generation of mixt bodies whereby the pleasing motion of Nature might be disturbed 103. Neither in nature are those four qualities contrary one to another but onely divers and unlike one to another neither do they ruin but unite into a firm league one with another So Heat and Cold in a remiss degree do amicably agree and commix in one and the same subject that a middle and temperate quality to wit a lukewarness might be produced But if in the intense degree they couple not without a fight and combat this proceeds from the excess and tyranny of the intension which cannot endure two qualities equally heightened and adverse to be partners and sharers of one and the same Sovereignty but there will fall out a tumult But indeed Nature casteth out intense qualities as bastards and strangers 104. Let not therefore any fancy that Nature admits fire intense into the family of her Elements for such a fire would be fit for destruction not generation would not be according to but against Nature which avoids violent things and delights in a temperature in which is no fighting no contrariety For the Rule of Nature cannot away with the rage of a scorching heat or a wasting cold or the distemper of moist and drie but doth pleasingly lye down in a composed temperature Let not any therefore search for the intense qualities in the Elements of things he will find them in them either less or more remitted 105. He is deceived therefore who says that hot and cold moist and drie are simple contraries For the Earth which by Aristotle is laid down as drie in the highest should always quarrel with the Air which is said by him to be moist in the highest Also Water that is cold in the highest according to his opinion should be opposite to Fire that is hot in the highest and this repugnancy would inclose by force every one of the common Elements or every Region of the World within the verge of its sphear and by reason of this antipathie would destroy all hospitality betwixt them But we are convinced of the contrary both by reason and experience For ditches and all hollow places under the Earth yea the very bowels and pores of the Earth are replenished with Air and the intrinsical moisture of the Earth by which as with their mothers milk all Vegetables are nourished is nothing else but an hot and moist Air cleaving close to the Earth and handing it as a nursive and nourishing faculty the pores of the Earth are the dugs and the airy moisture the milk by which she the Mother and Nurse of things doth nourish her off-springs and give them growth 106. They who settle four Elements in as many humours do grant that Nature being moist is receiveable yea is the subject of four Elementary qualities how then can they hold a contrariety in them which they place in one and the same subject For though those four humours are distinguished by their respective differences yet have they but one base one common root to all to wit Humour for yellow choller which resembles fire is no less an humour than flegm which resembles water and the same may be said of adust Choller and Bloud although they do not absolutely but comparatively confound the four Elements in a moist Being 107. If there were any repugnancy in the qualities and elements of Nature the greatest would be betwixt hot and cold and so betwixt Water and Fire but the nature of these are not adversary many generations which are under the Waters do evidence for wheresoever there is any generation or life there must be fire as the nearest intrinsical efficient moving and altering cause of the matter for generation Hence Men Beasts and the Fowls their Being have And ghastly Monsters rowling on a wave A fiery vigour to their seeds is given The homage for their birth is due to Heaven 108. There fore certainly he will be in the right who shall acknowledge those four first qualities inborn and essential to the things themselves and to their Elements to be apt to a mixture by the direction of Nature and not contrary for they are as it were four Organs or instruments which Nature makes use of in the perfecting of her alterations and generations 109. Nature sets up a Potters trade for she is wholly taken with making her matter circular these four qualities are as the wheels by which she doth by degrees and wisely inform her works through a circular and slow motion 110. Of those four Wheels two viz those of Moist and Drie are most agreeable to the matter because Nature doth turn and work the matter between these two those two qualities are nearest the matter because more subject to be passive and to a change But the other two to wit of Hot and Cold are more of action because by their turns they alter and change the former these are passive those active are as it were the active instruments of Nature working upon her passive matter 111. Let us therefore cast off that tenent of Contraries as contrary to natures concord and dash out it with a pen of iron with the good leave of learning from the depraved table of Philosophy and let us in the room of it inscribe the Symbole of Concord which Nature doth acknowledge of the same standing with her self by whose help the delightfull copulation of actives with passives is procured in every Generation 112. Those who according to the flying opinion do stand for four Elements contrary each to other do necessarily introduce a fifth as the knot or bond-tye of concord as the Peace-maker otherwise they could not receive any perfect mixture or any temperature in the work of generation but without a rudder or a ruler would float a drift through the vast Ocean of Nature never able to reach a port or bring forth a birth and so would they cheat the common Genius of Nature of her proper end 113. For these four being acknowledged by reason of their repugnant qualities to keep up an eternal war betwixt themselves cannot be united or appeased in the generation of mixt Beings but rather with their mutual conflict rushing in will procure an Abort than a birth in Nature unless their contrary actings be composed to a peaceable love by the part of some fifth heavenly and tempering Nature which may introduce a temperature void of Hot and Cold Drie and Moist 114. That fifth Element as they call it or heavenly and incorruptible Spirit springing from the light motion and virtue of the heavenly bodies upon these lower Beings and preparing the Elements for motion and life and stopping from ruin particular individuals as far as their setledness will permit hath merited the name of the salt Nature the tie of the Elements the Spirit of the world to be given it by the searchers of occult Philosophie 115. If there were any contrariety between the principles of things certainly it was between Light and Darkness
the compleatly mixed body because their parts have a correspondence proportionable with the parts of the world and have a kind of Analogie with them we may call them by the same names the more solid parts Earth the moister Water the more spiritual Air the inborn heat Nature's fire the hidden and essential virtues a man may safely term Heavenly and Astral Natures or the Quint-Essence and so every mixed body may by this Analogie triumph in the title of Micro-cosme 53. He that did appoint the first Elements for the generation of bodies alone knows how out of them to make all particulars and to resolve them being made into them again 54. Let not them therefore refuse the Light who working about the Elements of Nature either in the production of some body from them or the resolution of some into them create their own trouble since these Elements are onely subject to the dominion of Nature and delivered to her onely from their beginning altogether unknown to all our art and not compassible by our endeavours 55. The Element of Nature may be termed the most simple portion of the first matter distinguished by its peculiar difference and qualities constituting a part of the essence in the material composition of mixt bodies 56. By the Elements of Nature are denoted the material principles of which some have a greater purity and perfection than others according to the greater Power and Virtue of that form that gives the compleatment They are for the most part distinguished according to their rarity or density so that those that are more thin and approch nearer to a spiritual substance are therefore the more pure and light and so are the more fit for motion and action 57. Upon this ground it was that reverend Antiquity did seign that the whole Empire of the world was divided between the three Brothers the Sons of Saturn as coheirs because it acknowledged onely three Elementary Natures or rather three parts of the Universe For by Jupiter the Omnipotent who shared heaven as his portion armed with his treble-darted Thunder-bolt superiour to the rest of the brothers what did those professours of mysteries understand but that the Heavens being the Region of heavenly bodies do assume a priviledge of Sovereignty over these inferiour beings But they placed Juno wife to Jupiter to praeside over the lowest Region of the Heaven or our Air because this Region troubled with vapours being moist and cold is as it were in a manner defiled and impure and nearest approaching to a female temperament as also because it is subjected to the orders of the higher Regions receive their effects and communicates them to us twisting it self with more condensed natures and stooping them to the bent of Heaven But because male and female differ onely in sex not in kind therefore would they not have the Air or the lower Heaven to be distinct in its essence and kind as another Element from the higher Heaven but onely diversified in place and by accidents To Neptune the god of the Sea they attributed a dominion over the waters By Pluto the lord of the lower parts abounding in wealth they denoted the Globe of the Earth replenished with riches with the desire of which the minds of men being inflamed are bitterly tormented So that those wise men admitted of three parts of the Universe or if you please of three Elements because under the Nature of Heaven they comprized the name of Fire and therefore did they draw Jupiter armed with his Thunder 58. We are Schollars to experience in this that all the bodies of mixt beings have their analysis and resolution into drie and moist and that all the excrements of creatures are terminated by the same differences from whence it is clearly evident that their bodies are made up onely of two sensible Elements in which notwithstanding the other are virtually and effectually But Air or the Element of the lower Heaven is not the object of our sense because in respect of us it is a kind of spiritual being The fire of Nature because it is the formal principle cannot be wrought to any separation or comprehension by any destruction by way of resolution nor by any art or artifice of man For the nature of Forms is not subjected to the censure of the Senses because of its spiritual being 59. The Earth is the thickest body of the Universe therefore is it accounted the heaviest and the centre of it we must assert its nature contrary to the received opinion to be accidentally drie because it doth retain most of the close and dark nature of the first matter but a shade and darkness are the coverts of cold from whence they flie the light and are diametrically opposite to it but the Earth in respect of its extream density is the mother of shade and darkness hardly passable by light and heat therefore roughly knit by an heightened cold And for this reason black choller is to be esteemed the coldest humour of all because it is under the power of the Earth the Earth under Saturns who is accounted the Authour of a cold and melancholick temperature Further those things that are ingendered in the bowels of the Earth of the substance of the Earth as Marble and Stones are of a cold nature although we must otherwise conceive of mettals because they are rather of an airy nature and have in them sparkles of the Fire of Nature and a spirit of Sulphur congealing their moist and cold matter Yet Mercurie surpassing the rest in moisture and cold is beholding to the Earth for his coldness and to the Water for his moisture It is otherwise with those things that are produced in the Sea as in Amber and Coral and many other things that have their beings from the Sea and fresh Waters which as it is apparent are of a hot temper so that we have this instruction both from reason and experience that the greatest coldness is to be attributed to the Earth not to the Water 60. But driness doth agree to the Earth accidentally onely and in a remiss degree for it was created in the middest of the Waters and the order of beings required that in respect of its gravity being sunk in the Waters it should never separate from them but the Creatour using his Prerogative having removed the Waters gave to it an open surface that so there might be room made both for the creation of mixed Beings and for their habitation The Earth therefore was enfranchiz'd from its natural yoke of bondage and subjection to the Waters not by any order of Nature but by a priviledge of favour that so having its face wipt it might lift up a dry visage to the view of the Heavens and might partake of the welcome light of the world 61. Every cold and drie is averse from the faculty of Generation unless it be helped out by some eternal helps therefore it was the will of the Supream Authour of Nature to heat
