a fat smoak is the matter of fire but the flame to be the form of fire and by that thought they feign it to be a composed Body after the manner of other things But as many absurdities as I have before repeated do hinder it therefore the Iron remaining Iron doth receive into it self true fire together with its form So the Air remaining Air receives fire in the Crest of the uniting Beams with its forms and all its properties But Iron retaining the antient form of Iron cannot at once be informed by the form of the fire if the form of the fire were any way substantial that is unless the form of fire can leave its matter that it may be onely the assisting form of the Iron but not the informing For neither can Air remaining Air be at once also another Body as one Body cannot be two really distinct But I pray you if Iron be not throughout its whole Body fireable but a Coal altogether fireable what should move the fire that having left its own matter it should wander into the Body of Iron which is uncapable of fire Therefore surely the Iron is fired and it is capable of fire throughout its whole Body and so as it hath thicker parts than a Coal so it self is capable of more fire therefore it is manifest that fire is not a matter Lastly it is not the property of Elements presently to devour and consume other things as I have elsewhere largely taught But fire plotteth the destruction of the thing wherein it is therefore it is not an Element not a matter or a substance but a destructive Creature and a death serving for crafts and given for the great uses of mortall men None ever reckoned light among substances therefore neither light connexed For truly to be knit together or not is an accidentary thing which substantial thing is not generated as they think by an accidentary Being But moreover the fire consisting in a slack degree of Light is for the most part the Companion of life But Light being united burns up things that have life It is the Vulcan or Smith of Arts dedicated to humane necessities For it hasteneth ripenesses it promoteth the seeds to their ends it also hasteneth the seperations of things the closure or end whereof shortness of life could not else expect without grievous discommodity For in this respect it openeth it teacheth to dissolve secrets or things hidden to hasten the operations of nature otherwise oft-times slow drowsie and buried Next it seperateth and expelleth superfluities it by the vertue of an adjoyned Ferment removeth the middle life of things whence are chearfulnesses and increases of strength It also seperateth the pure from the impure the pretious from the vile the hurtfull from the profitable and the crude or raw from the mature or ripe yea it ripeneth crudities themselves And then the fire prepareth the Instruments of Arts which our life stands in need of Therefore let the Father of Lights the Creator of the Light be highly exalted throughout Ages who hath placed a Tabernacle in the Sun that he might comfort or supply all necessities by the Light of his Sun Now I will conclude from what hath been said before 1. That fire and hot light do not differ but by accident to wit in connexion and degree 2. That the beames of Light do pierce each other 3. That in piercing they notwithstanding do keep their essence and properties not thorowly mixt 4. That Light is primarily in place therefore also fire 5. That Light and Fire do pierce their Mean 6. That a thick dark Body seeing it cannot be pierced by the Light is first affected by Light in its Superficies and then this heats the succeeding parts even to its opposite Superficies 7. That heat is heightned in an object by degrees and that in every degree it hath singular operations 8. That whatsoever the fire affecteth it is by reason of the place which the thing placed doth occupie and so by accident seeing the chief intention of the fire is to heat by enlightning 9. That the fire being at length the Conquerour overcomes the difficulties cast in between it by the thick dark Body 10. That fire seeing that it acts immediately and primarily acts into a place it burns all things indifferently without respect to Bodies cast in between as it were removing the impediments 11. That a thick dark Body being fixed and resisting kindling is at length enlightned by the fire 12. That the fire or connexed Light finding a combustible matter doth remain con-centrated or centred together in its degree of connexing neither are the beames of Light seperated because it continually increaseth new fire which proceedeth in consuming but the old fire continually perisheth so long as the ascending doth continue At the end whereof the whole light perisheth since it hath not light from whence it may be enlightned Whatsoever therefore hath been hitherto spoken of united Light I understand it onely of the Light of the Sun For truly the Light of the Moon being sent thorow a Glasse is so far from having fire in the Crest that it is also felt to be colder than the rest which environeth or goes about in the Crest Therefore I call for touching to be the judge And that which is more wonderful than that that the Splendor of the Sun which is hot being reflexed in the Glasse of the Moon doth actually wax cold For the Almighty hath created two great Lights And although most of the Stars are bigger than the Moon yet they are not reckoned great because all their activities are comprehended under the two Lights therefore he created those First That they might seperate the day from the night Secondly That they may shine upon the Earth Thirdly That they might rule the day and night Fourthly That the greater might rule the day and the lesser the night Yet we learn from the Speculations of the Planets that the Moon shines as many houres upon the Horizon by day as she doth by night Yet the Almighty hath appointed the Moon to shine and onely to govern the night And seeing the Creator cannot erre it must needes be that the whole Light and governance of every night doth depend on the Moon as much as the day depends on the Sun Therefore the Moon was created to shine as well in the Heaven as upon the Earth the full of all nights Therefore the Moon is not like a receiving Glasse reflecting on the light of the Sun and void of her own proper light For although our eye findes no proper Light in the Moor be it little For we must give more credit to the Scripture than to our eyes according to that saying The Sun shall be darkened and the Moon shall not give her own Light From another place this truth shall by and by appear First of all it is manifest by the aforesaid Handicraft-operation of the Glasse that the Light of the Sun being united is made
meer Fire with every thing requisite thereunto And then that the same Light of the Sun falling upon the Icy Glasse of the Moon doth loose the property of his own heat and is made a cold light Which comes not to passe if it shall fall upon Ice Glasse Water a white Wall c. Therefore the Moon hath powers or faculties whereby she altereth the Sun-beames And that cold Blas ought to be of the nature of her own light if between the Agent and Patient a co-resemblance ought to interpose For truly another cold object re-percussing or smiting back the Sun-beames cannot therefore change these into cold beames Truly neither heat cold rough brickle sweet or bitter do act on the Light but onely visible and dark objects therefore the Moon hath a lightsome force or power of her self which as it is such doth act upon the hot light and changeth it into a contrary property What if the Astrologer doth foretell the future Colours of Eclipses do not those Colours promise some certain light proper to the Moon For truly they are not conjectured of from a Mean or vapours because colour cannot be foretold from the quantity of vapours in the calculation of a future Eclipse Therefore let the Colours of the Moon failing of light be the tokens of a light proper unto her And in this the beames of both Lights do differ That the Sun strikes his light by beames in a right line but the Moon doth never respect the Center of the World or the Earth in a right line but her center is alwayes excentrical For she respects the Center of the World onely by accident that is when she is con-centricall with the World And therefore as oft as she is con-centricall in full Moon and new Moon there is an Eclipse Therefore the Dragons Head and Tail are night-points wherein onely the Sun is directly opposed to the Moon in an excentrical Diameter Therefore the Moon-beames do not strike the Earth in a right line but they are dispersed into an excentricall space and so she by way of influence or by the action of government of which in its place displayes her forces on the night or on Nadir the point underneath the Horizon right opposite to our feet whether she accompany the Sun or indeed be estranged from this Sun by a full Diameter For such is the appointment of the Moon which the exundations or Spring-Tides of the Sea do confirm which are wont to be no lesse under the Moon laying hidden than at the full of the same Therefore one end of the Lights is to rule the day and night next another end is to seperate the light from the darkness and another end to seperate the day from the night Neither is that repetition to be imputed to a Solecisme or incongruity For truly the Sun shining or the Moon restoring her Light received from the Sun the Light indeed is sufficiently seperated from the darkness but the Light of the Sun never rules the night as neither doth he shine in the night therefore that the Moon likewise may satisfie her appointment she can never rule the night by a borrowed Light of the Sun Which thing sufficiently appeareth at leastwise while she runs with the Sun by day according as by night Therefore if then also the Moon ought to satisfie the divine intention she must needes have also by all meanes another light whereby she may shine all nights and may rule the night and a far other manner of powring forth her light than that wherein she reflecteth the Light of the Sun Indeed the Moon sends forth her proper displayed Light beyond no lesse than beneath the Hemisphere of the Air Water and Earth which way the supposition of the Center of the Universe maketh or tendeth according to the Opinion of Tycho Yet so that the action of government of light and influence operates more powerfully in the night from whence the Sun is absent the which that he may seperate the day from the night ought to seperate the properties of the Moon from his own although the Moon be conjoyned with him Diseases belonging to the Moon do prove that thing which are exasperated a little before night also at the new of the Moon And so she worketh thorow the bones and Marrowes of those who are shut up in their Bed-chamber which thing is not so proper or natural to the Sun Therefore the Moon doth sometimes make a stronger influence on that part of the Sphere that is opposite unto her than on the part where she is placed This light being unknown to the Antients hath been called an influence But I had rather reserve the sense of the Scripture because it is said The Moon was created to give light by night that is all nights indifferently even so as the Sun gives light by day Therefore that which they have called an influence is the property of the Moones light and that is not to have named a thing from the effect but from the causes The Bat Dormouse Mouse Owl and whatsoever Creatures do distinguish their objects afar off in the night under the thickest darkness and do note the swiftest motions of objects which our eyes can scarce observe at noon-day some of whom although they may bear before them a Grayish or Skie-coloured brightness yet they never enlighten the mean by that brightness that they may see perfectly through it at a far distance Therefore there must needes be some continual light in the thickest night and shut up Den for which lights sake such living Creatures do perfectly see But if it be unperceived by us and yet doth in truth exist it is no wonder if the light proper to the Moon hath deceived our eyes But that it may be plainly made known that night-wandring Animalls do send no light out of their eyes which may be for the enlightning of a medium or mean to know distinctly an object placed afar off and so that those Creatures do see onely for the light of the Moones sake Let a Looking-glasse be placed between the Eye of a living Creature and its object and that under the thickest darkness and surely thou shalt not finde the least reflexion of light in the Glasse yet if thou shalt put a small Candle at the utmost end of a large Hall but if in the other furthest end of the Hall there be a hole thorow which that feeble light may passe into another dark Hall or room in whose end let a Looking-glasse be truly that weak light being shaken by the direct beame of the flame of the Candle is received and will appear in the Glasse yet it is not sufficient for a man to discern any object Therefore much lesse shall the brightness or shining of the Eyes a beam whereof doth not fall and appear in a nigh Glasse be fit to enlighten the mean that they may perfectly discern all things For there is under the Earth a light even at midnight whereby many eyes
and connexion Whither when the light of the Stars shall descend the folding-doores do open and shut themselves Therefore let the Key-keeper of the folding-doores be the motion of the Stars Which also moveth the Peroledes or Pavements of the Air. Therefore all heat is not made by fore-existing fire or light nor doth cold shew a naked absence of heat But the motive Blas of the Stars is a pulsive or beating power or virtue in respect of their Journey through places and according to their aspects Which circumstances in the Stars do cause the first qualities on these inferiour bodies no otherwise than bashfulness anger feat c. do stir up cold and heat in men And that thing the Stars have by the gift of Creation The Winde according to Hypocrates is a flowing Water of the Air but I defining it by its causes say that the Winde is a flowing Air mooved by the Blas of the Stars And that for a naturall winde but otherwise it is often granted to an evill Spirit that even without a Blas he should stir up windes or increase a tempestuous Blas Therefore the Air unless it have a Blas remains quiet nor hath it the principle of motion from it self but it comes to it from elsewhere Therefore the motive Blas stirreth up Windes Tempests over-flowing of Waters by running thorow the divers Peroledes of the Air sometimes upwards sometimes downwards across long-wayes side-wayes into all the Coasts of the Earth although the Elements have no need of motion yet mans necessity requireth that motion But seeing nothing was for mooving of it self except the Archeus granted to seedes it hath well pleased the Eternall to place in the Stars a flatuous violent motive force not much unlike to the Command of his mouth So that Blas is for a testimony to us that God of his excelling goodness hath made the Elements and Stars for us by measuring out bounds of these according to our Commodities Blas therefore mooveth not so much by light beames and motion as motion but as the Stars have come down unto certain places whereunto these Stars do owe their offices Therefore there are stable properties in those places but if they are not stable that happens in respect of other Stars brought with them by an analogicall or proportionable motion for the interchangeable courses of continuance Blas therefore as a Masculine thing in the Stars is the generall beginning of motion it seemes no lesse to respect the Earth than the Air and Water For the Moon according to the holy Scriptures ruleth the night as the Sun doth the day although the Moon for her own half runs not under the night For the Globe of the Earth is divided into four parts into two accesses or flowings and recesses or ebbings of the Ocean daily And it spends almost 28 houres therein and so much the lesse by how much the Sun and Moon shall in the mean time depart from or draw near to each other Blas therefore stirs up also a raging heat in the waters the winde being still But the alterative Blas consisteth in the producing of heat and cold and that especially with the changings of the windes But the Stars neither have nor give moysture or dryth of themselves For neither is moysture to be considered in nature as naked quality without a matter and therefore neither is it brought down from the Stars unto us For all moysture is from the water which was before the Stars were born Therefore Paracelsus erreth who saith that rains snow c. are so the fruits of the Stars that they are boyled to a ripeness in the Stars as it were in bottles Dryness also was in the air the seperater of the waters before the Stars nor is it to be considered without a body in manner of a quality But heat and cold are rather qualities abstracted from a body Therefore there are onely two great Lights and therefore two onely qualities of them are spread into the air from whence all Meteors are stirred or mooved For the heat of life is the property of the Sun but cold of the other Star Also the other Stars have given their names or honours to these two Lights As often therefore as the Stars of the nature of the Moon are brought thorow places of the Sun a luke-warmth is made in the air but if Stars of the nature of the Sun do run down under the same places heat is made according to which qualities of the air the Gas of the air is also diversly altered Hence indeed Blas heats after the same manner thorow the soils of the air therefore Gas also is either detained in its pavements or soils or is brought downward to us So as that the atomes of Gas being invisible through their too much smallness loosing their constriction and excess of cold do again fall together or decay into the smallest drops and hasten downwards But if indeed the luke-warmth doth affect the lower Peroledes when Gas being provoked by Blas wandereth downwards Summer Snowes are made Surely Gas being grown together through frost a luke-warmth presently arising it is melted and rusheth headlong downwards For the Mercurie of the water resolveth its Salt and the Sulphur doth as it were rowl up these two And so they fall down into rain But if indeed that thing happens in the upper Perolede the drops descending are frozen in the middle cold pavements and so they are cast down headlong into Snow and Hails But if luke-warmth do bear sway thorow some continuall Peroledes of the air daily rains do accompany it Hence also it appeares that an unequall Blas in divers soils of the air doth bring forth divers effects For oftentimes the lowermost Peroledes are luke-warm and the day is plainly clowdy and there are very many Clouds But else the second and the third Perolede are luke-warm the lower being cold whence are Snowes And so the other Troop of Meteors is caused unto us Therefore I am now confident that by Gas materially and by Blas operatively and motively their causes and manner do more clearly appear than heretofore they have done From whence Astrologers and Physitians shall be able from a founder ground to presage of some things In the mean time I leave the matters of presages untouched which God by his ministring Spirits hath laid up among his signes of good or ill Onely I will relate what Fryer Stephen of Lusignan the last of the Family of the Kings of Cyprus of the Order of S. Dominick in his description of Cyprus printed at Paris in the year 1580 page 212 rehearseth in French to this purpose About the end of the year an Earthquake happened at Famagusta which continued eight dayes But afterwards raging or Whirle-windes arose passing over the Island and entring into the Market-place of Famagusta for there by beating down a great Pallace they presently take away very many Houses with some Men. So that if some Marriners had not by the chance of
Agent and subjecteth it self unto it But a frail Agent capable of sliding every hour and every way limited cannot be stronger than an immortall and spiritual Being with which it hath no resemblance nor co-touching Therefore the immortall minde is not mad doth not doare sleepeth not through Opiates or sleepy Medicines is not estranged through the exorbitancy or irregularity of hypocondrial melancholy doth not vary through Lunatickness or Frantickness at a certain time of the Moon neither stumbleth it through Wine as neither doth it feel madness through the stroak of a mad Dog or the Tarantula Therefore madnesses and the alienations of reason are not proper to the minde But this being afterwards afflicted by corrupted nature through the weariness of the body hath committed its Vicarship to the sensitive Soul which it pierceth onely with a vitall beam that it may be and live may be entertained and rowled up in it but as to any thing else it beholds it ill-favouredly onely crookedly or by the by But the sensitive Soul in a man is not the specifical form of any bruit beast and much lesse an individual one that it may be a bruit beast before it is a man They were doubtful in this thing as many as before me have thought the forms of bruit beasts to be substances and to be taken immediately out of the very substance of the matter not a new light to be brought down from above by the Creator which may not be a substance but a light which may be the band of a specificall oneness Without which all the endeavours of nature dispensations of bodies excitings and splendors of the Air are void and so whatsoever endeavours of seeds are enticed out of the bosome of nature are vain and barren For the Archeus cannot give that which he hath not neither hath he that which is far narrower than his own nature Therefore the Creator doth enlighten or illustrate the Archeus with a light of specifical essence of thingliness after an unutterable manner and also co-knits it into the unity of a composed body And there is in the sensitive creatures a Soul or sensitive life therefore in its moments of maturity and period of appointment the bruitall conception is soulified with a specificall formall light but seeing the seed of man hath not a specificall determination unto brutall dispositions unless a Woman with young doth by chance through imagination alienate the figure of mans seed and the Almighty hath knowledge whence and whither all seeds do flow when now it is come to a life in man it receiveth an undistinct sensitive Soul as to its brutality in splendor enjoying onely life and also at the same instant together with life the Creator coupleth an Immortall minde that by this ultimate act the sensitive Soul may be limited to a species or particular kinde by a humane individual yet it is to perish together with the life of man because it is coupled indeed to the formall and immortall Substance but is not united nor pierceth the same but onely toucheth it irregularly even as in the Chapter of long life therefore the sensitive Soul is specifically limited by the minde as it were light by a clear substance else it should be unfit for the union of the body And so its subordination to a further act in the conception of the Creator takes away from the sensitive Soul a specifical limitation because the being of a subordinate Form doth not appoint or limit the name or Species of a thing although it actually exist in the individuall And that also because the sensitive Soul is not a substance or an accident but a neutrall lightsome nature For neither is the vegetative Soul the form in a bruit beast whiles he onely groweth and doth not yet perceive because it is subordinate to the sensitive Soul Many therefore have thought that two formall acts do not suffer together with each other because they thought they were two substances and they contradicted themselves in the fire while they might see light to â—ierce light fire Iron yea and fire to be pierced by the bellowes with adjoyned fire Lastly the sensitive Soul in bruit beasts is not a naked promotion of the vegetative Soul or a passage to a more perfect state of it self that that coming to it this should decay or that this should be changed into that For none hath said that the souls of Plants are an accident but all confess them to be a vitall subsisting Being For they are vitall Souls but not proper living souls For so a Plant waxing dry its vitall light perisheth with its soul yet for the most part the virtue of that simple remaining long I have said for the most part because the root of Anemony or Wind-flower being plainly dried into wrinckles doth as yet wax green or revive again c. Therefore the operations of Souls and their effects do remain different So that the functions of one Soul may be extinguished those of the other being unhurt Therefore the severed lights of the Soul and the subordinate ones are limited to the bound of an appointed duration in motion In which bound unless they are pierced by a light coming upon them they straightway cease to be Therefore this vitall light differeth from a fiery light as I have said in the end meanes Instruments effects and properties Because a fiery light in a slack degree is not at any time living not vitall unless occasionally as it stirreth up But in a heightned degree being reduced by the folding up of it self together it is a destroyer and an artificial death and a simple Creature whereas otherwise the lights of Forms are divided throughout all the Species of things Seeing things do not elsewhere draw their thingliness than from lightsome Forms And we may easily measure the diversities of lights if the same light of the Sun being repercussed or struck back by the Moon can so easily change its properties Last of all the Archeus of Mineralls is plainly materiall liquid covering a hidden and drowsie brightness under thickness which is more growing and liquid in Plants but in the four-footed Beast it openly floâ—teth and shineth so that the living Creature dying a failing splendor may be presently seen in his eyes For feign an Oxe of 800 pound weight which the light of life being extinguished is straightway cold Therefore that hot light must needes be of so much moment that it may preserve so many pounds rushing into cold by its continual nourishment from cold Therefore the light of four-footed Beasts and Birds is Sunny no otherwise than that of Fishes doth prove it a Splendor of the Moon For there is no seldom example of the cold light of Fishes by night I say in shrubs or tamarisks Earths and combustible things For there is a light and that a kindled one a shining exhalation without fire and heat For now and then I under the thickest darkness of the night clearly distinguish lines under the
