not Spiritual substances of a proper Name but only the living vital lights of Soulified Creatures The which notwithstanding are Created by God the Father only and are dispensed according to the requirance of Seminal dispositions I knew thirdly that every frail and Sensitive Soul did issue from the seeds occasionally and dispositively only and therefore that it did partake of nothing of likeness or unity with the Mind of man For although both were Created by God yet that they were both divided a sunder no otherwise than as a frail or Mortal Being from a future Immortal one or as Light that is to perish by blowing out from a substance which should be the shining Image or likeness of the God-head I knew in the fourth place that in the seed of Man dispositions and hopes lay hid unto such a frail or Mortal Soul no less than in the seed of a Dog unto a living Whelp Fiftly I knew that the Sensitive Soul even as I have proved concerning long Life in the Treatise of the entrance of Death into humane nature arose in us from sin and that it doth naturally remain afterwards through a successive coupling of the Sexes neither that the Mortal mind could be made by nature Man or any natural means 1. Because it was a Substance 2. Because that it was permanent or durable and therefore 3. That it could never be made from a perishing Being 4. That the mind therefore ought to be made of nothing after the manner of all Substances without the aid of Co-operating nature 5. And that therefore the Sensitive Soul before sin was not in us as neither necessary Next I knew in the sixth place that forthwith after transgression the mind was fast tied to the Sensitive Soul Because that in a Body subject to Death there was nothing more near or more a-kin to the mind wherein it might sit and that therefore the mind had sunk it self into that cleer and Vital beginning as in an Inn and had been annexed to it by God even unto the Period of Life For I have therefore beheld so many foolish madnesses fallacies defects errors and Treacheries of men yea and all madnesses which might utterly deny all the use of the Mind and might make its totall absence rather than its presence to be Suspected Seventhly I knew that the Mortal Soul forthwith after the fall did so over-darken the Mind in its Inn and over-spread it being idle and as it were detain it Sleeping that it did Govern not only corporal actions but it did for the most part so dim or blacken the very presence of the mind it self that it is able to do nothing at all readily in this Life as though it were no longe belonging to its own right For there is a Law in our Members resisting the Law of our Mind Lastly I felt or perceived a contrary or contentions disquietness sprung up which endeavoured to excuse the liberty and burden of sinning For howsoever the mind doth continually breath forth a vital beam into its vicaress the sensitive Soul because it is that which never keeps holiday is wearied or sleepeth nevertheless it seemed to be so servile to the mortal Soul in its faculties that it is unable to enjoy its own understanding freely but to yield to the mad will or pleasure of the sensitive Soul Wherefore I being easily seduced through the deformities of Diseases readily descended because I saw that Serpents and some Simples yea even our hous-hold excrements did every way alter the use of the mind indeed the powers and functions of these to become wholly oppressed and mad and that we who were constituted in so great a majesty under the image of the Divinity did become far more miserable than Beasts For I was incited hereunto because it did not seem agreeable to 〈◊〉 or possibility that any Poysonous frail Being and that which is unlike to the immortality of the Mind could Spurn against the Image of God that it should loose all right and Prerogotive at the will of a mad Dog and that the Power of the meanest thing should be enlarged beyond the excellency of a Being which is infinite in duration hereafter For it seemed that that ought not to be capable of suffering by a frail or Mortal thing whatsoever should by it self be immortal But moreover the mind of a prudent man is be-set for the most part by foolishness because almost every one doth labour in his own point of giddiness For whosoever loveth that which is not to beloved is ennared and who so keeps not a proportion of suitableness between things that are to be loved now he herein beholds plausible things as pleasing with an affection of madness For so Eve beheld the apple as beautiful and therefore as pleasing she presently took that apple and ate And that thing is so usual that the holy Scriptures say that the number of fools is infinite For I have gone head-long into these-fallacies of errors because I as yet knew not what the necessity and bond of the combination of the mind and of the Sensitive Soul was For indeed because the mind was now connexed unto the mortal Soul it stood bound to this by the right of an Inn so that although the mind were of it self not capable of suffering yet because they were both combined by a conjugal bond and bride-bed of unity so as that the mortal Soul did enjoy the sole Life of the immortal mind it was altogether necessary that as oft as the mortal Soul did suffer any thing by frail or mortal hurtful things or things hostile unto it it should consequently also suffer that very thing through an equality or likeness of wed-lock a conjugal unity and social right of hospitality Not indeed that therefore frail things should obtain a power over an immortal Being which is supereminently above it and of a diverse station but God would have the mind thus to suffer as it being hindered by the discommodities of its Inn it should be deprived of its own liberty of ampleness and should hearken to the straights and anguishes of its mansion For the immortal life of the mind is communicated to a mortal Soul Seat and Inn which life notwithstanding as otherwise every thing received is received after the manner and capacity of the receiver is made mortal in that which is connexed with it or in a mortal light And the which may therefore also be oppressed by mortal things that the Life may be wholly blown out and then the mind being deprived of its Inn is not indeed extinguished or annihilated but is compelled to depart by reason of an untying and annihilating of the bond Whatsoever therefore the mind seemeth to suffer under Life it self indeed remaineth safe but it doth not freely exercise its Offices because feeling or perceivance is in the middle of the Bond. For truly I have constantly considered the light of the Sun married as a husband to the Splendour of the Glo-worm so
humane Nature The same Cause also doth wholly at this day make Death and a Disease For it is repugnant with the Glory of the Creator not to have made Death from the beginning and afterwards when it was made by Man for him to have assumed to himself the Glory of knowing how to make it as if he ought to have learned that thing from Man But what hath been already spoken concerning Death that is by an equal right to be understood concerning Diseases Because that seeing Death and a Disease have issued from the same piont of their original therefore if God be said to give Diseases or Death it is not that now he will be the Creator of those things whose Fabrick he before wholly refused But he is permissively called the Author and Prince of Life and Death Because as he is the true and alone Author of Life and therefore doth govern it and suffer it at his Pleasure So he permits that this man doth yield or depart and the other Man fall and that second Causes do happen as well directly as irregularly whence Man dieth or a Disease groweth But the Creation of a Disease as of a Being subsisting from a seminal matter and efficient and of an Ideal and deadly evil never proceeded from God For while he had placed it in the will of Man that he might remain without Death or the same day to die the Death by the same step also he put it into Mans hand to frame Death and a Disease it self as a fore-runner and preparer of Death The entrance of Death into the nature of Man being considered even as I have elsewhere explained it by a remarkable Paradox doth most exactly prove that a Disease doth nor only consist in the vital part of Man but also that a Disease it self is bred by a seminal Idea out of the Archeus himself But I will briefly prove that thing From the concupiscence of the Flesh arose the flesh of Sin and therefore also a mortal Archeus in that Flesh and from thence by consequence also the Archeus forasmuch as he is vital acts in the flesh of Sin every action and produceth every formal hurtful and deadly act which God hath refused to do and hath suffered Man to stamp on himself the Causes of Death and Diseases Yet Man is not therefore a Creator although he maketh formal acts to himself or the substantial formes of Diseases or the hurtful ones of Life For truly that was granted unto him by virtue of the Word That on what so ever day he should eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil he should die the Death and should make guards-men appointed for his own Death And that from the very Nature of Death it self necessarily brought forth in the flesh of Sin The act therefore which is of the Essence Exsistence and Subsistence even as also of the propagation or fruitfulness of the contagion of Diseases doth altogether depend in the Life from the Life by the Life within which it is also enclosed Surely miserable are Mortals and most exceeding miserable are the Sick who have hitherto hired Physitians at a great and dear price who know not what a Disease may be from whence it may arise and in what it may consist and subsist But I admire that before me the more Antient as neither Modern Physitians have smelt this out because their sacred Anchor being for the most part in the hope of a Crisis and concerning Crises's they have devised very many things to excuse their own Ignorances For truly a Crisis or judicial sign in Diseases proveth nothing besides the Archeus if they believe their own Hippocrates who saith that Natures themselves are the only Physitianesses and helpers of Diseases For the Moon doth not make Crises's causatively but the Archeus alone who follows the Harmony of the Moon For the Moon measureth dayes hath more regared unto the proof of the actions of the Archeus than unto causality For the Moon is alwayes on the fourth day in an opposite place to that which she was in on the first day Therefore also the Archeus hath opposite powers or faculties who doth imitate the Harmonious motions of the Moon So also on the seventh day c. I conclude therefore for the knowledge of a Disease that a Disease hath either a Fewell or an excitement only from the occasional Cause or doth arise from a voluntary and proper motion and perseveres in its own contagion of a seed as while an Epilepsie or the falling Evil is once con-centred or the Gowt hath taken root doth indeed awaken of its own free accord as oft as it listeth Even as also the Disease ceaseth for two or three dayes or more and again returns at set Periods although the occasional cause in the mean time be alwayes present and so after a hurtful solutive Medicine being taken although it be expelled a few hours after yet the Archens being thereby defiled rageth and is obedient to the drunk contagion of the venom So also ready inclinations and hereditary Diseases Proper or Natural unto some one whole Family are co-bred with us Because they are Con-centred in the Life it self and are as it were the Characterical marks and imprinted seales of hurtful Diseases CHAP. LXVIII I proceed unto the Knowledge of Diseases 1. Medicine is the most occult or intricate of Sciences 2. Therefore the ignorances of past ages are excusable 3. In what thing Diseases may inhabit 4. The rise or original of Diseases 5. Whence a Disease began 6. Why a Disease is immediately in the Being of the first Motions 7. Why the essence of Diseases hath been unknown 8. A Disease hath married a vital Being 9. After what manner all seeds do issue from the invisible World 10. The rise of Efficient Causes and the property of seminal Idea's 11. All the seminal Beginnings of things are from an invisible Idea 12. How a seminal beginning receives its compleating 13. The Ideal power of seeds is declared by their ranks 14. Although Death and a Disease began from the same Beginning yet they differ in that a Disease hath Idea's but a Death not 15. The Schooles will laugh at Idea's But the Author carps at the ignorance of the Schooles 16. He proveth their ignorance at least by one Example I Have already oftentimes nor in vain asserted that Arts and Sciences have hastened unto a pitch but that the art of healing alone if it hath not gone backwards at leastwise to have stood at a stay and to have whirled round about the same deceitful point Hence also I have conjectured that the knowledge of Diseases and a Medicine depending thereon was to Man most difficult On which so many flourishing wits have for so many ages vainly bestowed their endeavours and that thing I do not hereby conjecture to be from a contingency or events alone to wit because the knowledge of Diseases hath even hitherto stood neglected But because in respect
of the Causes it is wholly invisible and unpassable Wherefore although I tax the ignorance of the Schooles I will not have that to be done by me for a little vain glories sake as neither from an intent of reproaching the whole Body of the faculty Because it is that which hath not transgressed against me but only from a desire of teaching Mortals Not indeed that I perswade my self that the goodness of God doth envy this doctrine for the health of Man while as even from the beginning of the World he hath dispersed his gift by some throughout the ages of the World the holy Scripture also do most greatly commend the Physitian But that most through a sluggishness of diligent searching and a readiness of credulity have stifled in themselves that endowed or gifted Light And so the Devil being the builder it hath alwayes been super-structed on the false Principles of the Heathens Therefore Medicine the most difficult of Sciences by reason of the invisibility of Diseases and deceit much increased by Heathenish Theorems hath not been penetrable by any acuteness of Wits which difficulties the invention and knowledge of so many Simples and preparations appropriations and applications of remedies fetcht from thence according to the varieties and speedinesses of sliding occasions hath increased in every of which they are on both sides the invisible actors of their own tragedy The which Diseases unless any one shall perfectly know or hath obtained a super-excelling remedy truly he shall spend his weapons at the effects but not at the roots themselves Therefore the gate of healing hath even from the Cradles or non-age of the World remained shut which my Talent received hath commanded me to open for of boasting hereof it hath notably shamed me God is witness wherefore I ought first to free the Hinges and Bars from rust that I might set open the Doores to those that are willing to enter Therefore I ought to expose the one only and golden Key hitherto hidden in the Arches of the Archeus unto the Fire of the Art of the Fire and Light of Truth That any one may enter into the secrets of the Court so far as shall be granted him from Above First of all I do not name a Disease a Diathesis or Disposition but the very wandering or erring Being which is stamped by the vital Archeus himself I do not therefore behold a Disease as an abstracted quality And that thing I thus perswaded my self of in times past that like Life it is a Being proper unto the Life it self It being the reason why a Disease doth with so swift a pace pierce into the Life by reason of its co-resembling mark Wherefore the Apoplexie Leprosie Dropsie or Madness as they are Qualities in the abstract with me are not Diseases But as the Apoplectical Leprous Maddish c. Being contains the very Scope and Causes of the Diseases in it Truly a Disease begun from Sin For in the integrity purity of our Nature and vigour of Innocency there was no Death and much less a Disease For Death was threatned not a Disease but that they were understood concomitantly as to future times Therefore a Disease doth in its own Nature oppose the Life no otherwise than as Death it self and the powers thereof the which therefore we call vital Because through the spending of those a lingring or sudden Death happens We believe by Faith therefore that Death and every infirmity hath entred into Man by Sin and that through the concupisence of the Flesh of Sin they were propagated on all posterity Therefore that neither could the entrance of Diseases and Death be learned by Heathenisme Because it was reasonable that all the ranks of sicknesses should be rooted in the same concupiscence of the Flesh whereby Sin entred For as concupiscence in the conception doth not Sin before a consent which fashions an Idea of plausibility So it must needs be that every Disease arising in the Flesh of Sin doth consist in a strange Image or seminal Idea of corrupt Nature I have gathered also that it was suitable that the Being which under a concupiscible pleasure consented and sinned should primarily also be strucken with Diseases So indeed that it should not only fail or faint through external violences but should experience the revenges of Sin in the Flesh by its own proper exorbitances to wit that the Archeus himself the governour of the Flesh of Sin should by the same liberty of his own passions frame erroneous Images to himself which should be unto him as it were for a poyson Indeed that from the delights of the concupiscible part from passions which are the storms of the wrothful part and likewise even through voluntary disturbances he might stand subject unto his own Ruine which he should stamp on himself Which Images or Likenesses indeed as being the seeds of Diseasie Beings should be thenceforth wholly marriageable unto him in the innermost Bride-bed of Life This indeed is an hard saying in the ears which are not accustomed to hear beyond trifles heats and dirt Wherefore if any one doth admire at so great an efficacy of the Archeus being Ideated and of seminal Idea's as to produce Diseases and Death it self He doth not yet know that the natural beginning of all things doth altogether depend on the Ideal part in every seed Wherefore let him consider that as the Light being united for truly in sublunary things there is scarce any thing more spiritual than Light because it is that which pierceth solid Glasse yea also place it self doth enflame Woods and Houses So also that every Idea is a Light as well forasmuch as it is stamped by the Spirit the partaker of a vital Light as in that it is lightsome from the property of its own essence Otherwise Idea's themselves as they are conceived are nothing besides the Lights of a vital Soul reflexed on its own cogitations and the which therefore are not conceived but in a lightsome Spirit in which they receive the figure of the thing conceived That is they are there made an intellectual Idea it self Therefore although cogitation it self be a meer non-being Yet every thing conceived doth from the very right of its nativity consist of a matter conceived and of a vital Light intelligibly reflexed on it And seeing the Imagination is the Ape of the Understanding although it doth not transform it self into the thing conceived after the manner of the Understanding yet by conceiving it transports this thing figurally into it self and seales the conception thereof and decyphers a certain seminal Idea of the thing imagined together with light efficacy and every manner of operation And that wholly under its greatest Unity and Simplicity So that if in fructifying seeds and those continuing the perpetuity of the universe these things do appear to happen and to operate by a Light with great efficacy wherefore shall we be ignorant that these do not otherwise come to pass in Diseases Especially
while the same things are engraven by a stronger apprehension For things conceived do teach us that from passions or perturbations which are non-beings true real actual Images do arise no otherwise than as the thoughts of a Woman with Child do stamp a real Image how strange and forreign soever it be Wherefore thus indeed the Phantasie brings forth poysons which do kill its own Man and afflict him with diverse miseries So that as those Images do primarily proceed from the imaginative power whose immediate instruments the Archeus himself is So it is altogether necessary that he which toucheth Pitch should be defiled by it That is it behoveth the Archeus himself primarily and immediately to conceive and put on that new Image to be affected with the same and by virtue of a resembling mark or Symbole other things depending on him according to the properties of that hurtful Idea And that Ferment being once decyphered in that aire which maketh the assault is a Disease which forthwith diffuseth it self into the venal Blood the liquor that is to be immediately assimilated and next into the similar parts and into the very Superfluities of the Body according to the property even of that its own Idea for from hence the Diseases of distributions and digestions What if Idea's are formed in the implanted Spirit of the Braine or inne of the Spleen by imagining which also in Bruits are the principal Blas and Organ of all Motions It nothing hinders but that the Archeus himself implanted in the parts may frame singular and now and then exorbitant Idea's not unlike to the imaginative power for so the Spittle of a mad Dog Tarantula or Serpent and likewise the juice of Wolfesbane Monkshood or Nightshade do communicate their Image of fury on us against our wills Wherefore likewise nothing hinders the chief or primary instrument of imagination from forming in-mate seminal fermental poysonous c. Images unto it self Whatsoever doth of its own Nature by it self and immediately afflict the vital powers ought for that very Cause to be of the race and condition of those Powers For otherwise they should not have a Symbole Passage Agreement Virtues or Piercing into each other as neither by consequence an application and activity For seeing the powers or faculties are the invisible and untangible seals of the Archeus who is himself invisible and untangible those powers cannot be reached and much less pierced or vanquished by the Body because those powers however vital they are yet they want extremities whereby they may be touched whence it follows which hath been hitherto unknown that every Disease for it glistens in the Life because it is of the disposition of the vital powers it ought immediately to be stamped and to arise from a Being which was bred to produce seminal Idea's And seeing nothing among constituted things is made of it self originally of necessity the powers as well of Diseasie as vital things do depend either on the Idea's of the generater himself whence hereditary Diseases or of the generated Archeus But that that thing may the more clearly appear in the seed of Bruites and Man there is a power formative after the similitude of the generater Because it is that which seeing it is dispositive and distributive of the whole government in figuring its activity is contested by none The seed therefore hath a knowledge infused by the generater fitted for the ends to be performed by it self for the seed which in its own substance is otherwise barren is made fruitful by an Image stirred up in the lust To wit the imaginative power of the generater doth first bring forth an Idea which at its beginning is wholly a non-being but by arraying it self with the cloathing of the Archeus it becomes a real and seminal Being And that as well in Plants as in sensible Creatures For in vegetables a seed proceeds from an invisible Beginning for truly there is a virtue given to a plant of fructifying by a seed and so it hath an analogical or proportionable conception which formeth a seminal Idea in propagating borrows its fruitfulness and principles of Life from it but not Life it self even as elswhere concerning Formes therefore a seed borrows knowledge gifts roots and dispositions of the matter espoused unto it for Life from a seminal Idea to wit the cause of all fruitfulness And they who a little smelt out that thing in times past have said that every generation doth draw its original from an invisible World The thrice glorious Almighty by the naked and pure command of his own cogitation and conceived Word Fiat or let it be done made the whole Creature of nothing and put seminal virtues into it durable throughout ages But the Creature afterwards propagates its gift received not indeed of nothing as neither by its own command but it hath received a power of Creating its own seminal Image from God of tranferring or decyphering the same on its own Archeus This indeed is the seminal virtue of Man Bruits and Plants But not this beast-like conception is in plants nor is stirred up from lust for it is sufficient that it happen after an analogical manner whereby the Antients have agreed all things to be in all which manner by a similitude drawn from us the Sympathy and Antipathy of things do shew for they feel a mutual presence and are presently stirred up by that sense unto the unfolding of their natural endowments Because they are those things which else would remain unmoved but a sense or feeling cannot but after some sort have an equal force with an imaginative virtue The which I have elsewhere profesly treated more at large concerning the Plague But now my aim is not to Phylosophize concerning Plants but only of Diseases It sufficeth therefore that the imagination it self so called from the forming of an Image doth stampe an Idea for whose sake every seed is fruitful And seeing that in us that imaginative power is as it were brutal earthly and devillish according to the Apostle therefore it is subject unto its own Diseases and can stampe an Image in the Archeus it s own immediate instrument Hence it happens unto us that every Disease is materially and efficiently in us For whatsoever is bred or made that wholly happens through the necessity of a certain seed and every seed hath its this something from an Idea put into its spirit but a Disease is a real Being and is made in a live Creature only Whence it follows that although a Disease doth oppose the Life as the forerunner of Death yet it is bred from a vital Beginning and the same in the Life to wit from the flesh of Sin Notwithstanding Death and all dead things do want rootes whereby they may produce And so seeing Death bespeaks a destruction or privation it wants a seminal Image wherein it is distinguished from Diseases Life indeed is from the Soul and therefore also the premised character of the first constitution
utmost of Three Hundred Years because they are those which some living Creatures do daily of their own accord reach unto but man very seldom and that not but in some unwonted places But why Long Life may be extended with so great a largness it comes to pass because it is on both sides received after the manner of the Receiver For the Modern Tree of Life should now no longer render me capable of the least Dignity or term by reason of the light of my Life being depraved by many storms the thred whereof they have cut off while it was as yet in the Flax. He shall fullfil thy desire in good things and thy Youth shall be renewed as the Eagle For neither is it said as of the Eagle because the former Youth of an Eagle is not restored But the Eagle is renewed no otherwise than as the Serpent puts off his skin and the Stag his hornes although in the mean time they do not cease to wax old under that renovation So that the Eagle hastens into grey Feathers Therefore I thus speak of Long Life not indeed which may be extended even unto the last day according to the rashness of Paracelsus as neither do I speak of a sound Life which is plainly free from Diseases but of that which under some certain kind of Protection of the Faculties doth for some good while enlarge the bound of Life Which meanes if they are administred unto a Child and strong Infant are to bring the same unto the aforesaid term if he proceed to use the same What if at length certain Climates do protract the Life shall that thing be denied unto a Medicine unto which there is a natural endowment of Long Life For oft-times he which is constrained to use Spectacles in the fiftieth Year doth afterwards again of his own free accord see clearly in the eightieth Year of his Age. Why shall not that therefore be done totally by Art which happens in the Eyes from a voluntary vigour But I have alwayes supposed that whatsoever was once Natural to wit in Nestor doth not resist a possibility of Nature Neither also doth it move me that Arch-Physitians have found this place untouched and dumb and therefore also have left it Because the Schooles do long since despaire to be wise beyond Galen who notwithstanding like an Apothecary doth substitute one thing for another and indeed hath set forth ridiculous Books of Preserving Health as for Long Life For he encloseth this in straight crooked athwart and circular rubbings to wit he acting great motion and being a great Circulater in these things which are of his own Invention even as an ignorant transcriber of others For as oft as he faileth from whence he may copy out serious things he so discovereth the wonderful poverty of his wit that he hath seemed to have doated throughout some Books in a figural friction or rubbing And therefore none of his successors hath hitherto counted the Books of Galen of Defending Health worthy of a Commentary or hath attempted to lift them from the ground but rather by a successive Interpretation every one hath bound that Doctrine of Galen unto the obedience of the huckstery of the Kitchin and Diet. For so through the craft of the Devil Long Life hath wandered into defending of Health and from thence into the Kitchins The Art therefore of some Years is Short and the Life Long if we must have respect unto the Hope of Life which the loose Doctrine of the Heathens hath neglected CHAP. XCII The Enterance of Death into Humane Nature is the Grace of Virgins The Index of the Contents 1. Why it is Treated of Death before of Life 2. A final Cause is not in Natural Things as neither is it the first of Causes 3. Some Absurdities of Aristotle 4. The Author prostrates this Treatise to the Censure of the Church 5. God indeed made Death for bruit Beasts but not for Man 6. What may be denoted by the Etymology of Death 7. The Devil could not make Death for Man 8. Man prepared Death effectively for himself 9. Of what sort the Immortality of our first Parents was 10. By what means Immortallity did stand in Man 11. Why the Mind is not capable of Suffering 12. The necessity of the sensitive Soul 13. The eating of the Apple did contain in it the second Causes for a necessity of Death 14. The inward Properties of that Apple 15. Man before the Fall wanted a sensitive Soul 16. The Mind Imprints its Image in the Seed 17. A chain flowing from the eating of the Apple 18. To what end the Author hath written this Treatise LIfe was indeed before that Death could be therefore although Life be before Death in Nature and Duration yet for this Treatise the Enterance of Death into Man's Life doth precede Life because I might not treat of Immortal Life such as it was from the intention of the Creator before the Sin of our first Parent but onely of the Length of Life or of the prolonging of Life whose end because it is closed terminated and defined or limitted by Death Death ought to be first determined of by its Causes as the remover of the bound of Life Truly I have not studied to imitate Aristotle in this thing who teacheth That the End is the first of Causes For I have elsewhere plentifully demonstrated that Aristotle was plainly ignorant of whole Nature Wherefore that his Maxime as well within as out of Nature is false Because if we speak of God the First Mover the Arch-type of all things and of the invisible World be it certain that with him there is not any Priority of Causes but that they all do co-unite into Unity with whom all things are onely one Likewise seeing whatsoever is made or generated in Nature is made or generated from a necessity of the Seeds and so that Seeds are in this respect the original Principles and natural Causes of things and do act for ends not indeed known to themselves but unto God alone From a necessity of Christian Phylosophy a Final Cause hath no place in Nature but onely in artificial things And therefore also from hence is verified what I have elsewhere sufficiently proved That Aristotle hath understood nothing less than natural things and that he hath deceived his Schools by artificial things And he is wholly impertinent in this place because he hath reduced artificial things under the catalogue of natural Causes Yea in more fully looking into the matter Aristotle remaines alike ridiculous For truly a builder before the bound or figure of Houses made out of Paper doth presuppose a knowledge of the Place an attainment of Meanes in the next place of Lime Bricks Stones Wooden and Iron materials a computation of which Meanes doth go before a Figure of the Houses And so neither also is the Final Cause if there be any the first of Artificial Causes in the Mind of the Author Therefore it is a
