the minde it self is a meer clear or lightsom understanding For in this its very own light the minde being separated from the Body seeth and understandeth it self wholly throughout the whole to which end there is neither need of a brain nor heart To wit in which Organs or Instruments the substance of the minde doth seem onely to assume the race of properties Surely while the abstracted understanding it self doth make use of corporeal Instruments in the Body unto which it is bound and as by its Seat of the sensitive Soul it is drowned in the depth of the corrupt nature thereof it representeth and assumeth a qualitative faculty which is called Imagination The which from the Society of the imaginary power the Splendor of the sensitive Soul and understanding it self being degenerated in the Organs doth rise up by a certain combination into the aforesaid qualitative power Therefore that faculty is wearied by imagining faileth or waxeth feeble also it oft-times becomes mad and by imagining the hairs wax white or grey But the minde being once separated is never tired in understanding Moreover the Imagination in living persons is not onely wearied but also it hath not from it self intellective representations which it hath not drawn from sensible objects And therefore the intellective power which concurreth with the imaginary office of the sensitive Soul doth follow the disposition of the Organ and the will of the sensitive life no otherwise than as elsewhere in natural things the effect doth follow the weaker part of its own causes But whatsoever the Soul doth require to know and will for once or for oftner times that it hath wholly from it self and not from a stranger without For the good substantial will of a blessed Soul doth not arise from the thing understood but it is its own goodness of love by which the blessed minde is substantially and not qualitatively good Which Prerogative it hath because it is the typical Image of the Divinity But Bodies do slide by a perpetual free accord into the attributes of Forms their diversity of kinde successive changes and dissolutions Therefore the love or desire of the minde is not the office of an appetitive power but the minde it self is intellectual and willing which things are undivideably coupled under unity in as great a sameliness and simplicity as may be yet in mortalls they are separated as well by reason of the necessity of Organs unlikenesses of Functions as the mixture of the sensitive Soul For truly now we often desire those things which the understanding judgeth not to be desired and the will could wish not to come to passe But it must needs be that things whose operations are different the same things should be distinct in the Root of their own essence after the manner whereby all particular things are separated In the minde indeed by a relative supposingness only but in the sensitive Soul according to a corporeal and qualitative nature And therefore that amorous or loving desire of the mind is the substance of the Soul And although in Heaven there be a full satiety of desirable things and a perpetual enjoyment of them yet the desire of the minde which is a study of complacency doth not therefore cease neither doth this bring a passion on the minde any more than Charity it self Because they are those things which in the Root are one and the same otherwise the aforesaid desire ceasing a satiety or full satisfaction should cease or an unsensibleness of fruition or enjoyment should even presently arise in Heavenly Wights Therefore that desire or love is the fewel of an unterminable or endless delight Therefore it is manifest that understanding will and love are things substantially co-united in the minde But in the sensitive Soul that operations are distinguished from the Root of divers faculties while we understand things that are not desired we also desire things we would not nor do plainly know Lastly we will while any one inclines to punishment those things which we do not desire but we would not have it so From whence it happens that desire doth overcome the will and likewise the will doth compel the desire and so that there are mutual and fighting Commands All which things do happen in mortal men as long as the sensitive Soul doth draw its own powers into a manifold disorder of division So impossible things are foolishly desired things past likewise things present are desired or wished not to have happened But the desire whereof I speak laying hid in the minde unless it were of the essence of the minde he that hath seen a Woman to lust after her should not sin before a consent of the will Therefore we now desire by the faculties of the minde emulous or striving in the sensitive Soul the effects whereof are refused by the will and judgement Also in the manner for now the desire or love worketh one way and the will another Likewise in the motion of the day or in duration desire goes before or followes willing and one thing successively overcomes another that it may restrain any thing distinct from it self and that wholly in mortal Creatures because it is from the animosity of the sensitive Soul But in those that are in Heaven that love riseth again as it were the substance of the minde for there nothing is desired which is not willed And that is collected into a oneness as well in respect of act as substance Although they have their suppositions in the Root diverse which doth plainly exceed the manner of understanding in mortals Because indeed the Kingdom of God is now in man but after an incomprehensible manner but after death the same Kingdom collecteth all things into its own unity Therefore the chief or primary Image of God is in the minde whose very essence it self is the veriest Image it self of God which Image or likeness can in this life be neither thought with the heart nor expressed by words because it shewes forth the Similitude of God without which there is to other image in us which may be offered to our conception For therefore the very minde is also wholly unknown to it self And then in the husk of the minde or in the sensitive and vital form there is the same Image shining back in the powers according to the manner of the receiver because it is over-shadowed by a brutal generation being frail and defiled through impurity At length the Body hath not borrowed so much the essentifical Image of the Light of God but the figure onely But the miserable minde being devolved into utter darkness from the uncreated Light whereby it hath separated it self hath so lost the native light of the Image by reason of appropriation as if it were proper unto it from a due behoof whereby it afterwards understandeth willeth or loveth nothing besides it self and for it self And therefore in rising again it shall not represent the Image of God that is strangled or stifled
looked back on them crooked-wise or by the by they being as it were shaken into the Head of a man of another World Sixteenthly I learned also that life understanding sleep c. are the works of a certain clear or shining light not requiring Pipes or Channels Seeing the shining light pierceth the vital light Therefore also the Soul doth retract diffuse and withdraw it self by a motion proper unto it and altogether diversly in sleep watching contemplation an extasie swooning madness doatage raging madness by its own disturbances voluntary confusions yea and the violent impressions of some Simples Because the minde doth embrace an entire Monarchy in spiritual things divided in many general and particular kindes no lesse than Bodies themselves shall differ among themselves so also shall lights Seventeenthly At length that the understanding being raised by invention and judgment with a reflexion on places on circumstances on things past said before premised and so on things absent as absent is made by an ultimate or the last endeavour in the Brain through the afflux or issuing of a beam out of the Midriffs as such an understanding doth presuppose memory But that those things which are concerning future or abstracted things without respect of circumstances as if they were present are wholly forged in the Midriffs And for this cause mad men do behold and prattle of all things as if they were present as though they did talk of present things Eighteenthly Therefore poysons which have a power of displacing the imagination do not primarily affect the Brain but the Midriffs onely Which thing the History of a Lawyer who had drunk Henbane-seed elsewhere by me rehearsed doth sufficiently