it was meet for it to be enlightned not indeed with a burning enflaming or fiery Light but with a simple vital Light of the Nature of soulified Formes of the sensitive Life and Soul and that indeed of a humane Species For for the Understanding thereof suppose thou that Wormâ— named Glow-wormes have by Night a Light in their Belly which not only shines like the Eyes of a Cat but also pouers forth a thin Light round about that Light is extinguished with the Life of the Glow-worme A like Light suppose thou to be which enlightneth the vital Spirit as long as it liveth it shineth and is propagated into Spirit newly made being duly elabourated And by how much the more impure and the less elabourated it shall be by so much shall that Light be the Darker But that Light is extinguished in us the Matter of the Spirit remaining in the Plague Poysons c. even as by Swooning and Beating of the Heart the Light is extinguished and the Spirit vanisheth away In time of Death also the Membrane of the Eye is destitute of a manifest Light plainly to be seen Yet the Essence of that Light in Glow-worms is not so alike to that which is in us to wit as they differ from us only in Degree But there are as many Species of these Lights as there are of vital Creatures That is unto us a token of divine Bounty that there are so many Species and vital Differences of Lights which by us are comprehended under one only Notion because that those Lights are the very Lives and Forms themselves of vital Creatures So that the thrice most glorious Father of Lights doth recreate himself in the abundance of the kinds of Lights with no less a Lavishment than as in one only humane Countenance he hath fashioned almost as many Varieties as Men because there is in his Power a certain Common-wealth of vital Lights and Band of innumerable Citizens a certain Similitude whereof he expresseth in vital soulified Creatures by a Life a Form that is by a vital Light The vital Spirit therefore Is Arterial Blood resolved by the force of the Ferment and Motion of the Heart into a salt Air being vitally enlightned which Light in us is hot but in the Fish it is so actually cold that it is never able to aspire unto a Power of Heat as long as it liveth and subsisteth Our Heat therefore is not a consumer of the Original Moisture as neither therefore through want of Heat do Fishes hitherto escape Death although their Moisture be not lifted up into an Exhalation and least of all in the frozen Sea For neither shall the Capuchin our Country-man who is cold for the greatest part of the year from his Feet even unto his Belly nor feeling himself to have Feet therefore not undergo a dayly transpiration of the nourishable Moisture or doth he refuse the Refreshment of Nourishments or is the Capuchin changed in those parts into a Fish the which otherwise should be necessary for him to be if Heat should
of the Life that was to be governed to slide on the neck of the sensitive Soul CHAP. CXI Life Eternal THe Gospel promiseth to mortal Men not only that the Son of God was Incarnate and suffered for the Salvation of Man but that these two Misteries are to be applyed unto Individuals which else should be as it were in vain But I have considered of that Application after this manner For indeed by Sin Man brake no less the Intent than the Decree of God from whence humane Nature was corrupted in its Root because there followed another almost beast-like Generation thereupon which of it self is uncapable of life Eternal Wherefore the Gospel ought to include the abolishment of Original Sin and of all other things issuing from the Corruption of Nature Therefore seeing Man thenceforeward ought to be born no longer of God but naturally only of the Bloods of the Sexes of the will of the Flesh and of the will of Man neither yet could his Body rise again through any Power of his own into its antient Dignity and much less cease to be that it might again and otherwise begin to be Therefore the joyful Message was brought unto us that one Baptisme should be given for the Remission of Sins whereby Man should be so renewed by Water and the Holy Spirit that his Soul should be born again as it were by a new Nativity and be made partaker of the unspotted Humanity of Christ the Saviour being framed by the holy Spirit Which new Birth also reposeth the Soul into its antient State of Innocency taking away Sin and we believe that thing altogether really thus to be but not as if we should embrace Allegories or Metaphors for truth but these things do so really and actually happen in Baptized Persons that God doth grant a Testimony of that actual Grace which is conferred by Baptisme to be sensibly derived into the Body In which respect indeed Mahometans receive Baptism as it takes away from them an inbred Stink otherwise durable for Life and the which we observe to be otherwise in all Jews at this day And so the more inward effect of Baptisme doth even outwardly shine forth Yea and that thing confirmes that there is a perpetual and unobliterable effect of one only Baptisme But that new Birth doth not take away Death but leaves Christians with the Fardle of a corrupt Body generated by the Will of Man and in this respect nevertheless leaves the Soul subject to the Vices of a corrupted Body Wherefore unto those that are of ripe Age Baptisme was not sufficient although unto those of younger Years as long as they are innocent it is abundantly sufficient There is therefore another Priviledge promulged whereby Persons of ripe Years may have eternal Life that he who shall not eat unworthily the Lords Body Christ shall raise him up unto Life in the last Day but if he shall not eat he is to have no Life in him For this Mistery was given unto us for the Life of the World For the Life of the World is Adamical Frail or Mortal and well nigh Brutal For the transchanging whereof a Pledge is given unto us and likewise an actual and real Participation of Life eternal Therefore the Merits of the Lords Passion are comunicated unto us through a participation of the unspotted Virginity of Christ the Lord for the Communion of his most pure and chast Body unites us to himself and doth actually regenerate us in himself and so gives us a Life conformable unto himself The Body of the Lord is given for the Life of the World And although the Body of Man which was conceived of Bloods doth not presently perish Yet in that very Moment wherein we are united with the Lords Body and his Humanity it makes us partakers of his incomprehensible Incarnation and restores us into the antient Integrity of humane Nature as we do partakingly attain the most pure Virginity of Christ wherein we ought to be saved And so by reason of his amorous Union a participation of the Merits of his Passion is attributed unto us Therefore the most principal effect of the holy sacred Eucharist is a Participation of the Purity and Virgin-uncorrupted Nature of the Lord Jesus And so for this Cause it is declared by a proper Circumlocution to be Wine budding forth Virgins Furthermore that this Mistery of the unutterable Love of God doth operate the aforesaid real effects of regeneration in the Nature of Man The Apostle teacheth We shall all indeed rise again but we shall not all be changed As if he should say All Mortals shall at sometime rise again from Death The Damned indeed shall rise again being not any thing changed but in their former Adamical Body being ponderous not piercing c. to wit only the wished for necessity of Death being taken away from them But Children being regenerated by the Laver of Baptisme shall rise again in a Body after some sort Glorified but by so much the less perfect by how much they were remote from so great an happiness But they who were united in the communion of the Lords Body shall rise again plainly glorious throughout their whole Nature because they were most perfectly regenerated in their life-time of which