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
same day where in they should eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil they should die the Death because by the approach of the sensitive Soul there was made another and a new Generation by reason whereof the Mind being astonished withdrew it self from the Sterne of Life In this thing indeed did the necessity of Death and Immortality stand For Man had wanted a mortal Soul as long as he had wished to be immortal not only because one only immortal Mind was sufficient for the governing of the Body neither was it convenient that the Body should serve two Masters at once But moreover because there was no need of a Seed which might contain in it a Disposition unto a mortal Soul Therefore the whole seminal Disposition to propagate Seed was in our first Parent Presentâ— after the Apple was eaten and before the sensitive Soul was born as well in himself and his Posterity From thence indeed it is manifest that the Mind although it hath withdrawn its hand from the Stern of the Body Nevertheless that it is no less guilty in every production of a fructifying Seed than it was in Times past after the eating of the Apple Indeed that thing the words of the Text contain In Sins my Mother hath conceived me But after what manner under the Mean of the disswaded Apple the most chast innocency was defined being free from the Concupiscence of the Flesh and from the contagion of a brutal Impurity I will profesly demonstrate afterward But let it be sufficient to have now said by the way that a vital Seed hath arisen and was conceived through the lust of the Concupiscence of the Flesh for the begging of a sensitive Soul after a brutal manner on which Seed the Mind imprinteth its seal And therefore neither with the similitude or determination of a specifical brutality Without which Seal every Seed is barren otherwise ending into a lump of Flesh or a Monster Therefore from the Concupiscence of the Flesh as the Seed so also the Mortal Soul and the Life thereof and by consequence the flesh of Sin have drawn their original and by consequence also Death But indeed Athiests and Libertines do even at this day take the Text of the disswaded Apple together with that Original for an Allegory The which the Church hath long since banished for an Heresie and hath long since condemned it Therefore the History of the Deed which Genesis describeth is true But why and after what manner that eating of the Apple hath naturally unavoidably unremissibly and irrevocably caused Death to be equally continued on all Posterity so as that the one onely transgression of the Admonition being among the most hainous of Sins hath committed an original Crime and afterwards should enclose in it the Reason of a second Cause by propagating from an unexcusable necessity of Mortality or after what manner the withdrawing of Life and Cause of Death are necessitated in the eating of one Apple I desired not to have narrowly searched into the reason of the good pleasure of God and the motion of his Decree from a former Cause or from a consequent Effect seeing it abundantly sufficeth me that I know and believe it was so appointed of God but that truly I had hoped it might be for his Glory the Splendor of Chastity and Instruction of Libertines to have more fully sifted this Parâ—â—â— and therefore also to have applied it unto my Treatise of Long Life For now is the hour come wherein that Evil shall from the North be spread over all the Inhabitants of the Earth CHAP. CXII A Position 1. The substance of the Position 2. A summary Objection compacted of the Law Sin and the Curse 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. are Arguments against the Objection 8. A new Objection 9. The Objection is solved 10. The quality of the Sin in our first Parents 11. Why the Serpent assaulted the Woman 12. The Man is not cursed 13. The Woman is not cursed 14. The Text which is thought to contain a curse confirms the Position 15. The likenesse of Conception and bringing forth after the Fall and not before the Fall doth strengthen the Position 16. The Text proves the Position 17. An eight Argument against the Curse 18. A ninth 19. A tenth 20. An eleventh 21. A twelfth 22. A thirteenth 23. A fourteenth 24. It is shewn that Sin hath not caused Death much less if there had been any Law 25. What kind of knowledge was included in the Apple 26. Two faults in arguing of not the Cause as of the Cause 27. From what Causes the Corruption of Nature hath arose 28. From whence is the continuation of the original of Sin 29. Some Errours about the abuse of those faults in arguing 30. The Corruption of Nature from what immediate Cause it hath proceeded from what occasional Cause and from what mediate Cause 31. A fifteenth Argument against the Curse 32. A sixteenth 33. A seventeenth 34. An eighteenth 35. A nineteenth 36. A twentieth 37. A twenty first 38. A twenty second 39. A twenty third 40. A twenty fourth 41. After what sort Death entred the Apple 42. A conjecture from things going before 43. The conjecture is proved 44. Brawlings about Goats-wool 45. A twenty fifth Argument 46. It is concluded from the Truth of the Text. 47. Death doth not exspect an hec-ciety or this very momentnesse as neither doth Sin 48. The intention of the Creator placed in the Text is proved because he hath no where admitted of incest between him that goes before and him that follows after in generation 49. The place of Mans corrupted Nature is narrowly searched into by eight Arguments 50. A ninth is also added 51. The chastity of the Text is celebrated 52. The excellency of those that are regenerate beyond the happiness of Adam THe Almighty out of his vast and voluntary goodness of Love hath loved and raised up Man peculiar for this purpose that he might intimately and as nearly as might be express his own Image Wherefore he adorned the same Image of himself with so great a Grace of his own divine Majesty and so prevented it with the bountiful beholding of his Love that of his own good Pleasure he created Eve and ordained that she should be the future Mother of all Humanity and Adam after the Fall called the name of his Wife Hevah because she should be the Mother of all living who was to conceive her off-springs not indeed from carnal Copulation and after the manner of Bruits nor from the concupiscence of the Flesh or by the will of Man but from God or from the overshadowing of the holy Spirit alone after the manner whereby the Humanity was conceived and born in which and by which all that are to be saved ought to be regenerated That is the Virginity of the Mother remaining entire and her Womb being shut she had brought forth without Pain Eva was constituted above the Man This indeed is