prove For whatsoever the Stomach doth conceive that very thing is plainly transchanged and doth wholly passe into another Essence before that the least quantity doth from thence reach to the Brain and whatsoever thereof doth come thither is already venal bloud which hath put off all the qualities of its former condition in the entry of the first shops or at length it slides cut of the Stomach and together with the drosses is thrust out of doors And so no Simples after what manner soever they are taken are materially applied to the Brain Therefore it is false whatsoever the Schools do set to sale concerning pills for the Head Pills of light c. For truly neither do Pills allure any thing out of the Head neither doth the Head afford any thing which it hath not besides snivel which it sends unto its own Basin and not to any other place But if any Medicines or things do strike the Head alter it and profit it that wholly happens in regard of the Midriffs from which there is an unshaken action of Government into the Head even as hath been already sufficiently proved before Indeed they have rightly taught that giddinesses of the Head and Coma's or sleeping evils are stirred up by reason of a consent of the lower parts but neither is their Grain without Chaffe For the Schools have introduced grosse Smoakie and sharp vapours And then and that for the most part in such distempers they will have the Brain to be affected with the first or chief Contagion And therefore it s a blockish thing to have applied Remedies to the Head to the mark I say and without the Archer To wit because they have not known the true internal efficient cause and its connexions nor the accustomed manner of making Diseases and because they have plainly neglected the action of Government and the Conspiracies of light Nineteenthly Also lastly hence I have understood that the immortal and untireable Soul while it did of due right govern its own Body before sin it understood all things intimately optically or clearly and that without labour tediousnesses and wearisomness Because it did understand all things that were in its power in its own Center and unity without the help of Organs or Instruments But now being detained in a strange Inn it being as it were wholly hindered hath committed the diversities of Functions unto the sensitive Soul its Hand-maid In this place I presume to give a Reason of the thoughts of others who cannot sufficiently promise or grieve for my own For I have proposed to phylosophize concerning the more hidden Spring of Cogitations and of the most abstracted ones concerning the vices and exorbitances of floating and uncertain Cogitations yea we must pierce deeper when as we must take aim at the powers of vitiated Cogitations themselves and must come unto the fountainous and occasional causes of these vices Surely it is a matter hard obscure and unpassable wherein the speculations of the Schools the succours of Bodies do fail before the threshold yea and of Diseases whose causes and effects do fall under sense or are proved by the dissections of dead Carcases wherein I say the Patient or suffering imagination doth indeed enlarge it self but the Agent or active one is hidden In other diligent searches that which is vitiated is known by a knowledge of the whole but in those of the minde the cause and manner of a violated understanding should as yet be far more easily conceived than of a sound one because that a sound faculty doth more ascend unto the likeness of God but a defectuous one doth more incline it self unto the meditations of corrupted Nature And therefore that which is sound or entire in the faculties of the minde is not demonstrated by a former cause but that which is deficient doth after some sort make it self known by a rupture of the co-knitting of causes Also madness is alwayes of a most difficult learning because it contains in it a denying together with a privation wherefore in the case proposed I have judged of the same in another way whether perhaps by searching into the manner of making in any one kinde of madnesses I might finde an utterance for the other Therefore I have proposed that madness which ariseth from a strong and continued contemplation feat and passion Forthwith afterwards I concluded that the quality of the poysonous matter was to be known and the dispositions of Instruments which should concur when as any Simple being taken or something inwardly generated had stirred up madness But the knowledge of one sort of madness being attained it shall be the easier to measure afterwards the diversities of the same by descending into the ampleness of the manners or measures strength approaching application and variety of particular kinds For therefore I first of all reckoned to search into the Seat of the Sensitive soul to wit the exorbitances whereof do cause madnesses For truly I have considered that in what seat the animal form should abide in the same also the immortal mind should co-inhabite as being tied unto it which should refuse a duallity difference and diversities of mansions For neither was it meet for that mind to be tied to the body without a mean when as the Seed of man no lesse then of a
a speculative beholding within it self yet so that the Understanding may know one thing more presentially then another while it reflects it self upon things understood to wit because it is in truth it self and in a distinct Unity What if the same thing doth now daily stand in the artificiall Memory because that recollecting Memory is not a distinct act from the inductive Judgement of the Intellect Shall not this thing therefore be more proper to the Mind being once dispatched of the imaginative turbulencies of Understanding For neither doth that hinder these things because in Wine the Memory perisheth the Judgement remaining safe or on the contrary For he that is drunk or mad doth oft-times remember all things before his drunkness and in like manner the other returning unto himself remembers all things which were done in time of his madness Indeed those things are heterogeneally distinct in the Body according to the manner of the receiver Unto Inanimate things also I observe a certain deaf knowledge to belong likewise a Sense and Affection of their Object which things began to be called Sympathetical ones But such a deaf perceivance of Objects is unto those things in stead of sight and understanding There is moreover a virtue in them to wit a certain vital natural endowment of a certain goodness and valour for ends appointed by the Creator There is also a third Power resulting from both the foregoing ones which is that of Joy or Delight at the meeting of things helpful and of turning away from things hurtful wherein a certain affection toward their Objects is beheld Likewise Fear Flight c. which threefold degree of ascent is more manifest in the more stupid Insects even as in mad or furious Men in whom no Understanding is President and onely the governing Powers of a visual Light doth shine forth Yet besides there is present with these the act of Virtues and vital Functions by reason of which and by which they are Insects Thirdly There is in them a far more manifest formal act of Joy and averseness The which again in other sensitive Creatures are as yet far more clearly unfolded Unto these indeed a certain sensitive imagination doth belong with a certain kind of discourse of Reason which is unto them in stead of Understanding clearly appearing more or less in all so that Quick-sightedness Will Memory and Remembrance happens unto them under the apprehension of Understanding Yet their Objects and Functions being continually changed according to the matter which is inclined unto renting Divisions and singularities There is also in them an issuing Power of Goodness and Virtues whereby their Souls do more or less incline unto the exercises of their Virtues or Bruitishnesses And there is at length also in them their complacency and wearisomness and animosity on the considerations of Objects things so co-united unto sensitive Souls that it is scarce possible to behold two persons but we are presently addicted to one more than another and these things being incorporeal things according to the manner of the receiver they shall for that reason in man be more clarified Nevertheless I will not that the Image of God be considered in man by reason of any ternary of faculties which may thereto be found to belong unto other things in the Susteme of the World Certainly the dignity of