Regeneration although visible Signs appeared not yet they were in very deed within for neither are they made anew in the Resurrection unless they had first fore-existed in the Life-time by an every-way regeneration Our Faith is not of things not in Being but of true things not Visible because he will have us to profit by Faith Wherefore although this Mark of resemblance of Love and Union with God be altogether unsearchable even as also its Effects are only invisible Yet the aforesaid mystical and real New-birth is as yet reckoned earthly by Nicodemus and from that Title I have transferred it hither I therefore contemplate of the New-birth or renewing of those that are to be saved to be made in a sublunary and earthly Nature just even as in the Projection of the Stone which maketh Gold For truly I have divers times seen it and handled it with my hands but it was of colour such as is in Saffron in its Powder yet weighty and shining like unto powdered Glass There was once given unto me one fourth part of one Grain But I call a Grain the six hundredth part of one Ounce This quarter of one Grain therefore being rouled up in Paper I projected upon eight Ounces of Quick-silver made hot in a Crucible and straightway all the Quick-silver with a certain degree of Noise stood still from flowing and being congealed setled like unto a yellow Lump but after pouring it out the Bellows blowing there were found eight Ounces and a little less than eleven Grains of the purest Gold Therefore one only Grain of that Powder had transchanged 19186 Parts of Quick-silver equal to it self into the best Gold The aforesaid Powder therefore among earthly things is found
to be after some sort like them the which transchangeth almost an infinite quantity of impure Mettal into the best Gold and by uniting it to it self doth defend it from cankering rust rottenness and Death and makes it to be as it were Immortal against all the torture of the Fire and Art and translates it into the virgin-Purity of Gold only it requires Heat The Soul therefore and Body are thus regenerated by Baptisme and the communion of the unspotted Body of the Lord so that a just heat of Devotion of the Faithful shall be present Let the Divine pardon me if I as being beyond my Last have spoken of Life eternal by way of a Parenthesis For I willingly confess that a regenerated Body is not belonging to my Employment I treat only of prolonging the Life of the World This only I have said that Baptisme doth bring with it a real Effect of Purity perceivable by Sense and that the holy-sacred Communion of the Eucharist hath something like it in earthly things whereby we may the more easily believe Regeneration CHAP. CXI The Occasions of Death I Have compared the Fire and Light unto Life because it bears something before it which seemeth to be vital For vital Forms are either the Lives or Lights of things Therefore there shall likewise be as many occasions of Death as there are withdrawings of Light First therefore the Light is blown out and likewise the Flame perisheth by pressing together which they call through defect of Air. But I have demonstrated that that happens through want of a new Magnal but not that the Fire is nourished by Air So also by the constriction of a strange Smoak So indeed in Vaults and Burrows Lamps are extinguished but the Light is blown out by the Wind or another Flame For oftentimes Candles are extinguished by a filthy or deformed Flame being stirred up by the Powder of Rosin or Gun-powder Lastly Fires die through want of Nourishment Death in like manner doth many wayes rush on us For either a live Body is suddenly dashed together or sore shaken by weight Also a speedy pouring forth of Blood from a large Wound pours forth the Life and blows out the Light of Life So an inordinate Prodigality of corrupt Matter Water or Wind being abundantly made likewise Baths Hunger loosening Medicines introduce an untimely Death Also by the pressing together of the Breath in Burrows of the Asthma of a Cord of drowning of Smoak and by the Symptoms of the Womb likewise by the Resolutions and Palseys of the Sinews subjected to breathing In like manner by Burnings Destructions Coalifyings Gangrenes and Congelations of Cold. Also by Poysons Alculies gnawing Things Escharrers Putrifiers or Things that trample upon us by a fermental Contagion Likewise by retained Excrements Obstructions and the denied Commerces of Parts Likewise through Defect of some certain Digestion an Atrophia and Consumptions of a Part or of the whole Body Also by over-pourings of the Blood within the Skull Breast bottom of the Belly by corrupt mattery Impostumes Pleurisies affects of the Lungs c. Likewise by displacings of the turning Joynts Contractures of the Parts apppointed for expurging of Filths At length by reason of a Feeble Decrepit and woren-out Death of the Seeds and Powers And also by reason of the more grievous Passions of the Mind and Enchantments Death therefore doth so many manner of wayes steal away Mortals whose Life notwithstanding is alwayes simple and single For therefore there is a diverse and differing Consideration of Life and Death for a Sword takes away Life Yet there is far different Speculation of preserving Life than of healing of Diseases by the removals and hinderances of the Cause For truly Causes are partly external as a Wound the Plague Scorching c. the healing whereof therefore doth not depend on the removal of their Causes For neither therefore is the Fire which had burned any one to be extinguished from the Hearth that he may be cured even as neither is the Sword to be broken that the Wound may be healed up But for the preservation of Long Life the contemplations and removals of external Causes do no less occur or come to hand than those of a vital Fewel For indeed although no Infirmities should molest yet Death should not for that Cause cease dayly to strew a way for its entrance For although health hath respect to Life as its Foundation yet Life doth not include health For a Blind Lame Gowty Person c. doth no less live than a Healthy or Sound Person What if Life ends through a Disease that is forreign and by accident unto the Life as a Sword contains Death but not but by Application Otherwise Death doth by it self respect Life but diseasifying Causes become Mortal only by accident or by their Application unto the Spirit of Life For from hence it is that the Impediments of Long Life are seriously to be heeded and diverted if we expect length of Life From the Beginning therefore the meditation of Life consisteth not without but in the Life it self To wit after what manner Life may be preserved in the Body For the sensitive Soul now forthwith after Sin as I have said drew the whole property of Life unto it self and became the bond of Life with the Body But seeing that very Soul is in it self Mortal it must needs be first of all that all the vital Powers co-aeval or of a like Age with the Life should be slideable and mortal From hence at length Death For a long continuance of Life therefore first a curing of Diseases is required as well of those which touch at the Life of the whole Body as those which have regard unto the Dammages or preservation of a Part and Functions and which in this respect do lay in wait for the Life For truly seeing there is a single conspiracy of the Members certain principal Powers cannot chuse but at length go to decay also the subordinate ones being only diminished Wherein I disagree from Paracelsus because he thought that every Disease was of necessity to be taken away by a Medicine for long Life Because that good Man was no less ignorant of a Medicine for Long Life and the use thereof than of the very Essence and Properties of Long Life And therefore his Arcanums do very much conduce into a healthy or sound Life or unto a removal of Impurities yet they do not any thing directly and primarily tend to long Life as unto their ultimate end Because that as the Life So the Tree of Life chiefly concerns the preservation and renewing or making young again of the vital Faculties implanted in the Arts. In this therefore the Arcanums or Secrets which are for the taking away of Superfluities differ from the Tree of Life That those indeed do cure Diseases even those which our parent Nature doth by her self never Cure To wit the Leprosie Stone Palsy Consumption of the Lungs Dropsie c. but