a bottomless pit of darkness I was hugely agast and also I fell our of all knowledge of things and my self But returning to my self I understood by one conception that in Christ Jesus we live move and have our being That no man can call even on the name of Jesus to Salvation without the special grace of God That we must continually pray And lend us not into temptation c. Indeed understanding was given unto me that without special grace to any actions nothing but sin attends us Which being seen and savourily known I admited my former ignorances and I knew that Stoicisme did retain me an empty and swollen Bubble between the bottomless pit of Hell and the necessity of imminent death I knew I say that by this Study under the shew of moderation I was made most haughty as if trusting in the freedom of my will I did renounce divine grace and as though what we would we might effect by ourselves Let God forbid such wickedness I said Wherefore I judged that Blasphemy to be indulged by Paganisme indeed but not to become a Christian and so I judged Stoical Philosophy with this Title hateful In the mean time when I was tired and wearied with the too much reading of other things for recreation sake I rouled over Mathiolus and Diascoxides thinking with my self nothing to be equally necessary for mortal men is by admiring the grace of God in Vegetables to minister to their proper necessities and to crop the fruit of the same Straightway after I certainly found the art of Herbarisme to have nothing increased since the dayes of Diascorides but at this day the Images of Herbs being delivered with the names and shapes of Plants to be on both sides onely disputed but nothing of their properties virtues and uses to have been added to the former invention and Histories except that those who came after have mutually feigned degrees of Elementary qualities to which the temperature of the Herbe is to be attributed But when I had certainly found happily two hundred Herbes of one quality and degree to have divers properties and some of divers qualities and degrees to have a Symphony or Harmony suppose it in vulnerary or wound potions in producing of the same effect not indeed the Herbs the various Pledges of divine Love but the Herbarists themselves began to be of little esteem with me and when I wondred at the cause of the unstableness of the effects and of so great darkness in applying and healing I inquired whether there were any Book that delivered the Maxims and Rules of Medicine For I supposed Medicine might be taught and delivered by Discipline like other Arts and Sciences and so to be by tradition but not that it was a meer gift At leastwise seeing Medicine is a Science a good gift coming down from the Father of Lights I did think that it might have its Theoremes and chief Authours instructed by an infused knowledge into whom as into Bazaleel and Aholiab the spirit of the Lord had inspired the Causes and knowledge of all Diseases and also the knowledge of the properties of things Therefore I thought these enlightned men to be the Standard-defending Professors of healing I inquired I say whether there were not another who had described the Endowments Properties Applications and proportions of Vegetables from the Hyssop even to the Cedar of Libanus A certain Professor of Medicine answered me none of these things might be looked for in Galen or Avicen But since I was not apt to believe neither did I finde among Writers the certainty sought for I suspected it according to truth that the giver of Medicine would remain the continual dispenser of the same Therefore I being carefull and doubtful to what Profession I should resign my self I had regard to the manners of the People and Lawes and pleasures of Princes I saw the Law to be mens Traditions and therefore uncertain unstable and void of truth For because in humane things there is no stability and no marrow of knowledge I seemed to passe over an unprofitable life if I should convert it to the pleasures of men Lastly I knew that the government of my self was hard enough for me but the judgement concerning good men and the life of others to be dark and subject to a thousand vexatious difficulties wherefore I wholly denied the Study of the Law and government of others On the other hand the misery of humane life was urgent and the will of God whereby every one may defend himself so long as he can but I more inclined with a singular greediness unto the most pleasing knowledge of natural things and even as the Soul became Servant to its own inclinations I unsensibly slid altogether into the knowledge of natural things Therefore I read the Institutions of Fuchius and Fernelius whereby I knew that I had lookt into the whole Science of Medicine as it were by an Epitome and I smiled to my self Is the knowledge of healing thus delivered without a Theoreme and Teacher who hath drawn the gift of healing from the Adeptist Is the whole History of natural properties thus shut up in Elementary qualities Therefore I read the works of Galen twice once