of Sin of which God saith My Spirit shall not remain with Man because he is Flesh But that Sin if it hath not been sufficiently searched into by Predecessours I will add freely what I conceive For indeed in this History of Genesis do concurr together 1. The Sin of Distrust or suspicion of an Evil Faith of Deceit Fallacie or Falshood in God For Eve saith to the Divel Least perhaps we die And so she doubted that the Death admonished of would of necessity come unto them And likewise the Sin of a despised Admonition and that they more trusted unto the Serpent than to God neither was there disobedience where there was not yet a Law 2. An act of eating of the Apple not so much forbidden as admonished of bewarying of it 3. An effect of the Apple being eaten For in the midst of Paradise there was a Tree whose Property is said to be of Life Least he eat and live for ever and there was another Tree whose Property was that of the knowledge of Good and Evil unto whom there was not another like but the other Trees except these two served onely for nourishment The property therefore and effect of this latter Tree was to stir up an itching concupiscence of the Flesh or madness of Luxurie But it is called The Tree of the knowledge of Good Lost and of Evil obtained For they knew not that they were naked and they were without shame that is without the Concupiscence of the Flesh like Children because they wanted Seed 4. A carnal Copulation concurreth From thence at length a certain beastlike frail Mortal Generation contrary to the intent of God who was unwilling that Man should conceive in Sins in Sins hath my Mother conceived me not indeed that all Mothers afterwards should eat of that Apple but because presently after the Apple was eaten all Conception should not be made but by the will of Blood Flesh and Man And so that from thence should all Flesh of Sin necessarily proceed Therefore while the immediate Cause of corrupt Nature and Death is ascribed unto the Sin of disobedience Or while the immediate Cause of corrupt Flesh is attributed unto the Sin of suspected deceit in God they are faults in arguing of not the Cause as of the Cause For in speaking properly the very Corruption and Degeneration of the Flesh of our whole Nature hath not issued from the Curse as neither immediately from Sin accompanying it but from these only occasionally and as it were from the Cause without which it was not but our Nature is rendred wholly corrupted and uncapable of Eternal Glory by reason of the causalities of concupiscence and brutal Generation effectively and immediately causing a withdrawing of virgin Chastity and all hope of generating from the holy Spirit afterwards and from Eve as a Virgin And therefore original Sin is defluxing altogether on all Posterity because after the Virginity of Eve was taken away the race of men is not possible to be generated but by the will of Man Flesh and Blood the which otherwise God had determined to be generated by the holy Spirit It is therefore an undistinction of Causes and its unapt application of Effects unto their proper Causes which hath not heretofore heeded 1. Why that Apple was with so loud a voice forewarned of that they should not eat of it 2. That they have esteemed that to be a Curse which was not 3. That they have ascribed original Sin unto one Disobedience as the most near and containing immediate Cause 4. That they have thrown an unexcusable Death on the Curse and Punishment of a broken Law For although a grievous Sin hath concurred with an original declining of the Generation intended by God together with an impurity of the Flesh the corruption of Nature by carnal copulation Yet the corruption of Nature the degeneration of Generation as neither Death have proceeded from the original Sins of our Parents their distrust c. as from an immediate Cause but from the effect of the Apple being eaten as a new Product of necessity Naturally depending thereon that is Death hath proceeded from its own second natural Causes existing in the Apple Even as a total Corruption of Nature hath issued from thence because both are supported by one and the same Root of necessity But the Causes of these natural Causes were by accident co-bound unto the Sins of Distrust c. in the Unison of eating For the very guilt of the Sin of suspition of an evil Faith or bad trusting of Deciet and a Fallacy of God remained expiable by our first Parents after the manner of Sin to wit by Contrition and Acts of Repentance after the manner of other Sins But not that therefore whole Nature ought to be depraved that a Death and Misery of every Body ought to enter and perpetuate it self on all Posterity even although they should have guiltless Souls For God doth sometimes punish the Sins of Parents upon one or a second Generation But it is no where read that he hath chastised the Sin of the Grand-father on all his Posterity afterwards who had acted evilly for five thousand Years before For that pain of Punishment exceedeth the love of God towards Man whom he so greatly blessed presently after Sin It exceeds I say the Rules of Justice if the Punishment of him that is guiltless in that Sin be refered unto his Ballance And moreover I think that if God out of his goodness had not admonished our first Parent of Death If he should eat of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil But if the Devil from his proper and inbred Enmity had translated the Apple from that Tree under any other Tree and that both the Sexes of Men had eaten of the Apple that the Concupiscence of the Flesh and Copulation had equally succeeded and so although that had happened without any Sin yet that the Generation following from thence from the necessity and property of the Apple being eaten had suspended the intent of the Creator who would not that the Sons of God and Posterity of Eve should be conceived from the holy Spirit after her Virginity was corrupted And so Death a Disease and the very Corruption of Nature and Beast-like original Inversion thereof had been and yet not from Sin Because the Apple contained a natural efficient Cause of Luxury For how unaptly do these agree together Death proceedeth from the Sin of an infringed or broken Law and so from a supernatural Curse And those Words of the Text uttered after the eating of the Apple and before the banishment out of Paradise Least he stretch forth his Hand unto the Tree of Life do eat of it and live for ever For against the Curse of God no Creature is able to resist From hence therefore it becomes evident that the Apple contained the natural Cause of a defiled Generation and of their own Death and that the Tree of Life did likewise contain naturally a conserving
But if it listeth us to enquire into the cause hereof It is certain that Eve after the eating of the forbidden Apple made her self subject to the itch of Lust stirred up and admitted the Man unto copulations and from hence that the conceived humane Nature was corrupted and remaining degenerate thenceforward Through the Cause of which corruption Posterity are deprived of an incomparable purity From whence there is place for conjecture that Eve did by the Member through which she became subject unto many Miseries testifie among posterity a successive fault of her fall and bloody defilement in Nature For the part wherein the Image of God ought to be conceived by the holy Spirit became a sink of filths and testifies the abuse and fault of an unobliterable sin and therefore also suffers Because In sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy Sons in manner of bruit beasts because henceforward thou shalt conceive after the manner of bruits For so that Curse hath entred into Nature and shall there remain And by the same Law also a necessity of Menstrues For before sin the Young going forth the Womb being shut had not caused pain Wherefore it is lawful to argue from the Premises That the incomparable Virgin-Mother of God the Ark of the Covenant never admitted into her any corruption and by consequence was never subject to Menstrues as neither to have suffered womanish discomodities Because she was she who by the good pleasure of God hath the Moon and the Properties of the Moon subjected under her feet Unto Whom next unto God be Honour and Praise CHAP. CIX Life IF I must at length Phylosophize of Long Life I must first look into what Life is and then what the Life of Man what immortal and Adamical Life is afterwards what a Sensitive and Short Life is what a Diseasie what a Healthy Life what the Life of the World and what Eternal Life is To which end it is convenient to repeat some Lessons from my Premises First of all therefore Life is a Light and formal Beginning whereby a thing acts what it is commanded to act But this Light is given by the Creator as being infused at one onely Instant even as Fire is Struck out of a Flint it is enclosed under the Identity and Unity of a Form and is distinguished by general Kindes and Species But it is not a fiery combustive Light a consumer of the radical moisture It is as well Vital in the Fish as in the Lyon and as well in the Poppy as in Pepper Neither also doth heat fail in us by reason of a consumption of the radical moisture Neither on the other hand doth moisture fail through a defect of heat but onely through a diminishment and extinguishment alone of the vital Powers and also of the Light The Fire Light Life Forms Magnal Place c. are neither Creatures not Substances as neither comprehended in the Catalogue of Accidents Neither therefore do I distinguish the Form in vital things from their Life the mind of Man being on both sides excepted To wit there is a certain Life which is mute or dumb and scarce appeareth such as is met with in Minerals The which notwithstanding do declare that they live and perform their Offices by their Marks and remarkable Signs of vital Faculties And then there is another Life which is a little more unfolded or manifest Such as is in the Seeds of things tending to the period of their Species In the next place a Third Life is seen in Plants increasing themselves and bringing forth off-spring by a successive multiplying Next a Fourth Life is manifest in bruit Beasts by Motion Sense and a voluntary Choice with some kind of Discourse of Imagination At length the Last Life is now obscured in the Immortal Mind and Substance and is after some sort unfolded by the sensitive Soul its Vicaresse The Life therefore is not the Balsam not the Mummy not in the next place the Spirit of the Arterial Blood although this Spirit be the Conserver of the Body Because the Life is not a Matter yea nor a Substance but the very expresse Form of the Thing it self Moreover I being about to speak of the Immortal Life of Men I will follow the Text For indeed because the punishment of the broken Precept was Death For Death came not from God but from the condition of a Law I say the Almighty made not Death as neither a Medicine of Destruction in the Earth And that must be understood onely in respect of Men For neither ought the whole Nature and Condition of the Universe to be bespattered for the Sin of Adam so as that Bruits are made subject to Death through the corruption or deviation of our kind For truly even before Sin Bruits ought to dye to wit some whereof the Lord of things had substituted for meat and fodder to others For they ought naturally to dye every annihilable Life and Form whereof were onely one and the same thing Indeed it was of necessity that those Forms should perish whatsoever do obtain their first or chief antecedent and subsequent dispositions from a corporal wedlock of the Seeds The Death therefore of Bruits was not worthy of the word Death which included an extinguishment and annihilating of a Light but not a separation of the same with a preservation of the Light separated Therefore it was the great God his good pleasure that he made Man into the nearest Image of the Divine Majesty as a living Soul nor subject unto death Therefore neither is it said that God made Death It is therefore believed that Adam before transgression was Immortal from the goodness of the Creator Therefore I knew that Adam indeed was Immortal before the transpression of a Law Yet that it was not natural unto him from the root of Life but for the Tree of Life's sake For otherwise the planting of this Tree in Paradise had been vain if Man could not have suffered the successive alterations and calamities of Ages That Tree therefore was created for the powers and necessities of Renovation renewing of Youth yea and prevention of Old Age For although the Body by Creation was not capable of being wounded nor subject unto Diseases yet it had by little and little felt the successive changes of Ages if its vigor had not been continued by the Tree of Life For neither is it to be believed that the Lord of things the Saviour of the World was of a worse constitution than our first Parent But that the Redeemer of the World died and so felt the Calamities of Ages that in his thirty second year he was reckoned fifty years of Age. That happened not from his Nature nor from the root of his Life For Death as also the rottenness of Dayes had no right over him but out of his infinite goodness whereby he had appointed himself a Surety for our Sins he would subject himself to miseries and so also to Death in his most glorious
that I shall first satisfie thee what can be drawn from the Wound It is to be noted therefore that in a Wound there is made not only a Solution of Continuity or disunion of the part which held together but also that a forreign quality is introduced from whence the lips of the Wound being enraged they by and by swel with heat are apostemized yea and from thence the whole Body is in a conflict through Fevers and a various concourse of Symptoms For so an Egg whose shell is but even slenderly hurt or crackt putrifies whereas otherwise it might be preserved The Magnetism therefore of this Unguent draws that strange disposition out of the Wound from whence its lips being at length overburthened or oppressed by no accident become without pain and being no way hindred suddenly hasten unto a growing together Natures themselves are the Physitianesses of a Wound the Physitian onely the Servant thereof Neither doth the Medicine beget flesh in a Wound it hath enough to do if it shall but remove impediments Which impediments the one onely Armary Unguent or Weapon Salve doth otherwise sufficiently securely and plentifully expel Thou wilt Object That the Weapon Salve ought not rather to allure forth the forementioned strange quality than the natural strength and powers of the Veins and that the Blood seeing it is sound or uncorrupt in the Unguent ought to call to it the Health but not the indisposition of the wounded party even as indeed was written of the Carline Thistle I Answer that there are divers Magnetisms for some attract iron some chaffs and lead some flesh corrupt pus or matter c. but such is the favour of some Magnetisms that they extract onely the Pestilential Air c. Yea if thou shalt couple the effect of curing in our Ointment with thy own Argument thy own Weapon will wound thee For from thence that the Effect of the Unguent is to heal perfectly speedily without pain costs peril and loss of strength hence I say it is manifest that the Magnetical Virtue in the Unguent is from God in a natural way and not from Satan Because if this Satan should be a co-worker of the said Cure which thou affirmest the same Cure would be imperfect together with loss of Strength Weakness Dammage or hazard of Life a difficult Recovery or with a sensibility of some greater inconveniency and relapse of misfortune All which events as they are annexed to Diabolical Cures so they are far absent from the Cure of our Unguent As many as ever have been cured by this Unguent will give in their Testimony for us Satan is never a teller of Truth never a perswader unto Good unless that he may deceive thereby yea neither doth he long continue in the Truth For alwayes if he shall bring any thing of good to any one this Enemy under-mixeth somewhat more of evil therewith And surely he would according to his custome observe the same rule also in this Unguent if he were the Author or Favourer thereof At least-wise this Remedy would then fail when the wounded Person is recalled as it were from the pit of death who otherwise through the mortal contagion of Sin had through his dangerous wound soon poured forth his Life together with his Blood unlesse haply thou shalt say that Satan then takes compassion on us and that he hath now attained to himself a right or jurisdiction over such a wounded person himself leaves it in doubt to wit in curing him by the Magnetical Unguent whom he had rather should perish perhaps because Satan is now in your esteem a strict observer of his Word and Bargaine and no longer wholly a turn-coat fraudulent impostor and lyar Besides we deny the supposition also That the out-chased blood is perfectly sound or uncorrupt but rather that it being now deprived of a common life hath also entred into the beginnings of some degree of corruption onely that it obtains a Mumial Life Hitherto conduceth the putrified and yet Magnetical blood in an Egg. I therefore pass by the absurdity of thy Objection in that it hath been so bold as to wrest the Magnet or Attractive faculty of the Unguent according to thy own pleasure and not to that end for which it was given of God Positive Reasons of Magnetism more nearly brought home unto us by Metaphysical and Magical Science It is now seasonable to discover the immediate cause of Magnetism in the Unguent First of all by the consent of Mystical Divines we divide Man into the external and internal Man assigning to both the powers of a certain Mind or Intelligence For so there doth a Will belong to flesh and blood which may not be either the Will of Man not the Will of God and the heavenly Father also reveales some things unto the more inward Man and some things flesh and blood reveales that is the outward and sensitive or animal Man For how could the service of Idols Envy c. he rightly numbred among the works of the flesh seeing they consist onely in the Imagination if the flesh had not also it s own imagination and elective Will Forthermore that there are miraculous Ecstasies belonging to the more inward man is beyond dispute That there are also Ecstasies in the Animal man by reason of a intense or heightened Imagination is without doubt Yea Martin del Rio an Elder of the society of Jesus in his Magical disquisitions or inquiries brings in a certain young Lad in the City Insulis that was transported with so violent a cogitation of seeing his Mother that through the same burning desire as if being rapt up by an extasie he saw her being many miles absent from thence and returning to himself being mindful of all that he had seen gave also many signes of his true presence with his Mother Many the like Examples daily come to hand the which for brevities sake I omit But that that desire arose from the more outward man to wit from Blood and Sense or Flesh is certain For otherwise the Soul being once disliged or loosed from the Body is never but by a miracle re-united thereunto There is therefore in the Blood a certain ecstatical or transporting power the which if it shall at any time be stirred up by an ardent desire is able to derive or conduct the Spirit of the more outward man even unto some absent object But that power lies hid in the more outward man as it were in potentia or by way of possibility neither is it brought into act unless it be rouzed up by the imgination enflamed by a fervent desire or some art like unto it Moreover when as the Blood is after some sort corrupted then indeed all the Powers thereof which without a fore-going excitation of the Imagination were before in possibility are of their own accord drawn forth into action for through corruption of the grain the seminal virtue otherwise drowsie and barren breaks forth into act Because that
less may be washed off So also the Infant growes and waxeth of ripe Years without Diseases and is made capable of a Remedy for a Life of long continuance Therefore also according to the Letter it is not badly read concerning the thrice glorious Messias being incarnated That he shall eat Butter and Honey For truly the one contains the Glory of a Dew together with the extraction of Flowers But the other is the Magistery almost of all Herbs Therefore he shall eat Butter but not Milk From whence the discerning of the Good from the Evil and the sharpness of Judgment is promised But the strength of dayes increasing let our Child accustom himself to the more vigorous and hard Meats yet I fitly praise a Mean or Moderation But let him take twice every day four Drops of the Tree of Life CHAP. CXV The Arcanums or Secrets of Paracelsus BUt moreover we believe by Faith that the Life of men was by the divine Will shortned but that the Sins of mortal Men gave an occasion hereunto The Will or Command of the Lord hath entred into Nature and the Reasons of Death which it found not it made before the Floud as it were in a successive order the Life was continually changed by Off-springs at length it was extended unto the hundred and twentieth Year And last of all the Dayes of a Man were seventy Years which moreover is a Misery except in the Powers which he would should attain unto eighty Years This therefore is a short Life an ordinary Life unto which Man necessary supplies being brought unto him doth by the free will of Nature flow and come the which was by a divine Testimony out of the holy Scriptures appointed The Roots therefore of short Life have henceforward a place in Nature First of all the Mind which knowes not how to die waxeth not old But the sensitive Soul although it be at length extinguished like Light yet the Light it self doth not wax old because it cometh not unto it by Parts or Degrees For if the sensitive Soul or the vital Light it self should wax old seeing nothing can be added unto this perishing which may be of the Disposition thereof I should meditate of long Life in vain Therefore the vital Powers only wax old which are implanted in every Organ under the Beginnings of Generation The which I do not contemplate of as naked Qualities but I behold them as Governours failing by degrees in an aiery Body and therefore also that the Powers of the Spirits do follow the Nature of that Body which is worn out by little and little For Sorrow gnawes the Life no otherwise than as the Moath doth a Garment So also the Inordinacies of Living do violently overthrow the Life In the next place Man is a Wolfe to Man Which things surely do mow down the Life in many being as yet in its flourishing estate Neverthelese these are not the natural Reasons of a short Life as neither the necessities of a connexed Species or of an inbred shortness Surely besides accidentary Contingences we do bear about with us the Cause of short Life in the middle of our delights For first of all the memory decays and then the sight taste hearing and walking wax dull For to savour doth not undeservedly signifie as well tasting as a judgment of the Mind without distinction because they oftentimes die together but the Taste first fails in the Stomack by reason of the Spleen Wherefore I have elsewhere sufficiently distinguished the tasting of the Tongue and the tasting of the Stomack Presently by reason of the unequal strength of the Parts the inbred Ferments of the Shops do here and there by degrees fail but the Ferment of the Spleen being astonied the Power of the first Conceptions goes to decay And old Men are said to become Children For the Schools grant a lively Memory to be in Children by reason of the tenderness of their Brain easily receiving any kinde of Seales but that the Brain being the harder through dryness the Impressions of the Seals should be by so much the harder by how much the more stubborn they are from dryness to retain the marks of Conceptions But the Comparison of the Schools is frivolous that the Brain should have it self after the manner of Wax as neither do the cogitations express the interchanges of a Seal For first of all there should scarce be a fit place for ten Seals For if those kind of Seals should be so corporeal as that they ought to follow the disposition and alterations of the Brain they shall of necessity square themselves unto the extension of the place because Place is more difficulty sequestred from a Body than to be hard or moist And therefore let the Schools shew how great an extension all particular Seals of Conceptions in the Brain may require Doth the Memory for the seal of a Conception require a bigger place in the Brain of an Horse than that which is of a Mouse or Flie Therefore also consequently the extension of place in the Brain for a Horse should be also ten thousand times bigger than for a Mouse and so the whole Brain should scarce suffice for the remembring of two Horses That since place should fail I should rather remember the good things of the middle half than of the whole Yea I should far better remember things past for one Year agoe than those things which at sometimes happened unto me in my Childhood For I have seen a Boy who at the second time had learned the Aeneides of Virgil by way of Memory who scarce understood the hundredth Verse And so every particular Word did require as many Seales and Places of these But if the Seals of Conceptions should require no place nor do occupy an Extension of themselves in the Brain Therefore nothing is sealed and there is no Seal and also the Comparison of the Schools is dull For the Schools are too muddy who ascribe the Offices of the vital and principal Powers unto the first or second Qualities But what will the miserable Schools do if they scarce dare to withdraw their Finger from these accidents of Bodies Therefore Scholastical Respects of hardness dryness and tenderness being neglected I descend unto the Cause of short Life I have said indeed that from a decaying Vigour of the vital Powers the Life is of necessity and proportionably diminished From whence I will truly repeat that the Powers themselves wax old as it were with a covered Rustiness and do by little and little cease because the Arterial and Venal blood are at length successively transchanged into the nourishment of the Parts to be nourished and the growth of youth being finished truly the Juice that is prepared from thence is bedewed or besprinkled on all the solid Parts and a certain muscilaginous and spermatick or seedy Liquor is glewed unto them but it doth no more long remain with them but being consumed and concocted by the Ferment of the parts
life it self is entertained and sits and so it hath an immediate and plenipotentiary power on the life which is con-nexed unto it in the resembling mark of uniformity for otherwise it should be an inconvenient thing for the mad or raging life of a Fever to bring forth a disease or to conceive effect and nourish a formal and essential Beginning foundation and seed out of it self For the life is not able to establish a disease which is a seminal Being in the forreign and external subject of excrements For if the life ought to suffer by a disease to be vexed and killed thereby surely it being now defiled ought to suffer all the injury from its own self according to the Proverb None is hurt but from himself Hippocrates in times past after a rustical manner perceived that thing the first called that vital spirit The maker of the Assault as well for life as for death For God made not death for man the which began from sin But I do not deny that the life is provoked into its own injury by occasional causes yet at leastwise I could wish that the Antients had divided as is meet to be the internal cause essentially from the external occasional ones But I take not the internal and external matter for a respect of the body but that which is radically and essentially proper to the disease that I call the Internal and unseparable matter But otherwise if if it be only accidentally adjacent thereunto Therefore before all it is seriously and only to be noted in what manner the very essential thingliness of Fevers may be formed by the Essence of the efficient life That not only the very local thingliness of principiating a Disease may be hereby conceived but that moreover an essential limitation thereof essentially issuing from the life it self may be known Which things therefore are more deeply to be peirced Wherefore let it be instead of a Proposition that Mortality Death and a Disease seeing they entered with sin they corrupted the life and defiled the whole humanity with impurity Not indeed that the entrance of all particular Fevers is therefore from a new sin as neither immediately from original sin although they have originally defluxed from thence But in the state of Purity there was Immortality no Death no Disease because then the immortal mind immediately governed the body and therefore it suffered not any thing by frail things which are altogether inferiour to it self therefore it deserveedly freed its own Mansion united unto it self from death and corruption But after the departure out of the right way the mind delivered up its government to the sensitive soul whence the life became subject to a thousand inconvenient necessities of death The Sensitive soul therefore afterwards stirred up the Vital air which after that began to be called by Hippocrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Maker of the Assault and the chief Work-man of Diseases But the power of the same was badly understood by his followers and that Maker of the Assault remained neglected by Successours it being also unknown that the differences of diseases did issue immediately from the life And therefore the whole buisiness of Diseases was falsely committed unto occasional and never existing Humours For I have concerning the Original and Principles of Healing delivered the manner whereby that Maker of the Assault produceth an Ideal Being from whence Fevers and all Diseases borrow their Original The which generation of Idea's or shapie likenesses being there professly handled I will only touch at by the way First therefore it is confessed that the madness of a dog is stirred up by or in his conception through the effective Idea of that mad poyson The which is not in any healthy dog even as in a mad one And from thence it is manifest that that poyson which strikes our imagination after the biting is framed by an Idea caused by the conception of the mad dog The same thing ptoffers it self in the Tarantula in Serpents and things sore moved with fury So in the Plague-grave I have demonstrated that this Idea is made not only by the fear of the man but also of the vital air Wherefore also it is very equally necessary that for a Fever which is stirred up from the assaulting spirit and vital Beginning not which ariseth is moved or increaseth of its own accord or of nothing a motive Idea or effective cause springs up in the same vital Beginning being indeed poysonsome in it self and varying according to the signatures or impressions which this tree of a feverish Idea utters for its fruits For since of nothing nothing is made but of something alwayes something As well the Antients as the Moderns have supposed that any Fevers whatsoever do of necessity arise from the strife of the Elements or at least of feigned Humours Neither have they till now cleerly defined of which of these two the texture of Fevers might be But since the Elements are but three in number neither do these flow together unto the constitution of bodies because I shall elsewhere shew the connexion of these to be impossible they cannot produce any strange Beginning from themselves But Humours since they never have hitherto any where been and since Fevers are of a more aiery and abstracted body than that which a liquid excrement is thought to be I have discerned that from nothing nothing is indeed materially made but that most things are efficiently effectively and formally made from a conceived Idea which do forthwith after cloath themselves with bodies Indeed by the conception active Ideas are made and the formal Beginnings of seeds which presently cloath themselves with the coat of the vital spirit wherewith they then in the next place come upon the stage and are made that Maker of the Assault which is known by the Schools only by its name alone and therefore neglected by practical Physitians For that Fevers do now and then arise from the disturbances of the mind that is very well known to persons of no reputation and Barbers But that the Archeus or the spirit which violently assaileth doth suffer its own perturbations and conceive the Off-springs of these the Idea's stirred up in it self hath indeed been even hitherto unthought of and unheard of in the Schools Notwithstanding nothing is more certaine than that the spittle of a mad dog doth a good while after the death of the dog produce its madness in whom he bit it being plainly very like to its own dog from whence it issued Wherefore there was in the spittle a forming seminal Idea of that madness produced being like unto that from whence the first infection flowed For such an infection presupposeth an active vital and potent propagative power of its seed because it can cause death and madness in us But that power never acteth as a naked accident but as it inhabites in a formal subject of inhesion Neither also that the visible matter or Inn of its