less may be washed off So also the Infant growes and waxeth of ripe Years without Diseases and is made capable of a Remedy for a Life of long continuance Therefore also according to the Letter it is not badly read concerning the thrice glorious Messias being incarnated That he shall eat Butter and Honey For truly the one contains the Glory of a Dew together with the extraction of Flowers But the other is the Magistery almost of all Herbs Therefore he shall eat Butter but not Milk From whence the discerning of the Good from the Evil and the sharpness of Judgment is promised But the strength of dayes increasing let our Child accustom himself to the more vigorous and hard Meats yet I fitly praise a Mean or Moderation But let him take twice every day four Drops of the Tree of Life CHAP. CXV The Arcanums or Secrets of Paracelsus BUt moreover we believe by Faith that the Life of men was by the divine Will shortned but that the Sins of mortal Men gave an occasion hereunto The Will or Command of the Lord hath entred into Nature and the Reasons of Death which it found not it made before the Floud as it were in a successive order the Life was continually changed by Off-springs at length it was extended unto the hundred and twentieth Year And last of all the Dayes of a Man were seventy Years which moreover is a Misery except in the Powers which he would should attain unto eighty Years This therefore is a short Life an ordinary Life unto which Man necessary supplies being brought unto him doth by the free will of Nature flow and come the which was by a divine Testimony out of the holy Scriptures appointed The Roots therefore of short Life have henceforward a place in Nature First of all the Mind which knowes not how to die waxeth not old But the sensitive Soul although it be at length extinguished like Light yet the Light it self doth not wax old because it cometh not unto it by Parts or Degrees For if the sensitive Soul or the vital Light it self should wax old seeing nothing can be added unto this perishing which may be of the Disposition thereof I should meditate of long Life in vain Therefore the vital Powers only wax old which are implanted in every Organ under the Beginnings of Generation The which I do not contemplate of as naked Qualities but I behold them as Governours failing by degrees in an aiery Body and therefore also that the Powers of the Spirits do follow the Nature of that Body which is worn out by little and little For Sorrow gnawes the Life no otherwise than as the Moath doth a Garment So also the Inordinacies of Living do violently overthrow the Life In the next place Man is a Wolfe to Man Which things surely do mow down the Life in many being as yet in its flourishing estate Neverthelese these are not the natural Reasons of a short Life as neither the necessities of a connexed Species or of an inbred shortness Surely besides accidentary Contingences we do bear about with us the Cause of short Life in the middle of our delights For first of all the memory decays and then the sight taste hearing and walking wax dull For to savour doth not undeservedly signifie as well tasting as a judgment of the Mind without distinction because they oftentimes die together but the Taste first fails in the Stomack by reason of the Spleen Wherefore I have elsewhere sufficiently distinguished the tasting of the Tongue and the tasting of the Stomack Presently by reason of the unequal strength of the Parts the inbred Ferments of the Shops do here and there by degrees fail but the Ferment of the Spleen being astonied the Power of the first Conceptions goes to decay And old Men are said to become Children For the Schools grant a lively Memory to be in Children by reason of the tenderness of their Brain easily receiving any kinde of Seales but that the Brain being the harder through dryness the Impressions of the Seals should be by so much the harder by how much the more stubborn they are from dryness to retain the marks of Conceptions But the Comparison of the Schools is frivolous that the Brain should have it self after the manner of Wax as neither do the cogitations express the interchanges of a Seal For first of all there should scarce be a fit place for ten Seals For if those kind of Seals should be so corporeal as that they ought to follow the disposition and alterations of the Brain they shall of necessity square themselves unto the extension of the place because Place is more difficulty sequestred from a Body than to be hard or moist And therefore let the Schools shew how great an extension all particular Seals of Conceptions in the Brain may require Doth the Memory for the seal of a Conception require a bigger place in the Brain of an Horse than that which is of a Mouse or Flie Therefore also consequently the extension of place in the Brain for a Horse should be also ten thousand times bigger than for a Mouse and so the whole Brain should scarce suffice for the remembring of two Horses That since place should fail I should rather remember the good things of the middle half than of the whole Yea I should far better remember things past for one Year agoe than those things which at sometimes happened unto me in my Childhood For I have seen a Boy who at the second time had learned the Aeneides of Virgil by way of Memory who scarce understood the hundredth Verse And so every particular Word did require as many Seales and Places of these But if the Seals of Conceptions should require no place nor do occupy an Extension of themselves in the Brain Therefore nothing is sealed and there is no Seal and also the Comparison of the Schools is dull For the Schools are too muddy who ascribe the Offices of the vital and principal Powers unto the first or second Qualities But what will the miserable Schools do if they scarce dare to withdraw their Finger from these accidents of Bodies Therefore Scholastical Respects of hardness dryness and tenderness being neglected I descend unto the Cause of short Life I have said indeed that from a decaying Vigour of the vital Powers the Life is of necessity and proportionably diminished From whence I will truly repeat that the Powers themselves wax old as it were with a covered Rustiness and do by little and little cease because the Arterial and Venal blood are at length successively transchanged into the nourishment of the Parts to be nourished and the growth of youth being finished truly the Juice that is prepared from thence is bedewed or besprinkled on all the solid Parts and a certain muscilaginous and spermatick or seedy Liquor is glewed unto them but it doth no more long remain with them but being consumed and concocted by the Ferment of the parts