on in opposition to the Scripture CHAP. CXIII The Tabernacle in the Sun THe Schools deny the Sun to be fervently hot For they will that they also should herein be believed without demonstration Because they think that a man is generated by a man and the Sun And therefore that it becomes Nature least if the Sun should be of a fervent heat he should consume himself his Inn and all neighbouring things into hot Embers For seeing he is of a huge bigness and also heats afar of why should he not commit a cruel outrage if he should be fervently hot in himself For how should he generate a man and also all sublunary things As if first of all the Sun being exceeding hot the substance of the Heavens should therefore be burnable And that it should not be more meet to admit the Sun to be hot without nourishment than to deny all the Senses to wit that the effect doth exist being produced by no proper Cause To deny I say heat indeed which makes hot with so great a force and at so great a distance Chiefly because according to the proportion whereby we do the more approach unto the direct beams of the Sun by so much we meet with the greater heat I believe this fear of the Schools to be vain because the Light was made by the Word which contracted the whole Light into two Globes That the Sun should be the Light of the Day and the Moon of the Night The lightsome Globe of Sun is said to exceed the Diameter of the Earth and Water 160. times Out of which Globe of the Sun the beams of Light are dispersed as well above as beneath himself on the whole Universe And they most thorowly enlighten all traseparent bodies but dark or thick bodies in their superficies onely But I have shewn that the beams of the Sun being united by a Glasse are true fire shining in its properties For whether the beams are united or not that is to the Sun by accident And therefore if the beams of Light being connexed are true fire and do burn the Sun also as the very Center of the connexed beams shall of necessity be most exceeding hot For the Fire of the Sun persisteth without nourishment by the command of God Also seeing the fire in the middle of the crest wherein the Sun-beams are united subsisteth without nourishment Kitchin fire only bears before it a Light subsisting by it self without the intervening of the Sun Yet in that thing being different from the Sun that it ought to be nourished that it may subsist But the Sun because he is of a heavenly Nature wants not food because he is void of Usuries and appointed of God that he may thus burn The Sun therefore is a most fervent fire the principal Center in Nature of created Lights Peradventure when at sometimes dayes shall be at their full and the harvest of things shall be ripe the watery vision of the Heavens the Waters I say which are above the Heavens through a divine virtue shall assume a ferment and the seed of a combâ—â—â—ble matter and it shall rain fire from Heaven and the Stars shall fall For the Sun by the command of God breaking open the floodgates and bolts of his Globe shall burn the Heavens as well those which are nigh as those which are very far of and shall consume the World into hot embers For the Heavens shall be changed shall wax old and shall at sometimes melt like wax And the Stars shall fall down on the Earth not indeed whole because they are for the most part bigger than the Globe of the Earth but the parts of the Stars that are burnt shall make an Abyss of fire upon the Center Therefore the Sun is a fire in himself and being nigh but by how much further his beams are dispersed throughout the Universe they shall give the more apt nourishing warmths unto the seeds of things because the Sun doth suggest onely a general and common Light which is fit for exciting and promoting the seeds of things and for this cause it is vital But not that it conferreth Life and that which gives Essence to the seeds of things In Caire of Aegypt Eggs are nourished by the fire of a furnace and Chickens are abundantly bred without the nourishing of any Hen yet the fire of the furnace neither gives nor hath a seminal virtue neither doth it burn the Eggs nor because it nourisheth doth it cease to be burningly hot in its Fountain So the beams of the Sun being dispersed throughout the Universe are no longer fire but a simple Light Kitchin fire therefore doth after some sort dispose it self according to an emulation of the Sun To wit it enflames burns and consumes things that are near it but from far it onely heats and at a very far distance onely shines Yea neither is it reckoned true fire unless it be hot in the highest degree unless it centrically stick fast with its connexed beams in the crest of Light But it differs in nobleness from the Light of the Sun that it is not of the first created things not of an heavenly disposition not subsisting without fewels nor therefore is it universal The Almighty therefore as he hath created the Sun a singular thing so he hath created as it were one only Sun in every species of sensitive Creatures which should suffice even unto the end of the World and should propagate them thenceforward not indeed being hot in the highest degree but that it subsisting by the poynts of dispersed beams may not cover to ascend unto further moments of degrees Therefore in the smallestminutes of specifical Lights a formal Light of species or particular kinds is restrained by a Divine virtue which hath tied up every species unto a particular moment of Lights general indeed in respect of the Sun yet made individual by the co-ordination of my Lord For the Sun of Species's shall endure for ever no otherwise than as the Species themselves shall But because it doth not subsist but in individuals therefore the sun of Species is daily slidable in individuals even at every Moment unless it be nourished as it were by a continual fewel Therefore the light of Life hath some similitude with the Sun and a part agreeable unto Kitchin fire To wit in this that our Sun ought to have vital Spirits for an uncessant Fewel and those capable of an administring to a depending Light that is to follow â—â—ot indeed that the Spirits do in themselves and of themselves heat any more than the beams of the Sun the which the light of the Sun being withdrawn do presently die from heat and light Nevertheless they bear a mutual resemblance with the Sun because they seem to propagate an enflaming and subsist centrally in the heart For when the Schools took notice that the heart did voluntarily and of it self hasten into a cold dead Carcass and that the Spirits being dissolved or spent it indeed
by heat alone becomes a stone as they will themselves For because a stone melts not by fire even as otherwise mettals do therefore they conjecturing of Nature from a Negative have supposed they have untyed every knot And this grosse wit ought to have been suspected by every one long since if they all did not sleep a diseased drowsie sleep For what will they say of Sulphur which flowes or melts with the fire Hath frozen water or earth given a beginning to Sulphur because it melts Or what will they say of the condensing or co-thickning of Glass which is again dissolved by the same heat whereby it is made And what lastly concerning Salt which by one degree of heat is coagulated and waxeth dry and by another degree thereof is melted and a gain is dissolved by moist things Surely it is a shame to stay any longer in Aristotelical trifles and the Fables of Elementary qualities while we must diligently search into the causes and original of things Wherefore Paracelsus first taught our Ancestors that all Minerals which he believed to be materially made of the conjunction of the four Elements and elsewhere onely of the three Beginnings consisted chiefly of water and so that they are the fruits of the Element of water no otherwise than as Vegetables are the fruits of the earth But it hath not been alway unknown to me that all Bodies which are believed to be mixt are materially onely of water none excepted But that their Body is constrained or coagulated by the necessity of a certain proper and specifical seed for Ends known onely to the Creator from their cause which proposition I have proved to the full in the beginning of Natural Philosophy It hath also been hitherto neglected after what manner these seeds of things may come to light may cover themselves with the wrapperies of Bodies and dispose the same and how those very seeds may at length of necessity hearken to the importunities of Bodies Wherefore neither shall it be unacceptable in this place briefly to repeat the progress and flux of Seeds to their form and their maturities in Minerals out of the Doctrine by me elsewhere more largely delivered For indeed if a Stone be not made of a Stone it must needs be that stonifying includes the Generation of some certain new Being but every Generation presupposeth some kind of seed which may dispose the matter to a Being in potentia or possibility seeing nothing which is not vital is able to promote it self to perfection And therefore it would be a foolish and accidental perfection which should proceed from a Body without an internal Guide and an end appointed unto it Therefore if a Body be dispositively distinguished from the internal Efficient and doth issue in its production unto ends proposed unto it in Nature then also the Etymologie of a seed doth of right belong unto it because it proceedeth wholly from an incorporeal Beginning But this Beginning shall easily be granted by me to issue forth in vital things from the Image or according to the Idea framed by the Conception or cogitation of the Generater which therefore is called the imaginative power or faculty But that inanimate things have seminal Gifts implanted in their first Beings which after the manner of the Receiver do also proportionably after some sort answer to the Imagination the Sympathy and Antipathy of inanimate things do teach For a non-sensitive Body namely the Loadstone must needs after some sort feel the Scituation of the Pole or North star if it direct it self of its own accord unto it but is not drawn by the Pole even as in the Book of the Plague I teach by manifest Arguments Likewise that it feels or perceives Iron if neglecting the Pole it by a Choice inclines it self to the Iron which particulars least they should be here after a tedious manner repeated by me it is sufficient thus to have supposed them by the way Moreover This very Idea and perfect act of a new Being to wit the seminal efficient cause doth even in unsensitive things perform its office no otherwise than if it were strong in Life and Sense which Idea or imaginous likenesse cloathes it selfe with the Ayr of its own Archeus and by meanes thereof doth afterwards perfect the dispositions and Organs of the Body and at length compleateth those things which in the delineation of its own seminal Image are designed it for Ends known to God alone And in this respect also every Creature depends originally on God For this God hath freely put into living Creatures and plants a seminal faculty of framing such an Idea that is a fruitfulnesse of multiplying and raising up Of-spring by vertue of the Word Encrease and multiply to endure for Ages The which under the correction of the Church I thus borrow from the Scriptures In the Beginning the Earth was empty and voyd For surely it was beset with a double emptinesse or vacuity The which notwithstanding is not so said of the Element of water For the earth had not as yet minerals in its Bosom if it were void Indeed the earth was a meer and pure Sand not yet distinguished by a numerous variety and ranks of minerals But the Spirit of the Lord was carried upon the Great Deep of the Waters Not indeed that that carrying was not an empty idleness wanting a mysterie or a voluptuous ease of swimming but it contained the mysterie of a Blessing whereby the water might replenish the vacuity of the earth in one of its emptinesses with Fruits But on the other hand might satisfie the vacuity of the earth and fill up its emptinesse by Vegetables and living Creatures Therefore before the Light sprang up all mettals and minerals began at once in the floating of the divine Spirit Of which thing first of all the hidden lights of mettals imitating the Stars and the foregoing Testimonies which are wont to shine by Night in Mine-making Mountains do perswade me At leastwise the Spirit of the Lord which filled the whole earth being now earnestly desirous of Creating sealed by its Word the fruitfull Idea of its desire in the Spondill or Marrow of the Abysse of the Waters which in an instant brought forth the whole wealthy diversity of Stones Minerals and Mettals whereby it replenished the emptinesse of the earth with much usury which vaculty indeed living Creatures and plants were not able sufficiently as neither suitable to fulfill But the Pavement or Pantafle of the earth which this most rich of-Spring of waters was entrusted with for the filling up of its vacuity is called by Paracelsus the Trival-line the Womb that was great with Child with the seeds of minerals wherein the Lord implanted Reasons or Respects Endowments and seeds that were to be sufficient for Ages For so indeed the wealthy seed of Rocky stones and minerals is implanted in the Water that it may receive its determination and Ferment in the womb of the Earth But what the Virgin
in the Dutch Idiome is Litch-aem as if to say a Vessel of Light having obtained a Spirit and Soul from him And one thing ought to be made of these the Body Spirit and Soul ought to be sanctifyed Hy-lichzijn he shineth or Blessed Sal-lichzijn he shall be shining but if not the Vessel and Spirit must needs be damned Wise Men We observe or take notice that thou endeavourest to express thy self to be threefold but not a Unite and thy Spirit to be Darksome or Lightsome the darkening of it to proceed from the Flesh which is earthly deadly and obscure the illumination or enlightning of it it shall attain by the Spirit by beaming in emptying out and subduing the Darkness But we covet to hear whether there be a third thing because thou namest the Light of the Vessel and a Soul are there two diverse Lights or at leastwise do they constitute or make one Light of one Light Mercurius there is one only Eternal Light Entirely and Eternally Externally and Internally in all Parts because the Life Eternal and the whole Eternal Part was inspired into Man by the Almighty God even as Moses testifies in the second Chapter of the Book of Genesis Man was made into a living Soul which Soul made or constituted the seventh Day as is demonstrated in the very same Chapter Therefore the Heavens and the Earth were perfected and all the Ornament or Dress thereof And God compleated Work which he had made on the Seventh Day and he rested on the Seventh Day from all his Work which he had made and he blessed the Seventh Day and sanctified it Because therein God had ceased from all his Work which he had created that he might make to wit Man into a living Soul Wise Men If this Light be the Seventh Day what dost thou think of the Six foregoing Dayes and of that which is extant in the eighteenth Chapter of Ecclesiasticus He who lives for ever created all things at once Mercurius In the Beginning God created all things the Heaven and the Earth and whatsoever was created the wich Moses at the entrance of Genesis comprehends into the First Day where he denotes the making of the other five Dayes Saying In the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth but the Earth was empty and void and Darkness was upon the face of the Deep and the Spirit of God was carried upon the Waters And God said let there be Light and Light was made And God saw the Light that it was good and he divided the Light from the Darkness And he called the Light Day and the Darkness Night And the Evening and Morning was made one Day Insomuch that Man doth constitute the Sixth Day which Dayes were distinct from each other whereby Man may know himself what he is what he is to do and what Power he hath or may have by his Spirit as a Man not likewise as a Soul over the foregoing Dayes or created things as it is found in the aforesaid Chapter of Genesis And God said Let us make Man according to our own Image and Likeness and let him bear Rule over the Fishes of the Sea and over the Fowles of the Heaven and over the Beasts of the whole Earth and over every creeping thing which is moved in the Earth Wise Men Thou dost satisfie us and besides dost also over-signifie that Man was the sixth Day and that he seperated the Light from the Darkness on the first Day which Light or Spirit he called Day and his Blood Flesh or Darkness he called Night which Evening and Morning constituted the sixth Day and so consequently the other five although according to every ones peculiar Nature But dost thou make no mention of the seventh Day Mercurius The seventh Morning Light or Life is the Spirit of God it self even as was said And therefore in Moses his description of the seventh Day it is not expressed that the Evening and Morning was made the seventh Day as in the six precedent Dayes and that for this Cause because there is no Beginning or Evening granted to be in God the Father because he is he who Is what he is but it is so accounted because on the seventh Day he inspired into Man his Face the Breath of Life and this man became into a living Soul so that of Man and the Breath of God the seventh Day was made Wise Men From thy relation we have fully understood the Beginning and Ending of the first Day and of the sixth Day following with the seventh Day not ended that Man was conjoyntly made into a living Soul But we desire to hear what Moses will have to be meant by the Word In the Beginning Mercurius The Beginning is God the Son by whom in whom and from whom the Heaven and Earth were created as the Evangelist John doth most exceeding evidently testifie in his first Chapter in these Words In the Beginning was the Word which with the Dutch also sounds Woort that is Fiat or let it be done and the Word was with God and God was the Word This Word was in the Beginning with God All things were made by him and without him was nothing made In him was Life and the Life was the Light of men And the Light shineth in Darkness and the Darkness hath not comprehended it There was a Man sent from God whose name was John This Man came for a Testimony that he might bear witness of the Light that all men through him might believe He was not that Light but that he might bear witness of the Light That was the true Light which enlightneth every Man that cometh into this Word He was in the World and the World was made by him and the World knew him not He came into his own and his own received him not But as many as received him to them he gave Power to become the Sons of God to these who believe in his name who were born not of Bloods nor of the Will of the Flesh neither of the Will of Man but of God And the Word was made Flesh and dwelt in us and we saw its Glory as the Glory of the only begotten of the Father full of Grace and Truth John gives his Testimony concerning him and cryeth out saying This was he whom I said he which is to come after me was made before me because he was before me And of his fulness we all have received and Grace for Grace Because the Law was given by Moses Grace and Truth was made by Jesus Christ No Man hath seen God at any time The onely begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father he hath declared him Wise Men Now we have perceived this Testimony of Saint John that it contains every thing serving to perfection but deliver thy Opinion unto us after what manner thou art like unto Adam and in what respect in him and how thou hast proceeded from him Mercurius Before that man was made into a living
Soul God spake unto himself as the first Chapter of Genesis witnesseth And God created Man according to his own Image which Image is God the Son After the Image of God created he him Male and Female created he them And God blessed them and said Increase and multiply Which command was enjoyned to Adam in respect of his Spirit and Humanity but not as to his Soul for this is Eternal and Immutable So also all his Parts are like unto him whereof I also possess the whole Now even as man was made of the Mud or Clay of the Ground so also it behoves him to increase as other terrestrial living Creatures by a growing and uniting and eating of living Creatures which Foods are required to die in the Stomack and to be changed from their Substance if they ought to be converted from a more vile Substance into a more excellent one or to be promoted by the Spirit of Man unto a united Life from which co-nourishing and increasing my Vessel or Body and Substance I hold as Adam did because I proceeded from him after that he was made into a living Soul as it is found in the second Chapter of Genesis but for Adam there was not found an helper like unto him Therefore the Lord God sent a deep Sleep into Adam and when he had slept he took one of his Ribs and filled up the Flesh in the room of it And the Lord God framed the Rib which he had taken from Adam into a Woman and he brought her unto Adam And Adam said This now is Bone of my Bones and Flesh of my Flesh this shall be called Virago or Wo-man because she was taken from Man Wherefore a Man shall leave his Father and his Mother and shall adhere to his Wife and they twain shall be in one Flesh Wise Men Thou hast explained unto us what thou hast been wholly in Adam according to thy Spirit and Soul and in Eve according to thy Body likewise that the Vessel hath received the Spirit and the Spirit the Soul Now we could desire to hear in what respect Eve was produced by God out of Adam and what the sleep sent by God into Adam before he framed her doth denote Mercurius Adam from the Beginning was perfect in his Essence as being the first Man created by God so his Spirit did shine thorow his Flesh and Vessel and did illustrate it even as now the Light did illuminate his Darkness and was able to subdue it so it ought to excel and overcome the Darkness because it was Internal Stable Eternal and good in its own Essence the which Spirit existing Adam could not of his own accord produce his Like without Sleep sent into him for he persisting in his Essence was without sleep and because he had divided himself from himself all his Parts had remained proper unto him and again had returned unto the whole into one assoon as he had listed because by his Spirit predominating he had divided the Body subjected unto it self which Parts were inwardly and outwardly enlightned from his own Light which gave an Essence unto all his Members But some may ask how in the next place had it gone with Adam if he had not eaten the Poyson from Eve It is answered there had alwayes been in him a combating with his Spirit or Light against his Darkness the which on the first Day God divided of which two also Man was composed even as the said Chapter sheweth which is further explained at the end of the same Chapter on the sixth Day in these Words And replenish ye the Earth and subdue it And when they had fought to the utmost they had filled the Earth and the Darkness with their Spirit or with their Light and had so subdued it that the former Darkness had been supped up and co-nourished which was his proper and one only Work alwayes to be done and perfected But some one may further query seeing in Adam the said Light being separated from the Darkness had overcome the Darkness as it was shewed to be by the very same Light whether or no according to a spiritual returned or restored United Body he had been entire and eternal in all his particular Parts and Members This being so by that reason he might have been divided into Innumerable Eternal and Infinite men without the aforesaid sleep preceding I answer it is certain that this Deified man would have been entire in all his Infinite Parts likewise that all those Parts would again as one have constituted one Entire Body He having himself in such a manner had been likewise to be one Deified Man he being reduced hitherto by his necessary strife would by Grace in his Life have enjoyed or rejoyced in the same with Christ our Saviour after his Resurrection Whereby many such men might now have been begotten or brought forth and whereby all also of them might have enjoyed that very same Grace for which Adam was procreated and whereby they might have attained it by that very same strife It pleased the Lord God to send the aforesaid sleep into Adam to shew that he soundly sleeping had not contributed any thing to the structure of Eve but she was now founded in this sleep by God Moreover the curious might busily enquire why Eve was framed of the Rib of Adam but not of his Flesh I return an answer the former Man was Adam the second Eve made for his help and conjoyned Procreation Now Propagation consisteth partly in Man as in other living Creatures by conjunction or nourishing as was said and it is further to be observed in all increase of created things in this World before they are able to grow because they consist of two things that the one ought first to die to wit the Body and Form which consist of Water and Earth and do arise from the Light of the Moon and Stars as of the Lights of the Night every thing according to their different Nature none excepted and that this might be perfected in Adam the Lord God took a Rib out of Adam which is a Bone according to its being made in Adam a Progeny of Veins the which with the Dutch sounds also a Progeny of Vipers which Bone is governed by the Moon as shall be found that when the Moon increaseth the Marrow likewise of the Bones doth increase like the Waters and together with it doth decrease It will further be found that when Flesh is burnt in the Fire it looseth that form A Bone not so yea that is so stable that the Examiners of the goodness of Coyn do make their Crucibles thereof wherein they melt and search Gold and Silver So that a Bone or Rib is and doth retain nothing besides the humane Earth as it is a second Production in Man like that of the Earth out of the Waters so far it differs from the first and one thing Wherefore Eve as she was procreated from hence she is likewise of a second and