the Divine Image is not in any wise participated of by other created things For trul◠〈…〉 Divine Image is intimate onely to the Soul and so proper unto it as is its own essence unto its self Yet any properties of the Soul whatsoever are not the very Essence of the Mind but the Products and Effects of Essences For neither is it a thing beseeming the Majesty of the Divine Image to be drawn out of Qualities For the properties of other things do co-melt into the Essence of the Soul by virtue of the Divine Image But if they are reckoned as Attributes that is by reason of the miserable manner of the vulgar Understanding for truly the Mind is one pure simple homogeneal and undivided act wherein the Image of God doth immediately and essentially subsist so that in that Image even all Powers do not onely lay aside the nature of Attributes but also do collect their supposionalities into an undistinct Unity Because the Soul is in it self a certain substantial Light and a substance so clear that it is not distinctguished by suppositions from the Light it self And the Understanding thereof is so the Light of the Soul that the Soul it self which is nothing but Light is only meer Understanding In which Light of its own self the Soul being separated from the Body seeth and understandeth it self wholly throughout the whole neither hath it need of a brain or heart In which organs indeed its substance seemeth onely to assume the race of Properties For in the Body the abstracted Intellect it self being drowned in corporeal Organs and seeing it makes use of the same it represents and assumes a qualitative faculty which is called Imagination the which from the society of the Imaginative Power of the sensitive Soul it self and splendor of the Understanding degenerated in the Organs doth by a certain combination arise into a qualitative Power For therefore that Faculty is wearied by Imagining and failes so as that it becomes mad and the haires wax grey but the mind being once separated is never wearied in understanding And moreover in living Persons the Imagination is not onely wearied but also it hath not of it self intellective species but those which it draws from Objects And therefore the faculty of Understanding which in imagining concurreth with the imaginative Office of the sensitive Soul followes the disposition of the organ and will or arbiterment of the sensitive Life Like as regularly in Nature the effect follows the weaker part of its Causes But the Soul whatsoever it requireth for knowing remembring and willing whether it be for once or for oftner times all that it hath from it self and not from another For neither in the Soul being abstracted or with-drawn doth a Will arise from the thing understood Yea neither is there a Will in the Soul unto the thing understood but it is the goodness of a formal love The which indeed is not a proper passion of the Soul not a habit not an inclination nor any quality thereof But a substantial act of goodness whereby a blessed Soul is substantially simply and homogenially good but not qualitatively And it hath this prerogative whereby it is the typical Image of the Divinity But Bodies as well those which are believed to be compounded as those that are meerly simple ones do slide with a perpetual free accord into the Attributes of Forms they being readily inclined into the successive changes of a diversity of kindes and dissolution Therefore now it is manifest from whence the state dignity condition of the Soul and prerogative of the Divine Image in living Persons may be over-clouded But the
its obtained Ferment the proper savour of the seed and consequently is disposed thereby into a transmutation of it self For through the putrefaction by continuance that native or seedy moysture as soon as may be thinks of its resolving whence is a certain vapour and afterwards an exhalation A Gas which indeed doth easily ascend out of putrifying things is stirred up and there ariseth out of them a heat at the time of that putrifying of what sort soever it be such as plainly comes to passe in Woods rotting by laying under the ground and the which do straightway thrust forth a spongy smoak because that smoakiness the signifier of the heat and dissolved Body doth threaten a seperation of things of a different kinde and so that vitall Air although but even now more deeply shut up threatens a breaking forth out of its seminall Liquors yet its reins being loosed it wanders first within So new and moyst Hay hath made the un-looked for firings of houses truly not tokens of a slack heat but of heat rising to a degree Therefore the Air having once gotten a moderate heat it by degrees meditates of the perfection of an Archeus doth aspire it and provoketh the lump of the Body placed under its charge to the archieveable dispositions of Forms But what hath been already said concerning Vegetables that doth more plainly appear in the Eggs of Fishes flying Birds and creeping things and most manifestly of all it shines forth in the seeds of four-footed Beasts At length therefore the thin shining and twinckling or bright light doth kindle the aforesaid Air of the Archeus so as thereby he may be made vitall Furthermore as Mineralls are not diminished nor made great by the substituting of off-springs and their manifold propagation yet because they do contain in them their Beginnings from whence they have increased and are therefore although they are not blessed with a fruitfulness of Issue yet they have in their own Monarchy the constitutive radicall and seminall beginnings of themselves within I have already said that this Air is awakened in the seeds of things by a fit matter and then that by the young birth of an inward heat by reason of a received putrifying through continuance it doth conceive a heat and at length a brightness as in Fishes or a shining as in things actually hot not indeed that that splendor is the soul or form of a Plant bruit Beast c. For otherwise there should be of every Plant the same Form in the Species or particular kinde notwithstanding there is in the splendor it self another specifical thingliness conceiving with young by a specificall Odour nor far different from the Splendor which limits the light it self unto this something or particular essential thing So indeed that although that splendor be stirred up by the force of nature alone as putrified Woods things salted and the Sea it self do teach yet it is never made vitall but by the Creator the specifical form of a certain light being added to it the effectress of a thingliness or essence To wit which alone draweth the Odour Splendor and all the properties of the enlightned Air at once into the unity of it self Indeed this is the life or form of a thing for want of whose supply the young degenerateth into a hard piece of flesh in the womb a monster or corruption And although the vitall Air and its Splendor be present and do increase yet because the formall and vitall light faileth which draweth the subaltern or coursary succeeding properties and diversities under unity the young is corrupted and straightway putrifieth Wherefore the Father of Lights alone doth immediately frame or create the Lights of Forms and the Forms of Lights who giveth life and all things to all nor is not far off from every one of us Moreover the progress of generation in hot seeds is of a more easie conception For the seeds do presently putrifie by reason of heat afterwards the Archeus of those doth easily borrow a Splendor as the betroathed Air of a greater light For being not yet contented with the obtained vegetative faculty of his own kinde he breatheth further and proceeds to the light co-promised to his seed and stayeth and is quiet in the sensitive soul as not being able to climbe beyond it But even as in the Systeme or constitution of things there are onely four degrees So also there is a fourfold Form of them one of them indeed is of those which do promise scarce any manifestation of life as the Heaven the Stone Metall Fire-stone Salt Sulphur Liquors Earths likewise barren Vegetables dry bones c. whose form is a certain material light a form containing and giving a Being to the thing and therefore it is also deservedly called essential But the other rank of things seemeth to contain a vitall beginning and character of a Soul by the vigour of nourishment and increasing As are Plants whose form varying from the fore-going form are graced with the Title of life therefore is it to be called the vitall Form Not indeed that such