no longer coagulating even as otherwise under growth was wont to be done it wholly exhales without a residence lee or dreg or remainder of Reliques That therefore is the conclusion of the Venal blood that for the end of its Tragedy it is at length wholly expelled by way of an Exhalation through an unsensible transpiration after that it hath undergone the Offices of moystening Therefore while as that Liquor being now co-mixed through the innermost Parts and the Dgestion having thorowly performed its Office doth by way of effluxing exhale it cannot but have assumed the disposition of an Excrement From whence it alike unavoydably follows That the vital Spirit inhering in and conjoyned to the Bowels and also the implanted Powers of the same are by a continual and necessitated Fumigation blunted alienated and at length extinguished This therefore is the containing and natural Cause of short Life Therefore the whole consideration of long Life is conversant about the conserving of the vital Powers For it is not sufficient that venal Blood be present with all the Members to be delightfully nourished with their desired venal Blood Neither again doth it suffice that the implanted Spirit be thus far sufficiently refreshed from the inflowing Spirit by a continued substituting of Nourishment For nothing is done in the Stage of Life unless the seminal Powers the vital Characters I say be preserved from the destruction already mentioned For otherwise the Spirits are reduced unto nakedness and are lessened from whence our dayes are of necessity abbreviated For truly it by degrees looseth the Character of the Powers or Gifts of the Seed and is made a Spirit like unto that which is not soulified or like unto a Gas For although in Figures and Engines a perpetual Motion doth not fail because there is not required in the Powers moving a subsequential proportion of a greater unto a less that it may move some other thing Yet surely this hath not place in things which shall not move themselves nor are of ability to grow or be strengthed by moving And therefore they are things unworthy to be considered in seminal things For truly natural Generations which are constant even unto the Worlds End shall be sufficient to wit that the Species and Strengths of these do continue entire and that they do beget a Seed from them which is never diminished By consequence also if a Man of forty Years old doth generate one in times past like unto himself his Life of forty Years shall be able to be continued being co-equalized in Vigour unto himself being a young Man if the vice of a broken Thred doth not from elsewhere rush on it as I have said Therefore we must diligently search into whether the Reliques of the Tree of Life or its surrogated Substitutions are to be hoped for in Nature to wit by which whatsoever doth at length vanish out of us may be unto those Powers instead of a nourishing warmth nor may any longer through its sorrowful Fumigation bear before it the condition of an Excrement But it listeth us to acknowledge the quality of our aforesaid Fumigation not only in the Odours of some Sweats but especially because Wall-Lice Lice Gnats and the like Insects proceed from thence indeed the meer off-springs of filthiness and stink First of all it hath seemed to me an unprofitable Question Whether the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life thereof have ceased or indeed whether they do remain even unto this Day and in what place Whether Enoch Elias and John do there even till now live happy under the fellowship of Angels without the Discommodities of old Age and Infirmities It is sufficient for me that the Tree of Life began from the Creation that it was in Nature but not fabulous or parabolical It sufficeth that that Tree was and should be unknown to Mortals and so also that the impossible obtainment thereof deprives us of hope In the mean time I search into a succeeding Plant although inferiour by many numbers Yea there is no doubt but that if there be any Plant in this Vale of Miseries which resembles the Faculties of that primitive Tree a Place may contribute its Parts unto long Life as well in respect of the Plant as of the Man using it For that the same Plant is ennobled through the Variety of its native Soile and that our Life is prolonged by places of the better nourishable Juice and through the Drink of the more sweet Air Climates themselves do afford me Credit For neither is it to be believed that that thing happens altogether from the favour of the Heaven for that in the same degree of distance from the Aequator and altogether in the same Circuit of Heaven the Parts subjacent to the East do bring forth more noble Fruits than those which decline more toward the West And moreover much Variety is oftentimes planted nigh under the same Circle both which Parts notwithstanding the same aspect of Heaven doth sometimes dayly affect with the same Motion For Paracelsus promoting it a hope is raised up in some Physitians for long Life For every one promiseth himself to have been an obtainer of long Life by his Writings if he had not described his Medicines in so great darkness of Words Wherefore most do diligently search to have his obscure Novelties of Names signified unto them Also others deservedly suspecting his every where simple and curtail'd Description heartily wish for a more manifest method of operating But none the Vaile being uncovered hath attempted to dig unto the bottom of the Matter and Basis of the Truth promised For every one either derides or despairs or being too credulous admires all things with a bending Nose Yet if these are better than those because they have not cut off the way of the hope from themselves None notwithstanding hath chosen a middle way to wit of doubting and diligently searching how much of truth the things promised may contain For indeed Paracelsus promiseth that he could attain extream Old Age by his Elixir of Propriety and boasts that it was granted him from heaven to designe or chuse the Condition and Hour of his Death but vain are his boastings of long Life his knowledge and choice of Death who the while dies in the 47th Year of his Age. In the mean time his own followers are astonished and wonder by what Disease or chance the true partaker or obtainer of that Stone which maketh Gold was snatched away being as yet in his flourishing Age and who with Hercules Club slew thousands of the more grievous Diseases up and down as it were by mowing them down with a Sithe Truly I make no Apology for any I willingly confess that I have profited much by his Writings and that he was able by Remedies ascending unto a resembling mark of Unity to heale the Leprosie Astâ—hma Consumption of the Lungs Palsey Falling-sicknesse Stone Dropsie Gowt Cancer and such like commonly uncurable Diseases Yet I have gathered
excel as for long Life For so the Sweat of some Persons smells of the Goat or Rank but that of others doth not far differ from a Fragrancy That one thing I say in long Life is only to be procured least the nourishable Humor after that it hath ceased from its Offices being dismissed by transpiration looseth its Grace through defect whereof I have described a short Life For I have taught elsewhere that a Sow or a Goose being nourished only by Fishes do yield Fleshes which tastingly resemble the detestable Grease of Fishes Wherefore let the Medicine of the Tree of Life be an odoriferous Balsam Spicie grateful to Nature seasoning the Blood with an excelling goodness and a nourishment now applyed after the manner of a Dew Even so that through the vigour of its uncorruptibleness its balsamical Faculty may be continued even unto the utmost Limits of its exhalation out of the Body Wherefore we must beware of this one only thing that the fire do not alter this Fruit by a seperating distillation but that a proper division of that which is heterogeneal be appointed as being sequestred into its bottoms for a greater subtilizing of Purity and Simplicity and sealing of its Virtues For in Eden the Stomack subdued the Food from a proper vigour or force for all things willingly obeyed the Stomack without the strife of a middle Life it being that which they through the decision of the Stomack kept after some sort sase even until the deluge of Waters till that through a succession of Years and Propagations all things by degrees went to ruine Then the seminal Being was no longer drawn out of Meats after that the term of Life was restrained unto 120 and afterwards unto 80 Years For the Being of Essence which before was fetcht out of Meats bewrayed it self no longer because the Stomack had enough to do only to draw