the cold womb of the Earth with an heavenly fire and adjoyned to the drie globe of the Earth the moist nature of Water that so by the mixture of two generative causes moist and hot the sterility of the Earth might be helped and that by the mediation of the concourse and mixture of all the Elements the Earth might be made a natural Vessel for fruitfull Generation Therefore all Elements and all qualities are in the Earth 62. The body of the Earth was rightly created by the great God of a spongeous nature that so there might be a receptacle for Air Showers and heavenly Influences and also that the moist vapours being expelled by the force of inward heat from the Centre to the Superficies through the porous passages of the Earth might by a mean putrefaction corrupt the seeds of things and so prepare for generation these being thus disposed receive that enlivening and heavenly heat For Nature hath sunk in the depths a magnetick love by the actings of which they draw down and suck out the efficacy and virtue of things above which do increase the strength of the information and hasten the sweetness of vital Air 63. The heat that comes from the inwards of the Earth is moist and impure and doth corrupt by reason of the tainted mixture of Earth and Water But the most pure and heavenly doth generate by excitation dilatation and furthering the inbred heat to life even that inbred heat which is hidden in the seeds of things and as Natures secret closed in their centre But because both these heats are of the same kind they have a joynt and amicable operation in the act of generation and are inseparably united until they are brought forth to life and large vegetation 64. Water is of a middle nature betwixt what is thick and what is of a thin nature betwixt the Earth and the Air Natures menstruum a volatile body flying and not enduring fire drawn forth by a moderate heat into a vapour assuming multiplyed shapes more unstable than Proteus 65. The moist Element is Mercurie which sometimes assuming the nature of a bodie sometimes of a spirit doth attract to himself by his revolutions the virtues of superiour and inferiour Beings and as it were receiving their instructions doth trade in commerce as their agent or factor amongst the remotest natures of the Universe neither will he leave his trafficquing till all the Elements of the corruptible Nature receive their fixation and purgation by fire and there issue upon it an Universal Sabbath 66. Water being the nearest in nature to the first matter doth easily receive her impress The Chaos the ancient Parent of all things was a kind of subtile and dark vapour a kind of a moist dark substance like a thin smoak from whose most subtile part the Heavens are drawn forth into order which a three-fold difference divides into a three-fold province to wit the Supream which is the noblest the middle which assumes the second place of dignity and honour the lowest is inferiour to the other two both in scite and honour The thicker substance of the matter went to the making of that watry heap which is a middle nature The thickest part which is as it were the dregs of the whole Mass sate down to the bottom and was setled for the globe of the Earth The extremities of this artifice to wit the Heaven and the Earth did recede more from the first state of their matter and from their ancient shape the Heaven in regard of its great rarity and levity the Earth in respect of its great density and gravity But the Water which was a mean betwixt them continued a nature more like the first formless Abyss from whence it proceeds so that with ease it turns it self by rarefaction into smoak or vapour which is the image of the ancient Hyle or first Matter 67. Moisture is more proper to Water than Coldness because Water is of a greater rarity and more lightsom than Earth but those things which communicate most of light are farthest off from cold the morâ—rarity there is in any thing the nearer vicinity there is to light Wateâ— retained the symbole of moisture from the first matter the Abyss as the Earth coldness For the Architect Spirit of the World divided the more thick parts into those two nearly-allied Natures 68. Coldness wooes Driness and invests it self with it where it is vigorously predominant by the constriction of moist beings and by the desiccation of them as is evident in Snow Ice and Hayl For it is the work of Nature to bind and drie the Water than which nothing is more humid by the proper instrument of Cold yea the principal and common subject of Heat and Cold is humidity by both which it is so strongly assailed till it be conquered from whence it falls out that in Autumn so many drie leaves fall at the first cold that the stalks of feeble Plants upon the strength of Winter in the height of Drought are void of moisture and drie away The cold penetrating doth so scorch and makes so furious an assult upon the vital humours hence proceeds flaggy and withered age at length death comes and cuts down all with his well-set sickle and sweeps you into his general Granary How then can any one conceive Cold to be friendly to Moisture and to be its inherent property Since Nature suffers not the Elements to act against each other lest they should destroy and oppose each the others powers but an intense Cold quickly would bring under a remiss and weak moisture and would swallow it up all by a violent constriction so that by this means one of the Elements being lost there would necessarily follow an imperfection in the work of the rest and a deficiency in the generation of all things It is therefore not suitable to the Law of Nature to invest Water with the property of being cold in the highest degree 69. Out of these solider Natures of Earth and Water doth Nature extract her Elements by which she compacts Vessels and corporeal Organs for out of the commixture of both is made a clay which is the next matter of things in generation for it is in stead of the Chaos In which virtually and confusedly are all Elements Out of this clay was the first Father of mankind created and after all Generation issued from it In the Generation of creatures is a clay made of the seed and the menstruum from whence proceeds the living Creature In the production of Vegetables the seeds do first fall into a subtile clay by putrefaction and then are wrought up to a vegetable body In the generation of Mettals there comes forth a clay from the perfect mixture of Sulphur and Mercury and their resolution in a fat Water by which means the mettallick bodies are indurated by a long decoction In the Philosophical resolving of mettals and in the creation of that Philosophical Secret first is brought forth a
by reason of their opposite qualities but those qualities were tempered by the coition of both principles and from the extreams became a middle temper and such were they when they dislodged from the first and went into the second principles or Elements 116 The extreams are contrary each to other onely by reason of the intension of their opposite qualities but those things that spring from the mixture of these extreams are not â—dverse because they are of a middle nature and the â—fflux of the union of the two extreams to wit of Light and Darkness 117. That out of the mixture of Contraries to wit of Light and Darkness do not come contraries forth but in a temperature is plain by that of the Kingly Prophet breaking forth into these words of the Eternal Light He bowed the Heavens and came down and Darkness was under his feet c. He made Darkness his Covert his Pavilion in the middest of it c. The very fountain of Eternal Light that he might exhibit the brightnes of his infinite glory to mortal eyes did wrap it up in a cloud and dark mask and brought the Darkness to the Light that he might make of the two Extreams a moderate light and so allay the splendour of so great a light as was not to be gazed on without the ruin of the Spectatour yea Philosophers do affirm the Rain-bow that was given by God as a sign and token of a Covenant made with man to be produced out of a mixture of Light and Darkness that so that Symbole of the temperature of Gods wrath existing out of contraries might be tempered of various coherent and friendly colours 118. Those that have delivered that the Earth Water Air and Fire in their sphears are distinct Elements of the World and are turned each into other by mutual reciprocation did but slightly look into the depths of Nature for it is more safe to call them the compleating parts of Nature or the Shops of the Elements for the Elements of the world do not lye under our view or senses as separated in their proper Regions but do lye hid and keep close in their wombs till they come together in the generation of mixt bodies and make up a body But those parts of the World as so far mutually different can never have a conversion in them neither can that one common quality whereby those natures are linked together beget such a change that out of things of a diverse should be formed a like nature yea that they should be turned into the same 119. If those four Elements asserted by them do change and barter their rooms natures and offices all the compact frame of the World devoted to a chance and motion would be in a perpetual fluctuation which we know is established by God in a certain and constant order and scite and distinction of parts For Earth will quickly be made Water Water Air Air Fire and so backward and by this the Centre shall run out to Circumference and the Circumference run into the Centre the farthest and the middle parts of the World shall of their own accord remove out of their places that so after a long time the order of Nature shall be inverted whilest the top and the bottom and the bottom and the top change places and clash together He who doth fancy this so fair composure of a World doth not deserve to have so fine a piece termed a World but a Chaos an Abyss which Nature a friend to Order doth absolutely detest 120. They which do say that those extream bodies of the lower World Earth and Fire supposing not granting a sphear of Fire are turned into each other do wrong themselves and truth too For their distant and repugnant natures do disagree from such a change for the heightened cold thickness and gravity of the Earth are so opposite to the same degree or heat subtility and levity in Fire that they can never be brought to change Besides the Earth a fixed body will not yield to fire but slighteth its virtue if we may believe the opinions of Chymists and common experience neither doth any thing flie out from it but a fat and warry humour both of them not natural to the Earth but if any thing is to be turned into elementary Fire it must necessarily be light and volatile that it may be translated into its Orb and Nature The Earth therefore being most weighty and so the Centre of all being most fixt and so least volatile how can it be turned into Fire and be carried up into the Sphear of Fire or how can Fre the highest and lightest of all be beaten down to be essentially united with the Earth contrary to the laws of Nature It were a more easie conversion of Water and Fire because they are nearer by one degree than Earth and Fire 121 They that believed the exhalations from the region of the earth drawn up into the Air and because kindled there to be earthie and converted into the Element of Fire are far out of the way of truth for they are not earthie but rather airie natures for our Air being moist through the contagion of water lying in the drie bosom of the Earth gather a fatness and by the consortship of the Earth doth temper the moist with the drie but when it exhales through the pores and crevises of the Earth being drawn by heat or else the abundance of the matter forcing out it breaks not forth out of its prison without a noise crack whence proceed earth-quakes and openings not without much ruin that exhalation got loose doth flie up into the region proper to light bodies and there is set on fire being digested by its errant motion and heat more fully into a sulphureous matter Therefore that matter is not truly earthie since it is neither ponderous nor cold but because it is made fat and combustible by the concourse of hot drie and moist it may more properly be called the accidental food of fire than the Fire of Nature or the Elementarie Fire That is a bastard a spurious generation which for that very reason ought not to have been placed amongst the natures or been called by the names of Elements therefore these Firings are rightly called by Aristotle imperfectly-mixed things The same we must conceive of the smoke of combustibles For Smoke being unctious doth quickly take fire which is nothing else but smoke kindled 122 Fire feeds upon fat and unctious matter but the fat moisture of the Air is contempered with drought whence we often may see a sulfureous matter extrinsecally drie and terminated with drought as our ordinarie sulfur gun-powder and the like which though they seem to be outwardly drie do close within them a fat moisture and upon the firing are resolved into it 123 And truly they slip to purpose that have taken an opinion seeing stones and heavie bodies sometimes generated in the Air and shot down thence by lightnings thunders