sanctifying Love doth properly belong seeing that thou standest in no need of us neither can we devote unto thee any thing else The Prophet did accept A A A Lord I cannot speak behold I am an Infant but I reply to this Prophet O O O Lord my thoughts fail me and do melt in a naked wish of Love of the sanctifying of thy Name For loe O Lord I am nought but nothing nor any thing besides but as it hath pleased thee that I may pertain unto thee O All of All and All my Desire I deservedly seem to offer unto thee in my Mother Tongue and also to vow the Feude or Fee-farm of my Essence and Property wherewith I being invested by thee I enjoy the use of them for the help of my Neighbour For although the first conception of the Soul consisteth out of Words and so is without a proper tongue Yet I perceive that it is as yet crude and not sequestred as long as it is not polished and not being joyned to the mind doth depart into Cogitations Words and Writing This crudity I perceive doth make an infirm and unstable object of my first Conception and soon darkens it again Therefore thy Eternal Wisdom hath granted that it should be carried further even unto my Mind T is true indeed that thou wilt be worshipped by men in the Spirit but not in such a manner that it may remain in the undistinction of the first object But moreover the Angels and pure simple Spirits although they nakedly adore thee in Cogitation as Spirits yet they are busied by a certain and unknown Song to us in sanctifying thy Sanctifying Name without intermission Wherefore also thou commandest to be loved not onely from the whole Soul and whole Spirit but also from the whole Heart and with all our Strength So that the Prayer that is Spiritually framed and naked Worship do even exclude that which is Verbal which is unexperienced of the attention of the Mind Bestow on me O most beloved Lord that I may suggest that thing to my Neighbours thy Servants by similitudes An Organist hearing a new Tune or Song doth not presently at first play it without difficulty his Soul doth in part indeed perceive the Sound but his Fingers which are as it were the Framers of Sounds even as his other Members are the Formers of Words do not so fitly follow neither is it granted unto them to attain an absolute perfection of the Song so speedily quickly and distinctly He beholding indeed the Organ Table or Book doth presently play it to wit his Capacity being wont to carry his Fingers towards it at the first sight of the Book but that Song being composed according to the Laws of Musick but not turned into a Table he as less accustomed thereunto doth the more difficulty play it seeing a Table is accustomed to be first composed out of the Musick for his Spirit before he plays But as yet with a greater difficulty and rarity the Table and Plat-form of a Lute is extemporarily expressed in the Organ or that of the Organ in the Lute There hath not seemed unto me to be an unlike reason of the first conception of the Soul as of a sound as yet crude or raw and the Mind desires to have it reduced into Words or Writings through defect whereof not a few do stick in a good object the which by reason of an undistinct Mind vanisheth without fruit But moreover I perceive that the first Idea of the Soul doth follow an accustomed instinct of the Mind whereby it being even there polished or corrected is perceived by Words or Writings but indeed whereas man being from the beginning seasoned with the property of his Mother Tongue doth obtain it as incorporated or inspired and besides is wont to communicate unto his Mind and Mother Tongue his Cogitations which depart into Meditations Languages or Writings it seems an inconvenient thing and a Wonder to the Soul to endow an object of the first conception being decyphored in the Mind by Words in the Mother Tongue besides the inbred Custom with a forreign Idiome or Dialect wherein the Understanding labouring by changing the Dialect it over-shadows weakens and wearies it self and also doth alienate the pure and plainly Spiritual Conception of the first object But in very deed the object of every first Cogitation departing into Words I have certainly found to be alwaies first had in the Mother Tongue even in a man using none but tbe Spanish Dialect who also heard a Spaniard he being mortally wounded and weak of Mind spake many things but in Italian and heing called on in Spanish scarce understood I have likewise seen a Germane that was sick sitting or lying even as they placed him like an Image who never was capable of replying unto things asked him neither did he understand what Words either his Wife or any one of his Sons did pronounce in any other than in his own proper Germane tongue when as notwithstanding within the Walls of his House he alwaies used the Italian and French Tongues Yea and which more is he being a little after freed from this waking Coma or Sleep was scarce perswaded to believe the same And so O Lord I have cast down this poor Dedication of my Book in my Mother Tongue before thy most high Throne to wit the Song of my object which dammage of my Neighbour thou hast not disdained to let down into me Unto Thee be all the Honour I now proceed to signifie to my Neighbour the wretched ignorance of the Heathens whereby thy sick People have been hitherto seduced by the Universities and so miserably slain the Precept of the Prophet uttered in thy Name nothing hindring it Thus saith the Lord do not ye teach like unto the Gentiles Wherefore O Lord grant that my Soul may retain the gifts granted unto it unto thine Honour whereby I may imprint thy Goodness a part of my Debt in this Path of Death on my Neighbour Be thou unto me every Hinge who alone art the Way the Truth and the Life This is the one onely thing which it becometh us to love Thou my Angel Defender and Intercessor who beholdest the Omnipotent Good Beg in my name that which is wanting unto me insist thou in the steps of Raphael the Divine Physitian who carried the Works of burial of the dead performed by night unto God thou diligent Curer carry thou the present Work performed in the night of my darkness unto God that man may not hereafter be thus killed nor so soon undergo Death Offer up this my Work before the holy sacred Trinity whereunto I dedicate it So act thou for the Glory of God THE Translators Premonition TO THE CANDID READER FRIEND WHoever thou art know thou that as the things contained in this Work were not at the first written by the honest conscientious most learned and judicious Author from a vain ostentation or to draw out Peoples minds after the Tree of Knowledge
thirst after But now I being constrained by the Reasons and Letters of many moderate wise Men out of divers Kingdoms and States here and there who perswaded me that I was devoutly engaged by the pledge of Health to commit all the Writings of my deceased Father unto the Press and to annex thereunto when and after what manner he closed his Day Also in what State or Condition he left the aforesaid Writings And moreover to supply those things which were lacking for the vindicating the Life of Man-kind from many Errors Torments and Destruction It is That which hath extorted from me to leave all other things and thorowly to review the aforesaid Writings which being finished I gave up my self to hearken to their Calls I suspended my former purpose discoursing in plain and most simple Words the following Narrative in my Mother Tongue according to the tenour of the fore-going Dedication of my Father the which I also imitate by following him in the very same intent thereof The Death of my Father happened on the Thirtieth Day of the Tenth Month December of the Year one thousand six hundred forty four at the sixth hour in the Evening when as he had as yet a full use of Reason and had first required and obtained all his sacred Solemnities and Rights His Life it self was his Disease which remained with him seven Weeks beginning with him after this manner He at sometime returned home in hast on foot at Noon in a cold and stinking Mist which was a cause unto him that when he endeavoured to write a small Epistle of about fifteen lines or did indulge himself with too large a discourse his breathing so failed him that he was constrained to rise up and to draw his breath thorow the nearest Window whereby a Pleurisie was provoked in him at two several times from the which notwithstanding he restored himself perfectly whole yea the day before his Death he being raised upright as yet wrote to a certain Friend of his in Paris there being among other these following words Praise and Glory be to God for evermore who is pleased to call me out of the World and as I conjecture my Life will not last above four and twenty hours space For truly I do to day sustain the first assault of a Fever by reason of the weakness of Life and defect thereof whereby I must finish it The which accordingly followed after that he had bestowed a special Benediction or Blessing on me the which I esteem for a great Legacy I do not here more largely extend the property of his Disease by reason of the straitness of time seeing that I am besides to make mention of him in my Compendium from all things unto the one thing the which I endeavour God willing it to publish in a short time A few days preceding his Death he said unto me Take all my Writtings as well those crude and uncorrected as those that are thorowly expurged and joyn them together I now commit them to thy care accomplish and digest all things according to thy own judgement It hath so pleased the Lord Almighty who attempts all things powerfully and directs all things sweetly Therefore attentive Reader I intreat thee that thou do not at the first sight wrongfully judge me because I have taken care to have the more Crude Writings Printed as being mixed with the more Digested ones those not being Restored or Corrected Know thou that the desire of promoting this great and laborious Work hath been the cause thereof at length thou maiest experience that the desirous Reader was to be by all means satisfied no less in this than in the aforesaid Writings and then thou wilt judge that I have well and faithfully performed all things seeking nothing for my own gain the which shall more clearly appear by this my Preface I call God to witness that my Desire unto whom it is known doth extend unto the help of my Neighbour Wherefore read thou and read again this Writing and it shall not repent thee for ever for I tell thee in the height of truth that I have published these things from pity alone as taking good notice that men by reason of their own Imaginations are so little careful of or affected with the safety of an Eternal and Temporal Life Stop your antient in and out-steps enter ye into the Royal path Eternal dismiss ye those innumerable by-paths which I my self have with exceeding labour and difficulty thorowly beaten in seeking whereby I might come unto the knowledge of the Truth endeavourm in the mean time to find out the ordination of all created things and their harmony and that by all the more internal and external means which I was able to imagine I then bent all my Senses whereby I might make my self known unto Wise men so called hoping at length to find some Wise Man not learned according to the common manner in all places where I should passe thorow which I might call Nations of whatsoever profession or condition they were I spake to them according to their desire that I might joyn in friendship with them by discourse and according to my abilities I imparted unto them the whole cause by this and other means I touched at many clear fundamental Knowledges and Arts all which I heare advisedly pass by And when I understood all and every of them to be onely the esteemed workmanship of a great Man I discerned that by how much the more a thing was absurd vain and foolish or frivolous by so much the more it was exalted and respected or honoured the which servitude I perceiving became voluntarily averse thereto as being one who did prosecute plain simplicity I descending ascended unto essential and occult or hidden properties and for my aid the understanding of some Latine Books seemed to be desired to this end I read over diverse times the New Testament in the Latine Idiome and the Germane that by that means I might in a few days not onely understand the Latine stile but also that in the aforesaid Testament I might find the perfect and long wished for simple one onely and Eternal Truth and Life which the one thing to wit God doth onely and alone earnestly require and is averse to all duallity or plurality So also whatsoever God hath created he created all of it in that one and by that one thing otherwise he had not kept an order And by how much the more I knew this amiable free and one only thing in all things and did enjoy it I addressed my self to a quiet study I was outwardly cloathed with simple or homely raiment and for the more inward contracting of my mind as also for curing thereof I acted many things known to God alone as also for the preservation of my health and increasing of my strongth I lived soberly for many Years together I also abstained from fleshes like as also from Fishes Wine and Ale or Beer and that so far that I
Medicines to drink and so they plainly prostrated his strength But it opportunely happened that his remaining strength and youth overcame the Disease he appeared to have received his lost strength whereby he was confirmed that Professours and Licensed Persons were true Physitians reckoning from their relation that he had deserved or was in danger of Death and that he owed his Life unto their Torments hence they took of him a double reward but not according to their deserts The young Man renewing his former pious steps was the second time oppressed with the very same malady and he hoped by their endeavour again to escape the same cruelty but alass his spirit failed him and from sound Reason and a knowledge of the Truth he cryed out unto this his Brother It hath befallen me as to all others and it shall so long continue untill Physitians so called do in very deed feel and see this present time to be for Eternity but now they forget the time past believing that they possess the present time they deny the time to come seeing they cannot see that and so they take no care for a longer Life for they have never been destitute thereof even as of any other frail or mortal good whereof there is made a repairing but they possessing one only Life and loosing that all shall be ended It is a vain thing to employ ones self in Studies when no necessity is urgent upon us The Servant who ought readily to serve us is beaten which doth perpetually provoke this Man whom he shall name his Master by all his qualities he shall be ignorant of his thraldom although all Men except a few are bound up by his Servitude the which for the most part deprives of Life both now and hereafter I despair of a temporary Life for they who are said to bring help do want the knowledge thereof and they are first constrained to obtain it by brawlings and discords which will arise among them through hatred and envy wherewith those called Doctors or Teachers have never laboured seeing they are but few who by running up and down day and night do excel in Wealth whereby they scrape together an abundance of Money as well among the Healthy and Sick as those that are dead and so they might continue in concord the which shall remain so long until the last times appear which thou shalt discern by that when thou shalt see the number of Junior and Licensed Doctors of Medicine so to increase that they shall scarce have employment The Seniours shall be offended with the Juniours and Young Beginners because their dayly revenues shall be diminished and because they shall find forreign or accidentary Juniours being constrained to learn more sure Principles for to get their living to cure some Sick whose like being under their care did undergo Death which thing the Seniours shall envy wishingly desiring that all the Sick-folks might die unto whom the Juniors should be called Lastly they shall reproach them publickly before all the People saying These wicked young Men do cure by Enchantments they should of necessity be forbidden to practise By these and the like means they shall labour to subvert them and and they shall offend God that it may add courage unto other godly and industrious Juniours to perfect that which they shall propose to the Seniours in these Words When we have invited you to suffer us publickly to cure some Sick of an Hospital appointing a Prize or Wager for the benefit of the Poor ye also to be solicitous or diligent on the other hand and that they who had not answered the effect should pay the reward thereof ye have refused that thing ye seek not the Poor but Give Ye ye resemble Beggars in that thing who disdain their fellow Beggars and are unwilling that their number should increase for they have a confidence in some rich Mens houses and places where a larger bounty befel them for their deceitful Words and Tricks that so they may leave their Arts and these Houses to their Children for a Dowry which very thing also ye cherish in your Mind but it shall have a bad success because through this publick discord which shall spring from Covetousnesse that dayly Deceit shall be made known to the World and they shall receive only true Doctors who may be discerned by their good Fruits and who shall imitate the steps of the Samaritan These Words being finished he felt his Life to fail therefore lifting up his eyes towards Heaven he with sorrow subjoyned Oh most merciful Lord abbreviate thou the term of Mans Salvation and change thou the frail Doctrine of the Doctors their Flesh into the natural or peculiar Love of the Spirit that the Innocent may finish their Life to thy Glory I pray thee oh my Saviour do not thou impute my Death to the Doctors hereafter for an Offence for truly they know not what they do commit but vouchsafe thou to open their eyes that they may assent to the truth and that the People may publish those things of them as in times past of holy Paul Which saying being ended he wholly committed himself to the Divine Will and breathed forth his last Breath in the armes of this his Brother who did alwayes ponder these Words aforesaid This Man in his turn uttered these following Words We are all of us being Brethren in Christ engaged to patronize the truth the which is not better perfected than by opposing and defending Hence we will prosecute two things one is that the strength of our Enemies may be made known unto us the other is that we may add more strength to our own and so that we may be the more confirmed in our purpose After that they had heard all these Words they compelled him to undergoe this charge with the threatning of a Fine for so much as he had taken this voluntary Office on himself And he alleaged I being the second of the Seniours am desirous to be instructed by any one in this difficult matter I being a Servant of truth do after some sort yield to the two former Propositions but unto the third I can in no wise assent to wit to subvert the aforesaid Books by interdictions and brands of Censures for if we should endeavour that we should act altogether rashly we thinking to extinguish them in one place should also again raise them up in a thousand other places Men are no longer so ignorant and unwary as in times past when as all Examples or Patterns of religious obedience were published by favour which thing is chiefly manifest in Printers and Booksellers they making gain here and there and it cannot be forbidden and hindered Doth not the thing it self bespeak that we need not go far That Author himself set forth a Discourse inscribed Of the Magnetick or Attractive cure of Wounds which was stoln from him and about five hundred of them printed in Letters by his Enemies whereupon they divulged three divers
great celebration Letters and Verses which were taken from me by the Count of Giline when in my absence he had spoiled my Castle where amongst the rest of my houshold-stuffe he had discerned the aforesaid Books Writings and Hymns all which together with his Galenical paultry Physitian he was not able to endure to survive this destruction I lament as the one onely cause that they could in no wise see the light Whereupon thou didst wish them all Prosperity and health in the Lord saying I will from your earnest desire commit all things that have been rehearsed unto the Press All which things after that my intimate friend upon urgency had declared unto me I contained in few words and did shew them unto him the which being seen he counselled me to divulge in Print subjoyning if any one shall desire more things so he be fit for them I shall never be wanting but will serve every one more fully according to the thing begun or brought forth in him Follow me I walk thorow the whole World AN ACROSTICK Upon the Great PHILOSOPHER John Baptista Van Helmont INcomparable Work beyond the reach Of humane praise which justly doth impeach Huge Heaps and Volumns of largeful-cram'd sheets Nicely compos'd where subtile Learning meets Born up by lofty-winged Fame which can Ascend no higher now since LEARNED VAN Pres'd into th' Croud but as attached must Take Sanctuary in despised dust Inevitable dis-esteem and shame Surprizing them whilst onely HELMONT'S NAME Takes hold of meriting Transcendency Advancing by the hand of Truth whereby Virtue unvails the blinded eye of Vice Ambition Cruelty and Avarice Notorious Crimes which with prevailing force Have long continued on the World a Curse Ent'ring by Ignorance and Sloth whence all Lame and imperfect Sciences did crall Mustring like Weeds a multiplying Birth Ore-running the whole surface of the Earth None knowing how those Errors to unmask Till Painful HELMONT undertook this Task JOHN HEYMAN AN INDEX OF THE TREATISES Set forth by John Baptista Van Helmont 1. Prophesie concerning the Author expressed in a Poem 2. The Authors Promises pag. 1 Column 1. 2 Column 2. 5 Column 3. 6 3. The Authors Confession 8 4. The Authors Studies 11 5. The searching out of Sciences 15 6. The Causes and Beginnings of Natural things 27 7. Archeus Faber or the Master Workman 35 8. Logick is unprofitable 37 9. The ignorant Natural Phylosophy of Aristotle and Galen 41 10. The Elements 47 11. The Earth 50 12. The Water 53 13. The Air. 57 14. The Essay of a Meteor 63 15. The Gas of the Water 70 16. The Blas of Meteors 78 17. A Vacuum of Nature 81 18. An irregular Meteor 87 19. The Earth-quake 92 20. The Fiction of Elementary Complexions and Mixtures 104 21. The Image of the Ferment begets the Masse with child of a seed p. 111 22. The Stars do necessitate not incline nor signifie of the Life Body or Fortunes of him that is born 118 23. The Birth or Original of Forms 128 24. Magnum Oportet or a thing of great necessity or concernment 148 25. Nature is ignorant of contraries 160 26. The Blas of Man 175 27. Endemicks 188 28. The Spirit of Life 192 29. Heat doth not digest efficiently but excitingly onely 198 30. The threefold Digestion of the Schools 203 31. A sixfold Digestion of humane nourishment 205 32. Pylorus the Governour 222 33. A History of Tartar 229 34. A History of Tartar of Wine 232 35. The rash invention of Tartar in Diseases 235 36. Nourishments are guiltlesse of Tartar 240 37. Tartar is not in drink 249 38. An erring Watchman or wandring Keeper 254 39. The Image of the Mind 262 40. A mad or foolish Idea 272 41. The seat of the Soul 283 42. From the seat of the Soul unto Diseases 289 43. The authority of the Duumvirate 296 44. The compleating or perfecting of the Mind 310 45. The Scab and Ulcers of the Schools 316 46. An unknown action of Government 324 47. The Duumvirate 337 48. A Treatise of the Soul 341 49. The Distinction of the Mind from the sensitive Soul 344 50. Of the Immortality of the Soul 346 51. The knitting of the sensitive Soul and Mind 351 52. The Asthma and Cough 356 53. The humour Latex neglected 373 54. A Cauterie 380 55. The Disease that was antiently reckoned that of delightful Livers 386 56. A mad or raging Pleura 392 57. That the three first Principles of the Chymists nor the Essences of the same are of the Army of Diseases 401 58. Of Flatu's or windinesses in the Body 416 59. The Toyes of a Catarrh or Rheum 429 60. A Reason or Consideration of Diet. 450 61. A Modern Pharmacopolium and Dispensatory 456 62. The Power of Medicines 469 63. A Preface 483 64. A Disease is an unknown Guest 486 65. The Dropsie is unknown 507 66. A childish Vindication of the Humourists 522 67. The Author Answers 524 A Treatise of Diseases 68. A discernable Introduction 528 69. The subject of inhering of Diseases is in the point of Life 531 70. A proceeding to the knowledge of Diseases 534 71. Of the Idea's of Diseases 539 72. Of Archeal Diseases 547 73. The Original of a diseasie Image 552 74. The passage unto the Buttery of the Bowels is stopped up 555 75. The Seat of Diseases in the sensitive Soul is confirmed 559 76. The Squaldron and Division of Diseases 565 566 77. Things Received that are Injected 568 78. Some more Imperfect Works 574 79. In Words Herbs and Stones there is great Virtue 575 80. Butler 585 81. Of Material things Injected 597 82. The manner of entring of things Darted into the Body 604 83. Of things Conceived 606 84. A Magnetical or Attractive Power 614 85. Of Sympathetical Medium's or Means 616 86. Of things Inspired 617 87. Things Suscepted or Undergon 619 88. Things Retained 620 89. A Preface 631 90. Of Time 633 91. Life is Long Art is Short 645 92. The entrance of Death into humane nature the grace of Virgins 648 93. A Position 652 94. The Position is Demonstrated 661 95. Of the Fountains of the Spaw The first Paradox 687 96. A second Paradox 691 97. A third 693 98. A fourth 696 99. A fifth 699 100. A sixth 702 101. A numerocritical Paradox of Supplies 704 102. The Understanding of Adam 711 103. The Image of God 714 104. The Property of External Things 724 105. The Radical Moisture 726 106. The Vital Air. 731 107. A manifold Life in Man 735 108. A Flux unto Generation 736 109. A Lunar Tribute 740 110. Life 744 111. Short Life 747 112. Eternal Life 750 113. The Occasions of Death 752 114. Of the Magnetick curing of Wounds 756 115 The Tabernacle in the Sun 794 116. The nourishing of an Infant for Long Life 797 117. The Secrets of Paracelsus p. 799 118. The Mountain of the Lord. 806 119. The Tree of Life 807 Unheard of little Works of Medicine 1. Of the Disease of the
the disposing of instruments and the effect or thing produced 6. That heat is not an agent in seminal generation 7. Why Aristotle hath not known the truth of Nature 8. His Books of natural Philosophy contain onely tristes 9. How young men are to be instructed in the place or room of Schoole-Philosophy 10. Into what great Apolloes young men might climbe 11. The Prerogatives of the fire 12. What a young man so instructed might judge 13. Privations do not succeed in the flowing of Seeds to generation 14. There is no form of a dead Carcase 15. That generation and corruption do not receive each other 16. The Vulcan of life vanisheth without the corrupting of it self 17. Death is not the corruption of life 18. The distinction of privation and corruption 19. Of forms there is no corruption 20. The ignorance of Galen 21. His ridiculous Volumes concerning the decrees of Hipocrates and Plato 22. His books of preserving of health are foolish THE Schooles have so sworn constancy and their end to their Aristotle that even to this day they by putting one name for another do call him the Philosopher whom notwithstanding I certainly finde to be altogether ignorant of Nature and it grieveth me not to write down some causes which have enforced me hereunto and that for no other end than that hereafter as well Professors as young beginners may not through an aptness to believe and a custome of assenting be made to wander out of the way nor may suffer themselves hence-forward to be led by a blinde man into the ditch For otherwise I tell no mans tale nor am I more displeased with Aristotle than with a non ens or a non-being Therefore first of all Aristotle defineth Nature It is the Principle or beginning of motion as also of rest in Bodies in whom it is in by it self and not by accident Wherein I finde more errours and ignorances of the definer than words First therefore the word it is in sheweth that he speaketh of a Body really existing but not of his impossible matter 2. He denotes that such Bodies are not of the number or supposed things of Nature For truly it belongeth not to Bodies to be in Bodies by it self and not by accident 3. He takes away any accidents from the Catalogue of Nature as if they were without besides and above Nature because accidents are in by accident 4. He sets down that Bodies which have motion or rest by accident are likewise without Nature 5. That the Being of things is in Nature in Nature it self before the day or motion or rest of the same Because it must needs be that something first be before that it move be moved or doth rest And so the Principle of Being goes before the beginning of moving or resting notwithstanding Nature cannot be before its existence For if the beginning of motion or rest should be latter or an effect as to their Being Nature should be an effect as to its being a natural thing 6. What if God after Creation had enjoyned neither motion nor rest rest indeed according to Aristotle presupposeth the bound of motion there had now been a Creature and not Nature For God in the beginning created the Heaven and the Earth Now Nature was not understood by Aristotle to wit there was sometimes a Creature and it actually existed before or on this side Nature here defined 7. Bodies in which the beginning of motion is external and by accident suppose thou when 〈◊〉 heat of the Sun moves the Seed to increase or a Woman with Childe by accident transforms the imperfect Infant by her own Imagination should not be under Nature as neither that accidental beginning 8. To rest is not not to be moved but to cease from motion and so not to be moved is more general than rest Therefore Nature absolutely taken should be onely after the existence of Nature 9. If the beginning of motion in a moveable thing be Nature and the efficient cause be properly called the beginning of motion as he saith heat not elementary to be therefore it must needs be that the efficient cause is inward which is against Aristotle or that Nature in as much as it is the beginning of motion is not in Bodies most neerly or inwardly by it self 10. Every outward efficient cause is the beginning of motion in a thing by accident But every efficient cause according to Aristotle is external therefore no efficient cause external is natural which is contrary to his second Book of Physicks 11. Whatsoever things are moved by the Mathematicks and also a Mill moved by the Winde or a stream should not be moved by Nature But I believe that Nature is the Command of God whereby a thing is that which it is and doth that which it is commanded to do or act This is a Christian definition taken out of the holy Scriptures 12. But Aristotle contrary to his own Precepts of a definition takes the difference which he thinketh to be constitutive for the general kinde of the thing defined in Nature to wit the formall beginning of motion and rest But for the constitutive difference he takes the matter or Body wherein the said beginning of motion is But Christians are held to believe Nature to be every Creature to wit a Body and accidents no lesse than the beginning of motion it self 13. Death also although it be the beginning by it self of rest in a dead Carcase yet Christians do believe it not to be created by the Lord and so neither to be Nature and although it may light naturally on it yet that happens not by reason of the death but of its natural Causes But Aristotle in another place a like stumblingly touching on Nature saith Every power of the Soul seemeth to be a partaker of some other certain Body for neither dares he positively and simply to affirm it than those which are called Elements For even as Souls do differ so also the Nature of that Body doth differ the Seed contains the cause of fruitfulness to wit heat which is not fiery but a spirit or breath in the froathy body of the Seed and the Nature which is in that Spirit answereth in proportion to the Element of the Stars This Precept praised by the Schooles containeth almost as many Errours as Syllables And at length this Writer of natural instruction being exceeding doubtful knowes not what he may call or ought to call Nature For first he saith it to be a Corporeal power of the Soul and therefore he banisheth the understanding out of the powers of the Soul 2. He saith the power of the Soul which he afterwards calleth heat is a partaker of another Body than those that are called Elements As if it were a partaker onely of a Body above an Elementated one and heavenly 3. It is absolutely false and an ignorant thing that any power of the Soul is a partaker of the body although it be tied to the body For every
to be a Bird a thousand dispositions do succeed each other in the way and all of them to be external and accidentary to the Seed neither that in the mean time it ceaseth to hasten to the aims of its appointment For the figure of the yolk of the Egge together with accidentary dispositions succeeding each other do passe over it indeed yet there is not a new generation of the form of that puttified Egge present at every disposure of the putrifaction Indeed one onely vitall form of the Chick being excepted there comes to it no other which by degrees is stirred up by foregoing dispositions and at length the ripeness of dispositions being attained floweth into it For neither when the Bird dyeth is there a certain essential form and generation of the dead Carcase Because all generation in nature is enclosed in an essential form which a dead Carcase wanteth even as also a seed and an Archeus the Governour as shall be shewed in its place Even as the essence begins him with the Vulcan of the Seed and the same essence continues with the product or thing generated so the same product failing the same essence perisheth But the essence perishing the form the Governour or President thereof also goes to ruine For the Vulcan or Master-Workman forsaking the body the flesh heart veins c. do begin to putrifie for that they are now deprived of the vital Balsam their leader For under life the flesh and the bone c. were distinguished In its particular kinde and proper form the flesh was flesh and was formally severed from the bone in which form in the dead Carcase they do forthwith appear And so through death no form or essential thingliness comes upon the dead Carcase in the whole or in any particular parts Onely that which was vitall is seperated Therefore let it be an erroneous thing That the corruption of one thing is the generation of another Because the corruption of life happens onely through the quenching of the vitall Balsam or form therefore without a new generation of a Creature Therefore no privation happens in things that have life and so neither can privation there have the force of a Principle Seeing that from the seed even unto the vitall being there is but one progress promotion and ripeness about the end whereof the form is given Therefore also generation doth reciprocally or cursarily happen without any corruption as often as the matter being now brought to the ripeness of its appointment by the seminal Vulcan hath obtained a form coming to it from elsewhere Yea that Vulcan through the departure of life departs flies away and vanisheth without any corrupting of it self no otherwise than as light perisheth without the corrupting of it self Indeed life vanisheth after the manner of light perishing And the Vulcan seeing it is a certain vitall Air fleeth away Both of them without the corruption of themselves and the body which is deprived of life properly for that very cause is not corrupted although through the failing of the vitall Balsam corruption doth soon succeed Which thing sufficiently appeareth in Mummies and also in Vegetables which being dry and deprived of life are kept for uses yea they do very often drive away all corruption So far of is it that their life perishing for that very cause they should be corrupted Therefore death in things that have life is not the corruption of their own life as neither of that which lives but the extinguishing of life And although in some things the corruption of the body may follow truly that is to life and the body by accident which thing is manifest For truly dead Carcases are preserved from corruption by art Therefore now Aristotle confounds privation with corruption and doth not distinguish his own Principle non ens or a non-being from the Being corruption Lastly the forms of things are not subject to corruption and therefore neither are they corrupted but annihilated or brought to nothing Wherefore neither can the withdrawing or the extinguishing of the form include any corruption on behalf of the form Furthermore I have hated Metaphors or figurative Translations of words from their proper signification to another in the History of nature and Family of essential things because they are those things which have introduced the errours of the Schooles brawls of disputing and religious Worship given to Aristotle But besides if Aristotle be unskilful in nature and ignorant of all natural Philosphy truly Galen hath hitherto every where manifested a greater ignorance For first of all I will make it manifest that there is not a quaternary or a fourfold kinde of Elements nor a congress or conjunction of these for bodies which are believed to be mixt much less a strife or fighting of qualities or Complexions or for the Causes of Diseases And so that neither doth the Treatise of the Elements properly belong to Medicine Truly I finde Galen diligent in opinions and a boasting Writer without judgement or discretion For neither hath he better perceived of Nature Diseases Causes and defects than of the decrees of Hipocrates and Plato For I profess I have twice read over those Volumes of Galen with attention but I have found the poverty and undistinct ignorance of Galen to fight with his rashness For truly those Books do touch at nothing lesse than the Doctrine of Hipocrates or Plato Neither also hath Hipocrates any thing common with Plato And so that I have not found any one who hath judged them worthy of a Commentary as neither to have been written concerning the preserving of health This one thing is alway to be found in Galen that the names of Authours being suppressed he hath willingly snatched the Inventions of others to himself a man wholly scanty or very poor in judgement as oft as he hath expressed the conceptions of his own judgement I ought to declare these things concerning the two Standard-Defenders of natural Philosophy that the Schooles may abstain from worshipping these Masters CHAP. VIII The Elements 1. The Doctrine of the Elements in healing is wholly impertinent and so that in Galen such a heap of those Books is ridiculous 2. The vain opinions of the Schooles concerning the Elements 3. The true beginnings of naturall Science are delivered 4. Six conclusions out of the holy Scriptures 5. That there are onely three Elements 6. The Content of the Heavens 7. That there are two first-born Elements 8. That Fire is not an Element 9. The Errour of Paracelsus touching the matter of the Heaven 10. A Quaternary of Elements for the mixtures of Bodies and for Diseases falls to the ground 11. A Proposition that all things which are believed to be mixt are materially of water onely with a mechanicall or handicraft demonstration 12. What the Elementall and Virgin Earth is 13. From whence the two Elements may be called the first-born 14. An objection from artificial things 15. The force of the artificial fire of Hell 16. Another