Hipocrates whose Aphorismes I almost learned by heart and all Avicen and as well the Greeks Arabians as Moderns happily six hundred I seriously and attentively read thorow and taking notice by common places of whatsoever might seem singular to me in them and worthy of the Quill At length reading again my collected stuffe I knew my want and it grieved me of my pains bestowed and years When as indeed I observed that all Books with institutions singing the same Song did promise nothing of soundness nothing that might promise the knowledge of truth or the truth of knowledge In the mean time even from the beginning I had gotten from a Merchant all simples that I might keep a little of my own in my possession and then from a Clark of the Shops or a Collector of simples I had all the usual Plants of our Countrey and so I learned the knowledge of many by the looks of the same And also I thorowly weighed with my self that indeed I knew the face of Simples and their names but than their properties nothing lesse Therefore I would accompany a practising Physitian straightway it repented me again and again of the insufficiency uncertainty and conjectures of healing I had known indeed problematically or by way of hard question to dispute of any Disease but I knew not how to cure the very pain of the Teeth or scabbedness radically Lastly I saw that Fevers and common Diseases were neither certainly nor knowingly nor safely cured but the more grievous ones and those which cease not of their own accord for the most part were placed into the Catalogue of incurable Diseases Then it came into my minde that the art of Medicine was found full of deceit without which the Romanes lived happily five
the proportion of the dregs and sharpness But red French Wines unless they shall keep their Lee and the which they therefore say is the Mother or Nurse they dissolve their own Tincture and drink it up together with their own sourness and therefore those of two years old become discoloured unless they are exceeding generous For truly the tincture of Wines is a certain separable Body But generous red Wines because they do more slowly wax sour or sharp they are kept for many years But those bearing a little white unless they are severed from the Lee they presently grow weak For the Lee being taken away when their sourish part doth not finde an object which it may dissolve the Wine remains in its own former State Therefore Tartar is no longer Wine or Lee but a neither thing constituted of them both But that the thing is on this wise it plainly appeareth because more Tartar is dissolved in ten ounces of Rain-water than in two hundred ounces of Wine however it be stirred by boyling To wit by reason of the sharpness of the Wine whereby the Tartar was coagulated Lastly six ounces of Salt of Tartar do dissolve seven ounces of crude Tartar because the Lixivium or lye of that Salt doth drink up the sharpness of the Tartar But that Tartar doth consist of the Lee of Wine and not of Wine onely Printers do prove who do prepare the Lee of Wine or Tartar to be a suitable Ink for them And both of these in distilling do belch forth altogether the like Odour and the like Oyl But Tartar is not dissolved in cold water because the Lee of the Wine doth so compass the Salt in the Tartar that cold water cannot the more fully dissolve it by piercing Therefore seeing the Nativity of Tartar doth not elsewhere consist than in winy juyces actually consisting of Spirit of Wine and lightly waxing soure by reason of the flight of the Spirit inward Let the Schools of Paracelsus from hence know how badly the Speculation of Tartar doth suit even with those Diseases for whose sake it was invented For truly our Stone is by no meanes solved in boyling waters because Tartar is rather to be reckoned among the number of Salts or juyces coagulated with Salt than among Stones CHAP. XXXI The rash invention of Tartar in Diseases 1. No Disease doth arise from Tartar 2. Galen is unsavoury about the matter of the Disease of the Stone 3. Galen was often deceived herein 4. He thought the Stone to be hardened in us by the Element of fire in the middle of the Vrine 5. Some ignorances of the same man 6. A neutral Judge is called for 7. The drowsiness of the Humorists unexcusable 8. An explaining of the thing granted 9. Paracelsus came nearer unto the nature of Stones 10. But he also slid in stumbling 11. Paracelsus recanteth 12. His rashness brake forth from the ambition of a Monarchy 13. Blockishness is the Companion of ambition 14. The nodding unconstancie of Paracelsus 15. He was deceived by the Metaphor of a Microcosme or little World 16. His hidden boasting 17. The like boldness of Aristotle 18. That the Metaphor of a Microcosme differs from the truth 19. Paracelsus hath not sufficiently trusted to his invention of Tartar 20. Two ignorances of the same man are demonstrated 21. The Rise of hereditary Diseases 22. The Schools have erred in both extreams 23. The Phylosophy of Paracelsus concerning Tartar is rustical or rude 24. His errour is proved 25. The incongruities of Paracelsus 26. Paracelsus was ignorant of a formal transmutation of things 27. He blockishly proceeds SEEING that Tartar hath first entred into Medicine for the consideration of the Stone I have finished a Treatise touching the Disease of the Stone and I have shewen in print that Tartar is a stranger unto the nature of the Disease of the Stone Now at length I will make manifest that plainly no Disease doth arise from Tartar but that the meditation thereof in Diseases is vain Galen had known a man to be grieved with Stones and Sands in his Reins and Bladder but he knew not to what cause he might ascribe so great a hardness in us at length I found that not any thing can be condensed or co-thickned except one onely excrement which I call muck or snivel but he names it Phlegm or a waterishness And when he discerned