spiritual light 204 A transparent body as glass being pointed with the Sun beams doth gather them and receives in it the image of the Sun and is made lightsom as it were a brief draught of the Sun which sends forth its beams on the farthest side opposite to the Sun from which the beams of the Sun being refracted by the concourse of the glass seem to pass through the glass which yet indeed they do not for the rays by reason of the Air that cleaves to them are setled about the glass the spirit of light onely passing forward but by the beams which are darted out on the other side are the beams of the Sun or of the glass being kindled by the Sun-beams into a lightsom bodie 205 Every transparent body especially glass is a medium of light because it receives light into it and having received it doth communicate it to the Air that is beyond it not by the sending forth of lightsom Air about it which is repugnant to Nature but by another double way First because a transparent body yields to and le ts pass the spirit of light and doth send it forth abroad being received by it which sent forth gets into the adjoyning Air hence springs that plentifull light and besides because that transparent Medium is made by the benefit of the light it receives not onely light in it self but lightsom to others and by the spirit of Light which is in love with transparent bodies becomes as it were a lighted lamp But now every lightsom body hath the priviledge and power to scatter its light which is not granted to thick and dark bodies unless by reflection 206 Those which are the pure natures of mixt Beings are mearly spiritual the bodies are as it were the Barks and Vessels in which they are contained and kept And not otherwise could those sublime Natures unless tied to the corporeal Elements and so bound in by their weight pass this lower Sea and lodge in the Centre of this Abyss They come subject to sense by their bodies the bodies are moved and acted by them so do they do interchangeable offices This that secret of Homers Juno whom Jupiter let down with a weight at her heels 207 Since the whole frame of the Universe is but one onely body one onely universal Nature consisting of many natures and bodies bound together by their proper Mediums and bonds it should not be wondered at that such parts members are knit together by a strong but secret tye and do give a mutual assistance each to other for they have not onely a mutual relation to but also a communication with one the other and these various natures do exercise a kind of a commerce the extreams by the middle the middle by the nearest But this communication is performed by spirits sent forth for all the parts of the world all the individual natures of the world do abound in spirits many of which flowing forth leave room and give way for those that flow in and so is there by the continual ebbing out and flowing in of spirits a continual reparation of the world and of the natures thereof This is the scale of general Nature presented in a vision to the Patriarch Jacob these are Mercuries wings by whose help being mistically termed by the Ancients the Messenger of the Gods he was thought frequently to visit the coasts of the Earth and the courts of Heaven 208 The active principles of every kind of Vegetables or Animals are spiritual their bodies are the passive organs of the spirits by which they exercise the faculties of the senses and do by various actings put forth their powers as the authours of actions so that in the general life may be termed a concent of actions or a continued act diversified by the multiplicitie of actions flowing from a spiritual fountain and brought forth by corporeal organs 209 It is the propertie of the spiritual nature to act of the corporeal to be passive where therefore there is a concourse of both as in mixed bodies that as the more noble doth act and rule this as passive doth obey For the power of act is the priviledge of ruling but the burden of being passive is the mark of being servile so the in-set fire in the seed is the principle of generation and life the highest operating spirit the Archaeus of Nature the orderer in the preparing and forming the matter in the mixtion and distribution of the Elements So doth the Form in the mixt Being exercise its rule at his will as the fountain of all actions So do the virtues of the heavenly Beings dispose and seal all inferiour Elements and corporeal matter 210 Natural bodies which have an active vigour and an occult cause of acting do not as is commonly thought act alone by their qualities but by secret spirits For the fire doth not heat and burn by the single qualitie of heat but by the continual flux of spirits and rayes Neither do the Earth and Water refrigerate or moisten by the alone qualities of cold and moist but by their vapours and in-nate spirits sent forth do affect the sense from without Neither do poysons onely by cold or hot qualities but by malignant spirits bring death or infection sooner or later Concerning Plants or Herbs we must judge alike because their active virtues do not lie hid in their qualities but in their essence which Nature hath made abundant in spirits whose basis and principle powers are concerning spirituals for the bodies are as the shadows or the investments of things under which the invisible Nature is hidden but since qualities are the accidents of things are not therefore able to constitute their essence nor shew forth in their actings those wonderful virtues but are onely as the in set instruments of actions passions which the working spirits that are the workers of all actions make use of in their actings but yet Nature indures them not as principles and efficient causes of actions 211 The natural tinctures odours and tasts of things are special and spiritual gifts of Nature with which it hath suitably inriched her Beings which do not onely contribute to their ornament or onely are inherent in them as extrinsecal accidents but also have an in-set and radical cause and are not so much to be termed accidents as demonstrative tokens of inward virtues by which the occult and formal signatures of things discover themselves 212 Rarefaction and condensation are the two instruments of Nature by which spirits are converted into bodies and bodies into spirits or also by which corporeal Elements are changed into spiritual Beings and spiritual into corporeal for Elements do suffer these changes in mixt bodies So the Earth doth minister spiritual food to the roots of vegetables which being fed upon doth go into the stalk the bark the boughs the branches the flowrs and into the corporeal substance The same is done by Nature in Animals For the meat and
truly perfect information 42 The third way of informing the matter is in which a weaker form remains as it often happens though after divers ways in this our Elementarie region in which the appetite of the matter which is an evidence of weakness and imperfection luxuriating and lavishly springing in its basis and root cannot be sufficiently satisfied by the reason of its remotion and distance from its former principle neither can this weakness be cured Hence the matter not being fully informed according to its desire languisheth under the desire of a new form which having attained it doth bring to it as to its husband the dowrie a large wardrobe of corruption and faults This sullen perverse wrangling and inconstant matter doth always burn for new beds greedily wooing all forms which it longs for if absent hates if present 43 By which it is evident that the leaven of alteration and corruption and at length the fatal venom of death do happen not from the repugnancie of qualities but from an infected Matrix and from the menstruous poyson of a dark matter and this causeth it so to fall out both in elements and in the mixt bodies of this lower region because the form weakned and insufficient by its defilement and imperfection and being not of a just poiz and assize could not purge it out in its first and radical union This is confirmed by holy Writ in which we may observe our first Parent was not created according to his matter immortal but that he might be guarded from the tincture and corruption of the matter and therefore God set in Paradise a Tree abounding with the fruit of Life which he might make use of as his assertour guardian from the frailty of his matter and the bondage of death from the presence and use of this he was sequestrated after his fatal fall and final sentence 44 Two there were therefore first principles of Nature before which were none after which all to wit the first matter and its universal form by the copulation of which issued the Elements as second principles which are nothing else but the first matter diversly informed out of the mixture of this is made the second matter which is the nearest subject of accidents and doth receive the various turns of Generation and Corruption These are the degrees this the order of the Principles of Nature 45. Those who annex to the Matter and Form a third Principle viz. Privation do blast Nature with a Calumnie far from whose purpose it is to admit a Principle that shall go counter to her intention but her end in Generation being to obtain a Form to which Privation is adverse certainly this cannot be part of Natures aim They had spoken more to the purpose if they had made Love a principle of Nature for the matter being widowed in its form covets eagerly the embracing of a new But Privation is the meer absence of a form upon which ground the honourable title of being a principle of Nature is no way due to it but rather to Love which is a mediatour betwixt that which desires and that which is desired betwixt what is beautifull and what is deformed betwixt matter and form 46. Corruption is far nearer than Privation to the principle of Generation since that is a motion disposing the matter to generation by successive degrees of alteration but Privation acts nothing is of no work in generation but Corruption doth both promove and prepare the matter that it may be put in a capacity of receiving the form and as it were a mediatrix doth act Pander-like that the matter may the more easily get a satisfaction for its lust and by his help may the sooner obtain the copulation of a form Corruption therefore is the instrumental and necessary cause of Generation But Privation is nothing else but a meer vacancy of an active and formal principle and darkness was upon the face of the depths to wit of the uninformed and dark matter 47. The harmony of the Universe consists in the diverse and gradual information of the matter For from the poized mixture of the first matter and its form flows both the difference of the Elements and of the Region of the world which is briefly but truly set out by Hermes when he said That whatsoever is below hath an assimulation with somewhat above For things above and below were made of the same matter and form differencing onely in respect of their mixture scite and perfection in which the distinction of the parts of the world and the latitude of all Natures are handled 48. We must believe that the first matter after it had received information from the light and was distinguished by it into several things did go wholly out of it self and was transmitted into the Elements and that which was compounded by them and was wholly exhausted in the consummation of the work of the Universe so that those things which were closed in her being brought forth and exposed to view she began wholly to lie hid in them and we must acknowledge it is not to be found in a separation from them 49. Nature hath left us a shadow of that ancient confused Mass or first matter in drie water not wetting which rising out of those impostumes of the earth or Lakes doth spring forth big with a manifold seed being also volatile by reason of its lightness through its heat from which being coupled with its male he that can take out and separate and joyn again ingeniously the intrinsecal Elements he may well boast that he hath gained the most precious secret of Art and Nature yea a Compendium or brief of the Heavenly Essence 50. He that searcheth for the simple elements of bodies separated from all mixture takes a labour in vain for they are unknown to the most piercing judgements of men for our common elements are not the simple element yea they are inseparably mixed one with another The Earth Water and Air may be more truly called the Parts that perfect and compleat the Universe rather than Elements yet they may be rightly termed the Matrix's of them 51. The bodies of Earth Water and Air which are sensibly distinguished by their sphears are different from the elements which Nature maketh use of in the work of Generation and which make up mixt bodies for these in their mixture in respect of their thinness are not discernable but are barr'd from the senses until they conjoyn in a condensed matter and body There never hath a creature been Whose principles were to be seen But those things which fill up the inferiour Globe of the Universe as too thick impure and indigested are debarred from the right of perfect generation for they are rather the shadows and figures of elements than true Elements 52. Those Elements which forming Nature makes use of in her mixtions and in making bodies although they are not to be found out before mixtion yet in the finished work and in