objection from Arts. 17. Why the Water may be reckoned the first-born Element MY sight is carried on a useful good but not on vain reasoning Wherefore seeing the Auncients do call back nature and every of its operations to the account of Elements Qualities and Complexions resulting in mixture and the Schooles do even to this day hand forth this Doctrine to their young beginners in Medicine to the destruction of mankinde I will again and again set upon the dissection of the Elements whereby it may appear that they have erred hitherto in the Causes of Diseases I will every where relate Paradoxes and things unaccustomed to the Schooles and it will be hard for those to cease from the Doctrine drunk in who do believe the whole truth to have flowed into Galen Galen hath delivered in many Volumes and with a tedious boasting of the Greeks that every Body the Earth Water Air and Fire excepted doth consist of the Wedlock of these four united together and so from hence that a Body is to be called mixt Moreover that the whole likeness and diversity of bodies doth arise from the unlike conflux or concurrence and continual fight of four Elements But the Schooles that came after do as yet dispute it as undecided whether the Elements with their forms do remain in the thing mixt or indeed whether in every particular mixture they are deprived of their essential forms and the which by a peculiar indulgence they do re-take from the seperation and general privation of the form of the thing mixed At length from the unlikeness and combate of the Elements they bid all the infirmities and first-born fewels of our mortality to descend Surely it is a wonder to see how much brawling and writing there hath been about these things and it is to be pitied how much these loose dreams of trifles have hitherto circumvented or beset the World they have prostituted destructive vain talkings in the faires of the Schooles instead of the knowledge of Medicine and so so damnable a delusion hath thereby deceived the obedience of the sick in healing Therefore the juggling deceipts of Pagans being cast behinde me I direct my experiences and the light fteely given me according to the Authority of the holy Scriptures at the beholding of which light the night-Birds do fly away Therefore it is chiefly to be grieved at that the light of truth being had darkness is as yet taught in the Schooles of Christians In the beginning therefore the Almighty created the Heaven and the Earth before that the first day had shone forth Afterwards in the first day he created the light and divided it from the darkness Secondly he created the Firmament which should seperate the inferior Waters from the waters that were above it self and named that Heaven Therefore it is hence plainly to be seen that before the first day the waters were already created from the beginning being partakers of a certain heavenly disposition because they were hidden under the Etymologie of the Word Heaven Yet they were a-kinne to these lower waters to which they were once conjoyned before their seperation In the next place that darkness covered the face of the deep and that that deep did point out the Waters because then all the Waters above the Heaven being as yet conjoyned to ours upon the Earth did make an Abysse of incomprehensible deepness upon which the Spirit whose name is Eternall was carried that he might with his blessing replenish his new Creature of water Therefore it is manifest that the Creation of the Heaven the Water and the Earth was before a day neither that it may be numbred with the six dayes Creation afterwards described Because it pleased the Eternall also to rest on the seventh day which in respect of the aforesaid Creation would have been the eighth if it had been a day And therefore it is not reckoned among the number of dayes because the Creation of the Elementary matter was made before a day sprang forth Lastly by this Text the Firmament is not onely the eighth Starry Heaven but and also that which by our Authority we distinguish into seven wandring Orbs or Circles Which the teacher of the Gentiles hath seemed to contain in one But the Chrystalline and first mover for another and at length the huge Heaven of an incomprehensible greatness wherein every righteous man shineth like the Sun for the third although that Empyrean Heaven joyned with its two fellowes being taken for the second perhaps another may remain for the third Which may be the bottomless retiring place of Fountain-light full of Divine Majesty and unsearchable At leastwise the Firmament reacheth from the Moon even to the conjoyning of the Starry Heaven and seperateth the water that is above it from these lower ones and therefore the Heaven with the Hebrews soundeth where there are waters But the Lights and the Stars began on the fourth day and were set in order in the Firmament Therefore in the beginning the Heaven Earth and Water the matter of all Bodies that were afterwards to arise was created But in the Heaven were the Waters contained but not in the Earth hence I think the Waters to be more noble than the Earth yea the Water to be more pure simple indivisible firm or constant neerer to a Principle and more partaking of a heavenly condition than the Earth is Therefore the Eternall would have the Heaven to contain Waters above it and as yet something more by reason whereof it is called Heaven that which we call the Air the Skie or vitall Air. For therefore neither is there mention made of the creating of the Water and Air for that both of them the Etymologie of the Word Heaven did include Therefore I call these two Elements Primigeniall or first-born in respect of the Earth But no where any thing is read of the Creation of the fire neither therefore do I acknowledge it among the Elements and I reject my honour or esteem with Paganisme Neither also may we with Paracelsus acknowledge the fire by the name of Lights and Stars to be a superlunary Element as neither to have been framed from the beginning the which notwithstandig it should needs be if it ought to resemble or partake of the condition of an Element Therefore I deny that God created four Elements because not the fire the fourth And therefore it is vain that the fire doth materially concurre unto the mixture of bodies Therefore the fourfold kinde of Elements Qualities Temperaments or Complexions and also the foundation of Diseases falls to the ground For our handicraft operation hath made manifest to me that every body to wit the Rockie Stone the small Stone the Gemme or pretious Stone the Flint the Sand the Fire-stone the white Clay the Earth cocted or boyled Stones Glasse Lime Sulphur or Brimstone c. is changed into an actual Salt equall in weight to its own body from whence it was made and that that Salt being sometimes
forced to a mixture with the Circulate Salt of Paracelsus altogether looseth its fixedness and at length may be changed into a Liquor which also at length passeth into an un-savory water and that that water is of equall weight with its Salt from whence it sprang But the Plant fleshes bones Fishes and every such like I have known how to reduce into its meer three things whence afterwards I have made an un-savory water But that a Mettall by reason of the undissolveable co-mixture of its own seed and the Sand quellem are most hardly reduced into Salt I have learned therefore by the fire that God before there was a day created the Water and Air and of the Water an Elementary Earth which is the Sand. Quellem Because it was the future Basis or foundation of Creatures for man their Standard-defender and therefore in the very beginning it ought to be created although in its own nature it was not truly primo-genial or first-born Wherefore I finde two onely primitive Elements although there is mention made of neither in the holy Scriptures because they are comprehended under the Title of Heaven But with the two he also created the Earth Wherefore he created two great Lights that the Moon and the lesse by shining might govern the Water but that the greater should shine upon the Earth But I shall by and by teach that these first-born Elements are never changed into each other Indeed the Water putrifying by continuance in the Earth doth obtain a locall or implanted Seed And therefore it passeth either into the Liquor Leffas for every Plant or into the Minerall juyce Bur according to the particular kindes chosen by the direction of the Seedes Which Seedes are replenished by the Ferment of the Earth at first empty and void and then straightway by the blessing of the Spirit boren upon the Waters But my experience of the fire hath taught me to wit that the three first things the Salt Sulphur and Mercury of the Water do alwayes remain undivided whether in the mean time the water be lifted up in manner of a Vapour in the form of a Cloud or be made thin like unto invisible things or at length also it doth flote in its antient shape of water For that Paracelsus would have the water by evaporating to be wholly brought to nothing let that be his own Idiotisme or property of speech at leastwise not to be winked at by the ingenious Distiller Truly I have certainly found that the water being lifted up into the Atomes or Moats of Clouds yet doth alway remain the same in number and water in kinde which the Atomes of the Mercury of the water do shew to us in the likeness of a Cloud But there is never made in the water a seperation of the three former things and much lesse any essentiall transmutation or changing For truly there is a simple turning outward of the inward parts by the fire the which again return inward as oft as the Vapour is co-thickned into drops But the cause why I may think the Earth not to be reckoned among the primary Elements although it was also created in the beginning is because it may at length be turned into water by the depriving of its essence And therefore I believe the water to be the first and most simple body seeing that never returns into Earth but by the vertue of the Seeds and so the water takes the turns of a composed body before the Earth or Sand Quellem be made Which thing I shall hereafter more largely demonstrate CHAP. IX The Earth 1. That the Fire is neither an Element nor co-mingled materially with Bodies nor that it is a matter nor that it hath a matter in it 2. The Earth is not a part of the thing mixed 3. The Virgin-Earth is demonstrated by Handicraft operation 4. Grounds or Soils in the Earth are distinguished 5. The Water within the Earth doth more than a thousand times exceed the water of the Sea and Rivers 6. The true Original of Fountains 7. How Waters do of their own accord ascend 8. The continuity or holding together of a thread is proved in the Waters 9. By what chance the Earth happens to Bodies that are believed to be mixt 10. The number of Elements and their temperaments are most destructive trifles after that the same are translated into the art of healing 11. The Earth is the Wombe but not the Mother of Bodies and that is demonstrated by many Arguments 12. Water and Air do not convert any other thing into themselves 13. What kinde of thing mixture is and what the adjoyning or application of Bodies 14. Objections concerning Glasse and the Tile or Brick are resolved 15. The Operations of the Fire of Hell 16. How out of Glasse Sand may be safely separated from its Alcali or Lixiviall Salt 17. That the Center of the World is sometimes changed THerefore neither is the Fire an Element nor is it materially co-mixed in Bodies because I will shew the Fire neither to be a matter nor to have it in it self Yea the Earth doth no where offer it self to be co-mixt with any natural body besides it self which may be re-taken thence by any labour Therefore I have lamented and been angry with my self that the foundation of healing hath been stuft with trifles and that the sick should be constrained to yield obedience to so great mockeries But I name the original Earth of the Virgin-Element the constant Body of Sand it self but the rest of every kinde of Earth the fruit of the Earth from a Mineral off-spring The which by the art of the fire is sufficiently and over proved For that the Sand is the original Earth first of all its hard reducement into water proveth because the Sand out of a flint or an Adamant may be sooner reduced into water than the Sand Quellem And then that thing also the Spade proveth because in digging truly divers Soils do meet nigh the light indeed made to differ in colours and thickness and the which although by the rustical or homely Etymologie of the Schooles they are believed to be black white yellow read Earths c. yet they are fruits of the Earth and do consist of a Seed under which is a Sand also elsewhere manifold in its varieties of Soils as well in one onely as in divers places at length under those doth the Sand reside which our Countreymen call Keybergh or the flinty Mountain from whence do flow the originall of Rocks and Mountains and the chief riches of Mines At length the last of them all the white or boyling Sand Quellem doth shew it self in a living and vitall Soil which the Spade or Mattock never pierceth For how much soever Sand and Water thou shalt take away from thence so much doth there succeed in the room of that which was taken away filling up again the same place This Sand I say being unmixt is a certain Hair-cloth or sieve and
thing doth it not assume the same thickness of water even by reason of cold For so they had at least spoken something likely to be true Give heed therefore whosoever thou art that endeavourest by healing to work out the salvation of thy Soul what a Patron the Schooles do hitherto defend By what counsel have they made the Elements Complexions and degrees of qualities the foundation of healing who being seduced not but by a sleepy credulity have yielded the number essence use properties fruits and passions of the Elements and their own names to heathenish blindness Behold how slavishly the Schooles have borrowed their Elementary qualities and would have them be obedient at the pleasures of Dreams they have coupled increased blunted or repressed and divided them they have even sent abroad as it were wan devises for the causes of natural things knowings of Diseases healings and destructions of the Temples of the holy Spirit Therefore the air water and earth are cold by Creation because without light heat and the partaking of life Heat therefore is a stranger to them external to the Elementary Root But the air and earth are by themselves dry the water onely is moyst These are the qualities of those Bodies which none may vary as it listeth him But the air hath emptinesses as in its place else where whereby it drinks up and withholds vapours This is the state order Complexion of the Elements And which belongs not to the profession of Medicine unless by the way And so I will shew that in the Schooles that which least belongeth hath been very much searched into as if it were of the greatest moment and that which is of the greatest moment hath been hitherto neglected Because the whole pains of Physitians hath given place to mockeries and unprofitable brawlings Therefore if the Elements do not enter into mixt Bodies vain is the Doctrine of the Schooles touching the number composition temperaments concerning the contrariety proportion strife and degree of Elements for degrees are bound to the Seedes of simple Bodies not to an Element They are vain trifles whether the forms of the Elements do remain in the thing mixt because they are those things which are not in it as an Element it never ceaseth from that which it once began to be except the water to wit when being espoused to the Seeds it departs into a Body which hath hitherto been believed to be mixt Vain therefore is their fight interchangeable course Victory and that hence every Disease dissolution ruine healing and restoring doth depend Vain also is the method which is framed by contraries fetched from hence For the Schooles being by degrees guilty of those ill patched lies however they may a long time prate concerning Complexions at length they fail and being contented with feigned humours they scarce any more do debate concerning the fight of the Elements except in the six things besides nature and the frivolous Commands of Diet. 1. The Air and Water are Bodies not to be changed into each other The Demonstration The air which is in A being made thin by the heat of that which encompasseth it increaseth by the increase of dimensions and therefore it takes up more room than before Which thing notwithstanding cannot be unless it drives the Liquor B. C. into C. E. otherwise a poriness or fulness of little holes of the Vessel should be admitted or a Rupture of A. Which contradicteth the supposition of Heer and successively the air which was in C. E. into the Vessel D. But D. cannot receive that air unless it drive away so much air through the hole of the Pipe F. The Conclusion Therefore without the opening in F. the Liquor B. C. had not been moved from its place Therefore it is no wonder that the Liquor of Vitrioll hath by little and little exhaled of its own accord through the necessary opening in F. Therefore the stupidity or dulness of N. is laid open to whom when I had given many Instruments of like sort yet he had never observed the opening in F. Yea although I had plainly shewen these things to him many being present before that he had set forth his ridiculous fable against me yet he feigned afterwards that he wondred Because that Liquor had perished by degrees He saith that he found the whole Vessel most perfectly shut for neither doth that which is not exactly shut deserve to be called shut yet he grants that a motion of the Liquor was made which had shewen the temperature of the air And that the Liquor was changed into air the Glasse being shut Therefore false observations being supposed I will discover his misfortunes It being granted that the Vessel D. is as equally shut as is the Vessel A according to his supposition The thing required we must demonstrate That the water B. C. cannot be moved Likewise that it cannot teach the temperature of the air also that it could not be dried up or exhale Likewise that it could not be turned into air The preparing of an absurdity For if he admitteth of the motion and dryness of the water he ought to admit absurdities and contradictories or to confess his errours The preparing of the demonstration Let some heat be applied to the Vessel A. exceeding the temperature of the air encompassing for then the air included will enlarge it self according to the more or lesse heat and according to and as it exceedeth the true temperature of the air shut up in the Vessel D. against which it driving forward the water B. C. it shall destroy the equall tenour through too much action So that the air shall be pressed together and co-thickned by restraint that it may yield to the enlargement made in A. The Demonstration Therefore according to the supposition of Heer that air pressed together is turned into water the Liquor had never failed in the Vessel Yet his own observation will have it that the Glasse being on every side exactly shut the water was nevertheless dried up and made air But he cannot admit of dryness in a Glasse exactly shut unless his own supposition be destroyed to wit that air pressed together is changed into water neither again can that supposition subsist unless he shall admit of the continuance of the Liquor which notwithstanding doth contradict his own observation Likewise he cannot admit of the moving of the Liquor B. C. unless he shall grant the Glasse to be opened in F and by consequence he confesseth he hath erred in his observation And which thing although by the force of demonstrations he was constrained to confess before that he vomited forth his Apologie with all kinde of reproaches against me yet he hath persisted therein to discover his own ignorances The Conclusion Therefore it must needes be if the water B. C. be moved through some temperature of the air that both the Vessels A and D are not shut For else the Instrument should not be convenient for measuring of the temperature of
subdivision is many times re-shaken sub-divided by the colds through which it hath passed This Gas at least should never of its own accord return into its auntient water nor should descend unto the most cold places through which it escaped by climbing upward unless the uppermost Blas of the Stars should force its descent And so the Region of the still air is not void of successive changes but that the Rain doth not there moysten the ground nor the rage of windes serve for the commotion of the waters For since the Gas which it keepes in it self is now reduced to so great a fineness of it self and all its Atomes being as it were roasted with heats in the outward superficies of the Sulphur surely they cannot return into rain unless by a sweet winde they descend to the middle Region where they do re-take the beginnings of coagulating under the luke-warm blowing of the air For a certain alteration opposite to that place from which the Gas departed ought to reduce the Gas into water For a sweet luke-warmth in the still air maketh the Atomes of Gas being covered in their own Sulphur to divide which Sulphur a skin being as it were broken thorow or like a Glasse that is brought suddenly from luke-warmth into the cold is broken and so the Mercury of the water doth dissolve its Salt at the dissolution whereof the Sulphur it self may be melted into its former water And that kinde of inversion or turning in and out of the body of the water and that torture through the exact searching of the cold is necessary that all the power of the Ferment may be wholly taken away out of the Clouds For else much corruption and the much stink of mists would soon destroy mortalls As in Silver being melted the exceeding small atomes of Gold do slide to the bottom So do the atomes of the Gas settle and by sliding they do increase or wax bigger which otherwise being infirm by reason of the coldness of the Air are again lifted up unless a gentle or favourable luke-warmth in the coldest place did now and then hinder it For so indeed rains shoures storms so Hail Snow mist and Frost are through an alteration by accident having arisen as well from a motive as an alterative Blas in the most cold places And so Gas and Blas have divided the whole Common-wealth of a Meteor into Colonies In like manner I have learned by the examples cited that the Sun doth not heat by accident but by it self and immediately And that heat is as intimate and proper to it as its light is to it The Air hath therefore its grounds or soils no lesse than the Earth which the Adeptists do call Peroledes Therefore the invisible Gas is entertained in the various Beds or Pavements of the Air if the Water hath its depths of its Gulfs it s own Gates are in the Peroledes which skilfull men have called the Floud-gates and folding doores of Heaven For neither is Gas falling down into the place of Clouds carried out of the depth of Heaven without its directer Blas Yea it falls not down but thorow ordained Pavements and folding-doores For all the folding-doores do not promiscuously lay open to the Planets but all the Planets in particular are by their own Blas the Key-keepers of their own Perolede Which thing I submit to be examined by Astrologers that are the shewers or disclosers of Meteors and I promise that they shall finde out a rich substance For so windes do sometimes hasten perpendicularly downwards and smite the Earth but otherwise they go side-wayes out of their folding-doores they beat down Houses and Trees as also bring miserable destruction on all sorts of Shipping But the more luke-warm Air doth foreshew the Winde to come out of the depth of the Air and the Gas to bring with it the Blas of Heaven downwards Whence Gas is straight-way again resolved into a Vapour and afterwards into rain Indeed Clouds do then appear which not long before were not beheld at any corner of the World Because the invisible Gas slides downward out of the depth of the upper Air the which growes together into vapours and from thence into drops For that is the appointment of the Air that it may continually seperate the waters from the waters But seeing that one part of water is extended at least to a hundred fold of its dimension while it is made a vapour and so much the finer by how much the Gas thereof is sub-divided into the more lesse parts and since there is that order and that law of universe that all things may be carried on for the necessity of man and the preserving of the World Indeed in this respect do heavy things tend upward light things are drawn downward Hence it hath seemed to me that the Blas of the Stars is disturbed into rain and is carried into clearnesses and other seasons as oft as the pluralities of Gas it self in the still Perolede of the air do seem to threaten almost choakings and the too-much com-pressions in the air Yet I am not so carefull concerning the occasionall causes of a Meteor it is sufficient that I have known an exhalation arising from beneath to wit a vapour and Gas to be the materiall cause of every Meteor It sufficeth to have known Blas to be the effective cause by the authority of the holy Scriptures The Stars shall be to you for times or seasons dayes and years This therefore is the unrestable appointment of the water that by proceeding continually upwards and downwards it should answer no otherwise than as the windes by an inordinate and irregular motion do answer to their Blas of the Stars And so the water which existed from the beginning of the Universe is the same and not diminished and shall be so unto the end thereof But I meditate of the Peroledes or Soils of the Air to be as it were the Bottles of the Stars by which they do unfold their Blas even through their determined or limited places for the uses and interchangeable courses of times or seasons And chiefly because the upper and almost still Perolede doth contain the cause why there are windes fruits dewes and especially things pertaining to Provinces For seeing that the winde is a flowing Air and so hath an unstableness in it we must needes finde the locall cause of stability in the more quiet Perolede Therefore the folding-doores are shut or laying open in the Perolede according to the Blas of the Stars which they obey Nor is it a wonder that there are limits or invisible bounds in the air of so great power and capable to restrain a heap for the visible World doth scarce contain another Common-wealth of things and the least one of powers For who will deny that under a Rock or great Stone of Scotland scarce 12 foot broad and deep 30 there is not some division of a Perolede that in the mean time I may be