the Stone to grow in the remote and so in the ultimate Coasts of utterance and did think that nothing had access thither besides his own humours he boldly affirmed that the same thing doth happen in the Urine and therefore that the Stone cannot otherwise be constituted than from a watery Phlegm VVhich thing because he marked with the Element of water and watery properties therefore that it ought to grow together at the water-pipes in us The Invention smiled on him especially because a Stone being brought into the Bladder there was a continual voyding of muck together with Urine Therefore he thought that our fire because he believed it to be one of the four Elements which do concur unto the constitution of us was necessary for the hardening of the matter of the Stone and that the Phlegm should dry up even in the middle of the waters seeing he knew no other operators in nature besides heat and cold For he knew not that all things did at sometime arise out of nothing now at length that from a necessitated continuation in nature all things afterwards should flow forth from a certain Genealogy of Seeds but not that from a casual conflux of Elements and by the virtue of supervening heat and cold they are so fitly adorned with vital powers Neither considered he that those first qualities at the most and utmost could not generate or contribute any thing unto a new Being but onely occasionally to promote or fore-flow the vital dispositions of seeds in their own simplicity but not as the Elements should be combined Surely it grieveth me for his pains and that all posterity of sick folks doth hitherto pay the punishment of its own credulity because he never deservedly measured or of himself once desired the Causes of the Disease of the Stone as otherwise he ought before he erected a method of healing So his Soul is made the Chamber-maid of his own desires and he feigneth plausible reasons to himself according to the appetite of disturbance which removed it from its place to a consent of himself Therefore a strange Judge is called unto the Reasons found out by us least being credulous we worship our own fictions and love them as it were Sons and pledge for the same against equity as Parents Therefore let the fire the sieve of Reasons be that Judge But the art of the fire was not yet known in Galens time but it was hidden among privy Counsellers under an Oath in the silence of Pythagoras For Galen never law even the distillation of Roses Therefore in so great a want of knowledge his
of all in the book of long Life I have demonstrated at large that the entrance of Death into humane nature had its own causes in nature by means for bidden without the intent of the thrice Glorious Creatour that death being once crept in and admitted although that was not from the Creators intention yet that it was afterwards continued and un-intreatable from a necessity of nature and thereupon not only to have been permitted and consented to by the Creatour but also that the style of Nature being changed it was admitted yea and also as it were commanded under a better state being introduced in regenerating through the Divine Grace of Baptisme In which Treatise I have demonstated a necessity of the Sensitive Soul which else under immortality had been in vain whence indeed a Law in the Members was introduced contradicting the Laws of the immortal mind And a Total and unexusable corruption of the whole central nature was received Which new unheard of Doctrine to former ages I presuppose is therefore from thence to be fetched or required if so be that the knowledge of our Mind be desired For as it is now thus stranged from its own self from its own Beginning because it now seems to hearken unto the commands of the Sensitive Soul which notwithstanding in its own essence Substance and reality is unchangeable so indeed unto those who make a beginning or do repent as it addeth the knowledge of the means whereby it fell and became wholly degenerate so also it presupposeth the same Doctrine to be as it were the foundation of the knowing of it self In the next place concerning the Birth of forms I have likewise shewn how far this fraile sensitive and mortal Soul in us may differ from the immortal Mind the which surely that it is made to do no less than after an infinite manner is undoubtedly true seeing the mind indeed is a Substance not mortal but the sensitive Soul is neither a Substance as neither an accident But a neither Mortal Creature and perishing into nothing and of the nature of Lights Which Doctrine is in part that of the Gospel which speaketh concerning the Eternal Life and Death of Souls or that which reckoneth the Soul of man to be the Image of God and not hereafter to Die for the distinguishing of it from the Soul of a Beast which indeed together with the Life it self is returned into nothing no otherwise than as the light of a Candle But as to the other part the present Doctrine is plainly Paradoxal in as much as the Sensitive Soul is banished out of the predicament of a Substance or an accident For first of all I have demonstrated that the Sensitive and Beast-like Soul as well in bruits as that which is in us is not infinite and immortal yet it must needs be so seeing none doubteth but that every natural thing that is born is also Subject unto Corruption by the Law of Nature But we are obliged by Faith to believe that the mind of man is immortal hereafter And so that the mind of man is an abiding substance or a Spirit subsisting and Living in it self after Seperation from the body should not be to be pressed or demonstrated to a Christian whose understanding is subdued into the obedience of Faith but that a most prevalent Atheism had lately arose in the midst of us and in Hypocrites of the Church which by an every way renouncing of the Faith doth shake it self off from the Principles whereby such insolent rashness might be