clay out of the seed of both parents purged and mixed 70. Water is the base and root of all moistures yea it is moisture it self from which all moist things receive their denomination therefore Water may be rightly defined the Fountain of the moist Element or the Spring of moisture whose property it is to wet by its liquour But those things are termed humid which do in themselves according to a less or greater degree contain a moisture or a watry liquor Moisture is receivable of all qualities so bloud and yellow choler are humours endued with their own heat although they have their foundation in the Element of Water Aqua-fortis and the like are empowered with a burning and a fiery nature The burning Water and many other essences which are extracted from oyls and water do abound in heat although the root of them which is Water be cold because Nature doth first imprint in a moist elemēt various resemblances and signatures of its powers and doth in it en-root and infuse its principal and choice qualities Moisture is the first subject of Nature upon which her prime care is bestowed her first charge layed out by whose liquour it doth dilute and mingle various colours and indelible tinctures To it first do the spiritual qualities communicate themselves in it first do they take up their being and actings 71. The lower Waters being divided into two do occupy a double seat for one part of them brimming the Earth doth lean on it as it were as its proper Base and with the Earth makes but one Globe the other part flying upward doth range up and down the Region of the neighbour Air and there making to it self many masqued fancies of bodies and various figures of several phantasms doth reave hither and thither over-hanging the lower Region 72. Always there is a great part of the Waters that keep above and being driven to and fro by the Caroach of the Wind doth post over divers parts of the Air which was in this manner ordered from the Day of the Creation by the enacting of the Wisdom of GOD that so the uncumbered and plain face of the Earth might be unmasked and fited for the generation of things For the Channels of the Sea and Rivers were not sufficient to receive the whole Waters but if all should break the confining Bars of the Heavens and come tumbling down it would not onely cover the plain face of the Earth but it may be overtop the highest Mountains Such an enloosening of the Cataracts of Heaven we may guess did occasion the old Cataclysm or Deluge 73. Water is not onely sublimated into a vapour by heat alone neither is it onely bound up in a cloud by cold but to both the virtues of the Sun and the Stars do contribute their aids not onely by multiplying the vigours of the Elements but also by a kind of Magnetick virtue attracting and retaining a moisture much or less according to their different position and the diverse figure of Heaven from whence we observe the various ordering of years and times for indeed that Mass of Waters is not kept in so poized onely by the solidation of Cold or the Air but by the powerfull order and regiment of superiour bodies 74. Lest there might seem to Divine Justice a want of judgements for the execution of his wrath he made that Ocean which is poized over our heads to be volatile or flying and withal brought into his Armoury those fiery darts his Thunder-bolts that so the presumptuous sinners that cannot be won by love might be wrought about by fear 75. They are much out of the way who do attribute to Air moisture in the highest degree upon this ground because it is easily kept in within the bounds of another but hardly within its own for this is the property of light and liquid bodies not of moist and so doth better agree with fire and Heaven which natures are more rarified than with Water and Air for bodies that are rarified because they of their own will flow every where cannot be comprized within their own bounds and therefore stand in need of another Onely firm and solid bodies are kept in within their own compass and superficies which cannot be done by those things that are of a subtile nature because by reason of their thinness they melt and are fluid and so less consistent From whence this flows that the Air is a body of greater rarity but not of greater humidity 76. The Air from it self hath no quality intense and in the highest degree but sometimes hath them upon loan else-where The nature of Air is a middle nature betwixt things below and above and so doth with ease assume the qualities of those that border upon it from whence it happens that its inferiour Region according to the diversity of times hath a variety of temper which inconstancy is occasioned by the changes of the neighbouring and thicker bodies of Water and Earth whose state is easily altered by heat and cold 77. The whole Air is the Heaven the floor of the World Natures sieve through which the virtues and influences of other bodies are transmitted a middle nature it is that knits all the scattered natures of the Universe together a most thin smoak kindled by the fire of Heaven into a light as it were an immortal flame the subject of light and shade of day and night impatient of vacuity the principal transparent the easiest receiver of almost all qualities and effects yet the constant retainer of none a borderer upon the spiritual nature therefore in the Tracts concerning the Mysteries of Philosophers it is called by the name of a Spirit 78. The lower Region of the Air is like unto the neck or higher part of an Alembick for through it the Vapours climbing up and being brought to the top receive their condensation from Cold and being resolved into water fall down by reason of their own weight So Nature through continued distillations by sublimation of the Water by cohobation or by often drawing off the liquour being often poured on the body doth rectifie and abound it In these operations of Nature the Earth is the vessel receiving Therefore the Region of the Air that is nearer to us being bounded by the Region of Clouds as by a vaulted Chamber is of a greater thickness and impurity than those Regions above 79. The middle Region of the Air is not that in which is the gathering of the Clouds from whence are Lightenings and Thunders which is onely the higher part of the lower Region and the border of it but that which is above the Clouds is to be stiled The Middle Region whither the watry Being by reason of its gravity cannot reach yet whither sulphureous exhalations disburthened of the load of their Vapours do climb up and there by a motion either of their own or anothers being kindled burn Such are the flaming Meteors of divers sorts which are viewed in the middle Region whence we
may guess that it abounds with a hot and moist though not a watry yet a fat Being which is the food of fire In this Region is much peace and a good temperature because it is not hurryed with the tempests of any wind and onely the lighter excrements of the inferiour Nature are sucked up hither 80. The higher Region near the Moon is all airy not fiery as it hath been taken up though falsely in the Schools There is the peaceable habitation of the purest Air and as it borders upon the Heavenly Region so it approcheth it in nature for it is not defiled with the least â—mut of the lower Abyss There is a temperature in the highest a purity but little inferiour to that of the neighbouring Heaven In this place to fancy a sphear of fire is the shame of a Philosopher which breaking the Laws of Nature would have long ere this ruined the Fabrick of the Universe 81. The Fire as a fourth Element of Nature was placed in the highest Region of the Air as in its proper sphear by the chief Philosophers being led by an argument from order and by conjecture rather than truth For let no man fancy any other fire of Nature than the celestial Light therefore the blessed Philosopher in his Genesis makes no mention of fire because he had before told of the creation of the Light upon the first day which is the genuine fire of Nature and truly he would else not have omitted Fire if it had been a principle of Nature having specified Earth Water and the Fowls of the Heavens 82. Let not any therefore fancy unless sleeping a Region of Fire burning next the Moon for the whole Air would not be able to bear so great an abundance of intense fire but it had long ago fed upon and ruined the whole Fabrick of the World for whatsoever it falls upon it feeds upon and devours being the designed ruin of the World and Nature 83. Such a Devourer of Nature is not lodged as an Element of Nature neither above the Air nor below the Earth Onely he doth tyrannize in the kingdom of Nature either in the height of the Air or the depths of the Earth or else being kindled upon the superficies of the Earth Therefore Lullius a man of a raised wit did justly account it amongst the Gyants and Tyrants of the World It may also be termed to be an Enemy to Nature because whatsoever is destructive to Nature is an adversary of Nature 84. Our common Fire is partly natural partly artificial It may be man borrowed it for the accommodation of life and for his necessity from the Celestial by an unition of the beams of it and a multiplication of its vigour or else by attrition or the collision of two bodies the Spirit of God suggesting the project to man 85. The Sovereign Creatour of all things did place the fiery spirit of a kindly heat in the Globe of the Sun to inspire light and an enlivening heat to the rest of the bodies in the Universe wherefore many have thought him to be the heart of the whole Fabrick for from him springs the principle of all generation and life He that searcheth for any other Element of fire in the world doth shut his own eyes against the Sun 86. The source therefore of the Fire of Nature is seated in the Sun whose heat is always of an equality and temperate in it self though it be felt by us either greater or less according to his appropinquation or distance or according to his direct or oblique beams or according to the scituation or nature of places The Sun hath been elevated by most Philosophers as the Soul of the World breathing in motion and a faculty of generation to Nature 87. The Sun is not the Eye of the World as some Ancients termed it but is the Eye of the Creatour of the World by which he doth sensibly view his sensible creatures by which he conveys to them the sweetly-affecting beams of his love by which he renders himself viewable to them For scarcely could a sensible Nature have comprehended an insensible Creatour therefore he formed for himself and us so noble a body roab'd in his own glory whose rays that nearest approach Divinity are Spirit and Life 88. From that universal Principle of life all the in-bred heat of Elements or mixed Beings is derived which hath gotten to be called by the name of Fire for wheresoever a free heat a natural motion or life lodges there Nature hath hidden Fire as the principle of them and the first mover of the Elements by which the sensible Elements or the Portions of the World are elementated and receive their animations yet doth it cleave close to the womb of the Earth being bound up by the Earths density and coldness exciting an Antiperistasis 89. That Fire of Nature which is seated in mixt bodies hath chosen the radical moisture as its proper seat the principal residence of which is in the heart although it be diffused through all the parts of the body as in the prime organ of life and the centre of this little world whence that Prince of Nature as commanding from its Castle doth move concordantly all the faculties and the rest of the organs and doth in-breathe life to the humours of the mixed Being to the spirits and finally to the whole Elementary Mass And being the Sun and Vicegerent of the Sun doth act all in this little that the Sun doth in that large World 90. As the Sun being in the middest of the rest of the Planets doth enlighten them with his light replenish them with his influential virtues beget an harmony of life by his enlivening spirit so doth the solar spirit in the middle of the Elementary Nature giveth it an influential light and gathers the Elements together in the work of Generation and doth unite and enliven them 91. The first Agent in the World is the Fire of Nature which being seated in the Globe of the Sun doth diffuse that vivifical heat by means of his rays through all the dominions of Nature working in the seeds a power of activity and setling in them the principle of motion and action at the removal of which all motion ceaseth and also the faculty of life and action 92. The heat of Nature and the light of Nature are really one and the same for they have a continual and uniform effluence from the same Fountain i. the Sun but are distinguished by their office for the heat is to penetrate into the most inward parts of Nature but light is to manifest and open the outward parts the office of heat is to move the occult Natures of things that of light to set before the eyes sensible accidents both of these is wrought by the rays of the Sun The Sun therefore is the first Organ of Nature by whose approach or distance all the operations of Nature are variously governed intended or remitted by means of light and