first appeared for a sign of the Covenant Wherefore mortalls were amazed at that unwonted Being and being otherwise incredulous gave credit Secondly From hence I learn that the Rain-bow was given for a meer sign wherefore neither that it hath even to this day any reason of a cause with relation to any effect Thirdly seeing now the World before the floud had been about two thousand years old and yet there had been causes in nature which to this day the Schooles do attribute to the Rain-bow yet there was no Rain-bow Surely that convinceth of the falshood of those causes Whence at length in the fourth place it followes That unless the Rainbow be also at this day for a sign of the Covenant and for the sake of its first appointment it otherwise appeares for a frustrated purpose Therefore also the Rain-bow doth now and then remember us of the Covenant once stricken that we may believe and alway be mindfull that God the avenger on sinners sometimes sent the waters that they might destroy every soul living on the Earth that the same God might be a conscious or fellow-knowing revenger and Judge of our sin For all flesh had corrupted its way by luxurie which ought to be choaked by waters By the Rain-bow therefore God will alway have us mindefull of threatned punishments who by this sign doth signifie that he is the continuall President or chief Ruler the Revenger of nature But that the Rainbow might signifie that the World should be no more drowned with waters it was meet that it should bear before it not indeed a certain unwonted spectacle in the air without difference to any other thing but the mystery of the promised Covenant ought to lay hid in the Rainbow which might declare the promlse and belief of the thing promised by a signe Surely I seem to my self to admire with Noah three colours in the Rainbow and the pleasing splendours of three Sulphurs shining forth in co-burnt Mineralls And so the Colours do give testimony that the Earth being the womb of Mineralls is at length to satisfie the wrath of God by the extream melting of the burning of her Sulphurs Therefore the Rainbow doth not henceforth presage water but fire I wonder at the Schooles who will not hearken to the truth of the holy Scriptures delivered but that they even to this day proceed to make young men drunk with heathenish toyes or dotages For they hand forth that the Rainbow consisteth of a twofold Cloud to wit one being deeper and thicker but the other being thinner and moreover extended over that other that in manner of a Glasse it may resemble the Sun from the contrary part Verily it is a vain devise like unto an old Wives Dream For I have sometimes kicked the lower part of a Rainbow with my feet and have touched it with my hands and that not onely in Cloudy Mountains but in an open and Sunnie-field And so I have certainly known by my eyes hands and feet the falshood of that supposition Seeing that not so much as a simple Cloud was in the place of the Rainbow For neither although in the morning I did cleave the Rainbow and drew it by the colours of the Rainbow have I perceived any thing which is not every where on every side in the neighbouring Air. Yea therefore were not the colours of the Rainbow troubled nor suffered confusion The Schooles ought at least to declare why it should have alwayes the figure of a Bow or Semi-circle but never the resemblance of a Glasse Why if it be the Image of the Sun reflex doth it not shine in the middle of it self seeing the Parelia shines like the Sun with an undistinct and ruddie light Why should those two Clowds be alwayes folded together with the equall form of a Bow and variety of Colours Why doth not the Glasse that is against the Sun represent those Colours if that double Cloud be in the room of a Glasse Why doth not that doubled Cloud at least in its more outward and conjoyned part change the wandring Latitude of the Clouds if its hollow part be pierced with an abounding light of the Sun declining or going down Why doth a Rainbow also appear the Sun being hid under the Clouds and no where shining Why doth the Sun I say paint out alwayes those uniform and various Colours and so neerly placed together and not one onely Colour according to the simplicity of its own light Wherefore do many Rainbowes now and then appear together in one field For truly in so vast a Circle of the Air of the Horizon the reflexion falls not in one or two miles but the Cloud opposite to the Sun hath not its reflexion directly unless on the opposite part answering to it self in the Horizon but not on the part near to its side Lastly it is absurd that the upper and thinner Cloud which is void of Colour and which the light of the Sun doth easily pierce should fashion Colours in the other thicker Cloud which neither the Sun nor either of those Clouds have in themselves Surely I have very much admired at these vain positions of the Schooles while as I should handle a Rainbow with my hand and should see no Cloud at all round about Wherefore I have noted that the Rainbow by a peculiar priviledge hath its Colours immediately in a place but in the Air by the place mediating And so I have taken notice that those Colours and the figure of the Rainbow in their manner of existing are of the nature of light That is the Winde blowing the Colours which are immediately in a medium or mean do walk together with the mean and are dispersed according as the mean in which they are is but the Colours or Lights which are immediately in place are not changed although the Air or Mean in which they appear may change its place and flow So neither the winde blowing doth the Rainbow perish or walk For from hence it is that the object of sight is at one onely instant brought to the Eye but the object of hearing because it is not immediately in place but in an Air placed doth presuppose a durance of time and motion Wherefore the Rainbow not onely is not in a Cloud but moreover not indeed in the Air but immediately in place but in the Air immediately to wit as this is in a place For so the light of the Sun doth the more swiftly strike it self in an instant even unto the Earth because it is immediately in place but in the Air mediately to wit as this is in a place But that the Sun is the cause of the Rainbow that I believe is naturall but that a Bow immediately in place is appointed to be so coloured by the Sun but in no wise in the Air that hath the force of a sign For the Schooles have hitherto been ignorant that Light and Colours can subsist unless they do inherit or stick in some certain
equall therefore also the heat should be alwayes alike but seeing the property of Light by it self is not but to enlighten but by accident by reason of its conjunction to make hot or make cold and the dayes are now and then cold and Clowdy unto us under the Summer Solstice Hence surely I ought to have borrowed other causes from the Blas of the Heaven There is a certain action indeed hitherto unknown to the Schooles which in the proper limit of government I have taught which operates on the objects subjected unto it almost like to abstracted spirits And even as the Soul moveth and altereth its own Organs or Instruments Thou mayest call it for me an influence so that a connexion of the Stars be moreover understood of stirring up the Gas beneath according to the lawes of directions given and fixed by the Almighty for otherwise seeing that a beam of Light may be hindered by a covering every Blas also of the Stars on us should cease if they should act on us onely by light and motion yea and in an over-clowdy Heaven no action on the waters or on the things sowen in the Earth should be beheld For diseased persons do perceive a proportionable resembling motion of the Moon and for this cause do they foretell Tempests to come because there are in the very seeds of things the co-bred and allied Lights of Heaven Which do suit themselves to the motion of the nearest or Neighbour-lights and so to the most universall Blas of the Stars For therefore hot-Houses being shut the same effects are felt con-centred or harmonious not indeed because they light on us from without but we carry a heaven within in our vitall beginnings and the Almighty hath sealed things soulified with that Pledge or Signet Notwithstanding that con-centring and conformity do signifie a connexion of suitableness with the more large superiour Heaven And moreover I may easily believe if Insects do utter the foreshewing signes of seasons that we also at the time of health might foreknow all things unless corruption had bespattered our whole nature in the ground and had left us naturally so much the more stupid and miserable than those small Beasts for sin hath withdrawn the Celestial familiarities of talk from us in diseased persons onely it hath left its marks of antient foretelling whereby we may know that the marks of things to come are left us from nothing but the misery of corrupted nature which else in her purity had made us true diviners of the Heaven no lesse than Adam knew the natures of living Creatures And although the Stars do foretell the effects depending on free and contingent causes yet I would not be understood that a gift is given to the Stars of bringing in the causality of future things for it is sufficient that in this thing they perform the office of a Preacher as it were meanes depending on the fore-knowledge of God for as the fore-knowledge of God doth not take away from man a liberty of willing or judging and his tie with the fore-knowledge doth not take away the infallibility of events nevertheless it least of all contains an unavoidableness much lesse doth the fore-telling of the Firmament induce any necessity of contingency or accidentall event on the wills part although it doth altogether happen in respect of events coupled to their free causes Truly I have oft admired at those that refuse a denouncing of the Stars in free causes as though they did therefore necessitate and did take away a liberty of willing when as in the mean time they do admit that divine fore-knowledge doth not cause any thing against free will but that it can denounce Seeing the reason of necessity in the fore-knowledge of mans glorification is far greater in the power of God than in the fore-shewing of the Stars it being of its own nature tyed to change by reason of the repentance and unstable or frail nature of sinners For it hath happened that sometimes the Stars have foreshewen onely threatnings whereby the antient mortalls through the terrour of punishment do return into the way as did the Ninivites In which case although the Stars do loose much of their certainty and strength yet they do not forsake a certainty of necessity as oft as the Signes do shew forth the fore-tellings of Events Wherefore I reckon with my self that the figures of things successive throughout Ages are decyphered in the Heavens as it were in Tables which figures they name the lawes of destiny and that not indeed by an Hebrew Alphabet as some of the Rabbins Dream but that Provinces Kingdoms and men have their Stars on which the Stage of things accidentally happening to their Subject appointed for every one of them in the revolutions of dayes is decyphered wherefore neither is it a wonder if evill Spirits shall know how to foretel many of these things And so much the lesse if to every one of us are designed good Spirits our keepers Even as the Mountain Garganus Kingdoms and Common-wealths have Spirits for their own Rulers and Defenders For so the fore-shewings not onely of the rising and period of Kingdoms are therein painted forth but also the races and ends of all men are historically figured out by their peculiar Star which are also typically decyphered Which knowledge indeed although it being known to Spirits naturally forbidden to man I do oftentimes read it by its true name the divining of the Heaven yet I finde it granted onely to the Servants or Prophets of God according to his good pleasure For your old men shall dream Dreams and your young men shall have Visions and shall prophesie for this which containeth all things hath the power of a voice it openeth future contingencies shewed by their Stars onely to whom and when it will On some in the mean time he bestoweth a figurative knowledge of the Stars even as to the wise men of the East but to others he giveth Dreams as to Joseph and the same wise men and that the same may be truly interpreted as to Joseph and to Daniel a man of desires Also there are some at this day as mad men and drunkards fore-telling things to come and not knowing what to whom in what manner or by what meanes or why they do presage For so according to Josephus Jesus a certain man foretold the destruction of the holy City with a continuall cry and for that cause he was beaten But the Apostles spaâ—â— from the Comforter with the Tongues of all Nations which were then under the Sun but by the Hebrews and Pagans they were accounted to be drunk with new Wine Although there was no new Wine then to be found in Palestina For they prophesying glorified the Lord Jesus for neither is it read that any was then preached unto or converted Therefore they were accounted to be drunk with new Wine but not with Wine because drunkenness by new Wine among the Gentiles did stir up those that kept
substance and so an act whereby the matter is this something or particular subfisting thing truly the form ought most principally to subsist and endure or that maxime is false That by which every thing is such that thing it self is more such But the consequence together with the maxim is false For all the souls of Beasts and all their forms are frail or mortall for therefore I reckoned with my self the antecedent also to be false Indeed all created things were made of nothing and so they keep the disposition of that principle and therefore the Forms and Being of things do in the first place return of their own accord into their former nothing Notwithstanding God created not man immediately of nothing but of the mud or dust of the Earth and therefore his Creation was far otherwise than that of other things For the Almighty took dust from the Earth not indeed that which was equall in weight to a man like an Image-maker for of one onely Rib he formed the whole Body of the Woman that he might manifest the Mystery of this irregular Creation not to be after the manner of other things but substantial as to the Form I say the whole Mystery directed to its ends or to the Soul manifesting that the Soul of man was not onely an out-law and one onely substance among other Forms but also that from the unequalness of mud or the Rib to a whole Person we might see that our Soul is a formall substance not of quantity but meerly spiritual And that which being at sometime abstracted by way of a truly sub-standing or remaining Being should afterwards by the gift of Creation endure for ever Therefore every Form is created by the Father of Lights into a proper particular kinde and is a certain Light of its own Body But Forms are distinguished among themselves not onely by the degree of Light but in the whole Species And therefore there are as many Species of lights in nature as there are of things And seeing that also Angels are numbered among things it followes that there are far more Species of lights than of material things But we must deservedly call to minde that there is a brightness or Splendor in the Archeus of Seeds and so something like to a formall light which brings the matter to the suitable bounds of its particular kinde yet that that Splendor doth far differ from a formall light for truly that is forthwith and immediately created by the Father of Lights but the Splendor proceedeth out of the lap of nature And the largeness of the difference and unlikeness is placed in this that amongst it or at the most the Splendor of the seeds is the effect of the Master-Workman but the formall light is a cause and vitall act Again the Splendor differs from the Archeus as light doth from matter and therefore the whole Being of the Splendor is terminated in shining but the light of the form is so annexed to the thingliness or essence of it that they are formally one and the same being distinguished onely by a relation And so although the formall light doth shine yet its act is not terminated in shining but in an essentificall thingliness And therefore brightness and shining are indeed the beginnings of degrees to a fireable light and the heats thereof whereas the formall light differs in the whole general kinde from a fireable light and therefore it knowes no degrees but hath distinct and distinctive Species or shapes in its formality as well in the specificall essence as in the individual essence And therefore nature ought to receive its specifical distinctions from the formall light it not being otherwise able to distinguish it self from it self unless by some former thing which may contain an act of distinction As neither to perfect it self by it self unless it doth receive that from some former thing efficiently perfecting And seeing that Forms do actively distinguish things themselves and perfect them a Power of infinite wisdom foreknowing from end even to end is considered in them I have already taught before that the light of the Sun falling on the Earth meeting with the light of the Moon they do mutually pierce each other So the light of our Soul may touch and immediately pierce all the forms of all things so it hath but once lost the contagions of its Body But as long as it is the companion of the Body it pierceth forms subordinate to it self which thing is signified in the Word He hath put under his feet the Birds of the Heaven the Cattel of the field and the Fishes of the Sea For whatsoever the immortall Soul I speak not of the sensitive doth issuingly think of it also reacheth to that very thing even as in the Treatise of the hunting or searching out of Sciences and in the Squaldron of Diseases So likewise the minde pierceth also its sensitive Soul and so they do derive the thoughts of the Soul into the Body On the other hand the conceipts of the sensitive Soul to wit while a man being asleep thirsteth is hungry c. do ascend into the heart and oft-times do strike the immortal minde Hence therefore it followes that all the properties of things as well hidden as manifest are imprinted on Bodies by reason of a formall co-touching so that at length they do also defile even the deliberations of the formall substance As when a mad man doth but even lightly wound the skin with his tooth presently thereupon the resembling mark of madness is propagated or increased in the light whereby the sensitive Soul and minde do touch each other But God although he hath an immediate co-touching of all Forms yet he is not likewise touched or reached by any form but by the Soul actually mediating or intreating in the Symbole or resembling mark of good and that as being his Image reflecteth it self upon God But other forms as they are frail or mortall so they have no right of acting on the infinite substantial and thrice glorious light Therefore from what hath been said before it is certain that what things are innocency in Aristotle are the blasphemies of the Schooles in saying That if God should act any thing immediately he ought also to suffer are-acting And that the immaterial God doth make use of immaterial instruments that he may work or do any thing Moreover seeing the minde of man doth most nearly shew forth the Image of God is immortall and therefore is not capable of suffering I could not perswade my self that it is so restrained to the lawes of the Body that it can suffer by this Body I know that this is true that while health remains the chief powers of the minde are often troubled Therefore I acknowledge one health in the Being and another in the Mind yet I cannot comprehend that an immortall spirituall substance can suffer by an infamous excrement which in no wise reacheth it For whatsoever suffers that is made by a stronger
feigned whorish appetite of the matter 12. A demonstration of the errour 13. Whence the necessity of things really and principiatively is 14. The Schooles have not taught true Beginnings 15. Some things are corrupted in the Air but other things are preserved 16. Whence the corruption of things is 17. Corruption is onely of the matter 18. What corruption is 19. Corruption is not from privative things contrary to Aristotle 20. Carruption and generation do not reciprocally succeed 21. The unadvisedness of the Schooles 22. What Magnum Oportet may be 23. The Earth but not the Water shall bring forth Thistles and Briars 24. What kinde of digestion there was before sin 25. What is the misery of Thistles 26. Odours and Savours are fundamentall Ferments 27. The errour concerning the eight tasts 28. The three lives their flowings and ebbings thorow the three Monarchies of things 29. Why Warts do perish through the touching of an Apple 30. The foundation or ground of Sympathy 31. The going backwards of life 32. A threefold life of Mineralls 33. Properties are in a place and in the thing placed 34. What the double nothing is in the words The Earth was empty or without form and void 35. It is proved by the Handicraft-operation of a Flint that Light is a Being without a shining light 36. Perceivings are in the Instruments of the Senses 37. Which way the Magnall is serviceable 38. Who are the immediate Citizens of places 39. The originall and progress of Metalls 40. A more manifest progress of life in Metals 41. Whence Mineralls are of so great efficacy 42. The dignity of the Archeus before sin 43. Which are the ambulatory or walking qualities 44. That which the Schooles cry out to be impossible is necessary in nature 45. Whence that errour is 46. Some absurdities following from thence 47. A frivolous Maxim 48. The blindnesses of the Schooles are to be pitied 49. Why the objects of sight do more work in one that is with young 50. Adeptists do walk through the objects of sight 51. Some Speculations in the position of the appearances of Spirits 52. The distinctions of qualities by modern Writers or Philosophers 53. The occasions of Diseases 54. The manner whereby a Hydrophobiaor a Disease causing the fear of water is made 55. The same concerning other poysons 56. The successive alterations of poysons 57. The manner whereby poysons do work 58. Considerations about the activity of poysons 59. The blowing out or extinguishing of life in what manner it happeneth SUrely I have thus at unawares fallen from the Elements into the birth of Forms and there I have distinguished of a fourfold Form diverse in kinde from each other 1. To wit an Essentiall Form 2. A Vitall Form 3. Next a substantiall Form 4. And at length the excellency of a formall Substance I have added for the end or top of nature For when I had explained my Doctrine concerning the Elements I fell by degrees into the History of vitall things and consequently also I perceived my self devolved into the necessities of Diseases and death indeed that I might apply the beginnings of naturall Philosophy to the end of humane appointment Therefore have I come to Magnum Oportet To wit I have come down to the flowings and ebbings of life and so to the hidden calamity of death Wherefore all our consideration of nature shall hereafter become Medicinall For truly Paracelsus being not constant enough to himself stumbled in the finding out of the cause of a Disease in the mean and manner whereby every thing tends to a declining To the clearing up whereof I have already taught before that the fruits which antiquity hath believed to be a heap of Elements are the off-springs of the one Element of water begotten with childe by the seed which disposeth the water to generate in places as it were in wombs For wheresoever the water obtains an Odour it straightway also conceiveth in that very moment a Ferment and after that a seed in the begun disposition of the matter disposed by the Ferment For truly most things are made for the sake of the Odour alone For oft-times the Root stalk pith leaves and History of a whole Plant is born by reason of the flour of the Odour or Odour of the flour and the Odour is the ultimate end of many particular kindes as well in Plants that are for Sauces as in those for Medicines Because out of Sand or simple Earth and Water doth grow nothing at first but a moyst filthiness or mouldiness they contract a putrefaction through continuance or Odours For nothing putrifieth by continnance far under the Earth neither doth a Plant grow in the Sand. But almost nigh the light or day the Odour is putrified by continuance and Leff as brings forth its Plants If one part of mud or dung do putrifie in the Earth it may beget the water with childe in a five fold weight of it self and send forth fruit For the water being void of all Odour unless it shall conceive the Ferment of an Odour in its Sulphur surely it remains in its antient simplicity as Rain-water without fruit Therefore in the deep Pavements of the Earth where there is a departure far from filthiness putrifying and corruption although there be no Leff as yet the waters are got with Childe by a hidden Odour of the place first of all by an unconceivable contagion of a certain Salt straightway they do hasten to the more wealthy Colonies of Fruits and do break out Indeed it s own strange fermentaceous Odour dwells every where which may get the Sulphur of the water with child and sleeping within it may at length grow together As in Mineralls Or being grown together and even over-spread with a thicker Air may grow as in Plants and Creatures that bring for h Eggs or wholly from the beginning the form of the Air doth glister Even as in things that bring forth a living off-spring Therefore the Archeus being now conceived remains every where the keeper of life and the promoter of transmutations and by and by a change of his life doth follow the change thereof to wit from his first life and matter into his last For the Archeusses of things do agree in this as being vitall they do possess a certain Splendor yet they differ as they are unlike fore-runners and Stewards of the Form Yet they do not mutually receive each other least their government be disturbed but for order sake which they do badly explain by the Title of self-love he remains Master who shall be the stronger which way indeed they liberally dispense the Impressions of their Ferment that one may restrain the forreign disquietnesses of his fellow Archeus and may subdue him For even as under the immortall minde the subordinate forms of a bone membrane c. do not perish So also it happens in the transmutations of things Indeed although the food doth by an every way transmutation obtain the form of