a Form is a living Soul but vitall onely as it beares the entrances or flourishes of a sensitive and living Soul At length the third Order of things obtains a living Form not by Similitude but truly motive and sensitive And therefore it is likewise called a substantial Form not indeed by an absolute name a substance but substantial onely as if it should carry it self after the manner of a certain abstracted spiritual substance And lastly the fourth is truly and one onely substance among them all So it ought to be callod a formall substance never to perish through the infiniteness of its continuance But I have demonstrated the light and fire to be a neutral Creature between a substance and an accident The same thing in this place comes to be understood concerning every natural Form to wit the essential and substantial as they are of the race of Light But that the Angel and minde of man are formall substances and truly spiritual their abstracted manner of existing doth prove which is denied to other forms who do subsist and perish after the manner of every light Whence I collect it into a new position for the Schooles That no substance is to be annihilated by the force of nature or art It hath alwayes seemed an absurd thing to me that a matter imperfect in it self barren and impure should after its Creation be thenceforth eternall and that forms that are to be annihilated by death should be true substances that substances I say should be so much more lively than matter and yet momentary Wherefore it now appeareth that the consideration of the fire by the discourse of nature doth unlock the gate of nature and enlighten all Philosophy and hath excluded all despisers of the Art of the fire I considered in times past with trouble If the form of a thing be most chiefly and principally a
Agent and subjecteth it self unto it But a frail Agent capable of sliding every hour and every way limited cannot be stronger than an immortall and spiritual Being with which it hath no resemblance nor co-touching Therefore the immortall minde is not mad doth not doare sleepeth not through Opiates or sleepy Medicines is not estranged through the exorbitancy or irregularity of hypocondrial melancholy doth not vary through Lunatickness or Frantickness at a certain time of the Moon neither stumbleth it through Wine as neither doth it feel madness through the stroak of a mad Dog or the Tarantula Therefore madnesses and the alienations of reason are not proper to the minde But this being afterwards afflicted by corrupted nature through the weariness of the body hath committed its Vicarship to the sensitive Soul which it pierceth onely with a vitall beam that it may be and live may be entertained and rowled up in it but as to any thing else it beholds it ill-favouredly onely crookedly or by the by But the sensitive Soul in a man is not the specifical form of any bruit beast and much lesse an individual one that it may be a bruit beast before it is a man They were doubtful in this thing as many as before me have thought the forms of bruit beasts to be substances and to be taken immediately out of the very substance of the matter not a new light to be brought down from above by the Creator which may not be a substance but a light which may be the band of a specificall oneness Without which all the endeavours of nature dispensations of bodies excitings and splendors of the Air are void and so whatsoever endeavours of seeds are enticed out of the bosome of nature are vain and barren For the Archeus cannot give that which he hath not neither hath he that which is far narrower than his own nature Therefore the Creator doth enlighten or illustrate the Archeus with a light of specifical essence of thingliness after an unutterable manner and also co-knits it into the unity of a composed body And there is in the sensitive creatures a Soul or sensitive life therefore in its moments of maturity and period of appointment the bruitall conception is soulified with a specificall formall light but seeing the seed of man hath not a specificall determination unto brutall dispositions unless a Woman with young doth by chance through imagination alienate the figure of mans seed and the Almighty hath knowledge whence and whither all seeds do flow when now it is come to a life in man it receiveth an undistinct sensitive Soul as to its brutality in splendor enjoying onely life and also at the same instant together with life the Creator coupleth an Immortall minde that by this ultimate act the sensitive Soul may be limited to a species or particular kinde by a humane individual yet it is to perish together with the life of man because it is coupled indeed to the formall and immortall Substance but is not united nor pierceth the same but onely toucheth it irregularly even as in the Chapter of long life therefore the sensitive Soul is specifically limited by the minde as it were light by a clear substance else it should be unfit for the union of the body And so its subordination to a further act in the conception of the Creator takes away from the sensitive Soul a specifical limitation because the being of a subordinate Form doth not appoint or limit the name or Species of a thing although it actually exist in the individuall And that also because the sensitive Soul is not a substance or an accident but a neutrall lightsome nature For neither is the vegetative Soul the form in a bruit beast whiles he onely groweth and doth not yet perceive because it is subordinate to the sensitive Soul Many therefore have thought that two formall acts do not suffer together with each other because they thought they were two substances and they contradicted themselves in the fire while they might see light to â—ierce light fire Iron yea and fire to be pierced by the bellowes with adjoyned fire Lastly the sensitive Soul in bruit beasts is not a naked promotion of the vegetative Soul or a passage to a more perfect state of it self that that coming to it this should decay or that this should be changed into that For none hath said that the souls of Plants are an accident but all confess them to be a vitall subsisting Being For they are vitall Souls but not proper living souls For so a Plant waxing dry its vitall light perisheth with its soul yet for the most part the virtue of that simple remaining long I have said for the most part because the root of Anemony or Wind-flower being plainly dried into wrinckles doth as yet wax green or revive again c. Therefore the operations of Souls and their effects do remain different So that the functions of one Soul may be extinguished those of the other being unhurt Therefore the severed lights of the Soul and the subordinate ones are limited to the bound of an appointed duration in motion In which bound unless they are pierced by a light coming upon them they straightway cease to be Therefore this vitall light differeth from a fiery light as I have said in the end meanes Instruments effects and properties Because a fiery light in a slack degree is not at any time living not vitall unless occasionally as it stirreth up But in a heightned degree being reduced by the folding up of it self together it is a destroyer and an artificial death and a simple Creature whereas otherwise the lights of Forms are divided throughout all the Species of things Seeing things do not elsewhere draw their thingliness than from lightsome Forms And we may easily measure the diversities of lights if the same light of the Sun being repercussed or struck back by the Moon can so easily change its properties Last of all the Archeus of Mineralls is plainly materiall liquid covering a hidden and drowsie brightness under thickness which is more growing and liquid in Plants but in the four-footed Beast it openly floâ—teth and shineth so that the living Creature dying a failing splendor may be presently seen in his eyes For feign an Oxe of 800 pound weight which the light of life being extinguished is straightway cold Therefore that hot light must needes be of so much moment that it may preserve so many pounds rushing into cold by its continual nourishment from cold Therefore the light of four-footed Beasts and Birds is Sunny no otherwise than that of Fishes doth prove it a Splendor of the Moon For there is no seldom example of the cold light of Fishes by night I say in shrubs or tamarisks Earths and combustible things For there is a light and that a kindled one a shining exhalation without fire and heat For now and then I under the thickest darkness of the night clearly distinguish lines under the