heat 93. The second universal Agent is that same light not so immediately issuing from the Fountain but reflected from solid bodies inlightened by it as the heavenly yea the Earth it self for the light of the Sun beating upon those bodies gives a motion to their dispositions and faculties and alters them and diffuseth their several and different virtues by the reflection of his rays through the whole frame of Heaven and of our Air for by those rays as by so many conveyances are the various effects of several bodies dispersed every where for the benefit and harmony of Nature which are called by us Influences These are the true and first Elements of Nature which because they are spiritual do communicate themselves to us under some airy or also some watry Nature to whose good act as to the roots of the Elements we are beholding for the gift of every birth and of all life 94. Love styled by Plato the Eldest of the gods was breath'd into nature begotten by the Divine Spirit and hath the place of a Genius in her dispositions In the first Division of the World betwixt the first brothers she gave the judgement for the partitions of their families and after had alwayes the Praefecture in Generation 95. The God of Nature did fix the first bond of Love in the things of Nature between the first Matter and the universal Form the Heaven and the Earth Light and Darkness Plenty and Poverty Beauty and Deformity The second degree of Love from the first couple which is as it were the loving embraces of the Parents issued into the Elements which having a fraternal tye to bind them have divided betwixt them the whole right of Nature The third and last degree is compleated in mixed bodies which excites them by the in-born and in-bred sparkles of love to a propagation and multiplication of their like The Divine Love hath appointed this treble Love-knot as a kind of Magical tye that it might deliver it self by traduction into all and every part of his workmanship Love is the Base of the Universe the Cube of Nature and the fastening bond of things above and below 96. Let those avaunt therefore who do attribute the concordant motions of Nature to Discord for Nature is peaceable and pleasant in all her workings yea she is delightfully tickled in her actings The very Elements of things in their coition are wholly lost in love that they may knit themselves together by their mutual embraces and of many be made one 97. Let the Academies stand up and tell us how the first Matter can be the first subject of contraries and how Love can lye amongst the brawlings and jarres of Enmity or that eager appetite which the Prince of Philosophers acknowledgeth residing in the heart of this Matter whereby it doth as earnestly lust for its form as a man for a woman Will not those enemies constituting the seeds of Beings and the mixt bodies by their eternal food at length force Love and Concord to yield to their ruine 98. They that placed a lust between the Matter and the Form and yet an hatred and repugnancy in the Matter it self and in the Elements in making these contraries have made themselves so for according to the dictates of their School the Soul in all things generated onely man excepted is brought forth out of the power and privy virtue of the Matter But how can this be without love If the Matter radically doth lye under the dissentions of contraries must not the Form which springs from her very root feel the same portion Nay would it not be stifled by them in its first birth and cradle What man therefore that stood right in his wits would acknowledge the rule of these bandetties to be chief in the nuptials of Love and Nature in the very juncture of the mixture of the Elements and of the information of the Matter Yea who would expect an uniform and not a monstrous issue from the heterogeneous seed of opposite parents 99. Let therefore the Philosopher surcease to place the cause of the alteration of Elements of the corruption and failing of mixt beings in the repugnancy of the Elements but rather lay the fault upon the penurious weakness of the first matter For in the first Chaos 'Twixt moist and drie there was no battel fought Nor any enmitie 'twixt cold and hot It is indeed the Vulgar conceit that there was whereas onely two no way contrary of those four qualities to wit Cold and Moisture agreed to the female the matter and were in it The other two which are Heat and Drought which are masculine and formal qualities came forth out of the part of the informing light And the Earth was not called Drie Land before the drawing off the Waters and the coming on of the light Being which was first moist and covered with Waters 100. Therefore certainly reason it self doth evidence that those four qualities which by the Vulgar are accounted repugnant are not extant in the first matter unless after information And lest she might endure some contrariety in its solitude she had other diseases to wit Darkness Confusion Deformity Coldness an indigested Moisture with an impotency which are all evidences of a diseas'd and languishing body Therefore being infected from its creation with that corruption it derived it down to its posterity lodged in this lowest and weakest Region of the elements Therefore it is not set down in Genesis of that Abyss of Darkness that it was very good but reserv'd that gracefull Elogie for the Light and for the rest that were created 101. But who is there that hath the least dram of knowledge will conceive that this contentious repugnancy did flow from the form into the matter after the union of the four qualities in the matter being informed Since it is essential to and the intent of the form to adde a perfection to the matter and compleatly to perfect it into an harmony and consent and a temperament according to its ability 102. The first contraries through opposing qualities were Light and Darkness Light hath two qualities Heat and Drougth Darkness as many Cold and Moisture wholly opposite each to other because of their intention But after those two aged principles of Nature came together and the dark material and female principle was informed by the lightsom formal and masculine principle and impregnated by the light the whole matter of the Universe and all the Regions thereof received this priviledge of light though distinct in the degrees and differences for that fiery tincture of the Spirit of light left nothing unpierced and the four qualities also at first being in their highest degree were brought down to a remission in the informed matter and so closing sweetly contracted a fast friendship and consented to a temperature and so being made friendly they were entered into the homogeneous family of the Elements that so there might nothing of repugnancy or enmity lurk in the
and breaking of the clouds that the Fire turns to a stone or is converted into earth or have a conceit that the Earth is carried up thither This is done far otherwise for that hardened matter was never fire or earth nor proceeded from the Orb of Fire if there be any or from the bodie of the earth but an unctious and viscous humour in a manner clayish shut up in a cloud as in a fornace is so hardened and decocted as an earthen vessel by the heat of the burning exhalations that it turns a stone Hence proceed those darted Thunder-bolts Such meteors as these are the wens weaknesses and diseases of Nature not Elements In the same though after a slower manner is the stone generated in the bodie out of flegm in the reins or bladder For the Microcosm hath also his meteors 124 The fire of nature is far different from our artificial or accidental fire The fire of nature is double either Universal and Particular or Individual The Universal is diffused through all the parts of the Universe doth sweetly excite and move the propensive virtues of the celestial bodies doth impregnate and supply with engendering seed this Globe of ours designed for the generation of things doth infuse virtues into the seeds doth untwist the intangled power of nature mingles the Elements informs the Matter and finally doth unlock the secret of Nature but the fountain of it is in the Sun who as the Heart of the World doth stream forth his enlivening heat as his love through all regions But the particular Fire of Nature is in-born and in-bred in every mixed bodie and individual which flows as a rivulet from that General and doth work all things in this Microcosm or little World MAN according to an Analogie with the Sun in the Macrocosm or greater World But who is there that would not stile our common fire being an opposite of all generation living onely upon prey subsisting upon the ruins of other Beings the destruction of life deputing all things to ashes rather a foe than a friend to nature its enemie not its inmate and rather the ruin than the raising of Life But those fires that are bred in the Airie region are rather engendred by chance than by any intention of Nature 125 Neither are those two bodies of the Earth and Water situated next one to the other convertible each into the other but onely by reason of their neighbourhood are mingled together so that the Water washeth the Earth and the Earth thickens the Water and hence is made Clay being a bodie of neither but a middle betwixt both which if resolved by the force of fire will separate it self into both these natures The water flying out the earth settles neither will there be any conversion of each into the other for that cannot be effected by that single common qualitie of cold since the driness and moisture are not less powerful to resist than the mutual consent of cold can bring them to a conversion Besides the driness and fixation of the Earth are quite opposite to the moist and volatile nature of the Water so there is but one qualitie agreeing to an alteration and many disagreeings which will prevail in the combate Besides here is the help of nature always readie to conserve it self and doth never incline unless upon force and conquest to its ruin or change 126 We may guess the whole Globe of the Earth not to be of a less settled nature than the Heaven the Moon or the Stars for it if it be the centre of the World as it is generally received then certainly the constancie is not less necessary to it than to the rest of the bodies of the World Besides the earth is the same without any essential immutation of what it was from the beginning and what it will be to the end of ages But if it did suffer any notable detriment by the universal deluge in the general or any accidental in particular as by some chasme or by the breakings in of rivers or the Sea this falls out by the supream order of him that doth change at list the laws of the whole and every region or by the discordant harmonie of the World or by some disease of some distempered nature rather than by any propensiveness or viciousness of the Earth For all the bodies of the Universe do lie under their burdens and diseases although they be diversified according to the disagreement of Nature and difference of perfection yet the accidents do not change the nature and constancie of them in respect of the whole Absolute constancie and impassibilitie do onely suit to God alone but the Heaven Water Earth and the rest of the bodies of the Universe shall stand firm in regard of their essence to the designed period of their age 127 If any one of those four natures have a propensitie to conversion it will be strongest in the mean qualities for Water and Air are joyned in greater affinitie between themselves than with the rest or the others amongst themselves For they seem not to differ so much in their qualities as in the intension and remission of them not so much naturally as accidentally For since Water doth by a right of nature challenge to it self moisture and coldness it doth also communicate them to the lower region of the Air by way of commerce for Air obtains no proper qualitie almost besides the highest tenuitie yet capable of receiving the rest therefore is it of an heavenly nature being of it self most temperate and not addict to any proper qualitie doth readily receive and-despence the dispositions influences and virtues of the heavenly bodies Densitie and raritie which in a remiss degree are of kin seem to make the principal difference between Water and our Air for which reason God is said in Genesis to have separated the Waters from the Waters as if by reason of the unity of their nature it seemed more truely to be a division of their situation than a mutation in respect of their essence 128 Yet these bordering natures do not entertain any true and essential reciprocation but onely according to some respect not altogether changed but after some manner and this change is acted in the lower region of the Air which is bound in by the cover of the clouds and reacheth not the middle much less the highest region Water being rarified into a vapour flies up and is rather raised then turned into Air and that vapour condensed doth resolve and fall down again The ancients being led by the legerdemain of sence more than the light of reason conceived this circulation and returning into it self of one and the same nature to be the turning of nature into another but it is found to be otherwise by those that have and use a sharp insight into the depths of Nature He is also deceived that shall call the Air simply a thin Vapour because a Vapour is a middle and imperfect bodie betwixt the