middle life of the Archeus if the first life of the thing doth begin with the last life of the seeds For in Herbs although seeds may seem to begin their life when they swell and chap yet they do then rather die in the last life of themselves that they may bud in the first life of the thing that is to be constituted Therefore the first life of the fruit is the last of the seed In the middle life Herbs Roots and stalks do grow or increase but Floures and Fruits do threaten a period to the last life To wit this life must needs die in things if profit be to be hoped for from nourishment and Medicine Medicines hanged about the neck or head and what things do act by the force of rule or government of which sometimes I except Indeed the last lives of things ought to go backwards that the thing in the juyce which the Archeus from the beginning married may unfold its vertues to wit by laying aside the Title and property of the last life that it may rise again to a middle one Which death is not an exstinguishing and a true death of the thing but rather a transmutation which shall presently appear in an Apple For grain is eaten Truly at that very moment the last life of the grain dieth within is reduced into its own life the which our Archeus coming upon over-shadoweth and bringeth the middle life into its first life by transumption or translating it but the remaining properties of the former grain being dulled In the death of the grain or the last life of the seed the first life of a new Creature ariseth together with it To be brief as oft as the Archeus of a thing is transplanted under a strange guide so oft is there a changing of life made from the last to the first Being which first Being is translated into a new life of the thing and a middle life of the Archeus the Conquerour onely the blunted property of the middle life remaining whereby the going backward is made Let an Apple be cut asunder whose inward pulp let it be rubbed on Warts untill it shall be luke-warm and the half pieces being tied fast by a thred untill the Apple shall putrifie for then thou shalt see that the touched Warts have dispersed For as soon as the last life of the Apple perisheth unto which the impression of the Warts was glewed the last life of the Warts perisheth by going backward through the middle life For here words faith or confidence are not required because if that Apple be eaten by a Sow or a Mouse the Warts perish not For that the Stomach doth as it were preserve the last life of the Apple in the going backwards of the middle life which the Archeus taketh to himself But in the death and extinguishing of the last life of the Apple by putrefaction there is not a preserving nor a going backwards into the middle life And so with the death and extinguishing of the last life of the Apple the absent Warts do perish together with it by a Sympatheticall action of government for the resembling mark of Sympathy is seated in this thing Because the pulp of the Apple which cloathes the Kernel is as it were the Mushrome of its own branch no otherwise than as Warts are the Mushromes of their own flesh Therefore the impression of the Warts being translated into and sealed on the co-resembling fruit together with the death of the last life of the Apple the Seal dieth and that whereof it is the Seal For by no lesse reason doth an eflux bear a co-resemblance with its own body from whence it was taken than a Tune or note doth with its own musicall Instrument not so nigh at hand placed For in a Unisone or one and the same sound it manifestly leaps and triumphs for joy on a ring being hanged or laid on the string of the Instrument but in other notes although far greater and otherwise higher ones it is quiet For where the sense of a little leaping is beheld there is also a possible sense or feeling both of gladness and of sorrow and of death Therefore it hath seemed to me to be void of Superstition if the Wart consume through a natural sense of sorrow a sense of its own Eflux being imprinted in the death of its last life And so much the rather because the Apple is as it were the Mushrome of the primary intention of nature and of a more strong effect but the Wart is not of a primary intention neither hath it a Root in the whole Archeus For the death of the Apple doth not intervene if it be eaten by a Dormouse as neither a death of the added impression because the middle life is preserved being transplanted under the preserved Archeus of the Apple into the Archeus of the living Creature Wherefore although the Schooles have made mention of one onely corruption in generall yet there are divers destructions For some things do return from the last life into the first but others there are which go back unto the middle life but those things which go not back unto any life do expect the last resolution of themselves that they may passe over into a new seminall generation but they rise again by their first life at the coming of a new seed out of a Ferment putrifying by continuance Of this sort are those things which perish by the poyson of life or by the death of the fire For so an Apple putrified of its own accord and any dead Carcases do either wax Herby with the juyce Leffas or do first breed worms At length Mineralls also do shew three lives by a distinct order It is thus Mineralls indeed have not a seed with the Image of their Predecessor after the manner of soulified things which thing notwithstanding hath deceived many a proportionable or resembling flux of seeds being not rightly well weighed For Mineralls are tied to their constitutive causes no lesse than other things and so do proceed from a necessity and flowing of their own seeds And therefore they cannot want a threefold difference of a seminall life For whatsoever doth proceed without a Father unto this something as do Mineralls it findes its seed in the Inne of places Wherefore some things are immediately in place but other things in the Body placed The winde indeed doth uncessantly flow in a place yet its property is in some places stable there are certain windes and stated Tempests in Provinces which things I attribute to the place not to the Air or the unstable waters Therefore God hath endowed not onely Bodies with Virtues but also places he hath immediately replenished with an incomprehensible Treasure of seeds to endure to the end of the World For he hath loaden places with riches to come forth to light in a set maturity of dayes and to put on the garment of water For the Earth was at first without form or empty and
void to wit after a twofold manner without form because it was spoiled of naturall endowed vertues as well in its own body as in the places of its retirances which thou shalt thus behold For although the Air do flow under the Blas of the windes yet light because it is immediately in place and mediately in the Air remaineth stable For if light may be thought to flow together with the Air even at every instant in the flowing of the Air light should be generated anew Thou mayst know that the light is in very deed a Being without a shining light For I keep a Flint in my possession which if I shall expose to the Air the Sun existing above the Horizon for the space of three or four pauses at least neither also is it materiall whether the day shall be clear or clowdy and from thence shall bring it into a dark place it keepeth the conceived light of the Sun perhaps for some such like space And that is done as oft as the aforesaid enlightning is repeated And so from hence it is manifest that light is a Being subsisting immediately in place nor having another Being of inherency besides the placed essence of it self seperable from a shining Creature And so if it depart from the Air into a stone that it might also passe from the Air into the next Air if its immediate existence were in the Air and not in place For truly it is alike to light to wander out of place its immediate subject into the Air or into the Flint in that is only the difference that the essence of light doth not subsist in the Air besides the continuall warmth or nourishing of shining as neither doth the flame without a combustible smoak But if it hath the Flint a fit retaining place for it self as it comes to passe when fire possesseth Iron it remaineth therein for some time For hence it comes to passe that the sight doth at one instant perceive its object because as well light as colour is immediately in place but in the Body of the Mean as it were by accident and secondarily For seeing place is its subject it findes not resistance in transparent placed Bodies but in one onely moment light is shaken from the eight Sphear even on the Earth But Sound or the object of hearing is immediately in the Case of the Mean and walketh without the flowing of the Air from subject into subject Although the Schooles in this thing are made half deaf But an Odour or smell is not dispersed without that which is odourable which is the Gas of a thing which is dispersed thorow the emptinesses or Magnall of the Air. And the Magnall is a Case or Sheath wherein every Gas is reduced into its first matter of water Therefore not onely lights and colours do inhabit in places as it were immediate guests but Ferments Reasons and therefore they are placed by the Creator the Word that they may be the Roots of successive seeds even to the end of the VVorld Therefore Mineralls are not promiscuous every where but certain Mineralls in set years and places For Suevia is as rich in Copper as Cyprus in times past could be Therefore cold is guiltless as heat is vain to the constitutions of their seeds For places which have wanted Mines in times past will at sometime in their day their seed being ripe restore Usuries not unlike to the more rich ones because the Roots or Ferments of Mineralls do sit immediately in place and do breath without disdain for fulness of dayes The which when it hath compleated a seed then the Gas environing the water in the same place receiveth a seed from the place which afterwards begets the Sulphur of the water with childe condenseth the water and by degrees transplants it into a Minerall water For it oft-times happeneth that a digger of Metalls in Mines breaking great Stones asunder the Wall cleaves or gapes and affords a chink from whence a small quantity of water of a whitish-green colour hath sprung which hath presently grown together like to liquid Sope I call it Bur and afterwards its greenish paleness being changed it waxeth yellow or growes white or becomes more fully green For thus that is seen which else without the wound of the stone comes to passe within because that juyce is perfected by an inward efficient Therefore the first life of a metallick seed is in the Buttery or Cellar of the place plainly unknown to man But when as the seed comes forth to light cloathed with a Liquor and Gas hath begun to defile the Sulphur of the water there is the middle life of the seed But the last life is when it now waxeth hard But the last life of the metallick seed is the first life of the Metalls or at leastwise very nearly conjoyned to it But while that Masse doth breath Sulphur and shuts up its Mercury within then I say is the middle life of Metalls But their last life is when it hath attained a fixedness and the proper stability of a vein Wherefore there is a more manifest progress of a life and seed in Metallick Bodies than in the two fellow Monarchies For that Metalls do not require a figure nor their whole Body so exquisite or exact yea if the Image of seeds in things that have life do flow forth from their own Father or begetter surely the typicall Images of Mineralls are to be fetched from the Cellers or Store-houses of divine Bounty Hence also the seeds of Mineralls are not defiled with the filthiness and wantonness of their begetters nor therefore do they offer themselves as monstrous But because they are undefiled therefore they are of famous power in healing Mineralls therefore are to be spoiled of the possession of their last life no more than other things if we do expect obedience from them in healing Else they will bring a feeble help and will bewail that they have come in vain because they have attained the ends of their appointments but are directed for the leaders of whoredoms and Riots I will repeat what I have said above in Eden our Archeus was able fully to subdue all the Archeusses as well of poysons as nourishments into his own increase without any weariness of himself or re-acting of the same poysons or nourishments To wit he could take away every impression of the middle life and overcome it without difficulty For the Archeus was immediately governed by the immortall Soul and so also therefore was not capable of suffering For God not onely made not death in Paradise but moreover neither was there created a Medicine of destruction that is a poyson for man in the Earth But man being straightway cast out into the Earth this Earth clasped Thistles and Thorns that is although our Archeus being Conquerour doth subdue the Archeusses of meats to himself yet the surviving Reliques of strange properties do remain For the last life indeed of meates departeth the middle life
surviving Wherefore the more weak stomach feels a greater load or grief about the end of digestion than presently after food as if the Archeus were mindefull of his antient lost dignity Therefore I call these surviving qualities of the middle life ambulatory or walking ones And so that which the Schooles do cry out of as impossible is a common and necessary journey in nature as though it should be necessary for the matter of generation to be wholly stripped of every accident of its former essence nor that it could overcome fore-going dispositions and as if corruption or privation should precede every generation And so that it should be of necessity for a first matter or summary hyle to be actually underlaid and immediately to go before generation which notwithstanding they will have to happen in an instant For unless previous dispositions and the ferments of those to be generated should fore-exist in being made any thing might indifferently be generated of any thing when as the authority of principles being badly understood hath forced the Schooles against this Rock they thinking that all accidents do immediately and originally depend on the totall Form of a thing As though the form coming to it in the point of generation should have all the characters of its seed in it self and had infused them before it were But if the dispositive properties are sent into the Archeus by the form of the generater at leastwise they differ in the whole individual of the thing supposed neither shall they have respect unto the form of the thing generated The Schooles have neglected the perfect act of the seeds and the Archeus as also the actualities of subordinate forms And they have not known that from the beginning of generation even unto the voluntary end of the thing generated there is not but the flux of one seed not at all reaching to the forms of things generated Therefore the powers of seeds arising unto vitality or liveliness and the lives or forms of the living thing underlaid are concealed in the middle life of the Archeus Therefore the properties of the middle life do passe with the transchanging Archeus of meats and are transplanted into the jurisdiction of the humane Archeus yet much more dull than themselves Therefore it is frivolous that there is no accident in the â—â—ing begotten which was first in the seed which they do badly call corrupt Likewise also that from the form of a thing is all the off-spring of accidents For so from the univocall simple and homogeneall immortall minde should so many properties and inclinations of men badly be fetched But if thou shalt adjoyn the Stars to the minde these will soon forsake thee And the far-fetcht aid doth faint in the journey and faileth before its striking upon it It should also go ill with the seeds if from the form of a vitall thing which onely comes to it afterwards every property and efficacy of seeds were to be borrowed Therefore the opinion of the Schooles brings a disagreement that generation doth presuppose corruption and this likewise it Otherwise if the middle power consisteth in the totall form and last life of the thing Surely Physitians deceive or blinde the eyes of the sick when as the vitall form being withdrawn out of Plants and living Creatures they make use of these for the refreshment of the diseased They see indeed that oft-times in the Urine of a sucking Childe the Odours of the things which the Nurse hath taken do subsist to wit Oil of Anniseed Mace c. That which the Nurse hath took casts a smell in the Urine of the sucking Childe and so they are drunk down by the Nurse to that end yet they forbid the same accidents to remain safe in the thing born or begotten which was before in the thing corrupted Notwithstanding that rather in every naturall point of motion and alteration or between one and another instant all accidents are renewed Indeed the Schooles had rather that the light from the Firmament even to the Earth should in every instant of places and motions actually produce infinite kindes of light propagating each other by a continuall thred in every Mathematicall point of a Mean than to grant that light is immediately brought through a place by the shaking of its beam They had rather I say that the smell of Asparagus should spring from the specificall form of the Urine than from the middle life For they have not known any Being but a Substance and an accident nor a light subsisting but immediately within the substance of a mean Neither do they observe that they acknowledge an equivocall or double generation of accidents while they acknowledge one to be sprung from an accident but another from the specificall form But there are Reasons why the objects of sight do more strongly move the Imagination of Women with young then the objects of the other Senses that are more corporeal The first is because a visible object is in place immediately and so doth more affect and reacheth nearer and pierceth the Soul by reason of the alike manner of existing To wit they reach to one another by an intimate touching 2. The other Senses do readily serve the sight To wit a Woman with childe seeing a Salmon is carried into a desire of eating For then whatsoever she shall take affords her indeed actually the taste of Salmon and the taste serves the sight as its Master but it falling down into the stomach nor she having Salmon really in a visible object she perceiveth her deceit which her appetite causeth unto her and therefore she hath a loathing and the Woman is weakened trembling or panting at the heart For the appetite feigneth the taste of Salmon but the womb is angry at the deceit but it cannot transform the meat into Salmon Yea although she shall eat of another Fish and there is an easie passage in things that have a co-resemblance yet she cannot thereby form the longed for Salmon because it is the object of taste but not of sight Whereas otherwise suddenly by the object Salmon or Duck she easily transchangeth her Young into such a Monster For the objects of taste sitting immediately in some body cannot by reason of their corporeal thickness form a tranchangeative Image Therefore they who study in Adepticall things do strive to promote their labour of wisdom by the objects of sight and indeed by the light of the Moon That indeed the Soul may be touched by a formall light and night unto night may shew knowledge As touching the Young surely I consider it as a forreign branch implanted in the stock of a Tree which although it be nourished by its Mothers Liquor yet it liveth presently within in its own proper quarter For neither is it within as an entire part but as it were an entertained Souldier it snatcheth all things into its pleasure or desire and enlargeth the Vessel it self for its own command or government But I consider the