forth the Being of Nourishment From hence it is manifest that although the Tree of Life was present with us from Eden yet that it will not profit us as it did the first of the Fathers By consequence also that the Balsam of our vital Tree is not so profitable unto Persons of ripe years as unto Children For he that hath almost run out the stage of Life every such one perceives an help according to a Model or after a small manner Seeing all things in Nature are received after the manner of the Persons and place receiving and of circumstances For the Friends of Job wept with him seven dayes and nights without eating drinking and difference of health The which is now at this day scarce possible for any mortal Man to do Therefore the strengths of such a life should more profit by our Tree than I an old Man who almost worn out with the offences and labours of Chymistry and the injuries of Tribulations and Persecutions So we Bees do not provide Honey for our selves Whereunto is added that Eden was of it self a preserver of Long Life through the wholesomness of the place but that but a few Paces from thence there was the command of Death Corruption and Infirmities For if Credit be to be given to Histories there are also places at this day whereunto a Life of three hindred years is ordinary For where long-lived Persons are born they are also nourished But there are other places near at hand where a renewed tyranny of interchanges shortens the Life for so some Provincial Diseases are accustomed Therefore mountainous Places which have not the Gas of Minerals as the Forrest of Arden Asturia or the Pyrenean Mountains c. nor those subjected unto the natural Moisture of Lakes because the bountiful Communications of the Stars do reflect and breath a pure Air and do make for Long Life Even as also a plain Field which knowes not the Incitements of the Throat adds as much to long Life as fulness is an enemy to long Life for the stuffings of Meats do weary the miserable Powers to wit that they being as it were worn out with labour die or go to ruine before their time which things being thus revolved with my self for full three dayes space from whence a Medicine for long Life was to be fetched Opobalsamum notably smiled on me not indeed that of Peru or the Gums of Capaida of Brasile But the true Aegyptian opobalsamum noted in the Scriptures and primitive it being the Queen-tear of a low Shrub scarce saleable to Kings For I confess I have worthily attributed very much perfection to this Being And although there were enough of it to be found yet it doth as yet decline from the perfection of the Tree of Life because that Shrub is so frail or mortal And while I variously wandred in Nature that I might view the Tree of Life at length without the day and beyond the beginning of the night I saw in a dream the whole Face of the Earth even as it stood forsaken and empty or void at the beginning of the Creation then afterwards how it was while as it being fresh waxed on every side green with its Plants Again also as it lay hid under the Floud For I saw all the Species of Plants to be kept under the Waters Yet presently after the Floud that they all did enter into the way of interchanges enjoyned to them which was to be continued by their Species and Seeds I saw I say in the top of Mount Libanus the Cedars to have remained whole under the Deluge by the Word of the most Glorious God and that they in a certain number did as yet there remain And presently afterwards I returned to my self But I afterwards considered at leisure that the Ark which ought to save Mankind from destruction was commanded to be framed of the incorrupitble Wood Cetim For the World had endured perhaps 1652 Years but Noah proceeded slowly in its building for an hundred solary years And therefore he took Wood and Rafters which were not to undergo any dammage in all that time A leprous Person being separated from the People coming to the Priest bare the Wood Cetim in his hand that he might be cleansed In the feast of the building of Tabernacles every Hebrew carried Cedar and Branches of Myrrh that God might be mindful in the rain of the whole Earth that he appointed the manners of the Times and the Stars I therefore understood by the Cedar long Life likewise the blessings of the Times or Seasons and of the Stars and also that in a mystical sense cleansing was denoted but that in this Age it was also to be obtained For other vital things do soon wither with Old Age but the one only Cedar in number by a famous mistery through the uncorrupted substance of its Wood and its vegetative Faculty surviving promiseth long Life because it containeth it For the folding Doors of the Temple of Salomon were commanded to be framed of the Wood Cetim with Gold as it were a more vile covering or involvement
Moreover it is without controversie in the Church of God that the Cedar in Libanus in the Temple in the Figure of the Ark in the cleansing of the Leprosie and in the feast of the building of Tabernacles did represent the Mother of God the Virgin Queen of Heaven an incorruptible Vessel a Tree which brought forth for us Eternal Life in the Flesh the Patroness I say of the Poor and Mine But the place of the Cedar in Libanus exceeding the coldest folding door of the Air covered with Snowes denotes the unspotted Integrity of the God-bearing Virgin And so if the Tree denotes the holy Virgin especially conjoyntly with so many mysteries it s no wonder that the Cedar doth signifie the Tree of this Life also in the world For indeed there was in the dayes of David an aged Cedar in Libanus because it was that which by reason of its excellent taleness was from that time worthy of a mystical sense Wherefore either it being there planted after the Floud doth as yet hitherto continue the same in number safe or a good while before and perhaps from the cradles of the World according to the Vision of the Dream Which thing after what manner soever it may be taken at least-wise it shews that the Cedar despiseth the discommodities of Old Age But he is not from a Cedar his Parent planted after the Floud because that Parent also of the Cedar was preserved under the Deluge and much more easily afterwards than that which remains from the daies of David even until this time Let those laugh that will at that age of the Cedar in Libanus and let them say that Modern ones were raised up by a new Branch or by Seed falling down But that being supposed at this day also new ones had dayly come forth into a great Wood where notwithstanding no new Cedar growes But moreover from thence I gather that the same Cedar in number doth now persist which was even before the Floud yea even from the Creation of the World Because it was given for a Mark of resemblance to the blessed Virgin But moreover for our Magistery the Fruit of the Cedar is not to be taken for that the end thereof is not for a simple Being in the appointment of the Properties of the Cedar but only for a propagation of the Species which contradicteth long Life from the Foundation The Wood Cetim it self therefore is to be taken which is so much exalted in the holy Scripture Therefore not the Bark not the Fruit not the Root nor the Leaves are the ultimate end whither Nature hath had respect for long Life And so that the Cedar perhaps also is herein distinct from the Tree of Life in Eden A matter therefore of a Tree which knowes not how to die is found whose unputrifiable Wood and by reason of its many Properties being in a mystical Sense designed to the holy Virgin is that which brings forth Life to the World that it may redeem Death But the preparation thereof is the most exceeding difficult of all those things which fall under the Labour of Wisdom For this Cause indeed Monarchs want a long Life because there is none which hath known how to prepare it For none who is truly a Phylosopher is a Minstrel neither doth he follow Princes