a Lesson to Chymists That the Earth although it was in its first constitution created yet properly it is even a fruit of the water Therefore neither do generations or co-mixtures ever happen in nature but by a getting of the water with childe And so that as long as the water is chief in the seed never any generation proceedeth from thence Therefore much lesse is there a flowing compound body to be exspected from thence because it resisteth the fruitfulness of the fire And that thing least of all as oft as water and earth are mutually connexed to their own bodies Therefore the constancy of bodies is onely in the fire in the family of Mineralls and indeed most perfect in the purest Mettalls Because the Eternall hath not created moysture to be â—â—kened in its constancy to metallick Mercurie And therefore there is in Mercurie it self even as in the Elements a near reason of an uncapacity to be destroyed For truly I have discerned in Mercurie a certain outward Sulphur containing the originall spot of Mettall the which because it is originall therefore is it also taken away from it with difficulty Which at length nevertheless being seperated by art skilful men say that the Mercurie is cleansed of a superfluous Sulphur and superfluous moysture Because afterwards it may not by any fire be precipitated or cast into the form of Earth by reason of its greatest simpleness whereby it is compared to the Element of water For it hath lost its earth that is its Sulphur which earth in the center of its essence is no less from the Element of water than its remaining refined Mercurie which earth albeit it had from its first beginning most deeply co-mixed with it self If therefore the Mercury in its former state had a suitable temperament of earth and water therefore at leastwise after the taking away of that Sulphurous earth it had lost its anâ—ient uncapacity of being devided the which rather by a contrary disposition of relation it haâ—h hence-forward câ—nfirmed far more firm to it self for ever For Mercurie after it is spoiled of that Sulphur is found not to be changed by any fire because it is the Mercurie of Mercurie But the Sulphur is death and life or the dwelling place of life in things to wit in the Sulphur are the Fermenâ—s or leavens putrifactions by continuance o â—ours specificall savours of the seedes for any kinde of transmutations The Mercurie therefore being cleansed of its originall spot and being a Virgin doth not suffer it self to be any more laid hold on by Sulphurs or seeds but it straight-way consumeth and as it were slayeth these except its own compeere For other sublunary bodies are to weak that they should subdue pierce change or defile Mercurie of so great worth Even as it well happens in other bodies where the seed which lurketh in the Sulphur sends it self into water But the Salt and Mercurie of things as it were womanish juyces do follow the conceptions of the Sulphur For Aqua fortis is not wrought upon Mettalls or Mercurie but by the beholding of the Sulphur For the spirit of Sea-salt without the conjoyning of some embryonated or imperfect shaped Sulphur doth not therefore so much as dissolve the common peoples Mercurie Therefore the Sulphur onely is by adjuncts immediately dissolved and changed by the fire which successive change the other parts of the compounded body do afterwards undergoe not but for the Sulphurs sake Therefore Mercurie of Mercurie or in Mercurie remaineth safe as well in fires as in its Liquor the air Otherwise if a Corrosive matter should touch on that Mercurie the pains of many might happily be recompenced Because the whole Root of transmutations is in the Sulphur Therefore there is another Sulphur of Mettalls internall to Mercurie it self and therefore it remains untouched by every corrosive thing no lesse than from the destructions of fire and air Yea a totall ruine of things should follow if every thing dissolving should pierce into the innermost Root of dissolving And although Silver dissolved in Aqua fortis may seem to have perished as being in the form of a water yet it remains in its former essence Even as Salt dissolved in water is remaineth Salt and is fetched from thence without the changing of the Salt Which thing surely should not thus come to passe if the thing dissolving should in the least be joyned in dissolving and should not be stayed by the Mercurie of that composed body Therefore the inward kernel of the Mercurie is not touched by dissolvers and much lesse is it pierced by them But the ignorant being astonished at the novelty of the Paradox will urge If the water be not pressed together nor its parts go to ruine and Gold be of water alone whence therefore have Gold or Lead their weight For truly water hath not pores bigger by ten fold than the whole water In the first place as this doubt doth not take away doubts so it argues nothing against the matter of Gold to be taken from water onely For truly if Gold should be of four proportioned Elements and air and fire are light ones I therefore may likewise object from whence hath Gold its weight But if it consist onely of Earth and water from whence hath Gold its ten fold weight Therefore an argument which of it self doth not drive away difficulties doth nothing presse the adversaries But since it behooves an Interpreter of nature to be ready to search into and render the causes of nature I will shew from the premises that the seed of Gold hath a power of transchanging the water into this something which is far different from water Wherefore it is agreeable to nature and reason that in transmutation the water doth sustain as much pressing together going to ruine and aduniting as great Stones or Mettalls do overpoyse the water in weight and as much as the necessity of the seed doth require Because that of nothing nothing is made Therefore weight is made of another body weighing even so much in which there is made a transmutation as of the matter so also of the whole essence Therefore the water while it undergoes the lawes of the seed it is also bound to the precepts of the dimensions of its own weight co-thickning and going to ruine For if the water of its own accord flies up out-flees the sight in the shew of a vapour a hundred fold lighter than it self and yet remains water why shall not the water while it is made this something neither is any longer formally water also receive thicknesses greater than it is wont by ten fold for indeed on both sides the matter doth follow the properties of the seedes Therefore the liberty of nature is perpetuall of its own accord to cause and to suffer the pressings together of a watery body and will not undergoe those by any guidance of an Artificer yea Mountains are sooner overturned by Gun-powder Therefore there shall be sixteen parts of
a body which fills up the emptinesses of the air and which is wholly annihilated by the fire Nor that indeed as if also it were the nourishment of the fire it self For although that thing be impertinent to this Question and place yet that which is not truly a body can nourish nothing And then seeing it is neither a body nor a fat thing it cannot be inflamed kindled or wasted or consumed by the fire Then also I will demonstrate in the Chapter of forms that the fire is not a substance but that which is not a substance doth not require to be nourished Lastly seeing the Air is an Element and a simple thing it cannot admit of composition or a conjoyning of divers things or Beings in its own nature Nor are there in the essentiall substance of the Air diversities of parts some whereof may be consumed by the fire but others not For therefore if the fire had found a part in the Air capable of inflaming the whole Air being kindled had even by one onely Candle long since perished For neither had the fire ceased if having need of nourishment it had known that to be in the Air which was neighbour to it Yea if the Air could be burnt up by the fire the Air should passe over to some more simple and formerly Being and should cease to be an Element for the flame of the Candle should be before the Element of the Air and more simple than it Therefore it is manifest that the flame in the aforesaid Glasse although in respect of heat it enlargeth the quantity of the air yet that naturally it will have its smoakes entertained in the hollownesses of the air so far is it that the air doth extend it self and this is the one onely cause of the diminished space in the air whence the flame is also consequently smothered For the heat that is externall to the Glasse seemes to inlarge the air in the Glasse but the fire within by reason of its smoakes doth actually stir up a stifling and pressing together of the air Therefore the heat doth by it self enlarge the air as appeareth by the Engine meating out the degrees of the encompassing air but the fire by reason of its smoakes presseth it together And so it followes that smoakes do more strongly act by pressing together than heat doth in enlarging And then also that smoaks are more importunate or inconvenient to the air than its own naturall vacuum yea than is the enlarging of its own vacuum Seeing that the enlarging of the space of the air made by heat is delightfull to it in respect of com-pression caused by smoakes For from hence I conjecture that all particular members of the Universe have a certain sympatheticall feeling And so seeing the air essentially hath porosities or little hollow spaces it grieveth it that they should be filled up and over-burdened by a strange Gas Yet unless the air should have empty porosities at leastwise the Doctrine of naturall Philosophy founded upon a vacuum negatively falls bodies could never admit of an enlargement of themselves or of a strange Gas because by the changing of them into Gas they should require a thousand fold bigger capacities and so room would fail for the breathing our of belching blasts Therefore the air was created that it may be a receptacle of exhalations wherefore also it must needes have an emptiness in its pores yet it receiveth those exhalations by its set and just proportion and where it hath its emptinesses filled up to a just measure the air fleeth away and in its flight it forceth or gathereth all the flame into a Pyramide or Spire But if the air being detained from its flight be loaded with too much smoak it straightens it self and extinguisheth the fire which fills it self with smoak above due measure These things have not as yet been thorowly weighed by the Schooles and therefore they have thought the fire to live and be nourished by the air neither have they proof for this unless on a contrary sense because fire being stopped up with air is straightway smothered But that Idiotisme of the Schooles doth sufficiently make it self manifest Seeing the fire is not a body for as much as it is fire nor is it a creature of the first constitution for neither doth it live nor is nourished the which is like unto death Even as shall be manifested concerning the birth of forms But the Air is a simple Element For neither doth the stifling of the fire presuppose a necessary life as neither nourishment nor is there for this cause an increase of the fire although it be built in an abundantly open air neither also doth fire consume even the least quantity of air or convert it into its own substance which it hath none as it were its nourishment they are fables For the fire being deprived of air perisheth not indeed in respect of denied nourishment or of a participated life but for want of room which cannot contain the smoak by the pressing together whereof the fire being stifled is extinguished For after another manner from the too much and hasty blown up air the flame straightway perisheth when the flame being lesse toughly fastened to the Candle is presently taken away by a blast and being once taken away from the Candle it cannot have afterwards a subsistence in the air as neither having a substance in it self Therefore the pores of the air being filled up with smoak they fly away and give place to another air coming to them that they may also receive their juyce or moysture from Gas Which flight of the air stirs up as also requireth winde In the Salt pits of Burgundy a plain Earthen pot being filled up with water and placed nigh the grate of a Furnace doth far sooner freeze than any other which is set out in the open air and frost by reason of the continuall Flux and passing over of the air which by the Schooles hath been rashly thought to flow thither for the life or nourishment of the flame Therefore the empty places of the Air are moderately filled but if they are over-loaded the space of the air doth presently straighten it self and shuts it self up in a narrower room the empty porosites being consumed that it may by stifling the exhaling fire divert it from its enterprise That thing is inbred in all created things through self-love For neither otherwise doth water incrust it self in Ice than that it may not be snatched away by the cold of the air into Gas. There are therefore necessary vacuities or emptinesses in the Air that according to their capacity they might entertain the fluide vapours that are to be evaporated for whose sake the air hath seemed to sustain a pressing together and enlarging For else a vacuum of the air being taken away the least motion should move almost the whole Universe through its continuity or un-interrupted joyning and exhalations soon arising the mortalls that are near being choaked
in that Well should be more troubled by Sulphur than in its neighbour-wells wherein no such thing was seen Lastly we must know that an Earth-quake is not made by the long preparation of causes from three dayes before Because then the Earth could not be lifted up in one manner at once Yea if any exhalation of Sulphur had now three dayes before fore-timely made a passage for it self at that very time it had now found a passage for it self and had sooner breathed forth that way thorow that Well before it had lifted up so great an heap on every side yea a passage being found it had made the water by its blast and boyling up to sound in the boyling and much more prosperously in the streetes that were so much lower and the exhalation had broken forth in the more neighbouring places and had burst in sunder the Hill it self more easily by rising into an heap but the Earth had not trembled Therefore I reject the example of the deed as long as the reasons opposed by me against it from its impossibility are not overthrown Therefore the Earth trembleth not because it feeleth or feareth after the manner of a living Creature but it denounceth unto us something like it and doth as it were speak unto us accusing of the stroak of the Angel or the hand of an angry God But the Earth is smitten and trembleth by the Command of God pointing out that sin hath ascended up to Heaven crying out for vengeance before his Throne Indeed the smiting doth presuppose indignation and indignation a heaped up measure of sin But the end of an Earth-quake is that the sinner may amend himself and that the righteous man may as well beware that he doth not sin as of the threatned punishment of sin Therefore an Earth-quake doth alway threaten punishments But all particular offences have chastisements suitable to themselves For Luxury and uncleanness have Plagues and Diseases for purging sacrifices and punishments But Adulteries pay their punishments by Diseases imprisonment disgraces poverties also barrenness of off-spring untimely death or the like According to that saying He that someth in the flesh shall reap in corruption But pride of life is punished by poverties barrennesses wars destructions sudden death a miserable losse of friends c. At length covetousness payes its punishments by deceits thefts juggles discommodities of some member c. But if two or three sins do abound at once among a people then punishments are also co-mingled to wit in-clemencies tyrannies breakings of a Vow or Oath juggles or deceits extorsions plagues barrennesses wars c. But if sins are conjoyned in Powers or Princes as well of the Church as in Secular ones Judges The Prophesies are full that for the injustice of the same Kingdoms are translated from Nation to Nation Which things if they happen with the rise of Arch Heresies scandalls and subversions of Altars and especially where the Poor suffer together with them it is a signe that these evills do proceed from filthinesses in-clemencies ambition covetousness breakings of a Vow and drunkennesses or gluttonies For the Prophesies do abound with threatnings that Jerusalem shall be plowed as a field the City shall be made as a heap of stones that the Pestilence and Enemy shall take away all the prey and shall lead away the Chief of the Church bound the holy place shall be defiled that they may be for a derision among the Nations But if Wars do not touch Religion the sins onely of Princes and Judges are taken notice of But the Earth trembleth being smitten especially for the sins of bloud which cry out for Heaven to be a revenger Therefore after an Earth-quake punishments are to be expected which are deservedly due to excess cruelty and injustice The trembling of the Earth therefore denotes nought but the judgements of God a Revenger To wit a good thing from an evill cause as it containeth an inflicting of punishment on the impenitent Therefore from the Lords Resurrection the Earth trembled signifying the desolation of the City and of the Jewish Monarchy which the Gospel together with the teares of the Lord foretold and which Josephus hath written down at large For no calamities are without the Lords permission nothing without its cause neither doth grief or misery spring out of the ground Job 5. Isai 45. Neither do calamities at any time happen unto us by chance It was the most rare or un-couth wickedness of men that slew the guiltless Son of God for his benefits wherefore a most rare kinde of purging of the offence ought also to rain upon that Nation which had been educated with so great favour to the killing of the men and lasting destruction of the Common-wealth As was fore-seen by Daniel Isaiah and Psal 10. But when an Earth-quake runs as it were thorow street by street a tumult of a City against a City is signified and the streetes to be desolate or forsaken For a friend saw this Chapter it being as yet in Writing he presently perceived that a naturall cause was wanting and he consented but he was angry because I had deciphered the manner and that the Earth should be smitten not indeed with a Staffe but by a note or voice and he laughed at the conjecture Why hath not God he said done those things by Gun-powder by Winde an exhalation and a vapour wherefore hath not he said it or spoken it and the Earth was moved with God there are a thousand wayes neither is it certain what mean he hath used First of all if I have given a reason why the Earth trembling doth necessarily chap by the example of a Bell which trembles after the stroak certainly he ought not to be angry with me For neither intended I that he that exceedes every manner doth tie up himself to manner and meanes But in-as-much as that friend doth inter-ject naturall meanes as are the winde a vapour an exhalation Gun-powder laid under the Low-Countries These things were already sufficiently refuted in my Writings as to be possible in nature wherefore they are again unseasonably alleadged as if God should have need of those meanes Because when God makes use of meanes in working miraculously he also often-times useth naturall things but he doth not then make use of things which are reckoned as fellow-causes For those meanes rather are and do contain mysteries than the vigour of any causality Therefore I have drawn my conjecture of the smiting voice or tone not that I am a conscious or a fellow-knower of or a searcher into divine Counsel out of that word The Voice of Thunder shall strike the Earth Moses smote the waters of Aegypt and they were turned into bloud and the Frogs over-covered the Land of Aegypt he smote the Sea with his Rod and the waters stood still he smote the Rock and it brought forth a Fountain Elisha commanded the King to smite the Earth and was wroth with him because he had not smitten it
do see being witnessed in the holy Scriptures and bewrayed by those kinde of bruit Creatures which owes not its rise but to the Moon For therefore there was darkness that might be felt which should far exceed ours although thick because it was deprived of all help of the Moon Nor is it a wonder that darkness hath its degrees seeing the infernall pit hath its utter or uttermost darkness because an Hebraisme wants the superlative degree without the favour of the Moon For happily abstracted spirits have something which for seeing may answer to our eyes that it may not see wholly throughout the whole of what belongs to it self and some of these Spirits are Seers by night but others being mute or silent like to Bats may as it were wax dim or dark under the Sun or in the day time and therefore they do the more willingly appear to their own in the dark and mid night therefore I will subscribe a History of this I had in my time of being at the University a Chamber-fellow born of honest Citizens This man his eyes being shut did for the most part rise and wander in the night but he carried away the Key with him and returning opened the Lock that he had shut after him In the Evening therefore I arise and secretly hide the Key under the Bolster but he arising in his sleep takes the hidden Key as if he had seen it and goes his way I taking my Coat followes him But he climbed an antient Wall the bound of the Colledge beset with Mosse and Hay For there was an Arch whereby on the other side of the River the Wall did support the Wall of a Neighbouring Garden It was full Moon and a frosty night I was amazed at the sight and by reason of the cold returned But my Chamber-fellow by and by returning he so quickly or cleverly hid the Key in a hole of the Cloyster that any one seeing could scarce do that thing so undelayingly at noon day But in the morning he was unmindefull of all that he had done For those walkers their eyes being shut do see clearly under the thick darkness they climbe securely without giddiness of the head because they do enjoy a Moon light A small wound becomes oft-times hard to be cured because it is inflicted on a member by the Moon appearing or advancing Under the Equinoctial line all things do soon putrifie not indeed by reason of excess of heat which is now and then greater and more constant elsewhere for truly under the line it sometimes raineth for dayes together but surely by reason of the continual nearness of the Moon and the long and round figure of the Globe as I shall prove in its place If a dead man or a bruit Beast shall passe one night at least all the night under the Moon for there she smites the near places with a full beam on the morrow morning the dead Carkase flowes abroad or abounds with corruption By occasion whereof it is related among experiments that if any one the light of the Moon being collected into a Cone or Crest doth cast her beames through a Glasse upon Warts Apostemes that have a humour like hony small tumours called Nats and the like excrescences untill they shall feel the cold within they do easily vanish afterwards of their own accord Nor is it a wonder for such defects do heatken to the Moon increasing Hence also in her decrease they shall the more easily perish Indeed I know if the Moon shall shine upon a wound that its lips do straightway wax black and blew or envious and resist healing In the next place if a Frog be at the full of the Moon in a most sharp North winde of winter digged up washed clean and tied to a staffe in a field the morrow morning a certain white and transparent muscilage is found resembling Gum Dragon dissolved and the shape of a Frog For that is not the Workmanship of cold which by it self onely cooles and occasionally freezeth else the full of the Moon should not be required wherefore I impute it to be a passage into its first matter Moreover that first matter of a Frog doth very much prevail in the healing of a Cancer life and is called by Paracelsus under a riddle Gluten de aquatico or the glew of the watery thing or Creature Therefore the Sun doth call forth the flowing of seeds unto the bound of the last life But the Moon on the contrary drawes to the first matter of a thing For seeing the Moon doth draw waters and fat or nourishable things into the juyce Leffas therefore a profitable observation of planting and dunging is referred to the Moon Also that Plants do profit no lesse by night than by day the family of Mustromes and Pompions doth shew Neither is the gathering of Plants before Sun-rising superstitious not indeed because nature like unto Serpents or creeping things ceaseth from its works by night but because they being the more plentifully nourished by the night have obtained a full nourishment Therefore the Moon is chief over the night darkness rest death and the waters As all things do return to death rest and water And for that cause doth the Moon bring in a passage to transmutation Indeed she doth primarily behold and move or affect rather the seminall powers than the matter of the same yea truly because the light of the Moon drawes back seminall things especially to their first life or matter therefore some Adeptists do begin the labour of wisdom with the light of the Moon according to that saying Night unto night sheweth knowledge to those that seek it Therefore two great Lights are sufficient for all motions and progresses of seeds from the first into the last life and from this into that For because they do abundantly suffice to the fruitful use of nature hence they do enroule the other Stars among their Bands And therefore the Scripture hath made mention onely of the two greater Lights Thus far of Fire and Light I being now about to speak of the birth of Forms will rehearse that the Masse of seeds do receive into them a corporall Air the Vulcan which I name the Archeus or Master-Workman Some seeds of Woods or Kernels or Oil do contain him in them as Almonds Pine-kernels Pistack-nuts and the seeds of many Pot-herbs or they are mealy seeds as Acorns Chesnuts and Corny or grainy seeds or they do powre forth a milky fruitful muscilage or slimy juyce For the Archeus inhabits them being drowsie and sleeping in the curd of the seeds being content with his condition as long as he is negligent of propagation But when his seed is once committed to the Earth he cannot but drink in his liquor and become swollen and then contract a Scituation and presently snatch to him a Ferment putrified by continuance Which Odour and Savour although it be putrified by continuance yet in every seed it is specificall and therefore altereth by
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
smoak Salt Pepper Aqua vitae Vinegar distilled Oils do preserve fleshes But at leastwise about the end of life there is on every side a great confusion of the thing and a large losse of strength So that seeds serving to the lower conjunction do oft-times die together from whence the chief assisting Vulcans of things being as it were sore affrighted with fear and as mercenaries do first run away Therefore although corruption doth induce a transmutation with the death of another thing it is not a privation neither doth it therefore necessarily follow generation as neither this it Even as those things which exclude each other by a succeeding presence as otherwise light and darkness do First of all our death subsisteth without the failing of the form without a necessitated destruction of the matter if the Mummy doth continue although it includes a seperation of the life or form For that doth not shew corruption to be present although it doth straightway follow of its own accord and be preserved by art At leastwise it sufficeth that corruption is not made the immediate heir of the thing constituted nor that it necessarily succeeds from its dying without a will So neither when a thing proceeds out of a seed not any corruption of the seeds doth go before or accompany it For it is an incongruity in word and deed that the promotions perfections and maturities of seeds have regarded corruption An errour of rashness is maintained in the Schooles through ignorance of naturall principles As that those things which are the works of nature are thought to be non-beings to be banished into the abstracted considerations of Learning by demonstration Truly when Aristotle was connived at to put by a large word Privation between a Being and a Being he began by taking a liberty to substitute corruption in the room of privation For that privation as it was not a Being and so a dreamed Being of reason it was yielded to by a liberty transumptive or of taking one thing for another without taking heed But the Schooles had understood that the same right ought not therefore to agree to corruption if their sluggishness of assenting could have suffered them to be distinct Wherefore the whole Stage of nature hath stood neglected through the thoughts of the Gentiles For truly the ferments Vulcans and flowings of seeds being neglected all the efficacy of Nature hath through the undeserved orders of privations been wrung aside into the fables of heats and colds their discords hatreds skirmishings and contrarieties and have made the searching into naturall Philosophy ridiculous Moreover I have called Magnum Oportet A necessary remaining of the properties of the middle life in the thing nourished and constituted From whence it followes that the same remainder of the middle life from meats and drinks are the Thistles and Thorns which the Earth was to bring forth after the fall or departure out of the right way otherwise Thistles Thorns as they are Plants are Creatures made for the use and adorning of the World before the fall I have also sometimes vainly thought that the tartarous humours of meats and drinks were those Thistles and Thorns Because the middle life subsisting but it subsisteth by a reall and true act it was in vain to feign forreign Tartarers as shall be shewen in its place But observingly it is not included that the water shall bring forth Thistles and Thorns although it may bring forth its discommodities For the fleshes of men and bruits living on the Earth do shew forth the aforesaid Thistles But Fishes are nourished within and without and are washed thorowly with Salt yet are their fleshes sweet But those which inhabit in mud do express the Thistles in the savour of their fleshes not from Water but from Earth Before sin our Archeus had not only perfectly transchanged meats after a daily manner but had supt up the whole properties of the middle life into his own rule or jurisdiction as if he were their Master For truly the immortall minde being then as yet without the mean of the sensitive life was the very immortall life it self unto and not capable of suffering by its own Body Even as touching long life in its place For Paradise in this respect had excluded death because it had excluded a successive change of us But the Tree of knowledge of good and evill alone had retained a property to it self that it could imprint to wit the dualities or double properties drawn out of things on our Archeus because the Companions of the middle life do easily adhere to each other Whence a Gate was laid open to duplicities interchangeable courses successive change and disorder At length jarring the breaker of agreement thus brought in the apple of discord For we afterwards feel the perpetuall Tyranny and multiplicity of Thistles and Thorns For as many specifical Savours and Odours as there are in things so many forreign properties of the middle life are suggested daily by nourishments For these are the strange ferments by whose interchangeable course we are wearied or much troubled For truly no generation doth any where happen which a foregoing disposition in the matter hath not stirred up therefore such a ferment alters the inbred Savour and Smell of things whence the Archeusses are by little and little withdrawn from the obedience of the seeds and do hearken to the mockeries or enticements of a forreign ferment In brief the remainders of the powers of the middle life as well in nourishments as excrements are almost the occasionall Beginning of all sicknesses and in this respect to us of the Thistle and Thorn For Odours and Savours do bring forth a desire a dislike or a neutrality in the Bodies of seeds But an appetite being thus moved doth paint an Image in the Archeus no otherwise than in the Young of one with childe which Image is the invisible essence of seeds stirring up to embrace or abhorre But the neutrall Odour serveth for station and rest If therefore in the middle life Savours do as yet remain in things transchanged it is frivolous that things shall weigh their vertues and essences by eight material and not specifical tasts Furthermore seeing it is called the middle life in respect of two extreames The first shall be of the received and working seed seated in the Archeus he being endowed with a power of managing things Which when it hath obtained some maturity as when the seed is a Body having flesh and tender bones according to the requirance of the Species then is the middle life of a thing present For it is meet to measure the life it self by the Archeus as it were the Mediator the Instrument of life Therefore the first life doth glister in the seeds but in the Embryo or imperfect young the middle life But the last life is when the total perfection of the constituted thing is present which indeed although it be the last life of the thing yet is it the