appeased And especially of them who deny all divine Power otherwise neither is it my part to Treate of the immortality of the mind it being written and demonstrated by Augustine and piously copied out word for word by Lessius and by him re-delivered because they are those who have sufficiently proved the same But not yet against those which deny all Divine Power Therefore I might desist by treading the same under foot to re-meditate of it if it had been sufficiently demonstrated by them against the first sort of Atheists and unless I had put a difference of the mind in nature from every Soul of living Creatures unless I say the integrity or entireness of the same should have repect unto the knowledge of nature and that integrity should require a designed difference of man from any other Created things whatsoever and that â—ingly and Principally only according to its cheif and lively part without which man is nothing but a stinking dead Carcase more vile then a Flint and sooner destroyed and broken than any Glass Otherwise Christianity standing the immortality of the Mind standeth and the Substance of that Substander oâ—â—emainer even as also likewise the Mortality of other Souls or their reducement into nothing which is annihilation of a Proper Name And from thence is the true and properly said difference of the same CHAP. XLVI Of the Immortality of our Soul 1. Atheism and that worse than Idolatry 2. Religious Atheists are the worst of all 3. The Life of new Religious persons which prefer themselves before others hath introduced Atheism anew under the Doctrine of the Pâ—lagiam 4. Hypocrites abuse the Scriptures 5. The Argument of perfect Atheists 6. That modern Atheism was foreseen in times past 7. The foolishness of their Argument 8 Of what the Faith of Atheists is 9. Some Arguments against Atheists from things granted 10. Every thing understood is a Lyer while it is equalized with things understood by Faith 11. It is further demonstrated by the authority of Scripture 12. The Bread which comes down from Heaven Prophesied of 13. The remainder out of blessed Augustine 14. The mind cannot be generated by the disposition of Bodies 15. A neutrality of Beings unknown to the Schools THe Jewes of old presently after the Cessation of miracles were straightway hurried unto Idolatry a mad worshiping of Idols But the modern Age being more wicked then they of the Circumcision slideth voluntarily by degrees into Atheism For Lay-men being exsecrably involued in daily Sins do not only neglect God the invisible Fountaine of all good But also some that are bound or engaged to the Church eating up in the midst of us the Sins of the people do â—coffe at God and protest that they are indebted nothing unto him Because they believe nothing Accounting the Faith it self to be a meer politick apparitions Imagination and so that all Religions are indifferent Because they are those which they believe he introduced only to restrain people under a civil Law of living and that the are therefore almost every where different and alike just they being divulged by the Statute Law of Princes or right of customes received For else it might be a free thing to believe and do any thing if the commerces of men should not perish thereby For there are those who do believe and foolishly utter these things because Priests and Religious men themselves do privily profess unto
perceived our own Country remedies to be in vain they promise that humors never seen named and bred are to be dryed up at least by barbarous remedies But why do they give these drinks to drink also in a dry consumption Is it not that they may dry up the defluxing and exorbitant ill juicy humor But let them first satisfie the question whether the thing be or not whether watery decoctions are for drying up And then let them teach that these drinks will not by a certain priveledge dry up the Blood as neither those Humors which they call secondary ones but the other three Dreamed ones only in the Blood or next only Phlegmatish excrements lastly that they will not vitiate the requisite composition in the Blood and the due proportion of the thing composed But if these sort of decoctions do only dry up slimy and sharp excrements at leastwise they shall increase the clots and knots by leaving a curd of harshness But if they do these things in Rheums why not in the Gowt Or if not in the Gowt why also not in Catarrhs If they do dry up Phlegm between the joints when they are given to drink for prevention of the Gowt how shall they not constrain Phlegm sliding in the Veins or in the passage between the Skin unto a Sand-stone and knots If tough Phlegm be dried up into the Sand-stones by decoctions shall they not increase hurt in those that are distempered in their Lungs And therefore are they wickedly prescribed and given to Drink If dry things do imbibe or drink up moisture at leastwise I do not see how moist things shall dry up especially where the Drink of that which is decocted doth alwaies remain Moist Lastly at leastwife a Catarrhy humor could not chuse but be an excrement But the Schools have not considered that excrementous things cannot be blown away as neither be dried up without a dead Head For I have elsewhere taught that drying up is only of heat and cold This whereof in an increased degree scarce Tolerable for living Creatures doth convert watery Bodies into a Gas but the other is not an Operative quality into a drying vapour as neither into Moisture but that the dry doth drink up the moist and on the other hand that the most doth moisten as it is imbibed But moisture is not dryed up by dryness but the moisture departing being supt up by heat or cold The Schools in defluxions do forbid hot things do forbid Wines do perswade Barley Broaths and so in the middle of the Waters sometimes moistening and sometimes drying up as they say they endeavour to dry up but they know not what