Mother doth perfectly see all things at least but on one side or on the other half onely she also seeth onely half the Needle which she holdeth or presseth with her fingers however she may turn her eyes and head She may see I say many folks being collected into a Company but even to her Girdle or half-sided ones onely shall perhaps then the vapours be divided in halfes the Apple of the Eye nevertheless appearing entire can these vapours I say permit her to see and discern many things together but all things apart in the one or other half onely But an incorporeal Blas of government hath been neglected by the Schools which acteth without a corporeal eflux even as the Moon makes the Sea to swell For in the strangling of the womb they complain as long as they are partakers or Mistresses of talk of the stretching out of the spaces between their Ribs and they think that the Girdle they are girt with is tied to their Ribs or that a staffe is extended from their neather parts unto their Throat c. Consider I pray with me oh ye Schools that there is in us a double motive power and decline from this your thred-bare maxim To wiâ— That the action of the same power is hurt whereby the sound one is exercised For truly there is in us a voluntary Blas and the Blas it self of the parts as elsewhere concerning Convulsions Take ye notice That at least in this place if voluntary motion be natural the will also suffers nothing from the muscles moved by it self yea neither from the muscles refusing to be moved Nor in the next place therefore that there is a weariness of the faculty but onely of the Body or Organs Lastly that the muscles being moved by an importunate Blas of the parts there is not a wearisomness of the parts although the pain be heightned and they do not feel their own weariness because convulsive motions being stirred up by the Blas of the parts are made by a faculty which becomes mad and for this cause they are scarce felt or perceived For neither doth that prove because moysture in Wood or an interposing of a coal between the flame and Roâ—â—n of the intrinsecal Wood do foreslow the action of the fire that it may not the more swiftly consume the Wood with its devouring For truly Impediments do not act properly as neither do they re-act but they do purely and simply suffer They do indeed some way limit the very action of the fire or do seclude the same as it were uncapable partitions and no more For it is proper and natural to fire first to consume water and the more light discussable things into vapours before it in burning do enflame Oily things At length after Oily things to consume the fat which hath more fixedly remained in the coal But neither doth the water re-act against the fire or doth the fire suffer For whether water be in the Wood or not the fire doth alwayes act univocally or singly and according to the appointment of its own nature acteth freely and in such a manner as that it convinceth the aforesaid maxim of falshood Also Gold Talck Marble c. do not re-act on the fire although they are not consumed or wasted by the fire For the manifest incapacity of these hinders it by reason whereof the fire doth not act on those by an ordinary burning or enflaming For truly the fire intends to enlighten those Bodies in themselves dark so as that they may be after some sort made clear or shining bright the which at length it obtains in making them fiery Because the fire endeavours to pierce all things with its own form The which while inflameable things do not sustain without their own ruine therefore in burning they are enflamed and being consumed do depart Neither also doth the fire pretend to enlighten stones and mettals in a moment according as otherwise to the aforesaid Maxim but the fire suits it self in its own nature of acting according to the limitation of every object And so it is perpetually true that every natural Agent acteth and is received after the manner of its own object receiving Therefore the primary action of the fire is to produce in its object a fire like it self wherein some objects do burn under the intention of fire but others do persist and expect the last intent of the fire So that if some things are not combustible at leastwise the fire acteth into them as much as it can to make them fiery In like manner also the light suffers not any thing although at one onely instant it dart it self from the Sun from far on the Earth or although it be not sent thorow through a thick mean hindering it Truly the light suffers nothing by a thick or dark Body whether it shall passe thorow that Body or not For it alwayes attaineth its own intent which is to enlighten whether in the mean time an Impediment doth interpose or not for the resistance or repelling of objected Impediments are not in manner of a re-acting because Agents re-suffer nothing but they are of a meer incapacity Therefore it is plainly indifferent and by accident unto those Agents whether fixed Bodies are enlightned only by the fire and are pierced by the light or not For these things are even after the same manner as the Leaven of Meal in respect of the powder of Glass For the Leaven suffers nothing although the incapacity of the Glass doth hinder whereby the Leaven doth work the lesse For at least there is no re-acting where there is no action These things about the denial of re-acting strife hatred and war between the Agent or doer and patient or sufferer to wit which kinde of action alone the Schools have acknowledged I will add also other new ones I have said in the Book of Fevers that a poysonous excrement in Fevers is included in the Midriffs producing drowsie sleeps doatages c. Therefore it is an anodynous or sleepifying and mad poyson Likewise in Falling-sicknesses that there is an unsensitive befooling and mad poyson afflicting for a space being enstalled in the Midriffs In hypochondrial madnesses that there is a furious poyson or that which doates with jesting or merriment In giddiness of the Head a whirling poyson In the Apoplexie that which takes away sense and motion Lastly in swooning a stupefactive or sleepy poyson a dispersive of the Spirits And hence presently taking away sense and motion But seeing the Schools do not extend themselves beyond a rudeness they have thought that the occasional matters of these Diseases is the matter whereof of Diseases and that it is brought thorow the Veins and Arteries from beneath upwards unto the Brain which thing nevertheless I have refuted for the exposition of that Aphorisme If in a continual Fever after yellow Vrines watery ones shall presently succeed they denote dotages to come by reason as Galen will have it of Choler snatched into
and likewise durations and directions according to places strengths and weaknesses no less than an alterative Blas hath for all successive changes and periods of times These Blas's are Antiently wont to be ascribed unto the aspects of diverse Lights the which aspects notwithstanding as such do not exceed their own efficacy which is to have enlightned But for to stir up so unlike stations of times or seasons and tempests also foreseen that is before the coming of the Stars unto the places of those aspects is surely the effect of a greater weight than only of a simple Light I therefore suppose that the diversities of aspects spiritual Astrall or starry Images of the invisible World are framed which they lay up into the Air for the exciting of a Blas according to the Image of those properties for truly the aspect of the Stars is only momentary as also their place is unstable but their effects do presevere for some long time Therefore it must needs be that the lightsome aspects besides a momentary Light have laid up in the Air the Idea of a Blas operating even unto a Consumption of it self the irregular Rules Locks Bolts Spurs and Period of times or seasons Such an Image therefore is of the Nature of Light that it may operate at a set time for else it should scarce reach to us in the course of many years unless it were of the Nature of Light Therefore as there is in Plants an awakening virtue of a seminal Image for fructification So also there is in the Stars a faculty of framing the Idea of a motive Light which is the original principle of motion making whatsoever is committed unto it for execution But our Archeus whether he hath a virtue or force like unto the Earth or unto the Stars it is all one so we understand that it is proper unto him to stir up a tempestuous Blas in us since the disobedience of our first Parent Whether such a property increased in him from Sin or next whether he doth awaken those Blas's anew by his own beck and from the aspect of his own perturbation it is all one and sufficient so we acknowledge that all the force as well of a regular Life as of an inordinate government doth issue from nothing but from this vital Beginning And therefore all Diseases and the Types or Figures of these are certain conceptions decyphered by this invisible Ruler to finish the storms of our calamities In the Skie therefore of our Archeus are aspectual Idea's decyphered as well from the depth of the starry Heaven of the Soul it self as those formed by the erring or wandring implanted Spirits of the seven Bowels For so a fear of the Plague creates the Plague A sudden fear of Death hath oftentimes killed the Gout Likewise the fear of Honour lost or to be lost if it hath endured for the space of one day hath now and then caused the Falling-sickness The sorrow of poverty hath brought madness but in others it hath brought forth the Scrophulus or Kings-evil All mad folks are for the most part devolved or overthrown from Pride And the Wise Man testifieth That sorrow doth graw the Life of Man as the Worm doth Garments But Sorrow is a Sorrowful thought but this is a non-being because a mental Being the which because it is a non-being therefore it hath no power of acting from it self Therefore a sorrowful cogitation doth produce an active Idea and this something is made of nothing no otherwise than as in a Woman with Child perturbation doth bring forth a Monster and transchangeth the humane Young into a beast-like one because it is proper or natural to the imaginative power to frame Images or Likenesses as well in mental as Archeal Beings Sorrow therefore which is a slow disturbance brings forth an Idea which consumes and gnaws the Life because such an Idea hath the degenerate vital Air of the Archeus for its matter the which therefore pretends to pervert the remainder of the Archeus with its own likeness and this degenerate Air is corrupted in the Duumvirate And therefore presently after Sorrow there are continual Sighs and these things thus happen to the faculties or powers of a sorrowful Phantasie The same thing also happens in the power of the Phantasie proper to the Archeus whether the inflowing or implanted one both of whom even as concerning the Plague-grave elsewhere doth frame the most powerful Images of Imagination Wherefore also a two-fold Diseasifying Archeal Idea of a two-fold Archeus distinguisheth a transient or soon-departing Disease from a Chronical or long continuing one Wherefore they who shall hereafter rightly attend shall find that every perturbation of the Soul which is strong dayly and doth not descend by issuing out of the Archeus of the Bowels dedicated unto imaginative Offices or out of the duumvirate doth bring forth a diverse or distinct madness through the varieties of Idea's They shall likewise find that simples as well degenerated within as received from without do sometimes affect the Archeus himself from without do bring forth an equal Idea of madness of the Duumvirate which thing is manifest in the smallest contagion of a mad Dog which kind of Diseases also being con-centred in the vital Members talking with the Stars whence there is an unequal strength the torture of the Night hereditary Diseases and such as return by circuite are seen to have an invisible store-house within and an original principle of the tragedy whence according to the command of maturities or of a most remote excentricity Idea's the Authoresses of so great storms are repeated But Idea's if they inform the venal Blood or the liquor which is immediately to be assimilated and nourishable tempests are bred conformable as well to the Idea's of perturbations as to the entertaining Archeus Therefore the Archeus doth so wantonize within through his own proper luxury voluntary weariness or heaviness corruption defect furious Blas for names fail us where a thing layes hid as being unknown by a former Cause that although he shake nothing from without yet the Life forsakes suspends despiseth is averse to the Rains of Goverment and rageth Man knowing not of it For so Idea's do arise which being free do break forth into all dissoluteness and unbridled tyranny of Diseases And seeing the motions of a wantonizing Archeus are hidden to a Physitian and so that we are not able to repose the once rejected Rains into the hands of such an Archeus By consequence a certain Universal Arcanum which is a sleepifier and appeaser of the Archeus is to be administred He therefore labours for the most part in vain whosoever being destitute of a Universal secret doth place his endeavour in the brushing away of occasional Causes the Archeus being not first appeased The which surely is to be exactly noted with a Golden Pen For it happens unto him no otherwise than as he who having not first stopped up the spring head presumes by exhausting of
most properly all or every Number because all Number flowes from that and therefore every Number is nothing but a connexion of Unites From whence that very Unity is a Figure of the Divinity because from thence all Numbers are made and again into the same are resolved Indeed the Schooles as often as they have conceived any thing by Science Mathematical that thing they have presently wrested into Nature under the generality of Rules For so of Four imagined Elements by confusedly suiting four Qualities Complexions and Humours these Brawlings have been translated even into the Stars and they have determined of all things co-agreeing with their own Fictions By which method indeed they have fitted a continual speculation in Science Mathematical unto lineal points and at length also unto Time B. Augustine confesseth indeed that Time is something but that he was ignorant of the thingliness of Time to wit because he was seasoned with false Positions from Paganisme Wherefore I blush again and again that I am willing to explain the Essence of Time But this man I fear not to be my hater who already beholds truth in the Heavens For first of all I have withdrawn all succession from Time who from great Authorities had already shaken off the Yoak of the Heathenish Schools For truly I meditated at first that the Heavens stood still yet that there was not any other Time while the Sun was at a stand than now Therefore I began to measure out that Duration without the succession of the Motion of the Heaven And by consequence I by degrees learned that all Time was sequestred from Succession and that this Succession did fit or accommodate it self onely unto Motion Then afterwards I began to repute it a mad thing that the Sun should at some time stand still and nevertheless even to this day to sink Time within the Motion of the Heavens For although that detainment of the Sun was Miraculous yet the Duration or term of continuance was not therefore Miraculous And then I beheld that Time was already from the Beginning the Day not as yet existing or before Light was born and a separation thereof from the darkness Therefore the Heaven Earth Abysse of Waters Darkness and the Day it self were before that the circular Path of the Heaven did determine of the Day In the Beginning I say of the Creatures but not in the Beginning of Time Because that Beginning of Things includeth some Dum or While that it may be of Sense Although God appointed from Eternity to create Things Yet while it pleaseth his infinite Goodness to issue into an Operation to without then in the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth But that Dum or While was before a Creature because God had no need of a Creature or a created Duration neither had the things that were to be created need of a created Duration as a concurring Principle of an unlike Dignity with the Creatour of an infinite Power For if the Creature did not depend originally totally to wit absolutely and intimately on God as on the Beginning and End of its Duration verily neither should God also be the immediate and total Principle as neither the immediate Life of things that is he should not be their Alpha and Omega Therefore I from thence understood if Nature had at sometime stood rooted in Duration flowing forth without a Mean from Eternity it self that it ought also at this day so to stand by reason of the same rules of necessity For presently after I knew that Duration which they name Time was a real Being And likewise that if Time hath been from the Beginning before a Creature was made verily it could not be reckoned among created things For neither is there mention made of Time being created I also thorowly weighed that as a moveable Body is so in place that the place doth not only outwardly encompass the moveable Body however Aristotle in the mean time so thought but place pierceth the very moveable Body on every Side so that every intimate part of a Body is no less in place than the superficies thereof Yet place is not therefore on the other hand comprehended by the moveable Body So indeed and also much more abstractedly Duration is indeed intimate to things Yet it is not affected shut up or apprehended by things Also place supposeth a certain and determined Position indeed capable of being changed by that which is moveable yet wholly unseparable altogether from all place But Duration it self is so unseparable from things that it doth in no wise ever wander or is changed from these Therefore seeing Duration is above and within the Being of things and unseparable from these Yea more intimate to things than things themselves are unto their own selves Hence therefore have I meditated of a Duration plainly divine to be in Time and so in that respect not to be distinguished from Eternity yet to be distributed unto things according to the Model of every Receiver And so I have sufficiently proved the aforesaid Proposition Wherefore Time hath neither parts neither doth it admit of a division of it self and by consequence it knows not succession neither also doth it approve of Dreams To wit the which may receive into it Poynts actually Infinite being coupled or dis-joyned Yea neither is Time a Duration great or small rather than plain round long deep short or broad Because in very deed it is not within the compass of Predicaments because there is one only Infinite existing in Act to wit God who is all things For if Goodness Life Truth and Essence after an abstracted manner are God himself in created things it likewise cannot be denyed but that in the same things Duration it self represents God I believe therefore that true Time is unmixed without the Spot of a Creature every where and alwayes unchangeable nor to be after any manner successive And that I might the more nearly conceive of this thing I withdrew all Bodies from Time and all coursariness of successive things or the succeeding successive changes of Motions And then first I clearly understood that Time in its own Essence bears or ows no respect unto the Unstabilities Varieties or Measure of Motions For truly Time is that which it is whether Motions and Mutations are made or not because I have not found Duration to be related unto Motion or on the other hand Motion unto Duration unless by accident and by reason of a mental measuring of one thing unto another the which is altogether impertinent For truly Time not having succession cannot be serviceable unto co-measuring But because we being concluded in a sublunary place and being rashly seasoned by the Heathenish Schooles we have been wont in the Duration of Time indefinitely to consider Priorities and Swiftnesses together with their Correlatives because through a frivolous Abuse the limitation of attribution of Motions and moveable Bodies hath been accustomed to be measured according to space Which Relations
the great and new Paradox which I have undertaken to demonstrate in this Treatise Wherefore in the entrance obstacles that are obvious and devious are to be removed And first of all they object the Text The Earth shall bring forth unto Thee Thistles and Thornes In the sweat of thy Face thou shalt eat thy Bread I will multiply thy Miseries and thy Conceptions In pain thou shalt bring forth thy Sons thy Husband shall rule over Thee Thou shalt die the Death And by consequence ye shall be afflicted with the Calamities of Diseases and old Age. All which things issued forth on Posterity from the curse of the Sin of Disobedience even unto the destruction of the World upon no account to be redeemed and by no act of sanctity to be expiated Because God had appointed a Law to Adam that he should not eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil the transgression whereof hath defluxed as into original Sin So also it stirred it up into the perpetuity of a Curse from our first Parents equally on all their Posterity These things have been thus diligently taught hitherto Whereunto under the peace and censure of the Church I will humbly sub joyn my own Conceptions First therefore I negatively affirme the contrary because the Words of the Text do not precisely containe any Curses except on the Serpent and Earth but not at all on Man Whom if he with whom there is no successive alteration or change had cursed he had truly and alwayes cursed like the Evil Spirit For it is a foolish thing to believe that God should now curse Man whom presently after Sin and without the intervening of contrition or act of repentance he forthwith blessed with much Fruitfulness gave him the whole Earth and placed all living Creatures under his Feet Yea in the midst of the Curse uttered or brought upon the Serpent he replenished the femal Sex with his blessing saying The Woman shall bruise thy Head I will put Enmities between Tree and the Woman and between thy Seed and her Seed The which seeing it is not understood of the Seed of Man it promiseth the Messias the Saviour of the World to come of the Seed of the Woman So far is it that he had there cursed Man In the second place I deny that a Law was given and by consequence also a contradiction or opposing of a Law For it follows wheresoever there is not a Law Transgression nor Disobedience doth not interpose and by consequence a Curse doth not there befall But I prove that there was not a Law by the very Words of the Text And he commanded him saying Of every Tree of the Garden eat Thou but of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil Thou mayest not eat The Word he commanded Seemes to include a Precept and so also a Law Yet that one only Word obtains no more the force of a Law or Precept for the affirmative of every Tree of Paradise eat Thou than for the negative Thou mayest not eat For it included not a Sin although he had not eat of every Tree of Paradise And therefore it did no more contain a Law for the forbidding of one Tree than for a Liberty of all the other Trees Therefore the Text contained a fatherly Liberty for the affirmative and likewise for the Grant as also a fatherly Admonition of Caution for the Negative no otherwise than as if a Country-man being expert of the way shall say to a Traveller If thou shalt go that way thou wilt Perish and die the Death So the Admonition of the Creator thou mayest not eat and in whatsoever day thou shalt eat thou shalt die the Death do shew not a Law but a Persuasion and Wish But the transgression and Act of the despised Admonition doth indeed contain a Sin but not of Disobedience and Disobedience as much differs from a despised Admonition as a Law doth from an Admonishment it self The Prohibition therefore thou mayest not eat sounds as an Admonition to wit least he should eat his own and posterities Death by an unextinguishable Guilt because that Death was placed in the Apple but not in the opposition of eating And therefore that Death from the eating of the Apple was natural being admonished of but not a Curse threatned by a Law For the threatnings of Death which was unknown to Adam could not terrifie the same Adam And therefore threatnings had been void but not an admonition For Adam had not as yet seen a dead Carcase and the which before he saw living Creatures was ignorant of their Names And much less could he know what Death should be And least of all by far could Eve know what it should be to die in Paradise Therefore with our first Parents Death was as yet a non-Being and unknown but of a non-Being and of that which is unknown no Conception answereth and there is no fear at all Therefore neither hath God foretold Death for the threats of Terrour or a Law but from his meer goodness That when they had eaten of the disswaded Apple they might know that God had not made Death but themselves for themselves Neither doth the Text in Chap. 3. hinder these things Because thou hast eaten of the Tree whereof I had commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat c For the Words do manifestly declare the goodness of the foregoing Admonition but not a Law For the Word I had commanded is the same which before in the second Chapter and he commanded him saying signifies an Admonition only and not a Law Otherwise under an equal original Sin they had been obliged from eating of every Tree of Paradise which none of a sound mind will ever affirme For the great Sin was in a suspition of deciet falshood and fallacy of God and that they gave more credit to the Serpent than unto God and that they despised a fatherly and kinde Admonition But there was not Disobedience because a Law was not given It was indeed an Act against Gratitude Love towards God and a due and rational Obligation Therefore God cursed them not because they by eating had contracted the Penalties of Diseases Death and Miseries on themselves for a Punishment But God speaketh not of Diseases after the Fall Because it was sufficient once to have foretold Death to come while he admonished them that they should not eat In the next place the crafty Serpent assaulted not the Woman as being the weaker but because the Admonition was given unto Adam from the Mouth of God but signified unto the Woman onely from the relation of the Man And therefore God first requires an account of Adam First of all it doth not containe a cursing of the Man that the Earth should be cursed in its Work and should bring forth Cockle and that he should in the sweat of his face eat his Bread all his Life But they containe a remembrance of the loving Admonition that went before the