two Waters those above and these below betwixt our Water and Air yet it is neither of them because although it rarifie yet will it never be heightened to the great degree of the nobilitie of the Air It may be made a spurious but never a pure Air neither will the refined nature of the Air be so depressed and fall from its puritie as to thicken into a vapour cloud or Water For the right of Nature never got that first separation of the Waters which was really and actually done by that Architect spirit and that the established bounds of the parts of the World which God hath sealed with an indelible signature should either be blurred or removed by any new confusion 129 But those that dive deeper into things will acknowledge the Earth to be the womb of the World the vessel of Generation the mother of a multiplied and almost numberless issue which being rescued in the beginning of the Creation from the power of the covering Waters and priviledged to it self was made and remained drie land and her bodie being condensed sunk to the foundation and the centre of the whole and spread out her lap as a Parent to all vegetables and all other creatures yet did she want moisture whereby she might be made apt for a fruitful generation Gods providence set out a remedie for this exigence Therefore from the beginning was the water made volatile that so it might be carried up in vapours which being frozen by cold in this cloud might by heat be thawed again into Waters By this master-piece of Divine providence was this exigence of the Earth supplied and that driness which threatened barrenness was tempered with a large moisture and the womb of our mother conceived Therefore onely Water hath the circulation to the intent that it might moisten the bosom of the Earth or more truly it is distilled in the lower region of the Air as in its Alembick that so by often pouring in and reiterated distillations it being abounded and having gotten virtues both from above and below and endued with that celestial Nectar it might more effectually soften the bosom of the Earth and endue it with a prolifical virtue The chief worker of all who maketh use of the art of Nature hath added nothing superfluous to his work nor left any thing defective in it 130 But the Water being the menstruum of the World doth cherish and contain in it the seeds of things and their elements but she having this circulation the true and genuine Elements of things which are in the Earth as in the matrix and vessel of Generation and in the Water as in the menstruum are also whirled about In the vapour therefore are the Elements of the Earth the Water and the Air have their sublimation and exuberation with it They are not the bodies of Earth Water and Air which have their proper sphears and constitute the several Regions of the World but they are the very spiritual Elements of Nature which lye hid and inhabit in them out of which many bodies as stones may be generated and excocted in the Air For where all the Elements well mixt do meet as they do in a vapour there bodies may be generated but when they find not a convenient matrix as in the Air there are ingendered imperfect mixtures not by reason of any fault in the mixture but in the Matrix 131. The Water being seated as middle betwixt the Earth and the Air doth trouble both it by its flowing and always moving inconstancy infesting the Air with a black soote and noisom vapours and often drowning the Earth by flouds causing tempests in the Air ruines to the Earth and corruption to both and it doth assault the Region of the one with its levity and of the other with its gravity and doth cross the order of Nature and the nature of Times by its defect or excess yea doth shake all her borderers with her terrible claps and tumultuous ragings Her nature being altogether female the supream Creatour seems to have bestowed her on the World in the nature of a Woman or a necessary Evil even so doth she arrogate all things as subject to her and turns those things that were given her for a general good to a publick ruin Finally it is the scourge of divine Justice revenging Nemeses which being designed to the vengeance of sin doth break out to punish and sets the hopes and wealth of many the very roots of pride under several shapes of judgements the scoff and blast of the world 132. The universal Natures the more thick they are the more impure the more endued with tenuity the more purity The Earth because more thick than Water therefore is less noble and so Water than Air and Air than Heaven and so the highest Region of the Heavens is the most noble because it is most subtile For it is an undoubted truth that spiritual Natures are more excellent than corporeal and the more bordering upon the spiritual Natures the more they draw nigh to perfection 133. The foundation of Generation and Corruption is in Moisture for in both the travails of Nature Moisture of all the Elements is the first patient receiving the first seal of the form The natural Spirits are easily united with it because flowing from it do lightly return to it because the root of them in that and by that are the rest of the Elements mixed The moist Element hath its circulation no less in mixed and individual bodies than in the World both in the work of Generation and of Nutrition for it was Natures pleasure that both these works should be performed by the same instruments of condensation and rarefaction and by the same means to wit Spirits 134. The Earth is the Vessel of Generation Water the menstruum of Nature containing in it the formal and seminal virtues which it borrows from the Sun the male and the formal universal Principle from him is derived into all things the influence of the fire of Nature and of formal Spirits in which are all things necessary for generation the in-bred heat being wrapt up in the moist Therefore Hippocrates did rightly affirm That these two Elements Fire and Water could do all contained all things in them For from them do issue two masculine qualities of Hot and Drie from the other two more of Cold and Moist being the female qualities which so concurring and mixing perfect the generation of mixed bodies Over those two principal Elements the two greater Lights were set the Sun the authour of Fire and the Moon the Lady of Moisture 135. Nature perfects the circulation of the volatile Element by a three-fold action or instrument by Sublimation Demission or Refusion and by Decoction which stand in need of a divers temperament So doth the rightly ordered intention of Nature wandering through various motions directeth her interrupted actions to their designed end and attaineth the same mark though it trades through divers wayes
136 Sublimation is the conversion of a moist and a ponderous nature into a light or the exhalation of it into a vapour The end and benefit of it is three-fold First that a gross and impure body might be mundefied by attenuation and might by degrees be drawn off the dregs then that by sublimation it might gain the higher virtues which continually flow down Lastly that by such an evacuation the Earth might be disburthened of its superfluous and loading humours which seizing upon its passages do hinder the action of the heat and the free pass of the natural spirits yea do violently choak them This drawing away of the superfluous moisture takes away the cause of obstructions and gives ease to the squeazy stomach of the Earth and makes it more fit for digestion 137. But the Moisture is sublimated by the impulsive operation of heat For Nature useth her fire as its proper instrument for rarefaction of moist bodies Therefore the Vapours that generates Clouds Rain are most frequently drawn up in the Fall and Spring because then the womb of the Earth doth more abound with hot and moist now Moisture is the material and Heat the efficient cause of exhalations Nature doth shew a kind of intense heat in sublimation whilest it is bound in within the terms and latitude of temperature 138. Demission is the second wheel of Nature in the work of Circulation is the returning of the spirituous Vapour into a gross and watry body or the Refusion of a rarefied and sublimated humour being again condensed and its descent into Earth that it may dilute it of its exuberant liquour and suck it up by a sweet and celestial draught 139. Nature doth intend three things by irrigation First that it might not pour out but by degrees distil its abundant humour lest there fall out a gulf and by the abundance of water the passage for the vivifical spirit in the bowels of the earth be dammed up and the intrinsecal heat of the Earth be extinguished for that wise and righteous Governess doth dispense all her benefits in number weight and measure Secondly that it might distribute the humour by divers drops and by a various manner to wit a Rain sometimes larger sometimes less sometimes a dew sometimes a hoar frost sometimes pouring out a greater sometimes a less plenty that so it might water the Earth according to its appetite or necessity thirsting for more or less Thirdly that these irrigations or waterings may be not continual but by turns and betwixt other works for the Sun doth in its course succeed the Showers and the Showers in theirs the Sun the day the night and the night the day 140. The lightest Cold or the departing Heat doth unloose and make fit to fall those vapours that are brought up into the middle Region and there frozen For an immoderate heat doth dissipate and hinders their condensation and an intense heat doth so knit and freeze them that they cannot produce a humour that may be fit to fall down 141. The last wheel or action of the Circulation of Nature is Decoction which is nothing else but the digestion ripening and conversion into aliment of a crude humour instilled on the bosom of the Earth This seemeth to be the end and the scope of the others because it is the release of their labour and a receiving of the food attained by the former labours For that crude humour by force of that internal heat is chewed concocted and digested by it being as it were without motion and in a trance silently and without noise moving that secret fire as the proper instrument of Nature that it may turn that crude liquour tempered with driness into a food This is the compleat circle of Nature which she rowls round by various degrees of labour and heat 142 These three operations of Nature are so knit together and have such a relation each to the other that the beginning of the one is the end of the other and according to Natures intention they do in a necessary order succeed one another by turns And the orders of these vicistitudes are so interwoven and linkt together as that combining to the good of the whole they do in their operations prove serviceable each to other 143 Yet Nature is forcedly sometimes drawn out of her bounds and verges and ranges in an uncertain path especially in the guidance of the moist Element whose orders being interrupted do deceive and they do easily as well as suffer wrong by reason of the inconstancy of its volatile and flitting nature as also by reason of the various disposition of the superiour bodies which do bend these things below especially Moisture and draw them from their setled track according to the beck of the Sovereign Moderatour who doth use them as Organs and Instruments to the motion of the frame of the Universe Hence is raised the deceitfull and inconstant temperature of this our Mansion and the changed seasons of the year So doth the womb of the Earth being diversly affected bring forth either more plentifully or more sparingly generous or castling births So doth the bordering Air being either pure or impure produce either health or sickness the moist Nature rowling and tossing all things amongst us 144 The Rule of our Heavens is uncertain and deceitful to us because things below receive their orders from things above whose natures and affections are for the most part unknown to us yet let the Philosopher set always before his eyes the intention rather than the action of Nature the order rather than the disturbance of the order 145 We may observe the volubility or flittingness of the moist Nature not onely in the general harmony of the World but also in the particular of mixed Beings For they are generated by the revolution of Moisture they are nourished and grow by drying moistening and digesting wherefore those three operations of nature are resembled to food drink and sleep because meat answers to driness drink to moisture and sleep to concoction 146 Lest man should dream fancies to himself glory in divers priviledges assume to himself as proper onely to him the name of Microcosm or the Worlds lesser draught because there are discernable in his material workmanship an Analogie of all the natural motions of the Microcosm or the larger Volume of the World let him consider that every creature even a worm that every plant even the weed of the Sea is a lesser world having in it an epitome of the greater Therefore let man seek for a world out of himself and he shall find it every where for there is one and the same first Copy of all creatures out of which were made infinite worlds of the same matter yet in form differenced Let therefore man share humility and lowliness of spirit and attribute to God glory and honour 147 The inferiour natures are leavened by the superiour But the Water not enduring delay doth hast to meet the operations of the