blood slides indeed within the stems or threds of the Muscles and is made flesh but it doth not easily transcend unto the Bowels that are to be nourished and to the threds or fibers of the flesh For an infirm man being extenuated by a long disease a recovering even after youth doth easily retake the former state of his flesh but he which is waxen lean by the vice of a certain Bowel doth not therefore likewise rise gaain unto his former state And this is the difficulty of healing the Consumption and of healing the Ulcers of the Bowels whereas in the mean time external Ulcers being far worse are healed by Medicines taken in by way of the mouth although they are at a farther distance from the mouth than internal Ulcers Because the Bowels and inward Membranes are nourished by Arterial blood more than by Venal blood But life hath received its bound from God Therefore also whatsoever things are nourished by vital bloud they stop their increase at a certain number of dayes Whereas the while the flesh of the Muscles which is nourished onely with venal bloud and the fibers of the Mufcles which are nourished with Arterial blood doth uncessantly increase as oft as it faileth and groweth up to a hugeness to the destruction of some So also broken bones are made sound by a bonie callous matter at any age But seeing the Bowels do cease to increase all the spermatick fibers also and those of the first constitution do cease from growing For which of you shall adde a Cubit unto his stature For I have observed that women with child being long afficted with notable grief have brought forth the less Young First of all therefore I do not admit of a Livery spirit to be in the venal bloud And then neither do I distinguish the Animal spirit from the vital For truly in one onely ship one only Pilot stands at the Stern neither do more suffer themselves to be together without confusion Neither do I admit of a new Digestion for animal spirits in the bosom of the brain Like as also that the spirit doth not differ in the species from it self in all the particular Organs of the Senses and Executers of Motions Although the senses dirfer among themselves in the Species as also from motion So I think it to be a confused argument that deviseth many Archeüsses to be in a man For although the Gas shall draw a singular disposition from the instrument yet this doth not prove a specifical diversity Therefore in the Fourth and fifth Digestions there are no excrements nor unlike things or parts nor do they proceed from them And therefore it is false That in every nourishment there is an excrement For the arterial bloud and spirit do agree in a simple and vitall unity But if any superfluities of the former Digestions do rush into or are ingendred into the Arteries let that be a diseasie turbulent and confused government I now speak of the ordinary Digestions At length the sixth and last Digestion is perfected in all the particular Kitchins of the Members And there are as many stomacks as there are members nourishable Indeed in this Digestion the in-bred spirit in every place doth Cook its own nourishment for it selfe under which Digestion as there are divers dispositions incident so also divers errors of those dispositions do happen And so the diseases which the Schools do attribute unto their four feigned humours should rather be owing unto things tranchanged But I call things transchanged dispositions which afterwards do in the Arterial blood consequently succeed into the true nourishment of the solid parts The Schools divide these transchanged things into four successive coursary dispositions and as if in these no errour could offer it self they have forgotten the diseases which from hence ought to be attributed to a rank or order Indeed they say the first is because the venal bloud doth within the extremities of the veins obtain the Muscilaginous substance of a raw seed Presently in manner of a dew it is diffused or falls out into the empty spaces of the flesh Thirdly When it is now applyed to the solid parts And lastly When it is assimilated or made like to the thing nourished and is truly informed hereby it assumeth the nature of a solid part which to be the dross of the Schools surely they do not diligently mind For in the first place Neither the Arterial or Venal bloud do wax white in the extremities of the Veins seeing the extream or utmost parts are not potent with any other power of ashop or office which its whole more former Channel of the Vein hath not And so the Vein although it be the vessel of the prepared nourishment for the Kitchins of the solid parts yet the Vein is not the Kitchin of the solid parts Indeed all particular solid parts do nourish their own and proper Kitchin within Therefore the venal and arterial blood are not altered unless they be applyed to the solid parts Because they are diverted by the property of the solid parts into a raw seed but not of their own free accord in the utmost part of the veins Secondly The spermatick Muscilage is not be-dewed by the veins in a solid Member For a Muscillage is badly consonant to a dew But the thin and fluid arterial and venal bloud slideth along within the Kitchins of every part which are only transchanged by the ferment of the place Thirdly Neither are there empty places of flesh which are devised to be greedy of a dew Fourthly Neither is nourishment applyed to the sound or solid parts in manner of a dew which but a little before was a Muscilage Fifthly Neither at length is this dew united and assimilated to the solid parts but what soever happens to be assimilated unto them this is within the yeers of growth but afterwards as the venal and arterial blood have throughly crept into the solid members by a continued sucking of nature so they are there digested and suited and at length expulsed by transpiration Therefore these four Dispositions feigned by the Schools and badly harmonized I meditate to be digested into a Quaternary number for peradventure a hundred Dispositions do interpose before of an Egge of a Chick a solid part I say be constituted of Arterial blood with the blemish of the blindness or giddiness of the Schools wherein nothing is right or true but they do behold the very history of the matter bespotted and to them it is a truth because they have no nourishment of truth without the excrement of Fables Therefore also the veins themselves as they are nourished only with the Arterial blood of the first constitution even so also in this respect perhaps an Artery doth every where accompany a vein For from hence it comes to passe that through the more cruel issuings of bloud at last not venal blood but a whiteness flowes forth or the immediate nourishment of the veins by reason of the
in the Womb It is false therefore that Nature is every where circular Because she is that which would every where give satisfaction to his ends who is cloathed by the glorious Work-man of Nature and not by Nature For neither after another manner is there a re-bent Reflexion put into the seminal erected Spirit by the Generater but it proceeds from the Finger of him who disposeth of all things sweetely from end even to end Therefore the Seed being conceived the Womb forthwith shuts its neather Gate least any forreign thing should rush into it which might disturb its Conception In the next place the Vessels of the Womb which are subject unto its command as if a Door-keeper were added are also shut above because then a new Common-wealth ariseth in the Womb as a new family-administration of a future Young and therefore also a singular Kitchin is erected in the confining Vessels Even so that the Embryo is a good while nourished and increaseth not by the venal Blood of the Liver but by pure and fined arterial Blood But presently after as soon as this Kitchin is furnished for the Embryo which is about to live in his own proper Orbe the Womb prepars venal Blood which it may hand-forth unto the Embryo and therefore whatsoever less profitable thing it meets withal it is brushed out So that in that whole Motion the Mother for the most part is ill at ease For truly seeing Filths can no longer be expurged through the emunctory of the Womb and the which neither are able to expect the Maturity of Delivery the Filths go backward into the Veins they obtain the condition of an Excrement and are thrust forth by Vomit and other Sinks That which is not equally done in Bruits seeing they want Menstrues and do not admit of