But that contradicts this because the place is not scorched either beyond or on this side of the Circle and because those Carbuncles which begin to bud being not touched also by the Saphire do settle down and perish For truly if the expulsive Faculty were only strengthened it would expel the Venom every way round and not be tied up unto a certain and elect place Fourthly Nature before the touching of the Saphire had already denoted its own strong Ability in expelling of the Carbuncle Whence also it is false that Nature being once provoked to expulsion doth afterwards continue it of her self seeing otherwise the Saphire came too slow for the Beginning of Expulsion Therefore whatever thou shalt say the Poyson must needs be magnetically attracted by the absent Gem. Wilt thou therefore that the natural Magnetism of the weapon Salve be more clearly manifested unto thee Or wilt thou reprorch the attraction of the Gem and also write to the reproacher Thou wilt judge I suppose that it is better and far better to be of Opinion with us that as Death Wounds a Disease Slaughters crept in by the Devil from whom there is nought but Mischief So that every good Gift descends down from the Father of Lights all Men judging that to be good which neither the Subject nor the Object nor the Means nor the intended End dare to accuse of wickedness For this Cause the Prelates of the Church were wont heretofore to wear Rings enricht with a Saphire the use of that Gem being almost unknown amongst them For unto whomsoever the charge of Souls is committed it is also incumbent on the same from equity and Office or Duty to be assistant to those that are infected with the Plague For the darkness of Ignorace at this day over-shadowing the most famous Knowledge of natural Things instead whereof a polished Grace or fineness of speaking and a glistering of the windy and dead Letter and a presumptuous Prattle have succeeded which is greatly to be bawailed and more to be admired that mechanical Arts do dayly thrive but that the study of natural things alone is affrighted and goes backward through unjust Censures I have been the more tedious about the Saphire because it contains a Case or Condition wholly like and equal to the Armary Unguent or weapon Salve In this respect therefore Man also hath his Load-stone or attractive Power whereby in time of the Plague he draws the Venom from abroad out of the Infected by an unsensible transpiration For Nature which at other times is wont to admit only of a kind or wholesome Juice and diligently to separate it from the Excrements now yielding to its Magnet or attractive Virtue allures unto it a hurtful Air and invites Death into the Body Against which Magnet there is its contrary Magnet this is inserted to wit least our Dispute should become barren in any part of it namely the Saphire it self or also a clear piece of Amber being first rub'd upon the seven planetary Pulses but those are in the Throat the Wrists of the Hands nigh the Insteps and on the Seat or Region of the Heart and being hung about the Neck instead of an Amulet or Pomander excel the Magnet of Man hinder it and so are the most certain Amulets or counter Poysons against the cruel Contagion otherwise plainly un-efficacious if a co-rubbing of the Pulses hath not preceded For those things which before were a Saphire and Amber have from the rubbing on those Pulses changed their Family do first loose their name and afterwards are called a Zenexton or preservatory Amulet against the Plague Will any one account these Effects also to be diabolical and attribute them to a Covenant struck with Satan It is sufficient that we have brought a few yet satisfactory Examples and such as contain the like condition of the Armary Uguent we shall now seasonably turn our selves unto thy Arguments Thou reprovest Goclenius of Ignorance of the Doctrine of Aristotle for that he insinuates the same accident to pass from Subject into Subject I wish thou hadst been as ready in proving as thou art in refuting for as much as this also is a Mother of great Stubbornness to think that a scar in a dead Carcass is not the same which it was in the Man that was yesterday alive For in vain do we reverence the Reliques of Saints if only the impossible matter of the Aristotelicks remaineth and there shall not remain certain accidents in the corrupted Body whih were heretofore in the live one Behold whither whither a Paganish errour doth hurle those that unadvisedly carpe at others To imagine I say that to be impossible which is altogether necessary is the part of the grossest Ignorance Indeed the Light from the Sun even unto the Earth doth even more swiftly than the twinckling of an Eye also through the smallest Atomes of the Air produce new Species and Species of Species of Light truly this is to wax blind in Sun-shine for if we should not have the Light and Virtue of the Sun amongst us but only the thousandth of thousands of Millions Species of its Light and Virtue not any thing could grow and Fire should never be produced by the re-bounding or union of its Beams For the Species of Species of Light seeing they are no more Light than the Species of Colours are Colours they should never cause Fire Certainly I rejoyce in the behalfe of the Ignorance of such a Doctrine whereof Goclenius is accused as ignorant Doth not the Needle of the Compass through a Glass that is sealed with scalding Sodder wherein no Pore is found incline it self to the northern Pole And is it not drawn unto a neighbouring piece of Iron the Pole being the while neglected Therefore the same accident passeth thorow the Glass from the Load-stone into the Air and perhaps reacheth to the Pole it self And Magnetism also is a celestial Quality very like to the Influences of the Stars neither is it restrained unto distances of Place even as neither the magnetical Ungent of which I dispute is Thou smilest because Goclenius chooseth that hereby Mosse which is gathered from the Scul of a Man of three Letters Nor is there here truly any ground for thee to think there lurks a Snake in the Bush or the Vanity of Superstition for although a Jesuite being put to Death by Hanging or any other kinde of Martrydom be left to be dryed according to the Influence and Obedience of the Stars his Head will afford a springing Mosse every way alike useful and also alike in time for shaving it off co-agreeable to the Skull of a Thief for truly the Seed of the Mosse falls from Heaven on Mount Calvary For sometimes there rains a Froath which is called Aurora and now and then a more tough Muscilage descends which is called the Sperm or Seed of the Stars Sometimes the Heavens showrs down Frogs Spiders c. the which in falling are made a tangible and
its shop 28. From the impertinencie of the supposed position 29. From a convenient or agreeing thing 30. From the Gowt and wringings of the bowells 31. From an Erisepelas 32. From Causticks 33. From an Evangelical word 34. From a defect of the seperater 35. From the nourishing of the similar parts 36. From an impertinency 37. The deformity of a formed argument of the Schools 38. From a like thing 39. From the nature of an Element 40. From the simplicity of its end 41. A denyal of a position 42. From a Phylosophical maxim 43. From tast and properties 44. Who was the inventer of humours 45. What a diversity of Soiles may argue 46. From the blood of an Aethiopian 47. Whence the venal blood is the more red in its superficies 48. From a like thing 49. Whence there is a change of colours in things 50. From a shew of the deed in many things 51. The childish in inspection of the Schools of out-issuing blood 52. Miserable impostures 53. A ridiculous omission of the Schools 54. The judgment of Physitians fights against it self 55. Privy shifts sliding from unvoluntary cheeks 56. A cruel or hurtfull little book concerning the nature of man 57. From effects and fear 58. From the confession of Physitians 59. Dunghill Physitians distinguish not men but by dungs 60. A ridiculous argument of the Schooles 61. An argument on the contrary from a maxim of naturall Phylosophy 62. A convincing argument 63. Galen ridiculous about the cause of the variety of humours 64. The perplexities of Galen 65. Refutations by the Beginnings of natural Phylosophy 66. An errour of Paracelsus 67. The Schools are ignorant of the venal blood 68. An argument against the position 69. A false and ridiculous supposition of the Schools concerning the supplying office of the Spleen 70. Absurdities 71. A handicraft demonstration 72. Against the position concerning black Choler 73. Many absurdities follow 74. The Schools do most miserably prove their position for black choler 75. Some defects following thereupon 76. A convincing argument 77. An Idiotisme of Paracelsus 78. Sharpnesse doth not ferment Earth 79. From an impertinency 80. A convincing argument 81. From an impossibility 82. A ridiculous supposition of the Schools and four absurdities thereof 83. Some absurdities accompanying the opinion concerning the hony of Galen 84. From things implying 85. By a convincing argument from the supposition of a falshood concerning the Elements 86. From a number of the Elements 87 A bruitish objection 88. If we must not proceed by humours how therefore must we cure 89. The praise of the valatile salt of Tartar I Have sent forth an unheard of Doctrine of Fevers that I might hear what the more fruitful wits might teach me For there were some who had promised that they would be arbitrators or judges in the Case whom notwithstanding I conjecture so long to be silent untill I had set forth a treatise of humours which I had promised to gather out of my great works For truly they could not be ignorant that if I could sufficiently demonstrate that the humours accustomed in the Schools besides blood were never or never to be in nature they also were to have no contention with me concerning Fevers And that thing I now promise ingeniously to performe not indeed as that I may be glorious by the name of a Paradox but altogether from compassion towards young beginners that are badly instructed and toward the sick that are badly handled under the device of humours Therefore I will state the forme of the matter For indeed the Chyle or juice of the stomach being supt up into the veines of the mesentery they affirme the same chyle to be conveighed unto the Port-vein of the Liver to wit a trunk arising out of the small branches distributed through the mesentery into the intestines or bowels And that that Chyle in the time of its passage through the slender trunks of the veins extended into the liver is by the power of the Liver converted into blood and also into phlegm and a twofold choler And that this choler is afterwards seperated partly into the spleen and partly into the litle bag of the gawl To wit that they may be the keepers of both their own superfluous choler but that the two natural Cholers as the entire and constitutive parts of the blood are co-mingled together with the blood for the necessities of the parts to be nourished in the due proportion of the quaternary of which humours that as health doth consist So on the other hand that in an undue proportion thereof all diseases are entertained But that an undue proportion thereof proceedeth as well from the perpetual strife and hostile and unwearied contrariety of the four repugnant Elements as from the voluntary distemperature and inbred fight stirred up of things received into the body Truly I have already in the Beginnings of natural Phylosophy and rise of medicine sufficiently removed the foregoing cause of so great a fiction To wit where I have sufficiently demonstrated that there are not four Elements in nature and by consequence if there are only three that four cannot go together or encounter Therefore that the squadron being broken cannot cause four unlike Elementary combates temperatures mixtures contrarieties hatreds strifes c. For I have taught cleerly enough that the fruites which antiquity hath believed to be mixt bodies and those composed from a concurrence of four Elements are materially of one onely Element In the next place also that those three Elements are naturally cold nor that native heat is any where in things except from light life motion and an altering Blas And so that heat in the Elements is a meer Relolleum In like manner also that all actual moisture is of water but all virtual moisture from the property of the seeds Likewise that drynesse is by it self in the aire and earth But in fruites by reason of the seeds and coagulations Therefore that it is a false doctrine which is celebrated concerning the Elements mixtures qualities temperaments discords degrees in order unto diseases and the curings of these I have also profesly demonstrated that there are not contraries in nature That health is opposed to a disease with relation of that which is entire unto that which is defectuous To wit that remedies do take away a disease not by the force of contrariety as neither by reason of a naked similtude or likenesse but by reason of a meer gift of goodnesse restoring nature by helping her the which otherwise is the Physitiannesse of her own self These things surely were sufficient and might be able to take humours out of the way unlesse an opposite custome had as it were tied up the mind least it should hasten unto the knowledge of the truth For it is a very difficult thing to disaccustome those who are confident in themselves that by those humours they have long since compendiously viewed every catalogue of a disease Wherefore unto those that
PESTIS OR THE PLAGUE-GRAVE JOHN BAPTISTA VAN HELMONT Tobarch in ROYENBORCH Pellines c. being the Author THE PEST Reader the Title which thou Readest is a mournfull Terrour affixed to the doors within it shews death the kind of death and scourge of men stand still and enquire what this may betoken What the Epigraph of the Plague-Grave will have it self to be I have departed under the Anatomy not dyed as long as the ill-Counselling envy of the scoffer and ignorant lust of men shall cherish me THEREFORE HERE IS No Funeral no dead Carkase no Death no Sceleton no Mourning no Contagion GIVE GLORY TO THE ETERNAL That the Pest hath now fayled under the proper punishment of an Anatomy JOHN BAPTIST A VAN HELMONT Of BRUXELS A Phylosopher by the fire Toparch in Royenborgh Pellines c. Wisheth health and joy to CHRISTIANS Dear Reader I Have always even from a Child sought after the truth above every delightful thing because I every where found every man a Lyar and so that from the impiety of the world all false ignorant devised deceitful things and things ful of impostures have been invented And when I had fitly searched into all States Religions and Conditions by their individuals I saw indeed the certain and unchangeable truth in numbers and measures In the next place in created things I found indeed the essence and properties of things to be true and good but the truth it self however I in quired amongst men I no where found I greatly grieved that truth had hid it self from my capacity as not knowing that that was my own vice but not the fault of things At length when I had considered that God himself was the naked truth I took the Gospel-book in my hand wherein although I every where noted singular verity yet I found the interpretations thereof to be according to the will of the flesh Yea at this day I have noted some to be diligently studious to excuses excuses in sins especially in those of greâ—â—men And so the truth of the Gospel is reckoned to be professed but not consented unto as it ought to be For there is none who having two Coats puts of one that out of meer love he may cloath the poor man as if Christ were present therewith None turns the other cheek to him that strikes him And so Evangelical truth through the endeavour of some is at this day grown out of use among Christians In which consideration when I once had tarried out almost all night after the studies of some years and very many anguishes I resolved with my self that I would every where assault the Plague freely which had then invaded our Country-men and the which all fled from And although I had on every side contracted the most choiseremedies out of books into a breviary and also had remedies described by others at hand yet I experienced them all to be void feeble and vain For the forsaken sick and poor did oft-times utter their vomitings and belchings upon me and breathed out their soul between my armes to my grief but God preserved this ignorant and unprositable servant And at length I comprehended the nature progresse and properties of the Pest to be far different from what the Schools had hitherto understood them to be Because Doctours and writers themselves do first run away and what things they have here and there compiled out of diverse Authors they do equally extol and commend to the ignorant as most exceeding good and the which from their own ignorance they so judge to be And so all their doctrine is supported by the foundation of supposition In the mean time notwithstanding the knowledge of a Pestilent poyson hitherto scanty is desired and remedies are required which their gift being unchanged in the first shops can overcome the contagion of the poyson whereof nothing hath hitherto been dreamed by the Schools Tumulus PESTIS OR THE PLAGUE-GRAVE CHAP. I. Of what kind the Pest or Plague is AFTER a pensive lodging out all night a dream befell me and since night unto night sheweth knowledge I have thought that a dream doth contein knowledge Therefore I willingly submit my dreams unto the judgment of the Reader For I beheld my self to be in the vaults without the city they call them Grotts I saw Daedalian Labarinths in some place Arches threatning a cleft and ruine I had called them the porches or galleries of Pluto wherein inveterate or long accustomed darknesse and a thick aire wearied with long rest suffers not the light of a candle to shine a-far of For the thicknesse of the air did so meet with the Gas of the earth that the flame of a wax-candle would scarce shine but a few paces from thence For the voice becomes so dumb with a duskish sound that not far of from thence an out-cry cannot be heard and the more dull sound seemes to resemble not a voic but the shadow of a voyce For nothing is there which is vital except a company of Bats their nests being adjoyned or knit fast in the Arches of the co-heaped rubbishes Alas a sad spectacle the Image of eternal death where the seat of night-thieves is Wherein if thou shalt chance to hurt one of its cruel inhabitants thou art deprived of candles and presently of life unlesse thy light being extinguished thou prostratest thy self as humble and feign thy self as dead For those lurkers being the natives of obscurities do not endure to be obtained or corrected by any and much lesse to be driven away from their seat They call it an injury to have the light brought against them because with them they neither have light neither do they love it under doctrine and correction not issuing out of their nests they cry out for revenge and they gape for it with conjoyned votes For how strong are they because and when they are very many How bold are they in the Age and Kingdome of darkness and how unmild where all things favour their own wishes and flyings For our breath there smells of so great an hoary putrefaction that delay presently tingeth us with paleness And indeed it is familiar to the Mines of Metals that except the soil be frequently pounced and new air do breath on it from the Sky mountainous Inhabitants do certainly perish with a blind Gas but if they shall not lodge out of their house all night they at least do contract a disease deplorable even for their life time For therefore they are wont that they may preserve the life of mountainous Inhabitants to blow in new ayr and to blow out the hurtful by Engines But in the Roman Vaults they seek not for Minerals therefore also they want an Arsenical Gas For there frequent Sepulchres are found which are thought to be those of Martyrs who gloriously died Therefore I dreaming began to doubt whether fled Truth and not to be found at this day had made its grave with the Martyrs in the same place the question smiled on
me sleeping for the most High created the Physitian as also medicine out of the earth I have therefore deemed the truth of medicine and knowledge of a Physitian to have hid it self in the stable Foundation of Nature and the more hidden Sepulchre from the unworthy and defiled beholding of Mortals and to have forsaken our commerces and to have overwhelmed it self in many labyrinths and perplexities so that by reason of the smallness of light which is social unto us by nature truth remains covered over with darkness and hedged about with difficulties And the worst thing which here at length offers it self is that this Grave of Truth is kept not by a good Genius or Spirit but by the unhappy Birds of the Night therefore the spirits of darkness are to be supplanted But whosoever he be who strives the less to applaud those keepers he presently experienceth the violent power or tyrannical rule of those who under the shew of piety and quietness keep these Kingdomes of Pluto as their own But seeing they themselves come not into the light of truth they also suffer not others to enter unless they prostrate themselves as humble unto them For any other person is straightway encompassed by the powers of darkness the Enemies of the first Truth who under the pretence of godliness challenge the Legacies of their own Sepulchres to themselves because they boast that the Kingdome of Truth is in their possession And therefore that the command of Learning Sciences and the powers of great men are assigned to them For these being neither Birds nor Mice have obtained a middle and hermaphroditical kind and they go as it is in the 20th of Luke They pierce the houses and possessions of Widows they lead away after them poor silly women laden with sins c. Surely every such business walketh in darkness and all their endeavour is with a Noon-day Devil Truly I saw not a means of opening the Sepulchre of Truth but with long leisure but this thing hateful spirits even since the daies of Arias Montanus have not permitted to good men Wherefore that I might seasonably and with the profit of my Neighbour put that in frequent practise I decreed to withdraw my self from the vulgar sort and under the light throughly to knock the Vaults of Nature full of holes And least I should labour in vain I disposed of my glassen basins under the light that by a dumb sound I might discern the Vault of Nature underneath I endeavoured by the unwearied pains and charges of forty years to break the rocky stones asunder with the Axe Crook Fire and sharp liquor that light may flow in from heaven and that the Night-birds which presume to keep the Keys of Sciences and the narrow passage of Truth may vanish away or betake themselves unto a corner out of a Court-like conversation and the pursuances of courtesies or at least that they may no longer hereafter hinder mortals who are diligent searchers after truth For this mixt kind of Monster noyseth abroad that it is more excellent than all Birds because they begin not from an Egge after the custom of other Birds but do nurse up their Young with a longer sucking at the Breast and do cast those out of the Nest which they think are not sufficiently profitable unto them They boast I say that they are therefore the most quick-sighted of Birds in this respect because they also see most clearly under darkness Alas thus is our Age deceived by darkness But they feign and perswade the vulgar that Truth is in the shade within their own vaults who in the mean time being alwayes learning do never come unto the knowledge of Charity because they endure not the light that is perfectly learned by alone and naked Charity and therefore they alwayes weave to themselves the Wiles and webs of darkness Truly it was necessary for me to rent the bowels of the Earth and to break its Crown For truly Galen hath seemed to me to have entred into the Vaults with a slender Lamp who being presently affrighted stumbled in the entry and at first almost fell over the Threshold Therefore his Oyl being lavishly spent he returned to his own and told many things confusedly concerning the Sepulchres which he had not perceived nor known nor believed although he had seen them All from thenceforth boast rashly among their own people that they know many things who saluted not so much as the Threshold of Nature except at a far distance from the relation of Galen In the next place Avicen with his company although he became more cautious by the viewing of Galen yet he entred not much deeper but looking behind about and above him and being taken with giddiness his foot being dashed against a stone fell headlong down but returning he boasts in a Forraign Dialect that he had seen far more than his Predecessors The which when his followers understood and stuck to they chose a certain one of them for a Standard-Defender they all of them had rather fight for the glory of their sworn Prince than that they would themselves enter the passages as if the mind of man that is free being readily inclined like unto Clients had forsworn liberty Therefore none having afterwards endeavoured to enter and being content with the first Boasters they prefixed on their Centuries that themselves were to fight for the glory and Trophy of a matter not yet known but as many as came unto the entry being as it were factiously addicted unto the first Patron and insisting in the steps of Predecessors presently fell down together They dreamed that they were entred at leastwise they were deprived of light and help for removing the darkness of so great an heap Others also afterwards hastened toward the Vaults but they brought not the light with them they perceived their Oyl to be extinguished and snatcht away by the Enemies of the first Truth and humane health and Inhabitants of darkness At length Paracelsus having entred with a great Torch fastened a small cord to the wall about his first paces which he might follow as a Companion and Reducer of the wayes he aspiring to pierce whither the footsteps of mortals had not yet taken their journey The rout of Birds is presently amazed at so great a sight it thinks that Prometheus had entred it dares not nor was able to extinguish the Torch yet it secretly attempts to do it This man seeth very many Monuments he is long and freely enlarged he fills the entries with smoak and while he is intentive as a greedy devourer of truth his strength fails his Torch falls his light is extinguished in the middle of his course and he is as it were choaked with fumes I a poor miserable man have at length entred with the least light of a Lanthorn and that nothing might hinder and that nothing might detain my hand from the work I indeed refused a Rope and hung my Lanthorn at my girdle but