in what manner and by what means because hitherto the Humor the Author of so great evils is an unnamed one I therefore have not known either the Motion or manner or means whereby these Drinks are able to dry up by a true drying up and much less hurtful excrements only and least of all can they perform those things which Physitians do promise Nature therefore despiseth these Dreams of Physitians and doth alwaies make and will alwaies make void their promises I beseech the most excellent God that he would pardon the offences or sins which we have contracted not by a stubborn ignorance but from humane frailty Yet I fear least that befall Physitians which doth other men among whom an ignorance of right or Law takes away or looseth the inheritance Last of all even as the Gowt is truly a primary or chief disease hence the knowing thereof depends on the knowledge of chief Diseases about the end whereof some things are recorded concerning the cure of the Gowt CHAP. LII A Raging or Mad Pleura 1. The Pleurisie of the Schools 2. The errors of the definition and forgetfulnesses of themselves 3. Some Dreamed assertions 4. Whether the weight of Phlegm falling down doth pull away the Pleura from the Ribs 5. Some more gross assertions 6. The Vain Azugos hath no regard unto the essence of a Pleurisie 7. The vain hope of revulsion and derivation 8. To what end Blood-letting may conduce in a Pleurisie 9. The Schools are deceived by Artificial things 10. Both causes of the Disease do remain in their own effects 11. Some rashnesses of Paracelsus 12. The carelesseness of the Schools 13. The consideration of the Author in a Pleurisie declared by an example 14. A contemplation of sharpness in the bounds of a Pleurisie 15. A Proofe 16. The vanity of bloud-letting 17. Things required in a Remedy 18. A sharpness is proved in the Pleurisie 19. How the Pleura may be pulled away from the Ribs 20. Whence an inflammation of the Lungs is 21. The Thorn being plucked out the place doth oft become thorny 22. From whence a Pleurisie is 23. Where the Kitchin of a Pleurisie is 24. The repentance of nature in a Pleurisie 25. The Antients have spoken something of a Husteron Proteron concerning the Pain of the Pleurisie 26. How the bloody Flux seperates it self from a Pleurisie 27. Wherein a Peripneumonia or inflammation of the Lungs and an Imposthume full of Corrupt Matter do differ from a Pleurisie 28. What a clyster can work in the bloody-Flux 29. The use of Ecligmaes are taken notice of 30. The Schools are every where buisie about the Cloakatived cure of Diseases 31. The cruel carelessness of Physitians 32. Remedies wrested in a Pleurisie 33. Notable absurdities about the Bloody-Flux 34. Why a Clyster is hurtful to a Bloody-Flux 35. Observations of the Author who had a Pleurisie 36. How a seasonable cutting of a Vein differs from that which is delayed THe Pleurisie is by the Schools numbred among defluxions or rheums they define it to be a bloody Aposteme wherein the Pleura or coat which girdeth the Ribs is plucked from the ribs with a continual Fever pain of the place And Aposteme is the general kind of the Disease defined and so those who always define a Disease to be a disposition and do place it among qualities do now think the product or effects of a Pleurisie which follow upon the placing of a defluxing rheum to be the Disease and do provide it a place among substances but they no longer place it among a distemper disposition and hurting of an action but they now affirm it to be a material product and Aposteme In the next place they leave it uncertain whether they may ascribe the Pleurisie to a Phlegm or salt Rheum or indeed to venal blood expelled thither But neither do they also explain in the least what that furious disposition may be which by its angry heat doth rent the Pleura from the Ribs Yet that animosity is in nature and motion before the defluxing rheum and the Catarrh before that pulling asunder and that divulsion goes before an Aposteme Therefore they define the effect also they think that a defluxing rheum doth by its weight of salt phlegm actually rent the Pleura from the Ribs Moreover the Schools omit
But a Disease hath proceeded from the confusions and disturbances of an impure Archeus and being radically implanted in him hath so remained thenceforth unseparable to wit as to a formative power of infirm Idea's A Disease therefore growing together from Idea's as from its seminal efficient Beginning cloathes it self with a fit matter borrowed from the Archeus and ariseth into a real Being after the manner of other natural Beings And seeing the Idea is now formed in the Archeus he presently also begins to act these things neither is he idle but defiles a part of the Archeus In which part a ferment as the means of the efficient Cause is forthwith stirred up through an aversion from the integrity of Life and at length by assistance hereof he either defiles the more gross masse of the Body or at least-wise disturbs the family-administration of the digestions The Schooles I well know will deride the doctrin of Ptato because I have assigned seminal Idea's Ideal powers and formal activities unto Diseases for they will rather acknowledge four qualities environed with feigned Humours and do grin that these trifles are trampled on by me as not knowing whereunto the Causes Essences and Medicines of Diseases should be due Being ignorant I say that a more powerful near and more domestical Being hath mustred an army against the life of Man of whom also it was divinely said That a Mans Enemies are those of his House for they do every where notably accuse obstructions occasionally induced by the injuries of filthinesses as Diseases which obstructions do notably argue not so much the obstructer or also the thing obstructed it self as they have alwayes noted with a losty brow the majesty of an action passion and relation sound in the