and flatter them for because he stands in need of nothing he despiseth whatsoever a Prince can give The Tree of Life therefore alone refresheth the decayed Faculties and for some time detaineth the Life in its flowing But the difficulty of preparing it consisteth in this that the Wood ought to be resolved without a dissolution of its Faculties by a luke-warmth such as is that of the Sun in March even unto its first Being In which Being only is granted unto it a fermental Power of preserving and seasoning with an ingress unto the first constitutives of us and of insinuaring it self into the familiarity of the Spirits implanted throughout all the Organs But there is in the Juice of this kind of resolving the entire Virtue of the Cedar to wit a vital one together with every seminal and formal Property of long Life For the whole lump of the Wood is dissolved into a Juice which being otherwise distilled is transchanged and made a certain new Creature the which Aqua Vitae being distilled out of Graines or Ales doth also prove likewise the Oyl that is distilled out of Woods yea out of the very Oyl of Olives it self The practise thereof is this Resolve the pieces of the Wood Cetim with a like weight of the Liquor Alkahest in a sealed Glass under a nourishing luke-warmth and within seven dayes thou shalt see the whole Wood to have passed over into a milky Liquor But presently about the fifteenth day a twofold Oyl distinctly swims a top the which is increased even for a Month and is more clearly separated But then let the Oyl be separated from the Water by manual Operation Then distil thou the Water in a Bath and the Liquor Alkahest remains in the bottom in its own original weight but let the Oyl be nourished with the Water for full three months space with a slow luke-warmth and the whole Oyl assumes the Nature of a Salt and shall thorowly mingle it self with the Water and it is the first Being of the Cedar But as yet a few things concerning the length of Life because I being an old Man do pursue these things and I my self am about to die My Mind breathed some unheard of thing within but I as unprofitable for this Life shall be buried Because the Spirit the Porter withdrew the Bottle by the command of him before whom the whole World is as a Mushrom Let the praise be to him who hath given and who hath taken away that which was his own The Schools therefore may deservedly upbraid me Thou miserable Man a Man of small note a Man of great ambition an old Man hast paradoxally come to late that with thy Song in the commendation of Cedar thou shouldst over-spread the World with mists The Histories and Virtues of Plants are known to our Herbarists But thou that thou maiest vaunt of an unheard of devise concerning long Life as a Paradoxal Man proceedest to be mad with thy Cedar Go to if there be so great Power in the Cedar for Life why are not all Kings long-lived From whence dost thou as a new guest come produce thy Learning and experience whereby thou wilt be believed For as a Lawier blusheth to speak without Law so doth a Physitian without Experience For thou canst not deny but that the decoctions of the Leaves Kernels Wood Bark Root or Rosin of Cedar had long since produced a continued Life But nothing of these things is manifest by our Herbarists Thou there fore dost deter or fright us away through an hidden manner of preparation and by a crabbed Style of a smoak-selling Art desirest to involve a feigned mistery of Cedar Which thing the Alkahestical
no Subtilties but those which are sifted about Charity and which regard and preserve the Life of thine own Image For I grieved at the first at so great rashness of belief of Principles and at so great a sluggishness of Mortals about things of so great moment and the pitty of this thing increased with me dayly Hence at length I having obtained a little Light I knew with great grife that the Errours of the Schools ought by me plainly to appear But indeed in the entrance that thing seemed to me to be full of untamed arrogancy that I the least of all should brand all before me with the ignorance of Phylosophical truth but should attribute to my self only the obtainment of healing Therefore I oftentimes begged of the Lord that he would re-take that his own Talent from me and vouchsafe wholly to take it away and to bestow it on another more worthy than my self For I knew that he who had well lay hid had well lived at least-wise morally and in this ulcerous age Therefore I resisted and a good while deferred to propose this ignorance of the Principles of Medicine to its own World until that now being an old Man the last necessity constraining me and being placed in an Agony of Death I promised the Lord that I would sincerely divulge his Talent least I should at sometime be accounted in the strict Judgment of God to have come into the world in vain and to have departed as unprofitable from hence For by a Vision in a Dream I understood that I was more afraid of gainsayings than of Gods Indignation that Nature was crafty as long as she made a pretence for Pride in purely obeying God by reason of deceitful humane respects Also I saw not that my own Arrogancy which was placed rather in fear did make me less freely or generously to perform what was required against Judicious Men that would rise up against me for so many ages past than in purely obeying the most glorious Giver of Truth Yea that I did not commiserate my Neighbour and that I buried my Talent in the Earth in looking back on the uncertain Censures of the World concerning me I knew indeed the doores of Medicine to have been locked and the Bars and Bolts thereof to have been covered with rust for so many ages but I doubted to open them as if I should presume the Office of a Porter to be meerly my own and not to be given to any other Therefore I resolved with my self to do what Charity not arrogancy perswaded to be done as knowing that he is not injurious who beholds a publick good although it may make those blush who have rashly subscribed to the trifles of Heathens unto the dammage of mankind At length therefore I stood as a middle man between the shame and sore fear of the greatness of the thing and many times reposed my Pen And again I seriously begged of the Lord that he would vouchsafe to chose another more worthy than my self Wherefore the Lord being deservedly wroth suffered this Evil and unprofitable Servant to be sifted by Satan For an Order whose Zenith or vertical Point is the house of Powers and whose Nadir or Point under their Feet are other Orders began undeservedly to persecute me by unworthy Wiles I knew presently that the hand of the Lord had touched me And therefore in a full tempest of Persecutions I wrote a Volume whose Title is the Rise or Original of Medicine that is The unheard of Beginnings of natural Phylosophy wherein I have discovered the accustomed Errours of the Schools in healing I have I say afforded and demonstrated new Principles as also hitherto unheard of Speculations of Diseases that the Universities leaving the Vanities of the Heathen may for the future accustom themselves to the Truth For from thence I found a rest in my Soul such as I never found in the times of my Prosperity so that I being full of suspition grieved that so great Storms did not any thing disturb the rest of my Soul or sleep of my Body Wherein O God my Protectour I am not able sufficiently to praise the abundance of thy bounty which suffered not my Soul even in the least to fall out of a full enjoyment of peace under so great straits on every side I fearing this one only thing least as an unprofitable Servant I should be buried with my small Talent Whosoever therefore thou art who interpretest my Zeal to be proud boasting thou mayest do it for me so thou shalt not hurt thy self for I will rejoyce to bear back all confusion for the good of my Neighbour and of Posterity and I shall enjoy my wish