Tragedy of the world would again be hidden at leastwise I suppose that there will be other far more horrible Plagues than ever heretofore and against which all Antidotes will be vain For truly our Plague at this day doth not affect bruit beasts But in the last dreggishness 〈…〉 they shall destroy wild beasts also yea fishes and trees and there shall be Plagues but not an ordinary Plague otherwise this should be an uncertain sign of the future destruction For there shall be Plagues from the hand of God from the powring out of the Vials as the Revelation hath it But against those Plagues there is not to be a Buckler in Nature I promised therefore unto my self before I attempted to write these things that the Plague that was curable even unto that face of times and a true remedy thereof was to be fetched out of the Grave of Hippocrates or rather from above from the Father of Lights I will declare what I have learned for the profit of Posterity CHAP. III. The Heaven is free from as also innocent of our Contagion or Infection NOt the least comfort hath appeared unto the Soul that is earnestly desirous of knowledge or unto the miserable and forsaken sick from the writings of the Antients First of all it is of Faith that the Stars are for signs times or seasons daies and years nor that man can any way alienate the offices of the Stars or decline them unto other scopes That the Heavens are the works of the Lords hands that God created not Death and therefore that neither doth the Heaven contain Death a disease poyson discords corruptions or the effective cause of these For truly they are ordained not for the cause but for the signs of future things and only for the changing of seasons or Meteors and for the succession of daies and years The office therefore of the Heavens is not to generate evils to cause poysons to disperse or influx them to sow wars and to stir up deaths Because the heaven cannot exceed the bounds of its own appointment the heavens declare the glory of God for whose honour and the uses of ungrateful humanity it was created And therefore it rather contains in it life light joy peace and health with an orderly and continued motion no curse is read to have been communicated to the heaven after the transgression of Adam nor execration to be infused into it as neither a spot to have been sprinkled thereon The earth indeed brings forth thistles and thorns because under the Moon is the Copy-hold of the Devil and Death because of sinners the Empire of discords and interchanges The earth hath become a Step-mother unto us she is therefore the vale of miseries being great with-child of the corruption and fardle of sinners because it hath pleased God that there should be no other way unto rest but by tribulations yea it behoved Christ to suffer and so to enter into glory not indeed anothers but his own because he was willing to take on him the form of a servant I belive the Word of God but in no wise the vanities of the Sooth-sayers of Heaven and I judge that they who write that the Plague doth arise from the heaven do stumble as being hitherto deceived with the errours of the Gentiles The Heavens declare the glory of God and the Firmament sheweth the handy-works of the Lord The Heavens therefore shew a sweet or bitter thing to come but they do not cause that sweet or bitter yea neither is it lawful for us to call bitter things evils for God hath directed all things to a good end Therefore the heaven declares future things unto us but doth not cause them and the stars are only unto us for the signs of things to come and therefore there shall be signs in the Sun Moon and Stars The Stars also cause the successive alterations of seasons in the ayr waters and earth only by a native Blas From whence the changes and ripenesses as well in fruits as in the body of man especially in a sick one do consequently depend I understand also that the stars are in this respect for times or seasons unto us by their motive and alterative Blas For neither therefore are the Heavens Sorcerers or the Cocters of poysons the incensers of wars c. I knowingly consider them to be altogether as the alterers of successive interchanges in Elementary qualities as to the interchangeable courses of Stations Wherefore it happens that the sick aâ—e diversly altered in the promotion and maturity of seeds conceived in them because our vital faculties do stir up every their own Blas according to the rule or square of the most general motion of the stars not indeed as of violent leaders but of foregoing or accompanying ones For the Book of the Revelation doth not attribute even any the least punishing power unto the Heavens but the same to be distributed by God among the Angels and the which therefore are called smiting and ministring spirits performing the commands of the Judge Therefore I shall not easily believe that the Plague owes its original unto the importunate or unseasonable changes of times the which also Eudoxus according to Fernelius perceived And I cannot be induced by any reason to believe that the Heavens do give growth form figure virtues or any thing else which proceedeth from the Being of seeds For the Herb was potent in a flourishing seed even before the stars were born so that although there should be no stars yet every seed by the power of the Word is of it self naturally for producing of its own constituted body and against the will of the stars and stations of the year yea and of climates many seeds and forreign fruits are produced by Art Wherefore the Epidemicks of Hippocrates illustrated with the Commentary of Galen do also contain very many things unworthy the name of the Author not only because it attributes diseases to the stations or seasons of the year and not every one to their own seeds and divers infirmities to one root that is unto the first qualities of the ayr and so coupleth divers effects with unjust causes but because they contain very many absurdities of trifles For I am wont in this thing to compare Judiciary Astrologers unto Empericks who having gotten an oyntment powder or any other medicine extoll the same to be prevalent well nigh for all diseases and also for many other So many of those being not content with the shewing or betokening message of the Stars constrain them to be the workmen Deasters and absolute Patrons of all fortune and misfortune to be conscious or witness-bearers and the workers of life and death to come Lastly to be the Councellors and Judges of thoughts and questions asked If therefore they do not contain death wars poysons nor the Plague verily neither shall they be able to rain down such scourges upon us seeing they cannot give those things which they have not do not contain
is not more hurtful then the Plague yet they beware of and defend themselves from wild beasts England also hath hitherto wanted the proper name of the Pâ—st and the which from times past it nameth Plaga the Plague or stroake As to what pertains to the causes thereof the Greeks first and afterwards the Arabians and whosoever have dedicated themselves to either of these two do collect the Pest or Plague into two causes The first whereof they name Catarctical or fore-going causes but the latter connexed conjoyned containing and immediately accompanying ones and indeed when they saw the body of man by its individuals and places of its habitations to differ in great variety they devised a universal cause for the plague to wit they being seduced by Astrologers blamed the heaven that by its hurtful light and motion it be sprinkles the air with a cruel gore the poyson whereof they have therefore named an Epidemical or universal one and alâ—â—hugh they saw diseases infamous in contagion to arise through occasion of Pools or Lakes Caves poysonous soils Minerals Filths Mountains the natural moistnesses of the earth of a valley or sink or privy from whence divers puâ—refactions sprang yet they never esteemed the disposition of these diseases â—â— be the Pestilence but by a separated name they called them Endemical ones which distinction presently laid every doubt asleep and they themselvâ— have snorted in this deep sleep being glad that they had banished their own ignorance unto the heavens for a universal â—ault and they thought themselves secure not any thing distrusting that the heaven could vindicate it self from blame but them of ignorance They likewise separated the dead and those that were about to die in detesting their obediences that it might not be heard of neither that they might accuse the carelesness and ignorance of Physitians Especially when as the chief Physitian always runs away forsaking his own sick Patient iâ— his despairing of life Wherefore they call the Diviners of the stars together for their aid that seeing the world defends the errours of these men they may defame the heaven with a conjoyned accusation of a fault that it defiles the air and water with the consumptive poyson of an abstracted light But Paracelsus being much more bold than his Predecessors would have the heaven to be really infected with our contagion to note our sins with a pen of iron and unwillingly to receive them therefore to be a revenger and to stir up deaths But that the Plague is a meer wound that it is darted from heaven that the stars by wounding and in running do us hurt and that these wounds are made only in three places and not in more as not knowing that these are our emunctory places to wit behind the ears under the arm-pits and in the groyn In another place also he appoints not three buâ— four plagues according to the number of the Elements that every one of them are to be vanquished by a four-fold and much different remedy But elsewhere he also deviseth a fifth plague being sent into us by Gnomes Sylphs Nymphs Satyrs Hobgoblins Gyants or Faunes because perhaps he supposed these to be a fifth Element Moreover he being entreated by the City of Stertzing for a choice Antidote against the poyson of the Pest forsaking his former staâ—ry and Elementated remedies in the end wholly trusted to a drink of Triacle Myrrhe Butter but root Terra Sigillata Sperma ceti the herb Asclepias Pimpernell Valerian and Camphor with the best Aqua vitae to wit through inconsiderateness he as unmindful being snatcht away into a hundred confusions of simples by him many times and seriously detested but a little before In the next place neither do those things agree together that he elsewhere hath often not any thing distinguished the Element of fire from the heaven and nevertheless that he hath delivered four plagues distinct in their original cause and remedies the which he had dedicated unto one heaven which in another place he would have to be the only Author of the Pestilence He willeth also that Christal Aâ—â—es and likewise Gemms are bred in the air and do fall down from heaven the which he as unmindful of himself nameth the fâ—â—its of the water as willing Christal to be nothing but meer ice constrained by cold At length the Pest seeing it is a malady of the heaven and of the fourth degree yet he saith that the tincture of Gemms is the best solidative medicine of that wound and so also that a remedy of the second degree should cure the plague of the fourth degree I also pity the vain â—iresomeness about remedies which among a thousand Alchymists scarce one prepares For it is a frivolous thing to compose so many books and at length to have run back unto remedies which are scarce to be gotten in a popular disease and every where obvious For it is a frivolous thing in a wandring plague to nourish a whole Country with the fleshes of the Stork which flies away about Autumn or with a Lyons Tongue hung on the body For all such things discover ignorant boasting but not a common charity in so miserable a grief For neither hath Hippocrates chased away the plague out of Greece by such remedies For otherwise the poor man if the plague should be put to flight by precious remedies and victuals should with the despairing of his life the unequality of Fortune much bewailing and just grief ponder God to be a respecter of persons and remedies to be denied unto him I therefore shall never believe that God in Nature was less careful in curing the poor man than the rich For the history of Lazarus and the rich Glutton doth wonderfully comfort the poor Lastly Paracelsus hath set forth books of a plague generated by Pythonesses and Hobgoblins By Hobgoblins I say Satyrs c. which he denieth to bâ— evil spirits which he maketh coequal unto Witches in generating of the plague Yet hath he neglected to add remedies for such a pestilence as though the title of the Monarch of Secrets being presumptuous on himself it had been sufficient for him not to have â—rod in the footsteps of those that went before him and to have stirred up very much smoak and little fire and to have exposed the memory of himself â—nto laughter For his books of the Plague of Tartars of Minerals c. do contain much of prattle but little of trusty aid CHAP. VI. The Pest divided THe Paramire of Paracelsus is totally employed in perswading that every disease without exception and by name the Pestilence is in its whole species five-fold to wit being distinct in its causes original properties and remedies But the first kind he calls a Natural Being originally proceeding from elementated fruits and this plague he hath described in his books of the plague and pestilentialness wherein he is there his own Interpreter But since it is manifest that the fruits which the Schools have believed to
a disease 537 Death began from carnal lust 550 676 In divine things the Senses are to be cast off 310 13 What a Disease is 452 The difficulty of curing Diseases concluded from the Seat of the Soul 455 Of Diseases according to their occasional cause 565 Their division 566 How Diseases enter the Body 567 Most Diseases are centrally in the Stomach 261 10 Diseases concentred in the vital Spirit proved by dissection 485. Of the essence of Diseases 488 558 Hitherto unknown 489 171 145 A Disease is a real Being 947 Hunger no Disease 494 Diseases pierce the formal Light 496 A Disease begins from the matter of the Archeus 502 The product of a Disease differs from a Symptom 999 How a diseasie occasion augmenteth it self 521 Cure of Diseases not furthered by Anatomy 524 Diseases varie in respect of a six-fold digestion 620 What the ground of Diseases is 404 15 407 40 c. 430 3 448 60 238 21 269 Lunar Diseases their Symptoms 140 148 Diseases Produced by concupiscence 524 Cure of Diseases 446 The roots of Diseases from the beginning 1092 What the Dew is 68 23. What it abounds with 117 33 Decoctions censured 970 Defluxions of the Bladder ridiculous 856 Distilling without any Caput Mortuum remaining 404 18 Distilled waters of small force 970 Distillation of Vitriol 891 Distillation of Urine 847 Observations thereon ibid. Distillation unfolds natural Philosophy 692 Â 8 Of Diet its uselesness as to curing 451 9 c. Of the nature of Diuretickâ— 862 863 Of the dispensatories of the Schools 461 24 Thâ—ir hurtfulness ibid. 28 Illustrated by two Examples 464 43 Things externally applyed operate under the sixth digestion 479 48 A six fold Digeston 480 57 206 What a depraved digestion produceth 1104 Of the Retents of digestions 625 626 1003 The digestive Ferment what 201 206 What things help digestion ibid Of the threefold digestion of the Schools 203 703 16 There is as many suitable Ferments as digestions 206 2. From whence the force of digestion springs 207 21 Whâ—t helps it 703 17. The first digestion 207 The second digestion 209 21 22 The second and third digestion are begun at once 210 28 The third digestion where it begins 212 Digestion in the stomach not a formal transmutation of meats 215 48 When digestion may be said to be finished ibid. The fourth digestion its Seat 218 60 The fifth digestion ibid. The sixth digestion 219 67 Our digestions why attributed to the Planets 748 Supream of all digestions in the stomach 290 4 Death how it comes to â—e 649 8 After what sort death entred the Apple 657 41 Death followed sin 664 19 Death comes not from a dry habit of the Body 729 Death is from a decay of vital powers 730 Several occasions of Death 752 753 Drif what it is and what required thereto 595 Manner of making it 596 Dâ—atages observed 278 33 What drinks best in sharp sicknesses 454 22 24 The actions of the phansie from the Duumvirate 303 31 The power of desire in the Duumvirate 304 37 The Harmony of life from the Duumvirate 306 52 Fatness from the Duumvirate 308 59 The Duumvirate 337 Its Power Seat and Works 340 341 364 49 Vnderstanding is formed in the Duumvirate 275 Why the Spleen and Stomach are called the Duumvirate 287 26 Authority of the Duumvirate 296 The Dropsie Anasarcha whence 449 62 Its seat 515 Dropsie unknown 507 Not seated in the Liver 509 How stirred up 512 What the efficient matter thereof is 513 The Cure 521 A Bastard Dropsie ibid What abstinence from drink may effect in the Dropsie 519 Of Dungs and Toads in the Dropsie 519 520 Why drowned Bodies swim after a season 427 73 Drowsiness as well artificial as natural helped by Lixiviums 303 31 The vanity of drying up superfluities 440 42 Of drunkenness 449 63 Of being drunk with new Wine 122 23 Duelech of Paracelsus 833 Duelech is made of the Urine 836 837 Three Spirits concur for the nativity of Duelech 850 Its manner of making with an observation of the Fountains of the Spaw 851 What may be found in Duelech 861 Of the savour of Dungs 212 26 VVhere the Forment of Dung resideth 221 811 E. EArth why not reckoned among the primary Elements 49 16 11â— 44 What the Oxiginal Earth is â—0 3. 'T is Called the foundation of nature 4. ibid. It breaks forth to light in some places 51 5 The Earth is a fruit of the water 66 23 The various distinct Pavements of the Earth 94 5 The diversity of Soils in the Earth 688 3 In the last Soil the waâ—ers live 689 Of Earth-quakes 93 2 c. It is alwayes a threatner of punishments 102 33 Ear-wax good for pricking of the sinews 247 Eels bred by Honey and Dew c. 478 37 1026 65 Of the virtue of the Liver and Gaul of an Eele 304 46 An informative Similâ— of an Eg. 45 12 113 10 The prayse of Elecampane 703 10 Of the Elements 48 The two Elements Water and Air untransmutable 65 7 69 1 Their co-mixture no constitutive principles of bodies 134 24 Elements do not fight nor have contrariety 168 They Cannot destroy each other 1048 16 Electrum of Paracelsus against Inchantments 65 Elixir proprietatis and its prâ—paration 574. Elixir proprietatis not made without the Liquor Alkahest 813 Of the Embrio of a Bull-Calf its use 883 Of Endemicks 188 Endemical things are drawn in by breathing 189 7 The Progress of Endemical things 191 13 The Epitaph of an Emperour 528 Of the Ephialtes or night-Mare from what stirred up 299 15 Epilepsie whence stirred up 114 17 Erisipelas its Cure 475 29 114 17 Essence what it is 414 76 81 And in some things not so effectual when separated ibid. 78 Eve not cursed 654 13 Eve not appointed to bring forth in pain 654 14 Eve destowred in Paradice 666 33 Excrementitiousness whence caused 430 4 Extracts their invalidity 459 12 F. OF the infection of a dead Falcon. 1134 Fasting when easily brooked 24 51 Fever not cured by Phlebotomy 953 A Fever hitherto unknown 935 Thirst in Fevers examined 936 Drink allowed in Fevers 453 â—9 902 Caution about their food 454 24 Flesh to be shun'd ibid. Whence Cold and then hot 471 4 973 VVhat the Sunochus Diary and Hectick Fever are 978 Seat of a pâ—trid Fever 978 The occassional cause of Fevers twofold 979 980 986 The Cure 987 A Diary and Hectick affect onely the vital Spirit 973 Essence of Fevers discovered 1002 Feverish matter swims not in the Blood 956 The essence of Fevers not from heat 940 The seat of intermitting Fevers 948 The original of Camp-Fevers 1096 The poysonous Excrement in Fevers included in the Midriff 331 25 VVhat a Ferment is 31 24 c. By what continued 1124 Ferments being different do cause different operations 479 48 115 26 No transmutation without it 111 1207 2 Why commanded not to be used 111 1 Its properties c. 112 3 c. The
ibid How the Antients remedies may profit though not cure the stone 708 Why an expulsion of the stone is not to be intended 709 The quality of a remedy resolving the stone 710 56 Why stones are sometimes white 248 28 Whence a three-fold stone is made 249 3 Of the Stone 828 The flux of seeds for a stone 829 706 20 After what manner a man is made a stone 833 Of the Coagulum and Runnet of the stone by handicraft operation 840 Salt profitable in the stone 843 Of the occasion of the stone 857 Of the womb of the stone 866 Its Scituation 867 The pain of the stone from a contracture 86 Of the intention to cure the stone 701 15 874 Its cure 878 879 With testimonies thereof ibid. Of the manner of ministring a remedy for the stone 883 Of the stone that maketh gold its projection 674 58 751 807 The stone that maketh gold hath not the blessings of the tree of life 807 Sulphur only resists a fermental poyson 1158 In Sulphur is the life and death of bodies 66 14 Sulphur boiled in Linseed oyl 427 70 In oyl of Turpentine 515 The whole band of diseases hearken to some Sulphurs 577 260 39 The Sulphur of Copper hot stupefactive yet sweeter then honey 304 39 How floures of Sulphur profit those that have a Cough 309 94 Sulphur commended against the Plague 1154 Of the Gas of Sulphur 1155 The Sun scorcheth without pain 72 14 Is hot 74 23 139 41 794 The gifts of the Almighty are placed in the Sun 796 Sugar hurtful in most diseases 462 30 Loaf-Sugar not so good as the common 467 57 Swooning from the Stomack 302 303 27 What that Sweat is that accompanies death and Swoonings 42 What the Synovia is 842 389 20 Of Sympathetical Mediums 616 The cause of Sympathy 775 68 Of the Sympathy and Antipathy of things 1114 T. TAst in the midriff 909 Tartar its distillation 412 68 427 68 183 39 Why salt of Tartar dissolves crude Tartar 234 19 How Tartar is made 233 No disease ariseth from Tartar 235 1 Tartar not in foods 241 8 Tartar afâ—â—â— digestion in the stomach ceaseth to be a Tartar 242 243 Tartar not in drinks 250 7 Of the Tartar of the blood 1103 Of the original of the Tarantual 1509 The poyson of the Tarantula 787 148 What thirst is and whence 471 8 Thorn in the flesh how cured 521 Of thunder 90 17 A preservation against its effects on Beer c. 91 21 The seat of the Timpany and by what it is made 520 Why Tin is lighter than other Metals 107 20 The Toad commended against the Plague 1149 How prepared for that use 1150 How it kils the Ferment of the Plague 1151 How quickly he dies with fear Ibid. The Toad given by God as a Remedy for the poor against the Plague 1152 The bone of a Toad cures the tooth ach Tooth-ach whence caused 438. 30 247 Of the original of the tooth-stone 246 Of the flourishing and decaying of teeth 247 25 How the Transmutation of bodies is effected 115. 23 The tree of good and evil why forbidden 656 664 665 666 680 Of the tree of life 745 753 754 755 Tree of life what qualities it ought to have 808 The Cedar tree doth signifie the tree of life in this world 810 Of the preparation of the Cedar tree 811 V. VAlerian good against Inchantments 605 All Vegetables not woody contain a winie spirit 413. 73 Their Archeus hath no anatomical affinity with man 458 5 Their whole property from their seed and not from the heaven Ibid. 7 Their degrees whence different 146 88 Why vegetables unprofitable to the sick 578 Vervain commended 605 Venal blood wholly turned into nourishment 257 13 Venal blood never putrifies in its place 941 The natural endowment of the veins 942 An example Ibid. Vesicatories more hurtful then Phlebotomy 968 Vital spirit is salt 195. 19 733 734 Made of Arterial blood 196 24 732 By the ferment of the heart 733 Actuated by a vital light 734 The virgin earth 689 The Author instructed by visions 22 42 His vision of the soul 726 A vision of a Layick concerning the Lues venerea 1904 The spirit of vitriol reduced into an Alum by its dissolution of Mercury 473. 21 The dignity of the sulphur of venus and the nativity of vitriol 889 The best vitriol where to be had 891. 695 15 How vitriol may be made Ibid. The preparation of the Sulphur of vitriol 339. 9 Unguents how applicable 47 58 Ulcers their principal vice where seated 〈◊〉 18 21 23 Of the Difference of Ulcers 321. 29 The cure of Ulcers 322. 31 323 35 Volatile things fixed by fixed things  Volatiolation caused by ferments 117. 33 To provoke Urine in lingring fevers 465. 46 VVhat true provokers are 473. 19 476 31 Urinary salt made by the kidnyes 473. 19 Observations on distilled urine 847 Of the various actions of the spirit of urine 864 Urine-vessels not enlarged by drink but by the stone 708. 41 42 Urine not an excrement of the Kidneys 257 11 Of the division of vrines 1051. 1 Of the errours in the circle of urine 1052. 4 What the circle in the urine is demonstrated 1052. 5 What the yellownesse in urine may signifie 1053. 9 Watery urines after yellow ones signifie dotages 1054 VVhat a troubled urine signifies 1056. 26 VVhat the litle cloud in the urine may signifie 1054. 20 Of the several sediments of urine 1056 Examinations of urine by weight Ibid W. WArts how cured 141 55 154 VVater the material cause of things 32. 31 105 3. Proved so by an experiment 48. 11 109 30 Likened to the internal Mercury of Metals 65. 8 Never radically conjoyned with the earth 10 c. The parts of the water 71 8 410 54 What its unrestable appointment is 74. 28 Easily putrefiable under the Equinoctial 116 30 All bodies thereinto reducible 116. 33 The great use of that which comes from the Quellem 117 33 Water doth not always fal in a circular Figure 684. 50 When waters loose their life 689. 9 Waters the womb of seeds 693. 1 Why some waters hurt those that have the stone 251 Wheat changed into mice c. 113. 9 Winds whence generated 730 18 80 14 771 59 What the wind is 78 4 The vanity of the Schools defining it 85. 23 Violent ones how allayed 79. 13 Remedies for windinesse 4â—0 28 What causeth it 422. 41 Only in defective persons 424. 54 Some wind in the Ilcon c. Natural and necessary c. 428. 76 Spirit of Wine how reducible into water 69 27 105 9 106 11 VVines hurt by keeping in their Gas 107. 16 Wines profitable to our natures 966 Spirit of wine passeth into the Arteries without digestion 194. 12 731 Cold preserveth wines 232 VVhy wines wax soure 234 15 21 How wines become troubled 773 62 The labor of wisdome 184. 45 Of witches and witchcraft 568 The Devil how concerned therein 569. 1