an unseasonable Copulation Again the Conception of Men was not from the first intention of the Creator after the manner whereby we are conceived in Sins At length also because for Bruit-beasts pure arterial Blood was not equally required for Nourishment Therefore the teeming Woman alone shall pay for the Itch of one Copulation through a cruel expiation of many Punishments beyond Bruits The Embryo therefore or imperfect Young is at first nourished by arterial Blood prepared in the neighbour Kitchins of the Womb until that after the first fourty dayes he obtaining a living Soul lives of his own right But the preparatory Kitckin is exercised in the spleen-form Flesh whereby the secundine cleaveth to the Womb Therefore Succours for the Young are slow and oftentimes void and also those that are administred to the Mother by way of the Mouth because that before their entrance unto the Embryo all things are recocted And again in the Young it self before they can augment the same But the Infant being born before he is fit for bearing of the more hard Meats he is accustomed to the more gentle ones For so he is a good while fed with arterial Blood which leaves no Dungs be-hinde it For those things which fall from a little Infant that is born presently after his first Cry are the Reliques of the Blood of the Liver the which for the most part is not first admitted into the aforesaid Kitchins but after the third forty dayes And these indeed are the Excrements which do ripen and provoke the necessity of travail or delivery But moreover the Spirit that was once implanted in the Seed being sunk into the Seeds doth presently if not fore-know the necessities of the Body at least-wise perfectly learn them and afterwards draws unto it self a Consanguineal or nearly allyed Spirit or Nourishment by a certain Harmony of Affinity At length the Womb feeling the Maturity of the Young by co-wrinckling contracteth it self which the Antients have called Striving to expel the Young or Off-springs For I have oft-times with-held Abortion threatned and begun But sometimes I could not But I have known that I have detained it as oft as the abortion should be caused from a Symptomatical animosity without a fore-ripe expulsive Faculty to wit from the digression of the Womb And the Remedy did operate by restraining and sleepifying appeasing and pacifying the aforesaid Furies of the Womb But I could not prevent Abortion or miscarying as oft as there was a fall of the Mother from an high Place and much disturbance of Affrighting Grief Anger c. they being inordinate things And likewise if the Young had a remarkable Monstrousness which adds no slugguish Spur unto Expulsion Or if the Young die or pines away or failes through a notable Weakness And likewise if the Mother being strongly smitten with astonishment before the Young could live in its own Quarter hath with-drawn the Arterial Spirit unto her self The which if it shall straightway return from thence yet it finds the same Young as it were in a sound whereunto as unto a Plant so tender Life is scarce re-connexed By this means the semi-vital Conception is now and then wont to miscarry into a hard lump of Flesh or a foolish Branch But that thing scarce happens through a defect of the Fathers Seed because that a barren or foolish Seed is either not attracted and so neither is it conceived or if it be attracted it through a foolish Lust of the Womb soon fals out again and frustrates Conception But the Seed degenerates into a hard Lump of Flesh by reason of external Incidencies lighting upon the Seed whereby Hippocrates saith That Seeds are withdrawn whither they would not Therefore a hard Lump or Moale is made while as the Spirit is funk into the Body of the Seed and is spoiled of a humane Figure yet retaining its former growing Faculty The drowning or sinking therefore alone is able to command the Figure out of the forming Spirit if being to long sleepifyed within it becomes fast asleep But although the dreaming Vision did scarce fill up the space of halfe a quarter of an hour yet it at once represented all the successive Periods of Generation as it were in a Glass of the Thing To wit its Moments Fluxes Motions Aspects Diversities of interchanges and also its Errours stood collected into Unity But I being awaked alass how I sighed at the likeness of our modern propagation with that of Bruit-beasts And therefore Adam not undeservedly bewailed the Death of Abel for the space of an Age He grieving the while at the hateful bruitish Generation and knew not his Wife in all that time As well weighing that Nature being now defiled in its Root was to suffer original and of necessity durable Miseries CHAP. CVIII A Lunar Tribute SEing Woman onely among living Creatures the Ape perhaps excepted suffers Menstrues or monthly Issues and seemeth for this cause to have experience of the operations of the Moon-star but since the Schools do prattle of very many things concerning the Menstrues as if it were the ordinary nourishment of the Young Surely it hath behoved me to discover their boastings in the Treatise
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
than was meet For neither otherwise can I believe that the fundamental Part of Venus being hurt tickling lust is able to subsist Because that this is the necessity of the Parts that a proper Organ being hurt the Function thereof is of necessity intercepted I have sometimes spoken of the Venus of the Spleen At least-wise here it is sufficient that the Femal kind is by a divine Testimony of praise exceeding necessary and most profitable for the subsistance of a Common-wealth But at length seeing every Land doth not bring forth all things in this respect for a good and commodious way of Living the custom of Mortals hath introduced co-bound Provinces and Conspiracies of Merchandise Therefore Profit hath made the Lungs to be its Mercury and agreeable unto Merchandise with the forreign Parts that after that the Young should be now increased it should have the vital Vigour of breathing and voice A participative and distribvtive Life I say throughout the whole to be blown abroad in an equable Air To wit without which all the Blood should be thickned through nourishing into a Tophus or sandy Stone and the Body should soon increase either into a huge Monster or presently from the Beginning should be choaked Even as elsewhere concerning the Blas of Man But notwithstanding I will not that the Architect of the Seed shoud beg this Common-wealth and Harmony thus compared unto the wandring Stars for himself from far to wit from the Stars of Heaven elsewhere For the Archeus intimates the Stars through a proportionable Conjunction because he hath a heaven-like Being in himself For he who by a small Word made the Stars of nothing hath constituted a co-like Power of the Word Increase and Multiply within the innermost Parts of Seeds which is to endure throughout Ages Therefore the Seed hath drawn that unto it self from a free gift that it is able to stir up and imitate the proportionable Respects of the Stars in its own Blas wherefore it happens that more succesful Emulations of the Stars than those that are inbred do follow at set Periods because they are the more powerful and famous Sealings Neither in the mean time is there that Power in the Stars that they should be chief in the forming of the manners health calling or vocation and fortunes of Mortals For he who is all in all and created all things for his own Glory from an immediate end would not that his own Image should be subjected to the Stars least they should excuse themselves of their Fault by the importunate revolutions of the Stars But it is well that there is a seminal Being a proportionable thing which may after some sort answer to the Stars and to the whole Universe Wherefore in Man the Seed at first cloathes it self with the Secundines straightway after it earnestly labours about its own family-administration in the next place it meditates on the aforesaid Common-wealth it variously disposeth of all particular Parts and constrains them by the Laws of free Denizons then indeed also it thinks of a Kingdome and Empires At length of the whole Earth and last of all of the Heavens And so by virtue of the Word he delineates the whole Universe in himself as he is the Image of God For he hath put under his Feet the flying Fowls of Heaven the Fishes of the Sea Sheep Oxen and Beasts of the Field Because he hath set him over the works of his Hands But the Heavens are the Works of the Hands