Heavens for the Air giving way to the vapour that flies up to it receives it to lodge in the Region of the Clouds as in a large Hall but ere it comes thither its body being in a manner spiritualized the moist Being is divested of its ponderous nature that so it might by this addition of agility the sooner compass its desire and enjoy the priviledge of an ambiguous nature 148 In the mean time the Sun the Prince of the celestial Quire and the rest of the superiour Natures taking care of the inferiour do instil by continual breathings enlivening spirits as so many trilling rivulets from their most clear and pure Fountains But the Vapours being thin and so swimming in the Air or else bound up into a Cloud do most eagerly suck in in that spiritual Nectar and attract it to them by a Magnetick virtue and having received it they grow big and being impregnated and quickened with that ingendering seed as being delivered of their burden do freely fall down back into the lap of the Earth in some Dew hoar Frost Rain or some other nature and this Mother of the Elements doth receive into her womb the returning moisture and being quickened by this Heavenly seed sends forth in her due time innumerable issues according to divers degrees more or less generous according to the goodness of the seed or the disposition of the womb and the inferiour Waters also are made partakers of the benevolence of the Superiour and Celestial because she goes with the Earth to the making up of one and the same Globe and so they receive joynt and common benefits But by the nature of Water is the fermentation of the rest of the Elements 149 But this ferment or leaven is a vivifical spirit flowing down from the superiour Natures upon these inferiour without which the Earth would be again void and empty For it is the seed of Life without which neither man nor any creature nor any growing thing could enjoy the benefit of a generation or life for man lives not by bread alone but especially by that Heavenly food by Air to wit by such a spirit so breathed in and fermented 150 The three material Elements being remote in the composition of things do onely obey God and Nature and come not under the laws of Art or of humane Invention but there are three others that issue from the copulation of these which being extracted by resolution do sufficiently shew that they are the nearest in the composition of mixt Beings to wit Salt Sulphur and Mercury And so it is manifested That there is a Trinity of Elements and a Signature of the universal NATURE 151 These three last Elements are the issue of a three-fold copulation of the three former Mercury of the mixture of Earth and Water Sulphur of the copulation of Earth and Air Salt produced out of the condensation of Air and Water and there can be no more combinations of them named The Fire of Nature is in all of them as their formal principle the virtue of the celestial bodies contributing their influence and co-operation 152 Neither are these latter produced out of any copulation of the former bodies for Mercury comes forth of an unctious Earth and clear Water well diluted and mixt Sulphur is generated of the most subtile and driest Earth coupled with the moist Air Finally Salt is congealed of salt and thick Water and crude Air 153 It may be lawfull to affirm that Democritus his opinion That all bodies were composed out of Atoms is not far distant from truth for both reason and experience do vindicate him from biting tongues for the knowing Philosopher would not wholly conceal but would unfold in an obscure and dark term the mixture of the Elements which that it might be agreeable to the intention of Nature must necessarily be done by the smallest and by actually indivisible Beings other wise the Elements could not combine into a continuous natural body Experience teacheth us in the artifical resolution composition of mixt Beings which are tryed by distillations that the perfect mixtion of two or more bodies is not done but in a subtile vapour But Nature doth make her mixtions far more subtile and as it were spiritual which we may safely believe was the opinion of Democritus for the grosseness of bodies is an impediment to Mixtion therefore the more any thing is attenuated the more apt and fitted it is for mixtion 154 The three-fold degree of Existence in mixt Beings doth offer to us three supream kinds of mixt Beings to wit of Minerals Vegetables and of Animal Beings Natures law hath appointed a Being for Minerals in the Earth for Vegetables in the Earth and the Water for Animals in the Earth Water and Air yet to all the Air is the principal food and foster of life 155 Minerals are thought simply not to have an existence or a life although Metals from Minerals may be said to be endowed with a principal life both because in their generation there is a kind of a copulation and a commixiton of a double seed male and female viz. Sulphure and Mercurie which two by a long and multiplied circulation are turned and purged and being seasoned with the salt of Nature and fermented by it and being perfectly mixed in a most subtile vapour are formed into a clay or soft mass the spirit of Sulphure by degrees closing in the Mercurie at length that Mass doth grow hard and is confirmed to a metallick body 156 As also because perfect Mettals especially do contain in them a principle of life to wit in-set fire infused from heaven which being dulled by being bound in with the hard outside of the Mettal lies hid as void of motion and as an enchanted treasure till getting libertie by philosophical solution and the subtile artifice of the work-man it doth powerfully display its refined spirit and celestial soul by a motion of vegetation in the issue heightned to the sudden perfection of art nature 157 Vegetables also are invested with a vegetative soul or spirit they grow by a vegetative motion and multiplyâ— yet want an animal sence and motion Their seeds are of an Hermaphroditical nature for every particular grain doth contain in it a fruitfull seed without copulation or mixture of a double seed although in every kind almost of Vegetables experience sheweth there are both sexes to be found 158 God also hath wrapt up in the seeds of Vegetables a secret spirit the authour of generation ennobled with a special character which is wholly celestial and a ray of the heavenly light void of corruption in which is preserved the specifical form under the bodie of every individual subsistance which being through corruption resolved lost that immortal spirit being called out by the vivifical and homogeneal heat of the Sun doth rise up in a new stalk and doth bring into it the form of the foâ—mer 159 Animals besides their existence and faculty of
are stopped so as that they are not able to pass the narrow confines of their bodies wanting the sense and life of a Soul because there is so little of the Suns virtue in them as will not carry them above the motion of a Vegetation For in the order of creation the Vegetables were first before the Sun wherefore creatures are not equally indebted to him for their originals and the aged principles of their life but must acknowledge them received from the lightsom Air as a nearer Agent For the disposition of their matter was adjudged by Nature as too weak to receive so sublime a form 172 But for Stones since they are not so much generated out of a true mixture of the Elements as from a concourse of Earth and Water by an external force of Heat and Cold they are decocted as an earthen Work or vessel therefore they are altogether senseless having borrowed a feeble form from the dark and cold nature of the Earth and Water 173 Concerning precious Stones and Gems we must conceive otherwise for they derive their forms from the Chrystal Fouutains of the Heavens and the Sun and their bodies are the purest drops of a refined dew engendered by celestial influences and as it were the congealed tears of of Heaven whence they possess and contain many sublime virtues 174 But the matter of Metals because it is watry and earthy and most compacted by reason of the principal subtile commixtion of weighty Elements is therefore heavy and exceedingly ponderous and of it self capable of no motion but because it is sublimated and mundefied by the wonderfull artifice of Nature in an earthy and stony Matrix as in a Limbick and its mixture is compleated in a most thin vapour by reiterated distillations that by reason of its exceeding subtility and exuberancy the influential helps of the Sun and the Heavens get in and mix with it especially in the generation of perfect mettals for this cause though they fetch their bodies from Water and Earth yet Nature performing the office of workman doth so ingeniously make up the bodies especially of a perfect mettal that it delivers them to the heavenly Deities as those that deserve to be informed with the most eminent form It is a work of long travail but an absolute one heightned to the utmost of Natures actings in which Heaven and Earth seem rather to copulate than to consent But the formal spirits of mettals being bound up in a hard cover do stick immoveable till released of their bands by Philosophical Fire they do produce by their heavenly Seed in their matter that noble son of the Sun and at length that Quint-essence of admirable Virtue in which the Heavens seem to lodge with and come down to us 175 It was provided by the Decree of the supream Creatour that a Nature more noble should not degenerate into one less noble or that one more eminent into a nature that is more base or that it should abjuring its native priviledge of birth-right come under a servile vassalage Superiour Beings are coupled with these below and those of greater power do communicate themselves with those of a less that they may inform and compleat them by their emissary spirits which notwithstanding in this do no way derogate from their stock or kind Nay when they work themselves into the seeds of things or also into mixed Beings they subject not themselves to a bondage but do attain a new honour and priviledged power For every mixt Being of whatsoever kind it is is a kind of an Empire yea the whole world who hath a spiritual form of her own to rule her whose office it is to have dominion over the organs and faculties of Nature yea over the whole frame so that that which being void and without distinction did drift it rowling hither and thither in the vast Ocean of Nature is now called to an Empire 176 The formal act of the first matter as also of the Elements doth inform nothing besides the verie principles of Nature therefore the specifical form doth constitute a perfect mixt Being neither is it to be thought to contain any more forms since the very Elements in their mixtion have the charge of the fashioning not of the informing of the bodie 177 It is most probable that the virtue of multiplication which lyes in the seeds of Beings doth not flow from the Elementary matter as its efficient cause but from a celestial form for to multiply is the most natural and proper action of light for from one ray are almost an infinite number darted forth from whence it proceeds that the Sun who is the Fountain of immortal Light is also in nature the first efficient cause of generation and multiplication that therefore every form receives a natural power of multiplication from the celestial light is prov'd by this weighty Argument because it is lightfull and furnished with its native endowments Ergo multiplying It is lightfull because it doth enlighten with its rays the sensitive and imaginative faculties in creatures that so out of that double faculty springs a double apprehension knowledge of things an external by the senses an internal by imagination but all knowledge is a light as all ignorance is a darkness but there peeps up some enlightening and lightsomness when there is an apprehension of the images of things and when that which lay unknown in the dark is now manifested by a light of knowledge for it is onely by the good office of light that obscure things receive a revelation God did adde to man a third light to wit his Understanding by the help of which he attains by their causes a far more perfect way of knowledge All these things are produced by the operation of light and of a perspicuity flowing out of an enlightened Soul This last action of light is onely proper to man the two former are shared with beasts as well as by him for their souls are also partakers of celestial light Therefore reason doth convince that the virtue of multiplication in the individual Beings of Animals and Vegetables doth proceed from the Souls multiplication of light and that some rays of it are included in the seed with the Aetherial spirit until at length they are set upon the rising of the Sun of Life 178 Light and Darkness are the principles of Life and Death for the rays of Light are the forms of mixt Beings their bodies a dark Abyss By Light all things live yea Light is life but those that loose their life loose their light and are hurried into their former darkness in which they lay close and hidden before they were drawn to light by the fatal wheel of Predestination 179 The specifical forms of Animals as also of Vegetables are rational though not after the manner of men but after a property of their own according to the virtues and impress of their nature For they have their vital endowments their cognizances knowledge and