obstructer as if the obstruction it self or a relation it self should be a Disease but that the foundation of that relation should include the reason of a Diseasifying Cause Indeed the whole errour of the Schooles ariseth from the ignorance of a Disease which consisteth immediately in the life it self but not in dregs and filthynesses which are erroneous forreigners and strangers to the Life Good Jesus the wisdom of the Father of Lights with how great confusion of Darkness do humane judgments stumble unless thou govern them For truly while they have consecrated the Stone of the Bladder in the next place all the filths mixtures powers properties effects and liberties of effects activities and interchangeable courses unto the combates and wars of the Elements alone they have signified by the same method that they will not and cannot be wise beyond heats and colds For so they have hitherto taught without shame and judgment that the Stone doth wax dry is dryed and hardned in the midst of the Urine by heat and by the same priviledge of rashness or boldness they have neglected every thing the whole history of Nature and nativity of things and have made themselves miserable because ridiculous in the age to come Wherefore I have often complained with thee good Jesus O thou Prince of Life how difficult it would be for the Schooles who have been constantly nourished from their childhood with so great an harlotry of trifles and juggle of mists to have assumed the true Principles of things Unless thou hold the stern of the Ship and inspire a prosperous wind on the Sailes I guesse that the envious man will be ready to deliver up my Writings for Volusian Unlearned or wast Papers Help O God for the good of thine own Image that Seeds themselves may testifie the Archeus to be present with them who unless he be fructified by the onely conceived Idea of the Generater they do return into a Lump and dis-shaped Monster unto which a vigor is wanting no lesse of figuring than of unfolding of Properties Let Diseases witnesse I say although I am silent that they are Active Beings admitted into Nature by natural Principles Let them confesse according to Trismegistus that things superiour and inferiour are carried by the same Law of proportion and co-like Principles That by the meditation of one Thing Archeus or Principle all things do even to this day subsist and are continued That by the Meditation and Idea of that one they do receive the perfect Act of Superiour or Inferiour Beings What he spake is Truth and that Truth shall vanquish every strong Fortresse and pierce through all Solidities or Difficulties CHAP. LXIX Of the Idea's of Diseases 1. A division of the things to be spoken 2. The Spleen sits in the middle Trunk of the Body 3. The forming of real Images of the Phantasie is confirmed by an Example 4. Why an Idea descendeth from the Mother into the Young 5. Consequences drawn from thence 6. A measuring of the moderatenesse of Wine 7. The piercing of Idea's 8. A Child declines from his native disposition 9. What may be understood by an Agony 10. Most cruel Idea's 11. A most especial care of Educations 12. A difference in the motions of the mind 13. The doctrine of Desires 14. The rise and progress of Desires 15. A diversity of the Sin of Commission and of Omission 16. Why God hath endowed the Femal Sex with a peculiar favour 17. What the gift of a Sexual devotion may operate by it self 18. Why the Author hath treated of Morals 19. The Author repeats Eight Suppositions concerning the Idea's of the Archeus 20. The Author wanders about forreign Idea's 21. The foundations of Physiognomy 22. A Reason why Idea's are so powerful in us 23. What the Abolishment of the Cause of a Disease may be 24. A Diseasifying Cause is invisible 25. The Birth-place of Diseases 26. The Author brings forth that Divine thing of Hippocrates in Diseases unto the Light 27. Why Diseases do imitate the properties and activities of the Life 28. An Example in the Stone 29. There is need of two suppositions for an introduction of the knowledge of Diseases 30. A Conclusion drawn from thence 31. A Mechanical proof in a Bean. 32. The same in a Cancer 33. The progress of a Cancer 34. How the Beings of Creation do differ from the Beings of Prevarication or Transgression 35. The Thinglinesse or Essence of a Cancer 36. Some products of Diseases do lose an occasional causality 37. An erroneous Method of Curing hitherto kept 38. The Schooles their Causes of a Cancer are Erroneous SEeing therefore a matter and efficient Cause is required unto the Essence of a Disease and seeing the Idea is the Efficient Cause it self of a Disease both of them are to be explained And first of all I will describe the thingliness of Idea's their Efficacy and Fabrick that the Action and Nativity of effecting a Disease may clearly appear And first I will declare the Idea's conceived by Man And then I will treat of the Idea's of the Archeus And at length of strange and Forreign Idea's And Lastly I will deliver the matter making a Disease that from a Connexion of both Causes the thingliness