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
nature doth act all things by its own middle properties no aime of contrariety hatred or fight being proposed to it selfe For truly in the first place We believe it by faith to be true That God is the daily Authour and Governour of Nature and that every where his own creature doth as much as it can expresse and witnesse him in goodnesse In the next place That God is the fountainous Beginning of love concord and peace also that he hateth discords and contrarieties so that if he could have framed the Universe without brawlings and contrarieties there is no doubt but he hath done it But he could do that very thing most readily because he is Almighty and hath made all things as he would therefore also hath he done it The Subsumption is plain because nothing could resist him but what he would make free but the Seeds of things or the Agents of nature he hath not endowed with a freedom of willing therefore neither could the Agents of nature resist God And by consequence he made the Agents of nature according to the good pleasure of his own love goodnesse and peace For so when I take meat I never find in my self a contrariety as neither in the meats but if its abundance or quality shall offend me I find indeed a defect in me but not a contrariety If any one be averse to Cheese it argueth not a contrariety but a seminal disposition working some hurtfull thing through a seminal power directed by God For it listeth not us by reason of the necessary successive changes in things to call any hurtfull qualities the hostilities enmities of things Because we must speak properly in Phylosophy whereas otherwise words do change the sense and do estrange the Essences of things and especially when as thereby the whole constitution of healing is wrested aside to the destruction of man For contrariety doth not only bespatter the face of nature with as many vices as there are Agents and Properties of things but also seemeth to have accused the Parent of nature himself as if he were the Maker and Favourer of hatred and brawlings And so that the whole universe should be only an Inne of hostility a perpetuall Duel and a true infernal Fury no where expressing the Figure of its Creator Therefore contrarieties in nature are not from the Creator who despiseth them in things capable of choice much more in those things which himself hath framed according to the example of the Arch-type or first pattern Again The creature seeing it came out of nothing bears before it no Property from it self But if therefore contrarieties should proceed from errour alone from the accustomedness of Seeds being wrested aside then at least they should not subsist but in monstrous effects and therefore should be thrust rashly into the composure of nature And Lastly From hence it followes That the contrarieties of Seeds are only from God of which Assertion a Christian judgeth the folly For the Schools have never hitherto thorowly weighed how much these might differ from each other to have done any thing through a conception of contrariety and to have wrought any thing through the obedience of the Seeds due to the Properties given them by God For therefore to admit of contraries is to place errors in the intention means and end of nature Therefore we must know That nature doth altogether refuse contraries if we hope to attain its in-most tone or highest strain But that which the Schools have devised concerning radical heat at least they have forgotten That radicall cold doth marry it under the same vitall principle That contraries might rejoyce in their own equall right And they have opposed death only unto it out of the general kind Wherefore they have left that principal quality single without a contrary And leaving their own false Maxim That contraries are under the same general kinde and that they are predicated by as many equal turns on both sides For seeing death is a privation and non-Being it can never supply the place of a contrary according to the dictate of the Schools That it may be opposed to life or radicall heat seeing that which is not and which is nothing doth not stand under the same generall kinde with radicall heat Concerning the Fables whereof and the fictions of Primogenial or Radical moisture I have treated very largely in the Treatise of Long Life Again The Schools being dashed against the Rocks do now and then treat of heat and cold as potential things yet not as contraries because in every small drop or the least atome of Simples they determine heat and cold to be connexed and very excelling in strength to wit They declare in Opium a heightned cold to be and also a heat in its bitternesse And so also I have now rendred their knowledge drawn from savours ridiculous from one only example touching Relolleum's Because Seminal and Specificall Powers have by the Schools been rashly brought over into Elementary qualities or 〈◊〉 For they Divine cold to be in Opium although bewrayed by no judgement of the senses from its effects because they by a ridiculous dream have tied up the seminall sleepifying power unto cold As though the most High when he would send sleep into Adam had stirred up cold in him And as if after Dinner a notable cold in us should ascend into the head Truly the Schools do every way require an understanding for the obedience of an incomprehensible faith But if the Herb Flammula or Scarwort although it hath it self after an univocal or simple manner as much as in it layes unto all things whereunto it is applyed yet it doth not embladder a dead carkasse even as it doth a living body Because a dead carkasse is not moved actively or by its own motion by the poysonsom ferment of the Flammula Because those potential qualities are no more those of heat and cold than the Elementary ones are But the proper and formall-specificall efficacy of things Wherefore the device and testimony of rudeness or ignorance for contrariety is vain or foolish whatsoever hath been by the Schools subscribed to the desires of the Gentiles concerning heat and cold potential Seeing they deny potential heat to be the companion of actual heat under the same kinde under which notwithstanding they do collect contraries And so the rash history of temperaments hath drawn to it the vital and seminal faculties of things for it is unknown in the Schools that whatever acteth by reason of Salts is not of the proper power of the Seed but an accident varying by reason of the obiect For they have esteemed Lime as a most hot Simple because by its Salts it moved an escharre or crust in a wound Neither minded they that in Calx vive even as in Snow worms do of their own accord arise What is desired in this place I have elsewhere more largely explained concerning actions even as also touching the knowings of diseases Therefore hitherto I
so to be pressed together that the whole Arterie should wholly rush or fall down on it self perhaps therefore it is not unjustly cloathed with a double and harder coat For the discontinuance of that light is the cause that in one moment every chief faculty of the Brain in those that are hanged doth perish But not that the Spirit had so quickly vanished from the Brain Again if a pulsative motion should not be made a deadly cold would straightway arise and we should be more cold than a Frog So that although many things do live in the Winter time without breathing under the Clay yet not without a pulse Also the Ferment of the left bosome doth transchange its own arterial bloud not without a slow delay and would send it thorow the Body every way too slowly and therefore it should not satisfie the importunate necessities of the Spirits For let us feign a Bottle seasoned with an Odour but to be filled with Liquor up to its half For that Liquor shall scarce snatch the Odour of the Bottle but if it be shaken together that Odour also doth presently insinuate it self through the least parts of the Liquor So indeed is the vitall Ferment of the left bosom presently given to the Arterial bloud by the motion of the heart and doth compel it also to a hasty obedience of its own Impression For light is easily kindled by light and therefore also the Arteriall bloud being now quickned it easily snatcheth to it the light of that Sunny Lamp and is brought into a Skyie or Aiery off-spring Therefore the Blas of the heart is the Fewel of the vitall Spirit and consequently of its heat but the Spirit being thus enlivened is the mover of the heart almost neglected in the Schooles Also by consequence that motion is made for a necessary heat in Sunny constituted Animals and for the framing of Spirit in them Therefore I may not believe that the Pulse is appointed for a requisite cooling refreshment of the heart For truly things that have life do not war under the deadly Ensigns of cold neither do they intend or hearken to cold but onely do meditate on vitall things Indeed cold in us is a token because a Companion of death And therefore whatsoever it should attempt in the Fountain of life it should intend a taking away of life as also it should be destructive to our Monarchy so far is it that cold should be for necessity and co-temperaments sake For without a Pulse heat is not over-much kindled but straightway also life remaining heat dies For the Schooles being deceived do thus judge they thinking Elementary fire to be for the composition of Bodies and that fire in its heightned degree without which its fire ceaseth to be fire doth consist in the heart and that indeed Kitchin fire seeing else a ridiculous fire is to be far fetched from the concave of the Moon otherwise it should not by a loosed Bridle slide downwards safe at the pleasure of inferiour Bodies and contrary to its own disposition thorow so many colds of the Air unto the ordinary constitution of Simples And so if the Schooles had instead of radicall heat understood a fire feigned to be under the circle of the Moon they should improperly say that the same doth onely subsist in us as it were the Torch of radicall moysture Seeing else they dream that the fiery Element which they rashly feign doth alike unwisely live without a necessity and consuming of nourishment Therefore the Schooles do understand that there is in the heart a kindled Kitchinary and smoakie fire and that it is hot in a great degree and so that unless it be tempered by a continuall blast of new Air and all the smoakiness raised up by this fire be fanned out there is danger of choaking burning up and enflaming For so false authorities do bring forth false positions and through the ignorance of causes the speculations of healing have perished Truly in my judgement the Schooles ought at least to have remembred that the very blowing of the Bellowes doth not refresh or cool the fire but rather enflame it Neither do I see by what reason the motion of living Creatures may be the cause of their cooling refreshment In the next place I know that fire is in no wise to be joyned to the other Elements being divided by their least parts but that in an instant it is exstinguished I know also that its impossible that fire should be able to exist which is not truly fire and hot in the highest degree And so that if nature should attempt refreshment or cooling by a Pulse its endeavour should be foolish vain and impossible Whence a horrible thing followes that God in the ends proposed to himself hath actually erred Therefore let the Schooles repent But besides there ought to be a speedy transmutation of venall bloud into arteriall bloud and of this into vitall Spirit least that after faintings and tremblings of the heart under which are made most speedy divisions and scatterings of those Spirits so that the little pits of the small Pox or measills before not to be beheld do straightway appear as it were a necessitated death do invade Therefore aid was not to be fetched from far and to be deferred which his speedily required Indeed this is the reason why in a Fever the Pulse is swifter but not an expelling of smoakiness nor a greediness of cooling refreshment For truly let a Thorn be put in the loose or fleshy top of the finger there is presently a hard strong and more swift pulse but afterwards for the increase of the Pulse there is every where presently an increase of heat but not of cold and indeed as well before as without the births of smoakie vapours And then at the beginnings of intermitting Fevers after some houres and as long as the cold is delayed the Pulse is little slow deep or depressed yet putrefaction is kindled if the Schooles have spoken truth and therefore also the present smoakie vapour in the Schooles is the cause of the fit and they do thirst greatly in their cold and vomit up yellow choler Therefore also there ought to be a most frequent pressing together of the Pulse and the whole Pulse to be most exceeding swift Especially because many dying in those Fevers do perish in the cold a little before the Feverish fit through a great want of the Spirits and being as it were choaked But in troublesome heats also in an Erisipelas the burning Coal or Fever the Persick fire c. the vitall Spirit being incensed and as it were provoked to anger by the diseasifying cause waxeth exceeding hot as appeareth in the aforesaid locall also burning Inflammations whereas otherwise a temperate lightsome kindling doth on every side shine forth under a vitall Harmony yea that a little before death or sounding the horny membrane of the Eye is seen to be deprived of light the fire being not before in a burning
Some of our Religious Country-men are almost for a whole year so cold from the Foot even to the Belly that they do not feel that they have feet wherefore they should likewise be longer lived than us yea and their Legs should be like young mens when as their whole Breast is crisped with old wrinckles if primogeneal moisture being consumed by heat should afford an unavoidable necessity of death And likewise as well Fishes as those Religious men ought to refuse the daily refreshments of nourishment because scarce any thing doth exspire thorow the pores or if heat should be of the essence of our life certainly the part languishing with continual cold should either die or at least should be changed into a Fish Whence it is plain that heat is onely an adjacent to our life and its concomitant token but not the primary foundation thereof Therefore the Schools may see how unfitly they have hitherto circumscribed the whole constitutive temperature of nature in heat For far be it hereafter so blockishly to phylosophize and not to know that the consuming of moisture by heat which is terminated with in-thickning is one thing and that which is wholly moved forward to transpiration by an extenuating Ferment is by far another For this leaveth no residence behinde it but that a Sandy Stone or Coal But if an increased heat doth sometimes rise up in us so that it is that which doth as it were burn the members gangrene them and like fire make an Eschar or now and then doth eat into the flesh like a Dormouse those indeed are the works of corrosive degenerating lawless Salts that are banished from the vital Common-wealth So also by laxative poysons and Fluxes the whole venal bloud is resolved into putrefaction and the venal bloud being resolve by other poysons into a liquor Sunovie or Gleary water poyson jaundous excrement c. doth flow sorth oft-times most sharp and oft-times raging without a Corrosive For such kind of errors do happen in the life for therefore in a dead carcasse they do cease as they by a proper Blas do put on the animosity of nature corrupted by the Life and the life doth enflame a sword whereby it doth manifoldly hurt it selfe even as sometimes concerning diseases At length whether there be any Animal spirit to be distinguished in the Species from the Vital or whether the disputation thereof be a true brawling about a name I have shewn what a thing is in it self whereunto a name adds nothing or can take away nothing The vital spirit doth climb through the chief Arteries into the head But in the heart or middle of the Brain there is one onely bosom which being beheld above seemeth double but its Vault being lifted upwards it sheweth a onenesse Moreover in this bosom the Arteries do end into a certain wrinckled vessel plainly of another weaving or texture than is the other compaction of Arteries Hereby indeed the vital spirit flowes abroad and exspireth into the bosom of the Brain for the service of the chief faculties to wit of the imagination judgement and memory Hereby also it proceeds to be distributed into the small mouths of the Sinews beginning from the Brain So that if it be to be called Animal as receiving or under-going in the Brain a limitation of the part it doth obtain the properties fit for an appointed function yet it doth not therefore seem diverse from the vital by its matter and efficient cause For truly in the largeness of its own vital light it is capable of all those Properties without the thorow changing of its native essence For that Spirit which is thrust forth unto the tongue doth exercise the tasting but that same doth not tast in the fingers but doth every where receive a particular Character of Organs or Instruments and puts on a particular property The which if thy mind carry thee to distinguish from the vital spirit there shall again be as many essential divisions of the spirit as there are offices and as many as there are services divided by the pluralities of offices In the mean time understand the thing and call it as thou listest For I am not contradictory to the Schools out of a stomackful passion for I being admonished by a superiour Authority ought only to have laid open their errours and to teach things unknown Let they themselves likewise disclose my errours or mistakes with an equal mind surely I shall rejoyce if so be that onely my neighbour do obtain the profit which I wish CHAP. XXVII Heat doth not digest efficiently but only excitatively or by way of stirring up 1. Heat is not the proper instrument of digestion 2. What hath deceived the Schools herein 3. The defences of the Schools 4. The rashness of Paracelsus 5. The anguishes of the Schools 6. They forgot their own Maxim concerning contraries 7. They have constrainedly made heat and the predicament of heat more powerful than fire 8. Digestion and Seething do differ 9. Ferments are angry because they are put after 10. What the univocal action of heat is 11. A fish digesteth without heat 12. There is no place for potential heat in things to be digested 13. An Argument of hunger 14. Another from the unity of specifical heat 15. The third from a Maxim 16. Another Argument 17. Why sowre belching after the savour of burntish ones is good 18. Why one sick of a Fever abhorreth fleshes 19. From the scope of healing 20. The admiring of Paracelsus 21. An error of the same man 22. The digestive sorce of Hens 23. The Authour being as yet a Boy learned the true cause of digestion 24. He knew resolving to be from sowrnesse 25. We grow old only through extream want of Ferments 26. The quality of a fermenting sowrnesse 27. Whence is the dislike of some meats 28. The forces of ferments 29. Mice accuse the Schools of errour 30. Why the Ferment of the stomack is divers from it self 31. A commendation of the Spleen 32. Degrees of heat and cold do vary 33. The errours of the Schools concerning the degrees of Elements 34. The degrees of Chymicall heat 35. The Authour hath made degrees of distinction 36. Moisture and drynesse are not to be considered as qualities 37. Why they do not admit of degrees 38. Hence trifles were introduced by the Antients into the doctrine of the Elements BEcause the whole foundation of nature is thought to hang on the hinge of heat and the Elements mixtures and temperaments are already banished far off therefore to establish the progeny of the Archeus and vital Spirits we must hence following speak of digestions The which because the Schools have enslaved to heat I will shew that heat is not the proper instrument of digestions Indeed the metaphor of digestion hath deceived the Schools to wit it being by a Poetical liberty borrowed from a rustical sense introduced they have made concoction of the same name with digestion And as they knew seething
womb taste effect and end All which the Schools are hitherto ignorant of because erring in the use of the Gaul For in the first digestion the stomack is the receptacle but the Spleen doth inspire from it self a sour ferment into the meats and a sour Cream is thereby made But in the other the slender entrails are the stomack but the ferment is inspired from the gaul for the corruption and seperation of the watery part and a sharp volatile salt is changed into a Salt volatile one But that this might be done by a speedy touch I shall at sometime shew by some Handicraft operations To wit that the Oyl of Vitriol is by the only touching of Mercury converted into a meer Alum Vinegar and Salt c. Also straightway after drink there is oft-times a watery pissing made yet Salt and the mark of the first digestion is scarce conceived but that a notable part of the drink slides forth under an errour of the Pylorus and by consequence there was not made a seperation of the Urine from the bloud in the Liver Because the venal bloud is not as yet made in the Liver if the Chyle it self be as yet made or concocted out of meats in the stomack To wit when drinkers do very often make water after meat Therefore also Urine is made of watery drink yea out of drink from whence venal bloud was not made and so the generating of Urine doth there go before Sanguification At length the very veins of the Mesentery are the stomack of the third digestion which way the Liver inspires a bloudy ferment and a very red or ruddy salt venal bloud is the effect thereof For the wounds of the Gaul are presently mortal but those of the Liver not so If the eâ—ore the Gaul were likewise Choler death would of necessity follow every effusion of the Gaul Nevertheless the yellow Jaundise is not mortal although the Gaul as the same Schooles do teach is not onely diffused over the entrails but throughout the whole Body equally longly largely deeply and throughout its least part Therefore either a wound of the Gaul doth import more than the effusion of Choler or the Jaundise is not effused Choler or both is necessary Wounds of the Bladder also being inflicted above the share as successful Wurtz is witness in my judgement the Standard-defender of the more modern Chyrurgioâ—s are cured although the Urine together with its Gaul as they will have it cannot but be powred forth at that very time or moment Therefore the Chest of the Gaul hath a necessity and Integrity fast tied to the life by reason of sudden death Neither is it the effusion of that gawly superfluity which doth necessitate that speedy death Again Birds do live prosperously without Kidneys or a Bladdâ—r yet not without a Gaul wherefore there is a more conjoyned necessity of the Gaul than of Kidneys Because that the Kidneys being rockie and putrified the life is safe And then Fishes according to the Doctrine of the Schools do abound with very much phlegme and are destitute of actual heat they are onely nourished with cold bloud and watery food At length their excrements easily glistering they had no need of a spur the Gaul Wherefore seeing the ends matter and efficient cause of the Gaul attributed by the Schools should fail in a Fish surely we shall believe that the Liver is vainly deceitfully and by the errour of nature yea and of the Creator wearied unless we had rather acknowledge perpetual errours in the Schools and to contemplate some greater moment of a necessary bowel to be in the Gaul From hence therefore I determine the Gaul to be a vital Bowel and its very Body to be a bitter Liquor prepared of the best venal bloud containing the Balsam of the Liver and Arterial bloud But whatsoever it by chance casts back of it self into the bowel Duodenum is the excrement of it self and a Liquor now despised of the Gaul But that these things have themselves after this manner I have at sometime shewen under the impostures of Choler by the example of a Calf whoâ—e motherly and sweet milk waxeth sour and is coagulated in the stomach and therefore affords Runnet for Cheeses For milk is made a watery Cream but little of coagulated milk But that Cream contains Urine and venal bloud but another coagulated Body which of pale begins to wax yellow is made dung But that baggage straightway falling into the Duodenum doth proceed unto the Ileos being coagulated and waxeth of a Citron colour the more by how much it hath departed farther from the stomach and at length it waxeth green yet there is not bitterness in the yellow but a nitrous taste But in the green the smell of Dung doth now plainly appear But the wheyie Cream is presently drawn and supped up with greediness by the meseraick veins for the use of sanguification Likewise Milk is stirred in Infants whence also those that are the more young ones do cackie all yellow not from the plenty of Choler neither by reason of the domination of the Chest of the Gaul but surely because the ferment of their Dung is feeble Therefore the ferment of the Gaul doth not change the sourness of the stomach into bitter but into Salt for the reasons explained concerning the Spirit of life Spare me ye more tender eares because I ought to treat of Dungs I will therefore shew that the savour of Dung excludes the Gaul that it befools the use of the Gaul invented by the Schools and convinceth Choler of a fiction A Boy of four years old had fowled in Bed but being much afraid of whipping he ate his own Dung yet â—e could not blot the sign out of the sheets wherefore being asked by threatnings he at length tells the chance But being asked of its savour he said it was of a stinking and somewhat sweet one For among other things he had eat Pease-pottage but he complained that the undigested husks or brans of the Pease were notably soure for there is not an equal vigilancy of the ferment of the Gaul over thick and undigested Dungs as there is over transparent things and those things which are to be prepared into the dignity of venal bloud I came by chance unlooked for the same day and I diligently enquired a price being also added whether those things which he had eaten were bitter He answered negatively and the same as before Likewise Nuns did Board noble Maids sufficiently sober at their Table but they continually preached that they who did eat dainty fare should have their parts with the rich Glutton but that they onely should be saved who by the every way denyal of mortification did eat any the most vile things Therefore a noble little Virgin being very desirous of her Salvation and much moved by the aforesaid perswasion eats her own Dung and was weak or sick But she was called home again by her Parents and at length told
the chance She was asked thereupon of what savour it was and she answered it was of a stinking and waterishly sweet one Thirdly a Painter of Bruxels being mad between whiles about the beginning of his madness escapes into a Wood near by and was there found far from the sight of men to have lived 23 dayes by his own Dung He was straightway brought home I went to see him and the Lord healed him But he was perfectly mindeful of all things past at the time of his madness I asked him whether he remembred of what savour his Dung was He said it savours as it smells And being afterwards examined by me through the Capital tasts he answered it was not sour not bitten sharp salt but waterishly sweet Yea he said that by how much the oftner he had re-earen it by so much it had alway been the sweeter But being asked for what cause he had rather eat Dung than return home He said that he throughout his whole madness abhorred men being perswaded by his own fury that men sought to destroy him by a snare Therefore it is manifest that there is not even the least drop of Gaul in the Dung for the Gaul being once burst however a Fish may afterwards be most exactly washed yet the bitterness of the Gaul conceived by the least touching is never laid aside For if yellowness should bewray the Gaul the dung of Infants should be especially gawly which notwithstanding is licked by Dogs because it hath as yet retained some kinde of savour of the milk But whatsoever hath not been fully subdued in the stomach nor hath assumed the beauty of a transparency may not hope to be digested in the bowels by the ferment of the Gaul although it be tinged with a yellow colour Because it goes not to the second or third but thorow the absolute first Whatsoever therefore is thick and tinged with heat in the Ileos that is wholly banished into an excrement and under a certain sweetness doth attain the savour of putrefaction No otherwise than as soure fruits wax sweet by a little heat But whatsoever was before sour in the stomach that is made salt in the Duodenum and is severed from the Dung but if any thing do persevere sour which may resist the ferment of the Gaul wringings of the bowels c. do presently follow But the excrement of man doth putrifie because the ferment of the dung is chief over that place But that which slides out of the stomach undigested also is not digested in the bowels It is cast out whole but it keeps and now and then increaseth the part of sournesses which it assumed in the stomach For from hence do the brans in bread provoke the stool by reason of sharpness but other things do wax more sharp and stir up wringings of the guts Therefore from the Duodenum the Chyle doth forthwith begin to exchange its own sharp volatile Salt into an equall saltness it being resolved in the Cream But the remaining and more corporal substance of the Cream doth expect a sanguification in the veins of the mesentery from the inspired ferment of the Liver The salt Liquor in the mean time being attracted by the Reins thorow the Liver is it self committed to the Reins and Bladder for expulsion Therefore the third digestion begins in the veins of the mesentery which is terminated in the Liver For the venal bloud as long as it is in the mesentery is not yet digested not yet thredded or perfect For the venal bloud of the mesentery doth therefore not grow together in the Bloudy flux But otherwise a vein of the stomach being burst the venal bloud doth forthwith wax clotty in the stomach For the ferment of the Liver is so much inclined to sanguification for it is its univocal and one onely office that the veins do even by the right of league retain or hold that from the Liver and its proper implanted Archeus thereupon confirming it So that the bloud in the veins of a dead Carcase is not coagulated a long while after death which being elsewhere powred forth doth presently wax clotty For the Cream running down afterwards thorow the Bowels becomes the dryer and also the liquid matter thereof being sucked upwards into the veins But thereby the rest doth more and more putrifie so that when it is almost brought down to the ends of the Ileos now not a little of a more liquid Dung is generated because before it hath fully putrified it is snatched to the mesentery that it may be thorowly mingled with the Urine profitable for its ends Even as elsewhere concerning Fevers and likewise concerning the Stone Which yellow Dung the Schooles have believed to be Choler and Gaul and so out of the Dung they have founded their demonstration for one of the four humours and a Gate hath thereby layen open to miserable errours and wicked slaughters For it was of little regard for them hitherto to have built up their false significative knowledge by the unknown substance of the tincture of the Urine but to have made Choler and Gaul the constitutive humours of us the causers of all Diseases to wit to have feigned yellow Choler and that a little the more digested to be adust and like the cankering of Brasse and from thence to be dry and scorched melancholy or black Choler but the gaul it self to be the sink of superfluous Choler but the venal bloud to be nothing but an artificial Body connexed of many things or humours which being again seperated they should be the same after their death as before in their life but that a Body is not born of Mother nature by a true transmutation of the Chyle into univocal or simple venal bloud and at length to have instituted healings about the removing of accomplished causes which never will be or were in nature Surely that thing doth exceed gross ignorance and renders the Snorters of the Schooles unexcusable But perhaps they will object to me Thou sayest that the veins do suck the Cream being slidden out of the stomach into the intestines therefore the same office belongs to the veins of the stomach that they may draw that sour Cream into themselves without the interceding of the Ferment of the Gaul that is without changing of the Sour into Salt And by consequence thy ferment of the Gaul is a dreamed and invented thing yea meat broath injected by a Clyster shall be able to pierce to the Liver without the knowledge of the Gaul touching the right of a Clyster I have finished this question in the Book of Fevers I answer that it is an antient abuse of the Schooles who have equally attributed the same use to all the veins As if the veins seperated in the arms should busie themselves in drawing of the Cream First of all I have already shewen that the bloud in the veins is coagulable the bloud of the Mesentery not so And then we must know that all sour Cream is