comprehend nothing but what is sensible But the mind rangeth far abroad beyond the Cloysters of the Senses and searcheth to a greater height for the hunting out of the bounds of Nature The bodies are as it were the barks the grosser parts of the Elements the accidents of things under which lye hid the pure and sprightly Essences which acknowledge not the subjection and censure of the Senses and which it was a necessity to cloth under a dark Cloud that they might pass from their heavenly to their earthly province of the corporeal Beings The supream Creatour of Nature enacted this copulation of spirituals with corporeals whereby his uncreated spirit communicating it self first to the more spiritual and simple Natures might be conveyed through them as by so many conduits to corporeal Beings and in this manner diffusing it self gradually and orderly through all the Regions of the World through all and every Being doth sustain all things by the Divine presence as also that by a sensible creature the insensible CREATOUR might be apprehended through corporeal and sensible resemblances 189 Whatsoever lives either an Animal or Vegetable life stands in need of food that the natural spirits might be recruited which do continually slide forth through the pores and that so the loss of Nature might have a successive repair For the nourishing juice is made by the more succulent substance of the meat whereby the parts and humours of the body are re-inforced The radical Moisture is renewed out of the purer portion of the humours especially of the bloud the celestial influence intermingling it self by respiration with it 190 Living things have a two-fold nourishment to wit a Corporeal and a Spiritual the former being of small avail to life without the latter For Vegetables do evidently referre the benefit of their increase and nourishment no less to the Air and Heaven than to the Earth yea the Earth it self unless suckled with the milk of Heaven would quickly find her own breast to flag drie this that holy Diver into Natures secrets when he blessed Joseph doth thus express Blest be the Lord for his Earth for the apples of Heaven for the Dew and for the Deep that coucheth beneath for the pleasant apples of the Sun and of the Moon for the top of the everlasting Mountains for the fruits of the eternal Hills c. By which mystical speech the Prophet fore-ensureth the Earths plenty by the abundant influence of the Sun Moon and of the rest of the celestial bodies 191 That spiritual Diet as far as it conduceth to the life of creatures is acknowledged by every vulgar capacity that sees the renewed respiration and the frequent sucking in of the external Air For not onely according to the opinion of ordinary Physicians hath Nature so workmanlike framed those bellows bordering upon the heart to cool it but also that by their continued fanning they might breath in an aethereal Air and hand to it celestial spirits that so by their recruits the vital spirits may be kept in repair and be alwayes multiplied 192 Philosophers do not onely call those spiritual Natures which being created without matter are onely comprehended by the Understanding as the intelligencies Angels and Devils are accounted to be but also those that which although they have their original from matter yet in respect of their great tenuity nobility do not subject themselvs to the search of the Senses and nearer approching to spiritual Beings are rather under stood by reason than found by sense Such is the pure part of the Air such are the influencies of heavenly bodies such the in-set fire and seminal virtues such the vegetable spirits such the animal and the vital and the like in which consists the very nature of Beings than in grosser bodies Such like natures spring from Heaven and in relation to sensibles do assume to themselves the name and right of spirits 193 It is suitable that we should give the Fire of Nature a place amongst the spiritual Beings for in it self it is not perceivable by any sense but discovers it self onely in bodies by heat and other effects and accidents This is apparent in living creatures into which by this unperceiveable fire is infused a sensible heat and that Fire with the life stealing away the Elementary body or the carkass yet the mixed being dissolved remains sound and unhurt In Vegetables because this Fire is weaker it doth elude the sense and is not to be perceived by any heat 194 Reason also convinceth that our common Fire is to be sorted amongst the spiritual rather than corporeal Beings For if it were corporeal it should have from it self a peculiar and inseparable body no less than Earth Water or Air and the rest of the sensible Natures which do consist and are bounded within their proper bodies which do exist in them and by them which do act according to their virtues and produce them to the Senses But Fire hath not a peculiar and sensible body lodgeth onely in anothers for a Coal is not Fire but Wood fired neither is the flame Fire but smoke inflamed finally that Robber onely feeds upon what is not his own lives upon the prey and is extinguished when this fails having nothing in it self to feed it Besides a body super-added to another body doth augment the quantity of it but this not found in fire put into wood or smoke for the smoke or wood is no way increased by the accession of fire in their quantities from which it is evident that a fiery spirit rather than a body doth invade the wood or smoke A sword melted the scabbard being untouch't the bones shattered by the fiery bolt of Thunder and yet the flesh unhurt do sufficiently argue the spiritual nature even of that thundering fire Yet we must know that Fire is not wholly immaterial for it hath a matter though a very subtile and light one whereby it cleaves to the encompassing air whereby it may be kept in by a more gross body Yet doth it rather deserve the name of a spirit than of a body because it hath not a sensible quantity neither can it be comprehended but when it is arrayed in another body 195 For Light the original of it doth evince that it ought to be seated amongst those things that are truly spiritual There was no light but in God before the informing of the first matter the birth of the world But when Nature received her Being then began there a spiritual light to issue forth from the fiery spirit of God upon the matter and there to settle as in its lamp and this was the creation and original of Light that was the first act of the Deity upon the matter the first copulation of the Creatour with the creature of a spirit with a body Therefore the first informing Light was a meer Spirit which did kindle with its fiery virtue as with heat the nearest matter being exceedingly rarefied by its spiritual
Light and so were the darkness converted to light The Heaven being distinguished by the first light although it be not material and fiery yet is nevertheless invisible because in respect of the matter it is brought to the highest degree of tenuity and in respect of its form is endowed with spirituality But the Light that was scattered in the middle Heaven being bounded into a narrower compass was cast into the Globe of the Sun which was necessarily to be formed into a kind of a thick body as it were into a smoke fit to be kindled yet not combustible that so it might be setled being kindled by that immortal Light and be in the room of the general Lamp of Nature or as a fiery Mass The light of the Sun therefore is nothing else but a lightsome spirit deriving its rise from the Spirit of eternal Light gathered in and inseparably cleaving to the body of the Sun and made sensible by reason of the thickness of the body communicating to all the natures of the Universe light and a manifold virtue constituting the spirit of the World by its non-intermitted influence and bound up in a body for the good and welfare of the corporeal Nature 196 Yet the Sun-beams that are perceivable by our eyes are not pure spirits for issuing continually from the Sun have their progress being clothed with the encompassing Air They are therefore nothing else but a continued flowing forth of the spirit of Light which springing forth as so many rivulets from their Eternal Fountain and working themselves into the aetherial Nature as a flame into a most thin smoke do over-spread the whole face of the Universal World with their light 197 It is natural to Light to flow continually from its Fountain We call those Rays issuing forth and mixing themselves with the airy nature and they are the first actings of light in the Sun and the conveyance of it from the Sun For it is the property of a lightfull body to act by it rays and to send forth heat and light and that might spread its light abroad by a darting forth and multiplying of its beams We do by light signifie both the first act of the lightsom body as also a secondary lightsomness which floweth out from the former 198 The Lamp being out either for want of matter or blown out by the wind the fiery and lightsom spirit that kindled the Lamp doth not perish neither is it extinguished as it commonly seems but onely loosing what it feeds on and being stript from it is scattered in and vanisheth to Air which is the Abyss and universal Receptacle of all lights and spiritual natures of the material World from whence we may learn that the nature of this Lightsomness is spiritual and is derived from the spiritual Fountain not otherwise than natural forms from their Matrix which is the spirit of the Universe perpetually flowing from the Sun as from an eternal and immortal Spring For as the bodies of mixt Beings in their making do rise from the first matter and the Elements and do gradually at their departure slide into the same again so the natural forms of individuals in their approch do flow from the universal form which in the manner of a Form of forms doth inspire a formal virtue into the seeds and in their recess do again return into it But that form is the Spirit of the light of the Universe to which as to their principle and as to a nature of the same kind do all single forms and sparks of light got loose from their tyes return So are all mixt Beings resolved into their first principles but these principles do return to that Eternal Spring of Nature as to their proper centre and peculiar countrey 199 But that Spirit of the Universe is from the Sun yet not the very light of the Sun conspicuous to us by reason of the presence of its body but that invisible spirit which is continually dispersed by the beams of the Sun through the universal Region of the Air and doth extend it self perpetually by communication through our Heaven yea even to the centre of the Earth and that in the absence of the Sun and in the darkest night pouring out all gifts for generation and life through all the bodies of the Universe 200 The divine Love was not able to contain it self within it self but did wholly go out of it self in the creation by multiplication of it self and pouring out himself wholly also in the conservation of creatures in themselves Light also which is the exactest Copie of the Deity doth also imitate the divine Love for it is not able to be comprized within its own lightsom body but is diffused far and near for the good of other Beings by a strong multiplication of its beams being not so much born for it self as for others being as it were the token of Divine Love communicating it self to its power and reaching forth into the most remote places unless it meet with a stop from a thick bodie 201 Light also doth hold forth to us the infinite Nature of God for the small light of a lamp or candle cannot as long as it is fed by all its continued effluence of rays and by its infinite communication of its flames be exhausted or diminished As many beams so many streams flow from it Yet though it gives though it diffuseth it self although much be taken from it yet is it not brought to nothing neither receives loss which is the alone property of a spiritual nature and is altogether unappliable to a corporeal So the intellectual endowments as the understanding and knowledge of things which are justly esteemed spiritual lights are of the same kind that though alwayes bestowed abroad yet are preserved entire at home Therefore must we confess that there is something divine in Light 202 The beams of a lightsom body although they be of a spiritual nature yet are they stopt by a thick body because their conveyance is by means of the Air without which they are not perceivable by us by which copulation also they are in a manner made corporeal and therefore cannot pierce or enter into the bodies that are not porous So spiritual things do act with us by some sensible mean that so we may perceive them to act But the lightsom body being absent the beams also depart neither do they part from his presence because they immediately flow from him 203 But the Air is without enlightened not onely by the presence of a body of light and of the beams from it but also the body being gone and the beams withdrawn by a lightsom spirit flowing from them as is clear in the darkest Eclipse or the Heavens over-cast with the blackest clouds or wrapt up in the mask of night yea the Sun being sunk under the Horizon for that act of present light cannot proceed from the body of light and its beams being absent but from the access and presence of a