of God Which dignity of appointment surely seeing otherwise it contains a command it doth not indeed contain a certain feigned or remote and allegorical Power Therefore it must needs be that we do after some sort resemble the Heavens in the Image of the Arch-type But the command seeing it is already planted into Nature Man shall have that his proper nobleness in him from his original but not from the Stars that are placed under him But seeing that by the Schools and rustical Persons the defects which shall be in deformities and a vitiated forming are more considered than those which were to rise from erroneous Faculties Hence they have given an occasion that Astrologers should at their pleasure draw all things unto their own dances of the Stars But after that a diversity of Offices was by the more refined Men known to imply a diversity of kind of Faculties and Organs those Men therefore began to fetch interchange number and deformity from the Stars and to refer them unto the Directions of the Seeds For neither under Nature now once radically corrupted could Seeds be long kept fruitful under Unity neither by this Unity could so many distinct Offices of the Organs be compleated but that almost from the Beginning an unlikeness of strength in the Bowels yea and an unequality of strength in all particular Parts should under-creep and be sealed in those places From whence there should at length be a breaking asunder of the Thred a dissolution an off-spring of Infirmities and much Destruction All which things the Soothsayers of Heaven the Schools not resisting it but being astonished thereat have without punishment transferred unto their trippings of the Stars Wherefore a standard-defending Goat being as it were taken by the Beard the whole following troop of Posterity have admired them For there is so great a diversity of kind in the bosome of the Matter that there is scarce a Golden thred made which in some part of it is not the more infirm and doth not the sooner burst asunder Therefore neither is it a wonder that in so great a distraction of Members and Functions an unequal strength increaseth in the Members Wherefore whole Families do perish with a Tabes or Consumption or Dropsie In some Persons their Going fails after the fiftieth Year of the Age whose Sight persisteth unto their eightieth Year But in others their Sight is dull after their fourtieth Year whose Going promiseth a Long Life Because from a simple and universal Spirit of the Seed the Rulers of all particular Organs do increase Which Rulers surely being there alienated either through a Vice of the Organs receiving or through an errour of Dispensation do oft-times depart from their aim For the Spirit which hath distinguished the Parts from each other and formed them hath presently also received all its Limitations in those very Parts For the optick Spirit seeth in the Eye and tasteth in the Tongue because the inflowing Spirit is there limited by the implanted Spirit As besides there is a certain principiating Life in the Spleen another in the Muscles and lastly another in the Womb of a Woman even as I have often demonstrated elsewhere All which are by so much divided from the common Life by how much they are those things which have diverse existences Seeing therefore Plurality includes a certain Duality it 's no wonder that the Life being tossed by many diverse Governours did easily rush into Dissolution after that the immortal Mind suffered the Rains
pestilent one which image I have therefore denoted with the name of terrour as distinct from an image of conceived fear whereby a living creature is affraid A pestilent terrour therefore doth not here denote any terrour or the dread of any calamity but onely a pestilent horrid poyson conceived in terrour as well by the man as by the Archeus of the same In this Idea therefore is scituated the essence of the Pest and the thinglinesse of this whole Book I confesse indeed that the images of any fear are easily changed into the Idea of a pestilent terrour even so as a woman great with child deriveth the image of a mouse on the undefiled flesh of her Young yea hath sometimes transplanted the whole Embryo into an horrid animal or monster Because as I have elsewhere taught concerning formes formal images do mutually pierce each other and the latter doth readily draw the former into the obedience of it self which Hipocrates calls a leading of seeds whither they would not Truly to convocate a diversity of elements and a combating assembly thereof for a mixt body and likewise of complexions humors and conditions inclinations and studies sprung from thence Lastly the divisions of climates angles or quarters ages proportions strengths bignesse and interchangeable courses for a succour of ignorance that hereby we may make the more greater and more difficult calamities may increase uncertainties may rule ignorances may beget doubts may patronize impostures and promote despairs of life is nothing else but to have laboured in vain For the perfect light of Sciences is like fire which burns up every combustible matter without exception Such a Science Hipocrates had in times past obtained CHAP. XIV The property of the Pest I Have demonstrated that the passions of the mind do destroy the appeâ—iâ—e as also prostrate digestion In the next place that the first motions of cogitations do obtain their own assemblies in the midriffs Therefore also I have dedicated the mouth of the stomach unto Mercury whereunto the Heathens have attributed the sharpnesse of wit as also the sleepifying white wand of truce I have also said that the plague is originally conceived from the terrour of man and that the air which being brought out of a pestiferous body is carried into us doth at its first assault rush into the spleen which presently shakes out the same and delivers it as it were by hand unto the Oâ—ifice of the Stomach From hence are dejection of appetite vomiting head-ach dotages faintings thirst the drowsie evil c. But the Plague which is made in us even as that which is drawn in from without have their own Inns wherein every one begins to rage But as long as the Idea of sorrow and fear do besiedge the Tartar of the bloud in the Stomach and as long as the image of the terrour of the Archeus is absent the Plague is not yet present In the mean time indeed it comes to passe if they shall keep themselves the lesse exactly that the Tartar of the bloud being more and more malicious doth at length terrifie the Archeus and he stamps a pestilent poyson on himself For Plagues which are bred onely through terrour are more swift and much more terrible than those which proceed from an infected air for this perhaps strikes many to the heart because the stomach seeing at least it is a membrane yet I have placed the perturbations and first assaults even in the Orifice thereof or in the spleen at least wise in that extream or utmost part of it self which lays on the orifice or upper mouth of the stomach and from hence a ferment is bestowed that is requisite for the necessities of digestion But the Schools themselves call the mouth of the stomach by the Ftymology of the heart For a wound of that place and a wound oâ— the heart do kill with the same sumptom and alike speedily For I have seen many whose head a strong Apoplexie had made plainly unsensible and dead yet that were hot in the midriffs many hours after For a Bride in a Coach nigh Scalds is saluted by Country Musqueteers and the bullet or a Musquet smites thorow the temples of her head not a little of her brain is dashed out and her head presently dies But she being being brought to Vilvord four leagues distant from thence her pulse as yet afforded testimonies of liâ—e Is not also the vital spirit being a certain ruler of the whole body in the womb and the which is onely a membrane after the manner of the stomach and the seat of far greater disturbances than the liver lungs and kidneys Truly the members in themselves are nothing but dead Carcasses but the spirit is the Governour which quickens those members which spirit and after what sort God hath planted where he would Indeed I remember that I have often seen that those who had the Tartar of their bloud corrupted by some kind of fear of the Plague but without belief or presumption of a contracted infection diâ— undergoe an uncessant anguish and combating day and night yea although they were wise and laughed at their own perplexities yet they were not able but that as restlesse they would present the image