whether in the mean time my boldness shall turn unto me for rashness or not For God the Sower will water what he would have to grow And moreover in the Book of Fevers I have declared the Beginnings of my repentance and in what manner I desisted from Galen and Avicen to wit by reason of the discerned falshood of the Pillars of Medicine from whence a singular boldness of confidence thenceforth increased in me being as yet a young man whereby for my Neighbours sake I willingly exposed my self to the infurious Censures of all and the number of dayes by degrees running on the Lord beheld the Candor of my Zeal and granted me now a Man to see that whatsoever is taught in the Schools of Medicine is full of Miseries and Ruine and that it should be a laughing stock to Posterity Good Jesus how greatly was I then amazed at the greatness of thy Clemency which reveals those things unto little ones which were denyed for so manyages to men otherwise most religious and ingenious Moreover although I was from thence more assured that the manifestation of my Talent of truth received lay heavy upon me yet Nature is ready to find out excuses and deceives it self and its own Sorrows by the Props of Reason its Chamber-Maid I presently therefore fie it sâ—ames me of my own unconstancy shook off the undertaken burden again from my shoulders and said who am I oh Lord for the more solid things are defective unto me which I should substitute in the room of those that are to be depressed For what things I before believed were commanded me I again suspected to be suggested by the subtilty of Satan because secret Remedies were wanting unto me to wit the Letters Patents or Signes of my message Wherefore in my youth I had a good while perswaded my self that the very Art of healing was nothing but a meer imposture devised by the idle Greeks being at first framed for the destruction of the Romanes their subduers and afterwards confirmed for the Calamities of Men whereunto humane Credulity by reason of a conceived hope had easily subscribed and so that that Profession of Medicine had brought forth its own authority because for the most part we too readiâ—â— believe those things which we too greedily desire Indeed I knew
the nature of man being reproachfully ascribed to Hippocrates Teaching that one solutive Medicine being administred and that in a like quantity at divers stations of the year will wipe out divers Humours and that always after Convulsions together with the blood thus masked it will take away the life which soundeth that under the specious pretence of purging an authority is granted of putrefying the blood of co-melting the flesh and that under the deceit of the Humours of any colour according to the will of the Physitian and at length that unless the Dose covers the deceit and poyson the blood which is to flow forth thus changed will bring death on the sick party so that although it be said in the aforesaid little Book That one and the same laxative at different stations of the year doth at first draw out different humours yet it is constantly true that every loosening medicine taken beyond a due dose kills its receiver So that frequently the consuming power thereof remains so stubbornly tinged in the veins that it cannot be restrained and death follows after by a comelting Although the solutive potion it self and patron of death shall first almost wholly fall out of the body And in vain are restringent remedies administred in this case where the retentive faculty is not hurt but the imprinted poyson continually consumeth Wherefore rather an Antidote is required than an astringent medicine For that which a deadly flux by offending causeth that very thing doth laxative Medicines perform under the cunning craft of Physitians involved in the false position of Humours At length the guilty and accused guiltless Humour being drawn out yet the disease for the most part is not any thing the mildet thereby Are not therefore Mockeries to be conjectured from thence and whatsoever hath been pratled concerning Humours their excess choice and separation For it is daily seen that the events do frustrate the hope of the sick and promises of Physitians And therefore neither dare they certainly to promise health by a with-drawing of Humours by their laxatives the which alone they notwithstanding seriously accuse for the containing cause of diseases Because indeed they are badly instructed and too much at the perswasions of false Maxims Yet Hippocrates saith If those things are extracted which ought to be extracted the sick feel themselves the better and do easily bear it And moreover neither dare they to trouble bodies with Purgers in good earnest before the Disease hath caused an hope of its digestion but nature an hope of her victory and that without the endeavour of Physitians to wit of a future Crisis But this is done lest the Schools their solutive Medicines and also their own Maxims should be defamed amongst the vulgar if laxative potions being fore-timely drunk before the bodies are in a chafe that is before a prostrating of the disease a cure should not succeed Therefore seeing little of a remedy remains among Physitians besides cutting of a vein and purges yet least Physitians should be made of no esteem they now and then hand forth the lesser laxatives that they may seem to have done something They confess indeed and openly declare that those lesser purgatives will not cut off a disease at the root as if otherwise the greater laxatives would mow down diseases like a sithe but that they are diminishers of the peccant Humour and for this cause to aid and assist Suppose thou if not unto the health at least unto the death of the sick or thâ— kitchin of the Physitian For Physitians do privily confess that little aid is drawn from the pulse beholding of the Urine and the Blood but that they have viewed the Urine and Blood under Gordonius's Rules or deceitful Juggles to wit least they should seem to be less wise than their Predecessours The which surely contein deceit and pride covered with deceit At leastwise impure Physitians have taken up an invention for a man to be called and distinguished by the name of Dungs To wit a chole-rick melancholy phelgmatick person which things they believe to be meer excrements For it is certain that by loosening Medicines the venal Blood and flesh are resolved into that yellow and stinking putrefaction without a separation of a diversity of kind And it is a dull argument to infer from thence If the blood and flesh depart dissolved thorow the fundament and they are made a yellow liquor or muckie excrement therefore the flesh and blood do consist and are composed of the same matters which are true Choler and Phlegm For truly except that the blood were not a true natural composed body but essentially made up of many unlike parts it could not also return again into Choler from whence they say the blood is composed or otherwise there should be an immediate return from a privation to an habite Therefore the Blood was never made even of Choler and much less flesh the which shall differ in the species from Choler And by consequence if the whole blood and flesh are sometimes transchanged into that putrefaction which they name Choler and are ejected and so the whole flesh melteth as well by art as through a disease One of the two must needs be true either that that putrified Choler is formally and actually as yet blood and flesh or that that Choler being once dead and transchanged in the birth of blood hath again revived by an immediate return as well from the melting of the flesh as of the blood It must needs be I say either that those four Humours do alwayes persist in their own proper forms yet under the shape and covering as well of flesh as blood or next that those four Humours have put off their own Essence and forms under their entrance of the form of blood and flesh If thou shalt say the first Now the blood is not a natural composition but made up of many things But if thou wilt say the latter an immediate return of blood and flesh into Choler or other their constitutive humours is impossible Whence again it follows That those things which are cast forth of the body by a laxative draught are not Choler but a stinking cadaverous or mortified liquor being thus defiled by the force of the Medicine For Galen seems to reject both the Cholers and Phlegm for the natural complexions of man even so also to refer them into a meer distemper For truly he saith that one only hony in sanguine persons is wholly turned into blood the which in cholerick persons is totally changed into Choler wherefore he banisheth the nativities of these kind of Humours as without difference not so much into an inclination of the matter as into a vitious distemper of the Liver Whence it followes that three distempers at least do alwayes and at once flow together every one of which do bring forth their own particular humours Yea it is to be feared least Galen be dashed against the rocks and being drowned that he perisheth while