it be the same and co-like then that one onely snivel is not the superfluity of both bowels therefore as the Keeper being well affected doth scarce produce any snivel and that likewise according to opportunity so being provoked it brings forth snivel according to its own indignation and the property of the bowel receiving To wit a fury being snatched to it it brings forth a Salt biting sharp and stinking thing or quality in its snivel exceeding a mean in quality and quantity For from hence are their gnawings of the vvind-pipe and from thence Consumptions and bloudy spittings c. For although an Imposthume full of matter may bring forth divers difficulties of breathing and straightnesses of the Breast yet scarce Consumption-Coughs Therefore I have thought these to spring from the hurting of the rough Artery or vvind-pipe But that the Keeper doth not touch at the Essence of the Brain I conjecture from a strong young man to me known who morning and evening hath daily undergone miserable spittings by reaching for some years he being in the mean time strong enough in his Brain Sinews and Muscles But where one of the faculties is notably hurt but the other not at all they must needs be both divers in property and Essences wherefore also the Keeper of the vvind-pipe and Head do far differ Therefore the Air after that it is brought down thorow the Lungs into the Breast and thrusts downwards the very transverse partition which is named the Diaphragma or Midriffe into a circular form then therefore the Diaphragma pierceth the pores thereof and straineth the drunk-in Air thorow it self which thing Odours drawn by some nostrils and at length returned by belching do teach For so the fume of Coals doth provoke vomit and doth sooner affect the Stomach than the heart yea the Sent of a dead Carcafe is felt about the Stomach long after So also a VVoman great with young bearing 〈◊〉 a dead child the very dead Carcase smells in her breath For that smell passing thorow her Womb and Midriffe teacheth that breathing is serviceable not onely for the cooling refreshment of the heart but for the whole Body So also from a pining fume others have shewen that their Stomach was tinged with yellowness by reason of smoaks So also the Stomach abhorreth the smells of loosening Medicines received although those very purging Medicines are cloaked with Sugar and Spice because it perceiveth the same Odours by its own smelling Therefore if an Odour doth proceed in a straight line unto the Stomach the Air also doth The Plague it self being introduced by an inspired breathing is forged for the most part about the Stomach therefore vomitings Head-ach drowsiness c. do accuse and shew the Stomach to be affected CHAP. XXXV The Image of the Minde 1. The fear of the Lord is the Beginning and Charity is the end of Wisdom 2. Man was made after the Image of God 3. Three Ranks of Atheists 4. The Authours wish 5. The Intellectual Vnderstanding of the minde 6. The intimate Integrity of the minde suffereth by frail things without the passion of extinguishing 7. The action of the minde is scarce felt or perceived in us 8. The first Atheists are scoffers at the divine Image 9. The second Atheists have newly arose 10. The Atheistical ignorance of this is manifested 11. The variety of vital Lights 12. The minde how it differs from an Angel 13. An intellectual Vision of the Authour 14. Every wish or desire without God is vain 15. The Authours misery 16. The Vision of the minde being separated from the Body 17. That the minde is figured 18. The minde is an immortal Substance figured with the figure of God 19. A common errour about the Image of God 20. The errour of those who think the Image of God to be placed in a ternary of Powers 21. Against the opinion of Taulerus 22. The Image of God in man hitherto not evidently shewen because it is incomprehensible 23. The minde is damned by accident 24. After death there is no more memory or remembrance 25. The will was accidentally over-added to the minde after its Creation 26. In Heaven the will is void 27. A will appeares in Heaven not indeed a power but a substantial intellectual Essence 28. If the minde be the Image of God this was known to Plato 29. The definition of the minde 30. That Reason is not the Image of God 31. The Authours Opinion 32. These two thinglinesses or Essences do lay hid in the Soul through the corruption of Nature 33. This love is onely raised up by an extasie not otherwise in the miseries of this nature 34. A precision or abreviating of the Vnderstanding 35. An Objection is solved 36. That a triplicity or ternary in the minde is unfolded in every Susteme or Constitution of the World 37. A Similitude for the Image of God is far another thing than that of a ternary 38. A repeated description of the minde 39. How the minde doth behold itself 40. The constitutive Birth of the Phantasie 41. The minde doth understand far otherwise 42. The Prerogative of the minde 43. An explaining of living love 44. The differences of Vnderstandings in mortal men 45. Why that desire doth not cease in heaven 46. A description of desire 47. How sin is in the desire of the mind 48. The love of the mind is a substance even in mortal men 49. How great darknesse hath veiled the minde by the corruption of nature 50. The Image of God quite marred or trodden under foot in the damned THe beginning of Wisdome is the fear of the Lord but the fear of the Lord begins from the meditation of eternal death and life But most of the Moderns with 〈…〉 Stoicks suppose the end of wisdome to be the knowing of ones own self I call the ultimate end of wisdome and the reward of the whole course of life Charity or dear love which accompanieth us after other things have forsaken us Wherefore also the knowledge of ones own self according to me is onely a mean unto the fear of the Lord. And the knowledge of life doth presuppose the knowledge of the soul because the life and soul are as it were Sunonymals And indeed it is believed by faith that man was created into a living creature of nothing after the image or likenesse of God and that his mind is never to perish or die But that other souls when they cease to live do depart into nothing The weights of which difference elsewhere concerning the birth of Forms But hitherto it is not sufficiently manifest wherein that likenesse with God our Arch-type or chief or first Example doth consist I will speak what I perceive under an humble subjection to the Church There is no knowledge more burthensome than that whereby the soul comprehends it self although none be more profitable Because the whole faith doth stablish its foundation upon the unobliterable or undefaceable substance of the soul I have found
the minde it self is a meer clear or lightsom understanding For in this its very own light the minde being separated from the Body seeth and understandeth it self wholly throughout the whole to which end there is neither need of a brain nor heart To wit in which Organs or Instruments the substance of the minde doth seem onely to assume the race of properties Surely while the abstracted understanding it self doth make use of corporeal Instruments in the Body unto which it is bound and as by its Seat of the sensitive Soul it is drowned in the depth of the corrupt nature thereof it representeth and assumeth a qualitative faculty which is called Imagination The which from the Society of the imaginary power the Splendor of the sensitive Soul and understanding it self being degenerated in the Organs doth rise up by a certain combination into the aforesaid qualitative power Therefore that faculty is wearied by imagining faileth or waxeth feeble also it oft-times becomes mad and by imagining the hairs wax white or grey But the minde being once separated is never tired in understanding Moreover the Imagination in living persons is not onely wearied but also it hath not from it self intellective representations which it hath not drawn from sensible objects And therefore the intellective power which concurreth with the imaginary office of the sensitive Soul doth follow the disposition of the Organ and the will of the sensitive life no otherwise than as elsewhere in natural things the effect doth follow the weaker part of its own causes But whatsoever the Soul doth require to know and will for once or for oftner times that it hath wholly from it self and not from a stranger without For the good substantial will of a blessed Soul doth not arise from the thing understood but it is its own goodness of love by which the blessed minde is substantially and not qualitatively good Which Prerogative it hath because it is the typical Image of the Divinity But Bodies do slide by a perpetual free accord into the attributes of Forms their diversity of kinde successive changes and dissolutions Therefore the love or desire of the minde is not the office of an appetitive power but the minde it self is intellectual and willing which things are undivideably coupled under unity in as great a sameliness and simplicity as may be yet in mortalls they are separated as well by reason of the necessity of Organs unlikenesses of Functions as the mixture of the sensitive Soul For truly now we often desire those things which the understanding judgeth not to be desired and the will could wish not to come to passe But it must needs be that things whose operations are different the same things should be distinct in the Root of their own essence after the manner whereby all particular things are separated In the minde indeed by a relative supposingness only but in the sensitive Soul according to a corporeal and qualitative nature And therefore that amorous or loving desire of the mind is the substance of the Soul And although in Heaven there be a full satiety of desirable things and a perpetual enjoyment of them yet the desire of the minde which is a study of complacency doth not therefore cease neither doth this bring a passion on the minde any more than Charity it self Because they are those things which in the Root are one and the same otherwise the aforesaid desire ceasing a satiety or full satisfaction should cease or an unsensibleness of fruition or enjoyment should even presently arise in Heavenly Wights Therefore that desire or love is the fewel of an unterminable or endless delight Therefore it is manifest that understanding will and love are things substantially co-united in the minde But in the sensitive Soul that operations are distinguished from the Root of divers faculties while we understand things that are not desired we also desire things we would not nor do plainly know Lastly we will while any one inclines to punishment those things which we do not desire but we would not have it so From whence it happens that desire doth overcome the will and likewise the will doth compel the desire and so that there are mutual and fighting Commands All which things do happen in mortal men as long as the sensitive Soul doth draw its own powers into a manifold disorder of division So impossible things are foolishly desired things past likewise things present are desired or wished not to have happened But the desire whereof I speak laying hid in the minde unless it were of the essence of the minde he that hath seen a Woman to lust after her should not sin before a consent of the will Therefore we now desire by the faculties of the minde emulous or striving in the sensitive Soul the effects whereof are refused by the will and judgement Also in the manner for now the desire or love worketh one way and the will another Likewise in the motion of the day or in duration desire goes before or followes willing and one thing successively overcomes another that it may restrain any thing distinct from it self and that wholly in mortal Creatures because it is from the animosity of the sensitive Soul But in those that are in Heaven that love riseth again as it were the substance of the minde for there nothing is desired which is not willed And that is collected into a oneness as well in respect of act as substance Although they have their suppositions in the Root diverse which doth plainly exceed the manner of understanding in mortals Because indeed the Kingdom of God is now in man but after an incomprehensible manner but after death the same Kingdom collecteth all things into its own unity Therefore the chief or primary Image of God is in the minde whose very essence it self is the veriest Image it self of God which Image or likeness can in this life be neither thought with the heart nor expressed by words because it shewes forth the Similitude of God without which there is to other image in us which may be offered to our conception For therefore the very minde is also wholly unknown to it self And then in the husk of the minde or in the sensitive and vital form there is the same Image shining back in the powers according to the manner of the receiver because it is over-shadowed by a brutal generation being frail and defiled through impurity At length the Body hath not borrowed so much the essentifical Image of the Light of God but the figure onely But the miserable minde being devolved into utter darkness from the uncreated Light whereby it hath separated it self hath so lost the native light of the Image by reason of appropriation as if it were proper unto it from a due behoof whereby it afterwards understandeth willeth or loveth nothing besides it self and for it self And therefore in rising again it shall not represent the Image of God that is strangled or stifled
the faculty of concupiscence in the Stomach and Liver 15. Whither this speculation tends 16. They have also against their wills assented to the Paradox of the Authour 17. The seat of the mind is the same with that of the sensitive soul 18. The manner of existing in its seat 19. A piercing of Souls 20. What the sensitive soul is 21. A similitude of its existence 22. Heat is not the fountain of the light of life but the light of the Archeal life or product 23. What the mind is 24. By the comming of the sensitive soul death hath entred 25. A comparison of the dignity lost and obtained 26. The Spleen for the Duumvirate 27. The dignities of offices 28. All foolish madnesses do from hence take their beginning 29. A remarkable thing touching the examination of remedies a further progresse being denied 30. How immortality did stand 31. A change of the State 32. A Corollary of what hath been said 33. The errour of the Schools THE Sur-name of a Duumvirate or Sheriff-dome may astonish the Reader with the terrour of novelty wherefore I am first to render a reason of its Etymologie and afterwards I shall explain its government Before all things the seat of the mind is to be searched into For although the soul be every where where the life of it is yet as the Sun is not properly but in his own place in heaven although the light thereof be wheresoever he casts his aspect There is altogether the same judgment concerning the central place of the Soul But there is a strife about the center or place of exercise of the soul in the body And the Standard-defenders being as it were hung up in the air do encounter over this thing noâ— having a foundation where to fix their foot For Plato contends for the Heart for whom the Holy Scriptures seem to vote while they reach that out of the Heart proceed Murders Adulteries c. But Physitians do respect the Head as it were the Inn of discourse and understanding especially because the heart by such an unwearied motion of a stirred pulse cannot but make the soul to be troubled and unquiet Those that baptize do follow the opinion of Physitians Neither are there those wanting in the mean time who determine the immortal mind to be so every where and equally in the body that they will have it to abide in no certain seat no more than it can be tied or bound by the body And so they suppose the soul to be a wandring â—oving inhabitant of an uncertain cottage and to be every way dispersed where life is present But they do not regard that some parts are cut off the life remaining safe but that others being lightly smitten do presently bring death on the whole body Some one oftentimes by his mangled face and head as it were diminished testifies death to be present with him whose heart notwithstanding by its lukewarmth and pulse doth promise the soul to be as yet present And that thing is daily seen in those that do long play the Champion A certain Bride being willing to celebrate her marriage in Opdorp nigh Scalds because the Governour of the place was there is saluted by her retainers with the noyse of Guns But one of them dischargeth a Gun laden with a Ledden Bullet but it pierceth the Coach and the Temples of the Bride She presently falls down and is reckoned a dead Woman But Opdorp is seven Leagues distant from Vilvord whither when she was brought proceeding to Bruxels her Head was a dead Carcase cut in thin pieces and plainly cold yet nigh her heart I noted a luke-warmth and pulse Likewise a certain Image fell from a high place on the Crown of a Woman so as that the whole top of the Scull had depressed the Brain almost two fingers in breadth She was reckoned to have been dead yet there was a slender pulse in both Arms six houres after and it was noted by many A certain studious man being strong strikes another sitting at the Table with his fist about the orifice of the Stomach who presently fell down with a foaming mouth and being lifted up by us into his Seat he was forthwith deprived of Pulse and before Grace was read his whole Body was cold as Ice A Carter being thrust thorow about the mouth of the Stomach with a Dagger with a foaming mouth presently dieth he is also deprived of all Pulse and heat Therefore under a humble Censure of the Church I will declare another Paradox Although life be a token of the Soul and this life be every where yet as by the cutting of a finger or foot the Soul doth not fly away nor the life of the whole Body neither yet can the Soul or life be divided into parts that the Soul in its whole integral part may be any way dividable and that death seemes to be near through the hurting of a more noble member In the mean time it is certain that the life in the member cut off doth presently perish although a part of the Soul be not therefore taken away from the whole Body Therefore it is manifest from thence that the Soul doth not sit centrally in whatsoever part there is an operation and presence of life And it must needs be that the Seat of the Soul is in some place as it were its proper and central mansion For from thence it dismisseth its lightsom and vital Beames by the Archeus the Instrument of the vital light Because the Soul it self is a certain light and clear substance in the minde but in other Souls it is indeed a light yet not a substance As elsewhere concerning the Original of Forms The Creator to whom be all honour hath kept a certain progresse from a like thing who instructs us in the Seat-royal of the Soul that from the more grosse things we may consider things more abstracted For in a Tree an Argument is peculiarly drawn from a Tree by reason of the prerogative of the Tree of Life is seen a Root the vital beginning of it self For truly in the Root as it were in a Kitchin a forreign juyce of the Earth is cocted altered is alienated from its antient simplicity of water and undergoes the disposition of a vital Ferment there placed But being cocted it is distributed from thence that it may more and more be constrained and become like according to the necessity of every further Cook-room which hath established Lawes for the Spirit inhabiting So in the middle Trunck of the Body of man is the Stomach which is not onely the Sack or Scrip or the pot of the Food but in the Stomach especially in its Orifice or upper mouth as it were in a Central point and Root is the Principle of life of the digestion of meats and the disposing of the same unto life most evidently established For whatsoever natural Phylosophers have ever thorowly weighed concerning the heart that is of great moment they will
wheresoever the beginning of conceptions is felt But those are called forces which are not in our power because they are the first conceits of the sensitive soul as yet out of order and not yet diligently examined by the command of the minde But that which I write touching the seat of the sensitive soul I understand also for the immortal minde For truly the minde hath not a subject more near and like to it self wherein it may be entertained than that vital light which is called the sensitive soul wherein indeed the minde is involved and tied by the bond of life by the Command of God But the sensitive soul perishing through the annihilating of it self the minde cannot any longer subsist in the Body and therefore it hastens to the Being of Beings that it may passe unto places appointed for it Therefore the radical Bride-bed of the sensitive soul is in the vital Archeus of the stomach and it stands and remains there for the whole life-time Not indeed that the sensitive soul is entertained in the stomach as it were in a Sack Skin membrane pot prison little Cell or bark neither is it comprehended in that seat in manner of Bodies enclosed within a purse but after an irregular manner it is centrally in a point and as it were in the very undividable middle of one membranous thickness And it is in a place nevertheless not plainly locally But because every Soul is a light given by the Father of Lights and Creator of things but I have proved elsewhere that lights are immediately in place and mediately in a placed Air So also the sensitive Soul is in a place or seat whereof I write at this present But the minde seeing it is a lightsome substance it pierceth a created light which is the sensitive soul and this likewise pierceth the minde and blunts it with its contagion of the corruption of Adam of which in the Book of long life concerning the entrance of death into man Therefore the frail mortal sensitive soul is a meer vital light given by the Father of Lights neither is it declarable after another manner or word seeing that in the whole World it hath not its like besides the light of a Candle the which because it burns may be compared to a spark yet onely by an analogical and much unlike similitude and as it were by the more outward husk Therefore indeed that sensitive soul although it be locally present and be entertained in a place yet it is not comprehended in a place otherwise than as the flame of a Candle is kindled in an exhalation and the light in that flame is as it were life in the aforesaid soul yet vital lights are never parching but are separated by as many diversities as there are differences of souls And from thence is God called by S. James the Father of Lights Therefore the heat of things soulified is not of the Fountain-light of the soul but a heating light of the vital life and so it is the product of life but not the life it self And therefore also it is emulous of a Sunny light even as in a Fish the vital light is actually cold because it is of the nature of the Moon And for that cause God made onely two and sufficient lights for the life of sublunary things yet the light of which light or the souls themselves are the subjects of inherency And they are altogether neither Creatures between a substance and an accident because of the Country of the intelligible world Therefore in the sensitive soul for neither ever elsewhere in frail things as it were a spiritual light made by the Father of Lights is the Immortal minde conjoyned and the which also by the hand of the Almighty every where present or by an Angel is co-knit unto the sensitive soul by the bond of life that is of a vital light which is an unseparable property of the aforesaid light But the immortal minde it self is a clear or lightsome incorporeal substance immediately shewing forth the Image or likeness of its God because it hath received the same engraven on it in creating or in the very instant of enlivening or quickning For both souls are created at once and conjoyned by God who will never attribute his own Honour of Creator unto any Creature But before the fall of Adam there was not a sensitive soul in man but by what meanes or after what manner that together with death hath descended at once into humane nature that shall be shewed in its own place At least by the coming of the sensitive soul death hath entred and the corruption of our whole nature and the Majesty and Integrity of our former nature was obliterated or blotted out For truly while the minde did immediately perform the offices of life neither was the sensitive soul as yet present immortality was also present neither had beast-like darkness occupied the understanding And so man indeed suffered Ship-wrack in his own nature and that an unrestorable one but by the new birth under the calamities of tribulations maâ—â—s exalted in a far more excellent manner while from the image of God he is taken as adopted for his Son Furthermore it is altogether necessary that every motion of the first force and of the first conception of the soul doth happen in the chamber of the soul which thing although it be chiefly felt about the Orifice of the stomach and God be admirable in his works because indeed it hath well pleased him to dispose such admirable powers in the membranes of the stomach womb and skins that cover the Brain because they do bear before them as it were a certain image of a Common-wealth yet I have found the Spleen readily to serve for the ferment of the stomach and for the Sun Cocter and Directer thereof Therefore I have decreed to call the conspiracy of both Bowels the Duumvirate or Sheriff-dome For although the digestive ferment and the like aids may seem to shew forth a Family-service of servants yet the service of houshold-servants in vitals as it contains a power and strength so also it promiseth dignity and authority So that as in the stomach there are feelings faintings of the whole body and most sensible manifest and open priviledges of coctions neverthelesse the vital breathing-hole causing the digestions of so manifold arteries and so mightily of the stomach hath commanded that without a duality disagreement or powerful preferrence there ought to be made one Family-administration of both Bowels indeed by divers offices into one conspiring scope although both do singularly attend on their own work therefore also separated in place Truly there is one onely endeavour of the Duumvirate and agreeing and set harmony of intention Therefore the neighbouring Spleen doth lay on the stomack without as if it would nourish the same by a lively co-weaving of arteries Not indeed that the arteries do give all force or virtue to the Spleen but they have themselves as
thing desired if any one be angry it is even one and the same power For neither without injury of the other powers are the two aforesaid ones sequestred from the Bowels For fear love desire hatred drowsinesse or unaptnesse and joy have not divers stables Because all such powers are of the one soul but not dis-joyned houshold-servants of any kind of perturbations For truly when the soul is angry and while it rejoyceth or loveth although it be diversly affected and â—â—cyphereth as it were divers masks in Idea's yet this is not the office or work of the Orgâ—â—s but the passions of the one and only soul which because they are the works of the flesh and the interchangeable courses of the conceipts of the sensitive soul they are framed by the soul in the seat of the Duumvirate Therefore the Spleen being by intervals intent on its own reflexions delights and remedies of wearinesses filcheth away a third part of our life by sleep and as it brings forth dreams in sleeping so waking it propagates the knowledges of conception they being a little distincter and lesse drowsie Truly unlesse the Lord do nourish us with his grace we dream throughout our whole life wholly by a confused concâ—â—pt yea neither do we perceive that we do understand while the light of the Spleen being troubled and ceasing the brain receiveth the first conceipts of Idea's scarce any longer worthy ones Therefore sleep is stirred up in the Midriffs and doth notably manifest it self in the Head and so the Head doth not blush to bring forth at the consent of the Midriffs And therefore sleeps are the be-lyed parents of vapours and stoppages of cold For there is in the Sulphur of the Vitriol of Copper a stupefactive sleepifying and hot virtue and sweeter thâ—â—â—â—ey which in Opium is bitter whence it becomes easie to be seen that there is not a â—â—â—vative stopping and cooling virtue especially after feeding and drinking of wine but a created faculty that over-tops watching in the Spleen So also some poisons do alienate the mind and its own native Imaginative power whereby they do dispose of ours at their own pleasure as in the Apple of Adam in the Spittle of a mad Dog the pricking of the Tarantula in Jusquiamus or Heâ—bane c. So also stupefactive medicines do withhold the Spleen from a working exercise of serious Visions or Representations dismissed into the Brain besides the case of the memory by virtue of a soulified or quickned light of government For indeed God formed the last top of Creation not of the Skin bloud or grease of the man but of a Rib about the Spleen Also the Vessel or Kernel assistant to the stones on the left side is not derived into the stone of a man even as on the right side For truly one is taken out of the sucking vein before the Kidneys but the other out of the Trunck of the hollow vein it self Not indeed as Galen being deceived otherwise thought to beg a tickling of the seed from the Salt of the Urine but that the vessel of the Kidney might be proper or natural to the seed For who doubteth but that the salt of the Urine or of an excrement doth not take away all fruitfulness of the seed Especially if a small piece of the hair of a Horses mane or tail how small soever it be be thrust within an Egg-shell it extinguisheth the hope of a chick Galen being wholly excrementitious and ignorant who thought our Beginnings or first principles to want a tickling and begged also the last compleating of fruitfulness from excrements Therefore at the beholding of this mans ignorance I will moreover add a Paradox The Schools ascribe Venus or carnal lust and the tickling or provocation to leachery to the Reins or Kidneys and Paracelsus and all Antiquity subscribes thereunto All of whom I being silent Fishes themselves and Birds do presently convince of errour For Birds do want Kidneys and Urine and Birds are most leacherous I at least do believe that Venus is the office of the sensitive Soul and so that it is to be placed in the part wherein the first motions also while we sleep are made Because nature was in nothing more careful than in the difference of Sexes And so from the beginning of the pourtraying of the Young she is straightway busied in the Instruments of Venus And so perhaps this even the Antients would imply when as they have ascribed the Spleen the first paternity to Saturn the first of the Starry Gods Yea therefore they deciphered their Fauni or Country Gods and Satyrs a most leacherous and scurrilous kinde in the figure of Saturn For I have alwayes abhorred it as a filthy thing to have placed Venus the greatest Star next the Sun in the Kidney the sink of Urine Truly Birds in this respect should be far more noble than us Pollutions also or defilements of the seed do not happen in time of waking because sleep is the effect of the spleen and to this after delights Otherwise what common intercourse is there between the Reins and sleep do we not oftner make water waking than sleeping As according to the Schools sleep doth withhold any kinde of avoyding of excrements except that of sweat and unprofitable seed Surely otherwise voluntary pollution should be more subject to a waking than to a sleeping man But such an excrementitious expulsion issues forth with the sleep of wantonness that it may be manifest that there is the same Instrument of sleep dreams and pollution as they are the workmanship of one soul For as bloud-making begins in the veins of the mesentery as it were the stomach of the Liver so the cocting of the Sperme or Seed is made in the stones by the spleen For I remember those that have been stony in both Kidneys yet to have been much inclined to leachery But it were an absurd thing that a healthy and lascivious power should remain or be manifest under a Disease of its own radical Organ For the Liver being badly affected a good sanguification doth not arise neither is there a fit seeing to an eye beset with Sand Neither shall I ever believe that the Reins moystening with a continual Urine and being busied about the expulsion of an excrement and never keeping holiday are intent on luxury Therefore it hath seemed an excrementitious opinion that the motions of propagating the Species the Summons's of the vital faculties and Character of the minde should beforged in the Stable of forreign dregs or filths For the first motions of lust are manifestly felt about the mouth of the stomach no otherwise than as the late repentances of leachery For if death entred by the first motions it is agreeable that the frail degenerating life ought in the same place to have radically taken its beginning For the Orifice of the stomach obtains the place of a Center in the Trunck of the Body whence the beams are most fitly spread upwards as downwards But