of fear conceived before their eyes For they were like unto those who were bitten by a mad dog who will they nill they have their imagination readily pâ—yable at the pleasure of the poyson At length in the very Tartar of the bloud sticking about the midriffs I have found a proper natural phantasie which the image of fear conceived in the spleen had feigned to it self So lascivious dreams do not always follow from the imagination of the fore-past day but for the most part also from the matter it self predominating in the Testicles no otherwise also than as one that hath a desire â—o make water dreameth that he doth continually make water Therefore the terrour of the man is the occasion of the Pest and the terrour of the Archeus is the efficient cause of the pestiferous image and poyson For it is as it were the Father of the Plague the which the poysonous image being once bred although it may cease at least wise the Plague conceived is in its own image For if the terrour of the man were a sufficient cause of the Plague of necessity also the Plague should always follow a pestilential terrour which is false even as also in an inâ—ant who is void of all terrour the Plague is received at pleasure From whence it is sufficiently manifest that the Archeus himself being affrighted is the primitive efficient cause of the image of the pestilence The plague therefore consisteth of a defilement to wit of a contagion in the swiftnesse of its course in the singulaâ—ity of its poyson in the terribleness of its concomitants lastly in a difficulty of preservation and curing But indeed I leave behind me the inquisition of that plague which is sent for a punishment by reason of the hidden
Desire or Love of which I here speak is not a function of the appetitive power nor the very qualitative power of desiring it self but it is a substantial part of the mind or rather the Mind it self flowing from Understanding and Will Because those three are undividably conjoyned by the Creator under Unity in as great a simplicity as may be Yet in live persons or mortal men it is separated from Understanding and Will in its Functions by reason of the condition of the Organ and Nature of the sensitive Soul For truly now we desire oftentimes those things which the Understanding judgeth not to be desirable and which the Will could wish were not desired But it must needs be that things whose operations are different or dis-joyned that the same things are dis-joyned in their root according to the manner whereby all particular things are separated In the Soul indeed onely by a relative supposionality but in the Body according to a corporeal and qualitative Nature And therefore that substantial Desire or Love is an intimate Essence of the Soul being consubstantial and co-equal in age with the same So that although in Heaven there be a full satiety of desirable things and a perpetual enjoymens thereof yet that desire in the Soul doth not therefore cease the which is a study or â—â—â—eavour of complacency Neither doth it therefore infer a passion of the Soul any more than Charity it self because they are conjoyned in their root as one and the same thing For an amarous desire ceasing of necessity either a fullness or glutting or an unsensibleness of fruition or enjoyment should presently arise which in the heavenly Wights would be a shameful thing That desire therefore of Love is the fewel of an unterminable or endless delight under which consideration the Mind resembles the Spirit the Comforter For the unutterable Creator hath placed Man in the liberty of his own Desire that he might live in the Spirit after the Image of God in a holy Desire and perfect Charity It is manifest therefore that Operations are distinct from the root of Faculties while we understand those things which we do not desire but while we desire those things which we do not plainly know and which we would not desire In the next place we will as while a man goes willingly to Punishment those things which we do not desire and desire those things which we would not as while any one commands his Leg to be cut off And likewise the Desire doth afterward some-sometimes overcome the Will or the Will doth oft-times compell the Desire and they by turns draw each other under mutual Commands but wholly in Mortals because the sensitive Soul draws the Understanding and the Body the sensitive Soul into a manifold disorder of division For so impossible things happen to be desired and things past are wished for as present For unlesse that Desire were from the root of the Mind he should not sin who should see a Woman to lust after her before the consent of a full Will Therefore very many things are desired whose Causes are not willed and many things whose Effects are refused by the Will and Judgement The Desire also doth operate in one manner and the Will in another Also in the motion of the Day or in duration the Desire doth oftentimes go before and sometimes followes the Will and one overcomes the other by course that it may restrain something that is distinct from it self And that wholly in mortal Bodies But in Eternity where Love or Amorous Desire ariseth as the substance of the Soul nothing is Desired which is not Willed and that as well in respect of Act as Substance and Essence Because by reason of the simplicity of Substance they are collected into Unity Although in the Root they have diverse Suppositions which plainly exceed the manner â—f Understanding in mortal Men. In the next place the Kingdom of God in man is unutterable that is God himself by whose perpetual splendour all things are gathered together into Truth Therefore the Primary or chief Image of God is in his immortal Soul because the very Essence whereof it self is also the veriest Image of God which Image can neither be expressed by words as neither thought by the heart in this Life because it resembles a certain similitude of God But in the husk of the Mind or in the sensitive Soul and vital Form there is the same Image re-shining yet received after the manner of an inferior nature and defiled through transgressions or Death from whence at length the Body also borroweth not indeed the Image of God but the Figure of him But the Soul is devolved into utter darkness even as it hath separated it self from the uncreated Light and from the virtue of the Image and therefore it hath by reason of appropriation so lost its native Light as if it were proper unto it as beseeming it that thenceforth it understands wills or loves nothing besides it self and for it self For the damned shall rise not changed because their Body rising again shall receive its limitations from their Soul The which seeing now it is with all depraved affections reflexed onely on it self after a corporeal manner It shall not in rising again delineate the Image of God which is as it were choaked in it in the Body but after a corporeal manner That is by way of figure Lastly It being deprived through the flood-gate of death of the helps of Imagination Memory and Free-Will It afterwards understands wills loves all things from a blind apprehension as being onely addicted to it self For it knows its Immortality but feels Damnation and complaines of it as that Injustice is done unto it Because the love of it self is onely to excuse its excuses in sins as being committed in dayes of ignorance and innocency with much frailty of Nature lyings in wait of Enemies and want of sufficient Grace As neither that an eternal punishment is deservedly due for a momentary transgression For then it begins to be mad and persists in hating of God Chiefly because it knows the unviolable arrest of its loss and an eternal impossibility of escaping It being therefore cut off in its hope passeth even from the very beginning of its entrance into the utmost desperation in a place where no piety compassion refreshment or recantation is entertained It happens also that seeing the Understanding doth naturally transform it self into the Idea of the thing understood and therefore into the similitude of evil Spirits its Objects Therefore there is alwaies a present hatred of God despair cursing damnation and the furious torments of Hell The Almighty of his goodness vouchsafe to break the snares that are extended for us in our passage Amen CHAP. CIII The Property of External Things THe spiritual beginning of Life being now finished before I descend unto corporeal and sensible Organs and other supports of Life I will propose something concerning Places First of all therefore