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
Tragedy of the world would again be hidden at leastwise I suppose that there will be other far more horrible Plagues than ever heretofore and against which all Antidotes will be vain For truly our Plague at this day doth not affect bruit beasts But in the last dreggishness 〈…〉 they shall destroy wild beasts also yea fishes and trees and there shall be Plagues but not an ordinary Plague otherwise this should be an uncertain sign of the future destruction For there shall be Plagues from the hand of God from the powring out of the Vials as the Revelation hath it But against those Plagues there is not to be a Buckler in Nature I promised therefore unto my self before I attempted to write these things that the Plague that was curable even unto that face of times and a true remedy thereof was to be fetched out of the Grave of Hippocrates or rather from above from the Father of Lights I will declare what I have learned for the profit of Posterity CHAP. III. The Heaven is free from as also innocent of our Contagion or Infection NOt the least comfort hath appeared unto the Soul that is earnestly desirous of knowledge or unto the miserable and forsaken sick from the writings of the Antients First of all it is of Faith that the Stars are for signs times or seasons daies and years nor that man can any way alienate the offices of the Stars or decline them unto other scopes That the Heavens are the works of the Lords hands that God created not Death and therefore that neither doth the Heaven contain Death a disease poyson discords corruptions or the effective cause of these For truly they are ordained not for the cause but for the signs of future things and only for the changing of seasons or Meteors and for the succession of daies and years The office therefore of the Heavens is not to generate evils to cause poysons to disperse or influx them to sow wars and to stir up deaths Because the heaven cannot exceed the bounds of its own appointment the heavens declare the glory of God for whose honour and the uses of ungrateful humanity it was created And therefore it rather contains in it life light joy peace and health with an orderly and continued motion no curse is read to have been communicated to the heaven after the transgression of Adam nor execration to be infused into it as neither a spot to have been sprinkled thereon The earth indeed brings forth thistles and thorns because under the Moon is the Copy-hold of the Devil and Death because of sinners the Empire of discords and interchanges The earth hath become a Step-mother unto us she is therefore the vale of miseries being great with-child of the corruption and fardle of sinners because it hath pleased God that there should be no other way unto rest but by tribulations yea it behoved Christ to suffer and so to enter into glory not indeed anothers but his own because he was willing to take on him the form of a servant I belive the Word of God but in no wise the vanities of the Sooth-sayers of Heaven and I judge that they who write that the Plague doth arise from the heaven do stumble as being hitherto deceived with the errours of the Gentiles The Heavens declare the glory of God and the Firmament sheweth the handy-works of the Lord The Heavens therefore shew a sweet or bitter thing to come but they do not cause that sweet or bitter yea neither is it lawful for us to call bitter things evils for God hath directed all things to a good end Therefore the heaven declares future things unto us but doth not cause them and the stars are only unto us for the signs of things to come and therefore there shall be signs in the Sun Moon and Stars The Stars also cause the successive alterations of seasons in the ayr waters and earth only by a native Blas From whence the changes and ripenesses as well in fruits as in the body of man especially in a sick one do consequently depend I understand also that the stars are in this respect for times or seasons unto us by their motive and alterative Blas For neither therefore are the Heavens Sorcerers or the Cocters of poysons the incensers of wars c. I knowingly consider them to be altogether as the alterers of successive interchanges in Elementary qualities as to the interchangeable courses of Stations Wherefore it happens that the sick aâ—e diversly altered in the promotion and maturity of seeds conceived in them because our vital faculties do stir up every their own Blas according to the rule or square of the most general motion of the stars not indeed as of violent leaders but of foregoing or accompanying ones For the Book of the Revelation doth not attribute even any the least punishing power unto the Heavens but the same to be distributed by God among the Angels and the which therefore are called smiting and ministring spirits performing the commands of the Judge Therefore I shall not easily believe that the Plague owes its original unto the importunate or unseasonable changes of times the which also Eudoxus according to Fernelius perceived And I cannot be induced by any reason to believe that the Heavens do give growth form figure virtues or any thing else which proceedeth from the Being of seeds For the Herb was potent in a flourishing seed even before the stars were born so that although there should be no stars yet every seed by the power of the Word is of it self naturally for producing of its own constituted body and against the will of the stars and stations of the year yea and of climates many seeds and forreign fruits are produced by Art Wherefore the Epidemicks of Hippocrates illustrated with the Commentary of Galen do also contain very many things unworthy the name of the Author not only because it attributes diseases to the stations or seasons of the year and not every one to their own seeds and divers infirmities to one root that is unto the first qualities of the ayr and so coupleth divers effects with unjust causes but because they contain very many absurdities of trifles For I am wont in this thing to compare Judiciary Astrologers unto Empericks who having gotten an oyntment powder or any other medicine extoll the same to be prevalent well nigh for all diseases and also for many other So many of those being not content with the shewing or betokening message of the Stars constrain them to be the workmen Deasters and absolute Patrons of all fortune and misfortune to be conscious or witness-bearers and the workers of life and death to come Lastly to be the Councellors and Judges of thoughts and questions asked If therefore they do not contain death wars poysons nor the Plague verily neither shall they be able to rain down such scourges upon us seeing they cannot give those things which they have not do not contain