he would that all Salts Stones Minerals Herbs c. should lurk in man as it were in their own Seminaries or Seed-plots But that they break forth into act not indeed by the warmth of confused seeds lurking in a Chaos but only that by a separation of the vital Liquor that they return from those things which were co-bred with themselves into their antient Minerals Not heeding that it is an absurd thing seeing he will have the Macrocosme or great World to consist no lesse of Stars and Plants than of minerals that it should resolve it self rather into Salts than into Plants and four-footed Beasts Therefore in this matter hath not Paracelsus onely forgotten Seeds Vegetables Stars and soulified creatures but his own self also That it should be the property of a Seed from whence that heap of venal bloud is separated by mans vital Beginnings to return rather into this than into another mineral For as Galen endowing all things with heats and feverishly doating drew for some Ages the chiefdom of healing into himself So Paracelsus reducing all things into an under-earth off-spring being proud of his pretious houshold-stuffe grew mad a while and thereupon aspired into the same Principality But I pray who is that separater which withdraws and plucks away a part of himself from the Balsam of life in the next place who is that corrupter which had changed the part plucked off from a vital condition also into a mineral Salt which knowes not how to putrifie in it self or into a hidden metal credible onely by belief Dost thou not concerning long life call death the dominion of the Balsam How is it therefore that thou now callest death the separation of the Balsam Or who is the seminal distinguishes in the Zodiack of man which may wrest the one onely and the same Liquor from the Balsam of life sometimes into Alume and at length sometimes into Arsenick Truly Paracelsus after that by a laboursome and ridiculous diligent search thou hast heaped up great Fables because thou hast been ignorant of Ferments whereunto notwithstanding thou shouldest have come as to the active and seminal principles thou hast past by the Beginnings of Nature and sporting with the Zodiack or compass of the microcosm at thy own pleasure hast made thy self ridiculous to Posterity For a full knowledge of the ferments doth finde out an easie way to know take away overcome and separate the poysons of any Ulcers whatsoever For whatsoever is made in the course of Nature that is made by the necessity and guidance of the seeds and is moved unto the last period of them But not from the lot or condition of a resolved dead Carcase or the naked will of a slain or groveâ—ng part The which indeed should hasten from a privation by rising again into its former Being Away with thy trifles For we have no fountains of Salt no reducements of venal bloud into feigned and lurking mettals Neither are there minerals in us which by wantonizing do withdraw themselves from the vital Beginnings or which do exspect the withdrawing of these to wit that they should return from mans essence into their antient and appointed minerals that so they may become the wombs and springs of Ulcers Neither also are there microcosmical Lawes in us any more than the humors of four Elements mutually agreeing in us and the fights or grudges of these For with Nazianzen I cannot tie up man unto the sporting Rules of a Microcosme For I had infinitely rather to be the Image of God than the Image of the corruptible and torturing World for although man doth grow and increase with Beasts and Plants yet Beasts shall not therefore be the Image of Plants So although man do feel or perceive and be moved yea discourseth together with Beasts yet nothing speaks but a man Because an Angel neither stands in need of speech as neither of the Instruments of Seed But if a Bird seem to speak he imitates onely the tone and distinctions or significations of speech for there are not in us Hails Snowes Rocks Stones Metals Marbles Flints Gems as neither that Center of a World whereunto all weighty Bodies do incline Neither is there in us a Stone by Creation neither are there particular kindes of the red or purple Marble Jasper-stone c. and the stone in a man differs from a true stone no lesse than a Peare doth from a Cow for a Peare is indeed changed into the flesh of a Cow sooner than the stone in a man can decline into a Mineral Rock or stone The name therefore of Microcosm or little World is Poetical heathenish and metaphorical but not natural or true It is likewise a phantastical hypochondriacal and mad thing to have brought all the properties and species of the Universe into man and the art of healing But the life of man is too serious and also the medicine thereof that they should play their own part of a Parable or Similitude and metaphor with us Last of all Paracelsus is wholly ridiculous who teacheth that an Ulcer and a wound are nourished by Herbs Balsam and Oyntments So that these defects are nourished by Remedies with a true nourishment and severing of excrements and that thereby the lost flesh of them is truly actually and immediately restored and that he hath seemed seriously to have written which thing surely I willingly grant unto his own Idiorisme or propriety of speech At length for the curing of Ulcers there is use for Colcotar or calcined Vitriol being diversly applied according to the difference of the Ulcer For oft-times the Wine wherein it is steeped doth by its washing do that or else the Powder thereof after an exact separation of its Salt and sometimes being boyled in the Oil of Line-seeds even unto a blackness which is for the foundation of the Oyntment of successful VVurtz in wounds But I say enough to the curious To wit that Colcotar doth kill every corrupter of wounds Finally for a wound know thou that the very separation of that which held together is indeed the immediate and sufficient occasional cause to wit as it openeth beats in pieces or bruiseth c. Every separation also wants a confirming closure and is presently glewed together by glew dissolved in Wine because it is prepared of the Skins of living creatures Especially if the Glew be of the hide of a man dying a violent death that is he being slain in his full strehgth But the alterations of the Archeus from venal bloud largely poured forth and a conceived Idea of another revenge or indignation being bred which by a proper name I call our wounds and not anothers or those wounds which are inflicted from without do not onely stand in need of a co-glewing of that which is discontinued or separated but an appeasing of the altered Archeus For hitherto have Oils Balsams emplaisters respect which may procure the peace of the implanted and local Archeus being injured To which end the Balsams
strangle with a Cramp no otherwise than as being stirred with fury on them I remember that I once saw those that were strangled by their womb whose dead Carcasses looked black and blew being black in those parts wherein they had been pained before death Neither also doth it largely poure forth its Issues unless it should open its own Veins by an inordinate madness to overthrow the guiltless treasure of life So neither doth it contract the sinewes and muscles make the joynts lame displace the tendons resolve the muscles and crisp and cowrinckle the coats or membranes but onely by the action of government and unless it being stirred with fury it should keep a duality with the Womans life otherwise as long as every thing keeps unity it desires to remain in its Essence or Being When therefore a fury acts out of the womb alone it is the lesse evil But when it flies thorow into the sensitive Soul with which I have shewen that it hath an agreeing co-resemblance it pours forth the true madness of its own fury out of the hypochondrial part In young Maids at their first being enflamed or swollen with a lesse pleasure it withholds suppresseth discoloureth their courses and brings forth inordinate ones Then at length it produceth Palsies Cramps beatings of the heart tremblings and swoonings and contracteth the sinews which distempers by the volatile tincture of Coral Oyl of Amber Salt of Steel and such like Medicines I daily cure The same distempers being of the milder sort do obey stupefactive things Also the more cruel ones require greater Secrets of Chymistry What things I have already spoken touching the government of the Stones and Womb I have demonstrated by many Arguments in the Treatise of Catarrhs and likewise of the Duumvirate not by a more dull priviledge to belong unto the Stomach neither that fumes as neither that vapours do ascend out of the Stomach unto the Head and so that in this respect an impossible Fable is taught in the Schools Likewise in the Treatise of Fevers and elsewhere I have shewen by what sume drunkenness is made and by what way fumes are derived into the more formerly bosoms of the Brain Now I will teach the manner of making in an Apoplexie the Falling-sickness drowsie Evil c. that when I shall have denied them to be made by a co-knit Chain of vapours they may at least be understood to undergoe the action of Government To which end I must repeat what I before spake by the way To wit that the Beard is bred by the stones and that the distinctions ages varieties and colours hereof do depend thereupon which thing seeing it is commonly known I at leastwise admonish that it ought to be understood that a Vapour is not made which is brought forward by the Ministery of particular Organs but that a power is to be considered which in manner of light doth affect and dispose the whole Body or at leastwise its own objects according to the gift and ends seminally implanted in them by the Creator therefore a certain power or virtue beames forth from the Stones throughout the Body into the Archeus and so also into the sensitive Soul seeing the Church commends the femall Sex for a natural devotion Why therefore doth the Beard grow on the Chin and not on the Fore-head or on some other place seeing that eflux of the light of the Stones throughout the whole Body is universal This matter carries in it a most hidden Root of Philosophy demonstrated in the Treatise of the entrance of death into man For we must know that Souls do act on their own Body by the power of their own certain vital light the which seeing it is by the life in which the Soul it self is every where present every way extended the Soul in that its light deciphers the Idea's of its own conceipt and command that afterwards it may by the administring Spirits be wholly committed into the Organs for execution But those soulified lights or lightsome Souls themselves cannot be comprehended by us by a direct conceipt Seeing they are as it were the immediate clients of another and that an intelligible World wherefore the most High calls himself the Father of Lights For the Senses do bring nothing unto us from without which may decipher a conception of the soul in the phantasie wherefore in the Treatise of forms I have according to my slenderness touched at this matter as largely as I could in the newness of so great a Paradox which is as yet more strongly to be considered elswhere therefore lest repetition should tire it is sufficient here to have said by the way that substantial Souls and Forms even as likewise also a formal substance which I elsewhere distinguish from the former are certain unnamed Lights immediately framed by the Father of Lights Therefore the powers depending on Souls and certain ministring guarding Lights are also thus far lightsome I have shewen therefore by Science Mathematical that those very Lights do pierce each other yet that they reserve the Essence and properties of their former Lights But in inferiour things wherein Forms do inhabite and also formal Powers that these have their light even actually capable of being stirred up by our Archeus no otherwise than as in an Egg the power of the seed is actuated by a nourishing warmth Therefore there is in the roots of the hairs in the chin a power of growth duration and other dispositions although the masculine ruling power thereof be of one stone which power of the stones indeed although it be absolute yet it is not but diversly received in places to wit according to the manner and capacity of every receiver But as much as this speculation conduceth unto Medicine I will translate poysonous powers into the place of vital ones Because they are not lesse lightsome than those which are otherwise wholsom if poysons do immediately issue from their own forms For they are the gifts either of the more outward or forreign Simples of the first Creation or in the next place are begotten afterwards in us through errour of living By the same priviledge also the natural powers of the parts to wit of the Womb Stomach Stones c. do beam forth their own lights throughout the whole Body and do pierce the light of the Archeus also by the action of government depending on their light whence indeed this Archeus is comforted weakened estranged prostrated yea perisheth Therefore poysons in the Midriffs or those bred elsewhere do act by virtue of their own formal and lightsom powers according to the natural endowed Idea imprinted on them and they do affect the vital light planted in the sensitive Soul in the Archeus and so in the parts and they mutually pierce each other by a radical union and that either by a contagion of poyson remaining and transplanting the in-bred formal and vital light of the parts or onely for a little space as in those that have the
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
therefore they were to perish with the Death of the fame And therefore neither are they substances although substantial or after the manner of substantial Spirits Neither therefore also of the number of Accidents even as I have elsewhere demonstrated in the Treatise of the Original of Forms Therefore the beastial Life is of a vital living Light and a neutral Creature between a Substance and an Accident which neutrality of Beings hitherto unknown to the Schools was given by the Etymology of the Father of Lights So indeed that he not only maketh the burning Light of the Sun and Splendour of the Glow-worm But also the Souls of all Soulified Creatures universally whereof himself will remain even the alone Maker and Master CHAP. XLVII The knitting or conjoyning of the Sensitive Soul and Mind 1. Alpha and Omega 2. The Body is a dead Carcass of no worth without the mind 3. The natural Phylosophy of the Author is far remote from the traditions of Aristotle 4. The understanding of Adam shews this truth 5. That by the Prayer of Abstraction the mind ought to be unfolded 6. The Author declareth his five Professions 7. From the fifth he draweth five Conclusions 8. The co-knitting of the mind as of a kernel in the Sensitive Soul as it were in a shell or husk 9. Defects are from the sensitive Soul 10. An Objection against Sin and desert 11. An answer to the aforesaid Arguments 12. By an example of the Sun 13. Corrupted nature doth alwayes want the aid of Grace 14. The mind as it is the Image of God doth endeavour as it were to create something of nothing 15. The difference of conceits to be admired in a Woman great with Child THose things which I have already above written for the immortality of the Soul being premised I forthwith for the knowledge of the Soul return to my Lord Jesus who alone is the beginning of the Fathers Wisdom the unlimiting end the Alpha and Omega or the one only Scope in whom a total clearness of all understandings is and ought to be terminated For the immortality of the mind being certainly known the Soul ought to be made known to it self as much as it can for truly seeing the Soul the governess doth continually employ it self about the Government of the Body Surely nothing can be searched out in the Body unless when by Anatomy alone I behold dead Carcasses which is worth ones labour without the knowledge of the Life or Soul yea verily I have many times been angry with my self that I would conceive of external and forreign things and in the mean time not to know who I am who dare to contemplate of forreign and sublime things But the Image being not yet understood which the mind bears before it nor who of what sort or how excellent the understanding may be And Lastly neither after what manner an intellectual act may be formed Wherefore I determined with my self that there was a far different knowledge of the Soul to be delivered to Christians than that which hath been diligently taught by the Schools of the Gentiles for look how much can be declared by words so much also the Holy Scriptures do deliver But the rest is in exercising freely obtained by Grace it self neither doth the mind admit of any other Teacher than him who hath commanded to be called the alone Father and Master Because in very deed all Learning which is drawn from a fore-existing knowledge of the Senses proceeds from the Sensitive Carnal or Earthly Soul and the which therefore the Apostle calls Divelish enlightned indeed but not by the very mind it self to wit which alone wisheth to be enlightned by its Beginning which is above nature and not from the observation of the Senses Whither the state of understanding in Adam had respect before the received learning of his Senses For he had known the essences and names of living creatures because he contemplated of these things within in his own divine image while he would and by the very aspect of viewing thereof he remembred the same But after that the sensitive Soul began to spring up whereinto the immortal mind was involved the sensitive Soul alone received the vicarship hereof but the mind being thereby laid asleep is scarce awakened at leastwise not more manifestly or lively than while it employeth it self in mental or mind-like prayer whether that comes to pass because the while it casts off from it the rains of the Sensitive Soul or next because God requiring to be worshipped only in the Spirit calls for his own delights to talk with the Sons of Men. Truly the Prayer of silence and of a profound intellectual humnity did require another manner of man than my self who am now an old man and an ignorant Physitian but seeing I have undertaken the natural explication of the mind and since the essence thingliness and natural nature of the mind is plainly Spiritual and respecting its own immediate and supernatural Beginning I ought by all means to declare and explain the Doctrine of the mind by its exercises that a man may be bewrayed by his Works Therefore I beg and deserve pardon if I shall not declare the thing according to the dignity of the matter Divine goodness shall supply my defects by some other more worthy thâ—â— my self But before that I proceed let the reader know that hitherto I have not found a writer which hath Meditated any thing concerning the more inward emptiness or voidness bottom and fabrick of the mind or of the Creation Beingness Truth or Thingliness of its Idea but they have rather cast or hung up this same Doctrine behind their Back as it were irregular unknown and desperate and through admiration only elevated into a dark Smoak neither have they looked any longer behind them as neither within them For first of all I will discover my Errors committed by thinking and will declare the Circumstances which have sometime deceived me For I knew first of all by Faith that we have an Immortal Mind therefore exceeding any the Powers of nature because it is that which was inspired into Adam immediately by God the same Mind also at this day is inspired into the young by the same Prince of Life Because it is that in which the Kingdome of God hath of its good pleasure established its seat and so that he enlightens every man that cometh into this World and he hath enriched it with his own free gifts of the God-head and by his presence hath excluded the evil spirit To wit for which mind he vouchsafed to die but not for the fallen Angell I knew in the second place from the knowledge of nature that bruit Beasts have Souls more or less prudent and quicke-sighted yet all frail ones and those which hasten into nothing and that those do perish no otherwise than as a Blast as the light of a Candle is extinguished and departs into nothing And therefore that the Souls of Beasts are
Drinks Meats were swallowed down by a straight line unto the Stomach but to bend nothing toward the Lungs they devised sweet things which might serve for expectorating as they might cause a smoothness of the jaws Then afterwards they invented more thick Syrupes because they were those which they thought by licking them in by degrees would by a greater right slide in pare unto the Lungs But again all things sloathfully For first of all the Schools herein have forgotten the Head and next their own positions Then in the next place they have not considered that if such Ecligmaes should enter unto the Lungs they would cause more straightnesses and troubles than the filths themselves there running out and framed by degrees at leastwise they should heap up or increase evil by a new evil For in that place they should not any thing profit unless that for the future they should through the much straightness of passages increase the obstruction and render it grievous In that respect especially because Roses Colts-foot Fox-lungs Sugar c. do not a whit answer to a curative betokening because it is that which only requires a renewing of the changing faculty being hurt But those Medicines which do respect a more easie expectorating do assault the Disease behind and its effects only Seeing therefore in what part the utmost ends of the rough artery do end and breath into the Breast the Lungs do lay open it is sufficiently manifest that in the Asthma there is a straightness of the same pores Moreover they do as yet err that the Remedies of the Cough do not any thing differ from the Remedies of the Asthma when as notwithstanding they both do greatly and every way differ in their root and causes There is therefore a two-fold Asthma one indeed Womanish depending only on the government of the Womb but the other is promiscuous common to both sexes Surely a Woman is miserable on both sides which being excluded almost from all affairs doth not withstanding pay a sufficient punishment through a single Disease of any kind For this Asthma is so frequent to this Sex that the Schools have dedicated every Account of the number of the Womb which is very manifold unto the stranglings of the Womb and would as it were by one head or Chapter have passed by a great volume of Diseases For I have seen women-folks often who by the smell of sweet Savours besides Head-aches and threatned Swoonings fell straightway into an extream difficulty of breathing I have also observed others who the North wind blowing the Innocent were presently even in Stoves or Chimneys punished with an Asthma Lastly also others which from Anger a sorrowful Message drinking of Sugar Spanish-wine c. or also being chidden were presently taken with a lamentable Asthma For the Schools being alwayes busied about corporal Actions therefore also also do they perpetually worship Humours and have on both sides accused Phlegin raining indeed down into the Lungs That foul or stinking Vapours should ascend out of the Womb which should stir up their companional Vapours as well from it self as else-where out of the stomack whence they should press out all the expectorated Snivel or Filth the Author of an Asthma For the Schools have granted to such hurtful Vapours a safe conduct of piercing every way whither indeed there is not a free passage â—or Air which thing is manifest in a voluntary pressing together or deteining of the breathing Yea although these things have place only in a moist Asthma yet through the same ignorance they have not desisted to try any vain things by Clysters Blood-letting and Cauteries and solutive Medicines that even in a dry Asthma also they might give sufficient to the revulsion of feigned Vapours Therefore they have neglected that the Womb by the action of Government and almost after an influential manner doth at the will or beck of anger sorrow fear c. like death stop up the aforesaid pores of the Lungs where they end into the breast even so as the Moon by her Aspect only governeth the waters because the Life and Power of the Womb commands the whole woman To whom indeed therefore there is another Chin Wit Flesh Hair Bloud c. than to a man And again the furies and inundations of the aforesaid Government ceasing her breathing is presently restored free and that for the most part without a notable spitting out by reaching For neither doth the Womb rule the whole woman by the power of Vapours but by the meer command of Government seeing it is like unto a strange Guest no otherwise than as nourishably depending on the Body even as a shrub on a Tree in which it growes But besides the Womb lives in its own Square and hath known no enemy unto it self besides the passion of the mind wherefore it doth not serve the Soul but by waxing mad it exerciseth cruelty on the mind being urgent in disturbances no otherwise than on the Body For only the disturbances of the mind do drive the Womb into divers furies So that it cruelly rageth sometimes on the Sinews then on the great Guts Bones Bowels and Membranes the Heart likewise or Head joggs the Senses and mind For I have seen the Cords or Tendons being of times pulled together with great Torment voluntarily to leap out of their place and to have stirred up wondrous Convulsions of the Muscles and with great howling to have resolved them yea and in earnest to have put the very Bones themselves out of their place So also I have observed Apoplexies Palseys falling-Evils Jaundises Dropsies wringings of the Bowels the Megrim Madnesses and much tyranny of Diseases to have proceeded from the Womb which Diseases even as they have been in vain attempted by the Schools by manly Remedies I will say neglected and after some sort referred unto the choaking of the Asthma alone as if the Throat only by a singular Perogative should obey the Womb so truly the Sex is worthy of much Compassion being given unto us for a help of great necessities and as if it were therefore worthy of manifold misery For truly the Innocent and devoted Sex undergoes the double punishment of Corrupted Nature through individual womanish Miseries once it suffers almost all Diseases from the Womb and the same again as it is man But it is happy likewise in that it bears Tribulations patiently and thus far is nearer to the Son of God The other Asthma therefore is promiscuous to both Sexes But again an Asthma is subdivided into a dry moist one so reckoned to be from the Filths expelled The causes of the Asthma and manner of its making have hitherto remained unknown in the Schools And consequently the curing of an Asthma hath remained unaccustomed Let God be witness and judge between me and the Humourists how much I might commiserate the Sick that are badly entertained under the unhappy flatteries of Ignorance at length being cut short of their hope and
the assisting and co-operating Work-man of all Diseases an angry Parent and revenger For he saith that the unknown Star Zedo is the immediate and containing cause of the Dropsie So he affirmeth that to the Consumption Gout Apoplexie c. doth belong their own peculiar yet unnamed Star and unto every Epilepsie or falling Evil it s own proper constellation But in his Paramires he affirms the three first things to be the immediate causes of all Diseases that is all things confused Let him explain and excuse him that will for I have not dedicated my life to the interpreting of others dreams Therefore have I seriously searched into Nature and the particular kindes of Diseases and it hath happened unto me no otherwise than as to all others before me until that the Doctrines of all Authors being cast off I had seriously implored the Divine Grace For then I suddenly knew that unto every Disease hath happened its own matter which may nourish a Vulcan proper to it self within the which although he doth sometimes imitate the courses of the Stars yet that the enforcing cause thereof did not depend on the Stars For all Seeds do possess as it were their own Common-wealth especially their own vital light whereby of their own proper vertue they do shew forth a proportionable resemblance of the Stars Be it a ridiculous thing that the Consumption or Dropsie although they may be stirred up more severely and mildly under diverse starry positions are caused or made by the motion and light of the Stars the which do after another manner generate by a manifest occasion through so clear a collection of filths and the which being removed Health doth also follow without leave of the Stars The exposition of which Doctrine by me thou shalt read in the Book of the Plague and elsewhere But the matters of Diseases with their seminary Vulcans from the first even unto the last I have prosecuted with all their duplicity and interchangeable courses in respect of humane life The Almighty grant that so much as he hath bestowed on me I may nakedly refer unto his Honour and the profit of my Neighbour and that he may bestow another more able than my self on the world For Paracelsus hath framed divers Books concerning long life to have chosen death for himself that he would by a Divine priviledge have comforted his own old Age by his Elixiâ— of propriety but not by Remedies prescribed by him for long life who died in the 47th year of his Age. So great boasting therefore and unconstancy of this Man have hitherto made me a little careful In the mean time many difficulties have long since held me in doubt about the three first things until that I having obtained help from God knew that Woods and Herbs were to be distilled without any Dead head For I did long ago wonder that out of the coal of Honey no ashes and by consequence neither the salt of ashes could be had Which things afterwards I willingly through an universal resolving of a Body beheld For it was sufficient for Paracelsus to have forsaken all things involved under doubting who in a slender draught had drunk down anothers Invention and had not yet converted it into nourishment and making it his own of robbery hath he striving to flie unto a Monarchy slipped out of his Nest before he had sufficient feathers For he snatching unto himself the glory of the Invention hath well pleased himself in dispersingly repeating one and the same thing often although in the mean time he made little progress in things of his own For it is a ridiculous thing and like a Fable that Sulphur should be distilled sublimed reverberated calcined resolved in us and that from hence divers Diseases should be caused only indeed by the boldness of the Man without a Pledge or Surety of greater authority than himself For he knew not nor durst to draw Diseases into an open profession or publishment he being not yet sully committed hereunto by his Inventer It is also a childish dream that salt is distilled sublimed calcined circulated and doth undergo other torments in us or that Mercury doth sustain these strict examinations in us and for every interchangeable course of variations that it doth of it self alone bring forth other Diseases pains and defects and that others again be infolded with its other two fellow beginnings or masked with divers degrees and doses They are also trifles that Mercury by reason of the highest circulation of its subtilty might be the cause of all sudden death which we have known to be constituted by its causes to cure and prevent For first of all eight ounces of venal blood are daily blown away in nourishing without a Dead head pain and defect yea without feeling while they pass thorow and whereby they pass thorow But whatsoever hath once been dedicated unto expulsion in the shew of Water Mercury or Sweat or whatsoever hath been once reckoned unfit for nourishing or the offices of nourishment being now once performed is designed for scattering or blowing away that is never afterwards distilled sublimed calcined or circulated in us For the works of Nature are too serious because they do ultimately respect God For Nature doth not play at Ball that it should again receive excrements into favour being once rent from the commerce of Life It never returns into the same point because it proceeds and never keeps Holy-day In the next place if any watry liquor be a hundred times re-distilled it shall not therefore be the sharper or subtiler but rather by degrees the Seed of its middle life being worn out it passeth more and more unto the simplicity of an Element For rain water which now falleth down from above is not more subtile or fine than that which rained in the beginning of its Creation But if any watry thing should exhale by our luke-warmth and should obtain a sharpness through dreamed returns that should not be the fault of subtilizing of Mercury but of an adjunct Surely I wonder that so great a Chymist hath not known that the venal blood is not circulated nor that it doth bear the circles of subtilizings in us and that it doth not persevere in us above one only course of the Moon and the which tribute of feeble blood a Woman doth therefore pay Because she is she which ought to abound with very much blood as well for an increase of the Young as for the sucking of Milk But that Paracelsus might the better overshadow his own Fiction he supposeth that one of the three first things being separated doth presently assume from a Microcosmical Nature an actuality in that which is casual to any and one Being of those which are infinite a thousand Seeds whereof being collected into one it did contain and therefore that by reason of a monstrous and strange Nativity a hostile thing is for that very cause in us and is made the cause of Diseases And so that there are
right side as also the Western in the left and he at length ascribes to every wind their proper Remedies involved under Hieroglyphicks as yet to him unknown Alas with how sorrowful a pledge are all these things and by how sporting a means hath that man invaded the principality of healing to wit that we are all little Worlds for at how dear a rate doth he sell us this Idea or Image of the Macrocosme and by what a scanty argument doth he found his dreams when as in very deed there are no winds nor matter of winds in us which we do not breath in and breath out otherwise that neither is there a flatulent or windy Gas in us unless in one way house and passage To wit from the stomack through the bowels even into the fundament Indeed Paracelsus had known these things in part in the next place that of winds in the Womb Pleura Head and Muscles there were old Wives fables Nevertheless he as yet weaved greater that he might compose these ridiculous hinges of winds the which by a stronger right he had transferred into the Wombe then into the bowels The which with great grief doth writh it self sometimes on the left side of the bottom of the belly sometimes on the right side and besiegeth even the Navil or inclines it self behind unto the back and loynes But he had remained doubtful where he had found a fifth wind in the head-long Wombe and where a sixth while the Womb is carried straight upwards and therefore although he at large declameth concerning the Star or Astrum of the Wombe in a particular Book yet he sleeping hath neglected the Cardinal winds of the World in the exorbitances of the Wombe Although he also doth seriously declare that the Womb is a World but moreover less than the Microcosme But oh Paracelsus by supposing some Els of a bowel stretched out by wind and that wind shut up on both sides for if it be not shut up it shall neither cause pain nor stretch out but shall be evacuated by its own emunctory of its own accord and so that it doth neither breath nor is carried side-wayes after the manner of winds My question is concerning the Name Essence Original and Remedy of that wind And then when the Ileon is extended perhaps for 40 turns as well from the back forwards as with a side passage on both sides with what and what order of twisting shall the hinges of the four winds have their Scituation Name and property of Name For so in every winding circle there should be now fourty Southern winds and as many Northern ones c. For if in the twentieth or in every particular twisting of the intestine thou oughtest to have added a reason why not in the tenth or twelfth if thou desiredst credit to be given to thee dreaming of these things But surely thou hast not been a faithful Aeolus of those winds Because thou marking the colick to have oft-times afforded the contracted muscles of the hands Convulsions I say and Palseys hast not blushed to say that winds are carried from the bowels through all the muscles and tendons And thou hast affirmed that with so much the more liberty because thou findest the Schools prone unto every service of vapours and winds perhaps for all Diseases For when through the dictating testimony of truth within they found not rest for themselves in Elements Complexions and Humours they being confused sought out a mean whereby they might find the cause of Diseases by vapours and winds For perhaps when humours had deceived them they wished that they might not be reproved by an invisible position of winds Indeed it was an invention of the Impostor Satan who seeing he endeavours to be Gods Ape by the belief of invisible things pretends that the understanding of the credulous or those rash of belief is due unto himself And that they do suffice for all Diseases so the belly do rustle its rumblings in the ears And therefore I ought also by all means to have treated of flatus's or windinesses Surely I pity on both sides so great unconstancy of Paracelsus and ignorance of those that believe him whereby he excludes and cuts off from himself his pretended title of the Monarch of Secrets For he knew not in this place that such is the property of any poyson being administred even under the friendly shew of purging Medicines that they do sorely trouble or shake the Archeus and stir up a Blas thereof according to the Aphorism A Cramp or Convulsion after Hellebour is mortal And that that colick which besides the wonted wringings of the bowels proceeding from a sharpness doth moreover contain an infection of poyson is also the Author of the Convulsion Although wind in the mean time be not carried out of the gut Ileon So a man dying with a total extinguishment of his strength leaves his dead carcase on both sides extended with a general Tetanus but whenas he is snatched away by a violent Death his dead carcase is flaggy Whence I have learned that there is a certain life feeling and motion or Blas in the flesh besides a voluntary one To wit that life apprehending poysons and death together with an extinguishment doth extend the tendons on both sides Whence it is false that the heart is the last which dieth For the life of the Muscles doth as yet remain surviving which is most powerful in Insects so also the head being plucked off flies do as yet flie away And in a woman long dead her Wombe hath oft-times chased out her young Therefore every Convulsion of the Muscles whether from the colick or by taking a laxative poyson or any other thing is not from a voluntary motion but from a natural act of feeling and moving of the Muscles but not that the flatus which extends the bowels doth also efficiently extend the Muscles Even as in the Book of the Disease of the Stone in the Treatise of Sense and Sensation I have abundantly confirmed It is therefore for a sound decree This is carminative that drives away winds but that scatters windy blasts As if by enchanting verses winds to be renounced by Physitians should depart For if the conduit and passage of utterance do lay open wind never wants a forreign aid as neither a strange driver that it may go forth Yea which is more wringings of the guts do not alwayes cease although there be a free egress for flatus's Otherwise if the way be without an impediment the windy blast whether the Physitian will or no shall find it for truly there is but one only passage of the bowels and that continual unto them But such driving Medicines ought to have some mean even as a Pestil thrusts forward the contained clysters But that mean that it may be fit for the expelling of a flatus it ought suitably to answer the conduit of the bowels as well in the slender as in the grosser ones and moreover to have a