Fall Again neither do these Words sound of a Curse that the Woman should be thenceforth obedient and subject to her Husband although therein the intent of the Creator doth clearly appear to wit that he had appointed the Woman to be the head top and ultimate Creature above the Man But now by reason of a double Sin that she ought to be subject to her Husband But that signifies rather a deserved Punishment than a Curse Even as a Superiour is not cursed who is laid aside for an Errour committed But whereas it is said In Pain shalt thou bring forth thy Sons the Text expresly confirmeth the mistery of the Paradoxal Position For from thence it manifestly appears 1. That Eve was not created nor appointed as that she had brought forth in Pain Wherefore this Message is not decleared unto her for a Curse But there is set before her eies how much Calamity she had caused unto her self that she should hereafter conceive and bring forth after the manner of Bruits in Pain For it is not to be doubted but that Bruit-beasts are not guilty of Sin yet do they bring forth in Pain Not indeed that they have sinned in Adam as their Father or that they are partakers of his Sin because they had brought forth in Pain whether Adam had sinned or not Neither also is it agreeable with divine goodness that Bruit-beasts should bear an undeserved Punishment while as they from a Faculty of Nature and from an appointment of Creation do bring forth in pain 2. If Bruits bring forth in Pain a likenesse of Conception and bringing forth in Bruits and in Woman after the Fall is denoted which Likeness seeing it was not before the Fall therefore this Text strengthens the Position 3. If Eve had not eaten the Apple and consequently from the Apple the concupiscence of the Flesh from the tickling of a corrupt Seed verily she had brought forth without Pain Where the Text promiseth a Virginity in conceiving and bringing forth and so a perpetual Virginity appointed in propagating To wit that she had conceived and brought forth her Womb being shut For what other thing is this than that which others think to be the Curse of Eve is in very deed only a commemoration of the good lost through the copulation of Man of Seed and of the concupiscence of the Flesh in the Flesh of Sin after the manner of Bruits henceforeward The hope I say was lost of conceiving by the holy Spirit after that she had conceived by the will of Man as every Mother in Sins doth For otherwise if Death had been of the punishment of a broken Law and not from the concupiscence of the Flesh there should be every day as many new Deaths as there are Transgressions or God should not make so much account of his Commands of the Decalogue as of the Admonition of the caution or avoiding from the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil For he would not have those Laws to be alike seriously observed which he would not have to be chastised with an equal Punishment Therefore it being as yet supposed that there had been a Law concerning the denyed eating of the Apple even as there is a Law of forbidden Worshipping of Idols Adultery c. But these Laws are not punished with a continued unpurgeable Impurity on Posterity in such a manner as the opposition of that eating is From hence therefore it most easily appeareth that original Sin was not so much from the force of disobeying a command as from the effect of a defiled divine Generation being changed into a beast-like one For else there is not an equality of distributive Justice nor therefore a conformity in the goodness of God whether we have respect unto the ingratitude of our first Parents or next unto the disobedience against a Law Because the first disobedience should pay a punishment derived on all even on the innocent Posterity rather than any tenths or hundreths afterwards and than innumerable and far more great or haynous Sins Indeed I think that there is the same rule of Justice with the same Lawgiver of every command preceptively and defensively given and pronounced that the breaking thereof ought alwayes to draw after it an equal Fault neither therefore to be punished in all the Posterity and those that are innocent and then that none of Mortals nor any one of them had been sufficient for the original punishments of their Ancestours and a hundred-fold of Deaths to wit if Death had taken its original effectively and immediately from the opposing of a Law or the unchangeable God had not appointed his future Commands to be alike observed as at first if Death should not have its root in Nature the application of which root had been onely from man Therefore If Death should be immediately from God alone from the curse of Sin Now God had made Death and so by Faith we should believe a Falshood In the next place if Death had proceeded from a Curse and had been from a supernatural Root So also neither should our Death find natural Causes in us or our Death should not be of the same kinde with the Death of Adam Yea which is far more absurd our Death should not proceed from the same primitive Beginning from which the Death of our first Parents began And by consequence our Death should not be the effect of original Sin And so unless Death do happen from elsewhere than from the punishment of a Law and the curse of Sin that is unless the Adamical or Beast-like Generation of the Flesh from the Concupiscence of the Flesh and its Copulation doth naturally containe Death in it like unto Beasts in very deed Innocent Children should pay an undeserved Punishment Again if Death should be immediately caused from a Curse or from Sin should not the Text unfitly say On the same Day thou shalt die the Death while as it should not say Presently in the same Moment thou shalt die For a Curse doth not want twenty four hours that it may operate as neither likewise doth Sin require an interval for the Guilt and deserved Punishment of the same which was expresly seen while an impure Man endeavouring to vindicate the reeling Cart wherein the Arke of the Covenant was carried from a fall payed the Punishment of his boldness by sudden Death But seeing Death consisted in the procreation of forbidden Seeds and of the Concupiscence of the Flesh it presupposeth the eating of the Apple and its Digestion And therefore those Words On the same Day thou shalt die the Death or shalt be made Mortal also thou shalt suffer punishment by Death doubled in thee and thy Posterity do strengthen the proposed Truth of our Position But there is no original Sin accounted of from the first afterwards or unremissibly derived on all Posterity but that which from the eating of the Apple thenceforth defiled the whole Nature because it tranferred the Propagation of mankinde on the Flesh