shall endure or as long as from the juyce of the grape the wine is not perfected For as meal differs from the leavened paste or dough and the mealie lump from bread so doth wine from the juyce of grapes And as meal if it be boiled doth not bring forth windinesses but being leavened doth of its own accord belch forth windy blasts so meats do not in their own nature contain the flatus which the ferments do draw out A wonder surely it is that the Schooles have perceived nothing have written nothing of these things hitherto but that they have delivered all things by hand to the command of heat Moreover concerning the Gas of new wine and properties of a wild spirit enough elsewhere Neither let those things be unseasonable or unfit which I have elsewhere written concerning ferments concerning digestions touching transgressions under anothers harvest and the diseasie transplantations sprung from thence to have brought them over unto this limit concerning flatus's A most weak stomack therefore affords un-savoury belchings but a less weak one soure ones a vitious stomack burnish bitter and sharp ones But a stronger stomack doth indeed rightly concoct meats that are full of juyce not likewise the Onion Garlick Radishes c. Belchings therefore do witness some weakness and therefore do express the savours of meats But under the fardle of much meat that is full of juyce brackish also burntish belchings do bewray themselves especially if the meats are mortified But brackishness being stirred up by an exasperated ferment doth bring forth a various appetite to meat Furthermore also that flatus's are not bred of windy things mark an example Distilled Vinegar while it dissolveth Crabs stones Crysulcha Silver a wild spirit is belched forth A harsh apple in roasting stirs up very many flatus's not so if it do longer sweeten on the tree by ripening If therefore in the same apple a flatus had materially been it must needs be that the greatest part of the apple which was flatutulent and a meer windiness was through ripening converted into the sweet and homogeneal substance of the apple that is into a non-windinesse That a mixt Body as they say is made of almost a simple element Wherefore the whole apple whether it be ripe or unripe consisteth of the same matter and indeed not of a windy one A sharp apple being roasted in a glass Hermetically shut constraines the vessel by reason of its windy blast to burst asunder But a like apple being closed up in the like glasse with as much water as that it may boyle sends forth no Gas but onely a watery exhalation Aqua fortis being distilled by its self doth wholly pass into the vessel receiving without a wild Gas But if a dissolvable mettal be added unto it it brings forth a Gas so as that if the glass be well stopt with morter although most strong it breaks in pieces when as in the mean time none of the aforesaid mettal departs into a Gas. The Tartar of Wine cannot be distilled so much as with the hundredth distillation of its own oyle unlesse a chink or chap be left in the joynts Otherwise a wild Gas how big soever the vessel be doth suddainly break in pieces But if therefore Tartar should materially contain a flatus it had uttered the same in its first combustion at least in another distillation the which notwithstanding is made a new afterwards in every of its distillations also of its oyle or sulphur onely Because a hidden sharpness of the Wine and also a volatile Alcali is herein whence of the coupling of them both a wild Gas is made For the food not being sufficiently subdued in the stomack putrifies and causeth a Gas For it putrifieth through the corruption of the place which is of the dung of the stomack or by an action besides nature For the least atomes of the meats being well chewed are well turned into chyle but the greater atomes in a more weak stomack although in their circumference and outward appearance they are by digestion resolved into chyle yet in their center seeing they indeed perceive sufficient heat yet do not equally enjoy a ferment they remain undigested are corrupted of a yellowish colour and for the most part do the business for the bowels or if they do retain the ancient sliminess of the food together with a little sharpness they are changed into wormes which are alwayes messengers of weakness but the ferment of the stomack finding some things resisting it and therefore half-cocted and half-putrified presently enflameth doubleth and heighteneth its tartness whence there is a gnawing belching from a brackishness the companion of apetite which lump falling down into the intestine stirs up rotten and stinking flatus's from a fat putrifaction By way of handy-craft operation Take of Sulphur one part let it boyl with a double quantity of oyle of Line presently the Sulphur putrifies and the substance of Birds lungs appears breathing forth the smell of humane dung even as also in distilling the like Gas belcheth forth The lump therefore being badly digested in the stomack descending through the intestine stirreth up sharp flatus's if the tartness shall be heightened whence there are wringings of the guts But if any snivelly thing thereof shall adhere to a bowel the more stubborn gripes or wringings are made and now and then an accompanying Flux And by so much the more cruel by how much the sharpness shall be the more brackish For from a brackish flatus there is a small and fluid Colick but from meats it is far more stubborn and changeth its places and wandereth But if from a brackish adhering and affixed muckiness it most cruelly afflicts and puls together Flatus's or windinesses therefore do proceed not from the matter properly but from an operation of the ferment attempting a new generation besides nature and from the error of the provoked Archeus These things of natural and diseasie flatus's But poysons being drunk why they produce the habit of the body swollen with a flatus Know thou that that comes to pass a little before and after death For neither doth a dead carcase swell by reason of an attainment of a new matter but because the life is chiefly in the bowels therefore the habite of the body is first defiled by the poyson But the corrupting of the flesh is alwayes in a sour or sharp savour for leavened things are by a famous mystery read to have been forbidden to the Jewes therefore a sudden and cruel corruption dashing it self into fleshes doth also beget in them a windie blast and swelling So a dead carcass that is drowned doth presently sink to the bottome so long as until the flesh waxeth sharp under putrifying then indeed it springs up and is swollen with windiness and the life of the muscles which is as yet left after death doth work the flatus For it is wont to be said That a dead Carcass will issue to the top of the Water when
in other Professions but that in the Art of healing alone men have been hitherto so stumbled through deaf Principles wherein notwithstanding Charity towards our Neighbour hath been penally commanded For all things have remained most obscure many things most false and those things which might chiefly conduce unto the scope of Curing untouched For there is no where a tractable acuteness but on every side a great dulnesse So that from what hath been said before there is none but may easily gather that whatsoever hath been hither to diligently taught according to the Doctrine of the Pagans and against a mutual Charity was the Invention of the evil Spirit Therefore indeed the stability of Paganish Theorems hath remained through the perswasion of the Devil which speculations notwithstanding through their easinesse onely at the first sight ought to have been suspected by any one of a sound mind Therefore nothing more hard inhumane and fuller of cruelty hath been received now for so many Ages among the Arts of Mortals than that Art which under a con-centrical subscription makes fresh experiments by the deaths of men The Professors whereof while they presume that themselves do keep the keys of knowledge they neither enter the passages themselves nor admit others who are willing to enter in but do drive away all by all wiles and subtilties Alwayes learning and never coming to the knowledge of the Truth according to the Apostle Oh Jesus my light my life my glorying and the helper of my weakness and corrupt disposition who in they own matters dost easily find out a passage with whom that is easie which with mortal men is as it were impossible Thou who hast made me to undergo all adversities I offer unto thee my calamities and the oppressions of justice Nevertheless thou hast always comforted me with thine unvanquished right hand afford me thine hand that if thou vouchsafe not to snatch me out of the deep pit of so many tribulations at least wise that through thy strength I may not sin against thee and that they may repent who have hated me undeservedly and that they who adore thy Power may acknowledge in me that thou alone art God the helper of the oppressed and the undoubted hope of them that trust in thee Let them be cloathed with contrition and find favour with thee and that I wretched man may sing forth the praises of thy greatness after this life For the rottenness of this Age is such that thy judgement being hidden the hypocrisie of mighty men professeth Faith in deceit and collects their wickedness under the shadow of Piety But in so great a tempest of my miseries unto the miseries of mortals and the defective errors of Physitians before the view of my mind I have attempted under thy command to record in writing That as hypocrisie hath trampled on me and my fortunes so I likewise know and that primarily that the father of lyes hath introduced the cup of ignorance and the bane of charity and health into the Paganish Schools lucre strewing the way under the beaten stormy path of Tritons For every young beginner that is to come shall admire with me that nothing hath been so unskilfully handled as those things which concern the life of mortal men For truly according to Thomas a Kempis it is all one with the Devil so he may render thee uncapable to serve God whether that be by true things or things appearing Therefore it sufficeth him so he shall but frustrate man of health and cut short his life wherein he might serve God if so be he shall make him a despiser of Divine aid by the appearing Doctrines of Pagans For the Schooles have written a thousand Volumns concerning the temperature and strife of qualities in the next place it hath been much and long interpreted by the Successors of Galen about these trifles and they have daily relapsed into new centuries and patcheries And at length they have squared unto those qualities feigned and excrementitious humours which should so wholly govern man as well healthy as sick that they should be chief over humane affairs as though the conditions manners healths appetites instincts inclinations slips or mis-deeds strengths valours defects events of fortune yea and the deserved punishments of loss or damnation and the adoptions of eternal life of mortal men should depend thereon A horrid surely and intollerable thing that these toyes have stood so long and that from things not existing and never to be and the which by the asserters themselves are accounted for excrements so serious and pernicious Fables have been co-feigned and believed And so that by the Schooles themselves scarce any thing hath been ever narrowly searched into which under such Principles may in very deed be truly true and good In the mean time I grieve I testifie it again not indeed that I have obtained the light of Truth from a long compassion towards my Neighbour but that it hath behoved me to lay open these Errors That is I grieve that the Devil hath deceived the Schools and will deceive them as long as they shall suffer themselves to be deluded by Paganish Fables and to be separated from the Schools of Truth But that that thing may be manifested I will by a Prologue declare it by the way and as it were by a positive demonstration For truly God made not Death And that is of Faith Therefore man became mortal from another thing than from God And seeing the scope or bound of most Diseases is Death it self because it is that which is nothing else but an extinguishing of life therefore a Disease and Death are Diametrically opposite to life Whence it follows that every Disease doth immediately act on the life But nothing is able to act on the life unless it be applyed unto it and well mixed with it But a Disease the enemy is not applyed unto the life promiscuously unless it shall besiege a part of the life and so shall sit totally or partially in the very life it self Which being done that part of the life besieged or overcome doth retire from the vital Air and the which being thus vanquished and become degenerate is made hostile unto the life as yet remaining or as yet constituted in its integrity Hence it necessarily follows that every Disease as it finds matter in the Organical or instrumental Air of life whereby it most immediately and inwardly riseth up against the life it self so in the same vital light it finds an efficient cause And so a Disease being thus instructed or furnished with matter and an efficient cause is entertained about the life Neither is it of concernment the while whether that contagion of a Disease be drawn from occasional Causes or in the next place be bred within in the Archeus through the errour of Life At leastwise it is sufficient in this place that the Life it self is on both sides the principal object for the hostile disease But seeing the Life it self
as is the Falling-sicknesse the Gout Madnesse c. Truly in all these things there is a manifest Errour of the Schooles which teach That whole Nature is governed by a Ruler or a created Understanding not erring knowing all ends and for the sake of these acting after a most excellent manner For truly it is not to be doubted but that a Wound might be healed or closed without the Tumor Pain corrupt Pus and Inflammation of its Lips But that a Thorn may be drawn out of the Finger with greater brevity than that the Finger should therefore arise into a corrupt mattery Aposteme For the fat or grease of an Hare being annointed on it doth extract the Thorne in one Night Meanes are not wanting to the Archeus whereby he might perform that very thing safely and quickly even as he doth in some of his own accord but that our Archeus is subject to any kind of Passions as if he did conceive childish indignations from the least hurting of the Body No wonder therefore that the sublunary being of Nature by no means subjecting it self to Justice doth yeeld to or fall under its own inordinate Passions When as also the whole man whereof the intellectuall mind is President doth exceed the path of right Reason in many things At length that is remarkable that in the works of Art the efficient Cause is alwaies without and the Schools being deceived through the errour thereof have not known that in natural and substantial generations the Agent is internal For therefore they have banished the efficient Cause as external in the catalogue of natural Causes Yea it hath been unknown that both the Causes of natural things being connexed as I have demonstrated in its place doth not differ from its Effect but in the priority of flowing which thing hath deceived as many as have similitudinously contemplated of Nature by artificial things For neither have they been elsewhere more blinded than while they have introduced that incongruity of their own speculation into Diseases For they have not onely made artificial things like unto seminal speculatively but also in endeavouring to cure they have through a great confusion of falshoods bespattered the whole practice of healing with contrarieties For they have thought that to produce and to generate are altogether the same while in the mean time a generater bespeaks that he brings forth something from his own substance but he produceth who onely couples active things with passive although he contribute nothing of his own He maketh or doeth also who acteth any thing how he listeth Furthermore I also oft-times admire that while the Schools do constitute the benefit of healing in the removal of Causes after what sort they could place distemperatures within the rank of Diseases seeing the hot and most known of diseases doth both suddenly and of its own accord slide into cold and we are able presently to remove the intemperance of heat at pleasure without helping of the Fevers And then seeing they have never received the vital Cause which is the impulsive one in Diseases for the efficient Cause of Diseases they have determined of removing nothing but the occasional Cause For the Archeus although he be the true and immediate Cause as well according to the matter the which he brings vitiated and that out of his own bosome as also according to a seminal and efficient Idea yet the Archeus doth not shew the removal of himself But the Schools do act contrarily while they attempt their Cures by blood-letting purgatives and next by every means fortifying Life But upon what ground they do that they themselves shall see Moreover in Diseases Nature is standing sitting and laying Nature standing doth her self cure her own Diseases from a voluntary goodness as wholsome Fevers And likewise a Quartane which is cured by the proper guidance of Nature but not by the helps of the Schools And Nature standing can also presently walk the which belongs onely to Health But Nature sitting although she be able of her own accord to stand and at length to walk yet she is constrained to arise before she stands and therefore she ariseth with the more difficulty But if she attempt to arise by inordinate remedies she is prostrated from her seat and lays on the ground and being not a little shaken thereby is pained and sometimes dies of her fall Yea also while many that they may not be sick or ill at ease do make use of counsels or advices which do for the most part hasten old age and death and oft-times also deprive them of life But Nature laying along can never rise of her self as the Leprosie falling Evil Asthma Stone Dropsie c. Yea neither is it sufficient for her to arise for if the nerves or sinews are not confirmed they do easily relapse Furthermore Hippocrates will have a Physitian to be onely the Minister or Servant of Nature but Natures themselves to be their own onely Physitiannesses and that thing he thus commanded in his age When as otherwise a Physitian is the Patron and Master of Nature being prostrated which kinde of Physitian if the old man had not as yet acknowledged surely much less the succeeding heathenish Schools even unto this day Last of all dead carcasses are dissected which is done to excuse their excuses in sins for after a thousand years Anatomy the Moderns do scarce either the better know Diseases or the more successfully expel them They rejoyce indeed that they have found an imminent mark of any corruption in a part which covers their unfaithfull Aids or Succours with the Buckler of impossibility So indeed the world is deceived with a lofty brow For neither was that corruption there before the space of two days although the place might be pained long before So far is it from excusing the Physitian which is seasonably sent for that it rather lays open the fault of the same who to wit had seasonably or in due time dispersed the accused excrement For nothing of the parts containing is destroyed in live Bodies but it is first deprived of the commerce of Life And besides neither can it long be deprived of the Balsame of Life nor a mortisied part wait many houres in the lukewarmth of the Body which doth not likewise speedily putrifie stink and draw the whole Body into its own conspiracy Therefore from thence it is manifest that the corruption which is obvious in the Dissected dead Carcass was made but a few hours before and began but a few dayes before Death For corrupt mattery Imposthumes which are stirred up by malignant assemblies in the Lungs do indeed contain the Seeds of Diseases but the mortifying of Internal parts doth not many paces precede the day of Death One onely thing is at leastwise to be admired that the Schooles indeed have acknowledged a Spermatical or seedy nourishment whereby we are immediately nourished because it is that which they divide into four secondary humours yet that they have not
known that the same Humours do become degenerate in the passage of Digestions and are the occasions of many Diseases But that the Liver alone in Vices of the skin doth bear the undeserved blame that is a thing full of ignorance and worthy of pity I will at length moreover commune with Christian Physitians by one only Argument To wit Iâ— is of Faith that God made not Death for Man Because Adam was by Creation Immortal and void of Diseases For concerning long Life I have explained after what manner a Disease and Death at the eating of the Apple as an Effect unto a second Cause have entred into Nature Therefore in this place it hath been sufficient to have admonished That the Concupiscence of the Flesh arose from Transgression and also to have brought forth the flesh of Sin and therefore that Nature being corrupted produced a Disease through Concupiscence I could wish therefore that the Schooles may open the Causal Band and Connexion between the forbidden Apple and the Elements or the Complexions of these Whether in the mean time they are lookt upon as the Causes bringing Diseases or as Diseases themselves To wit let them teach If the Body of Man from his first Creation did consist of a mixture of the Four Elements after what manner those second Causes or co-mixt Elements onely by eating of the Apple which else had never been to fight the Bonds of Peace and Bolts of humane Nature being burst asunder at length naturally exercise hostilities and all Tyranny What common thing I say doth interpose betwixt the Apple and our constitutive Elements But if this came miraculously and supernaturally to passe that Death was made a punishment of sin Then God had made Death Efficiently but Man had given onely an Occasion for Death But this is against the Text yea and against Reason Because Death was made with Beasts in the Beginning even as also at this day unto every one happens his own Death that is by a natural course and a knitting of Causes unto their Effect It must needs be therefore according to Faith that Death crept naturally into Nature so that man was made Mortal after the manner of Bruits For it is certain that at the eating of the Apple the brutal concupiscence of the Flesh was introduced Neither do we read at length of any other knowledge of good and evil to have been brought in which was signified under the opening of their Eyes than that they knew themselves to be naked and then it first shamed them of their nakedness Wherefore I have long stood amazed that the Schooles have never examined the aforesaid Text that they might search out the Disposition or Respect of the Cause bringing a Disease unto its natural Effect In what day soever ye shall eat of the forbidden Fruit ye shall die the Death Which indeed is not so to be taken as if God had said by way of threatnings If ye shall eat of the forbidden Tree I will create or make Death in you Diseases Paines Miseries c. for a punishment of sin or that through a condign curse of my indignation ye and your posterity shall die For such an Interpretation as that resisteth the divine goodness because that for the sin of our two Parents he had equally cursed all their posterity with an irrevocable curse of his Indignation who after sin commited and the Flood it self readily blessed Noah by increase and multiply c. Wherefore those words Ye shall die the death did contain a fatherly admonition To wit that by eating of the Apple they should contract the every way impurity of Nature as from a second Cause seated to wit in the Concupiscence of the flesh of sin But seeing such a concupiscence can never consist in elementary qualities it is also sufficiently manifest that a Disease and Death are not connexed as Effects to the Elements and the qualities of these But the concupiscence of the flesh as it infected onely the Archeus even so also it did onely respect the same In the Archeus therefore every Disease afterwards established it self and found its own onely and immediate Inne And so also from hence the Archeus is made wholly irregular inordinate violent and disobedient Because he is he who from thenceforth hath framed inordinate images and seales together with a spending of his own proper substance as it were the wax of that seal For images or likenesses are at first indeed the meer incorporeal Beings of the mind but as soon as they are imprinted on the Archeus they cloath themselves with his Body and are made most powerful seminal Beings the sealing dames mistresses and architectresses of any kind of passions and inordinacies whatsoever which thing I will hereafter more clearly illustrate in the Treatise of Diseases Finally the adversaries will be able to Object That it would be all as one whether a Disease be accounted a disposition or a distemperature of the first qualities or a disproportionable mixture of humours or lastly whether it be called an indisposition or confusion and likewise that it is as one whether the Cause which brings a Disease he called the occasional or the material Cause of Diseases or the internal and conjoyned Cause thereof For truely the one onely intention of Nature and Physitians on both sides is conversant about the removal of that matter for the obtainment of health Therefore that I am stirred about nothing but an unprofitable brawling concerning a Name I Answer Negatively and that indeed because both the suppositions are false For as to the First For that doth not onely contain a manifest fault in arguing of not the Cause as of the Cause and of a non-Being for a Being But besides the Destruction and Death of mortal men doth from thence follow For for that very Cause for which a Remedy is administred to correct the distemperature of a Discrasie or the abounding or disproportion of humours because of things not existing in Nature they at least cannot deny that our Disputation is of things but not of a Name onely when as to wit they accuse cure or undertake to cure the Disease for the Cause or this for it They handle I say things that are never possible as if they were present And then also they presse a falshood Because indeed I never said that a naked confusion or indisposition of the Archeus is a Disease but I affirme that the immediate and internal matter of a Disease is to be drawn from the masse of the Archeus himself But I call the imprinted seminal Idea which springs from the disturbances of the Archeus the efficient Gause but as to what appertaines to the other supposition the occasional or inciting Cause and the internal containing Cause or the very Body of a Disease do far also differ from each other For example The occasional Cause of intermitting Fevers is present out of the fit which should not be if the occasional Cause were the very internal matter of
an actual Combate 10. He gives answer unto the maskes of fear objected by the Humorists 11. He goes to meet his Adversaries 12. The intentions of the Author 13. An old abuse doth not give a right 14. That it is the miseries of Princes to live encompassed with flatterers and therefore out of the truth 15. The Courts are wanting of the best Physitians I Will prove first that the liquour Alkahest the first being of Salts Lile the first Mettal Mercurius Diaphoretius or Horizontal Gold that any one I say whatsoever it be of them for all of them through the consanguinity of one dissolver do conspire into a Unisone is sufficient for the curing of any Diseases whatsoever however the carping Momus's guts may crack First of all Adeptists have known with me how far the Dispensatories of the Apâ—thecary do differ from hence yea and how remotely those Writers are absent who being themselves as yet Young beginners through a great itch of a little Glory have set forth Basilicals and the first principles of Chymistry But I will prove it by the assumption of this Chapter and the other Calumnies raised up against me shall voluntarily melt like Snow Wherefore I being the last of Alchymists will thus prove the aforesaid Assumption Health it self doth not consist in a just temperature of the Body but in a sound or entire Life For otherwise a temperature of Body is as yet in a dead Carcass newly killed where notwithstanding there is now death but not life not health but health is the one only homogeneal integrity and unblamed disposition of life requiring a preservation of that integrity in healthy Persons and a restoring thereof in sick Persons And that thing Hippocrates so long agoe smelt out affirming that Nature alone which is only one is the Physitianess of Diseases but the Physitian the Minister or Servant as also the Medicine a means of reducing nature being exorbitant Therefore the integrity of health is in a Unisone and there is one only governour of Life and no more Therefore this governour alone is ill affected in Diseases For it is he alone which maketh the assault as well in healthy as in sick folkes and the rupture of him only doth rent asunder the family administration of Life For although nothing doth provoke from abroad and nothing from the seed of our Parents doth disturb us Yet that Archeus doth now and then fail or decay of his own free accord and from hence our integrity is dissolved and impurities by an after right are thereby many wayes bred which do ensnare the Monarchy of Life Truly seeing nature it self as Hippocrates witnesseth is the Physitianess of Diseases therefore its Unity is to be conserved and its integrity to be restored But that thing may be sufficiently over-performed by one only remedy For there is a Unity of altered nature a Unity of health being hurt and therefore a Unity of the Spirit which is disturbed under the Disease is only to be considered but not a multiplicity of occasional diseasie varieties And seeing one of the aforesaid Arcanums doth plentifully contain in it all things requisite from the gift of God and by the preparations of the Artificer Therefore one of those Arcanums or secrets is sufficient for every and any Disease whatsoever And therefore the text doth not say Almighty created Medicines from the Earth But Medicine in the singular number which Medicine otherwise already prepared for the art of healing he created not from the earth That Medicine therefore pierceth the innermost parts of the Body which of its own very gift of goodness doth comfort and confirm all the members And next doth most powerfully dissolve whatsoever filths have been any were co-heaped The which being once dissolved nature is busie to disperse the hurtfull matter through a passage known unto her self Let Young beginners take notice in this place that according to a wonted blockishness they beg the Principle after that I have already made it abundantly manifest that there are not contraries in Nature no temperature of Elements and much less a distemperature of Elementary qualities Neither likewise Humours whereunto health and by consequence an infirmity do by a just title owe their patronage In like manner also I have so withdrawn from Fevers a trust to solutive Medicines that I may not again recollect the same without the grief of the Schooles Indeed a perfect purgation ought to loosen only the sick but not healthy folk And for that cause it is most perfect the which doth at first unsensibly lull asleep and pacifie the Archeus who afterwards seeing nature is the only Physitianess doth cut down the Diseases and the occasional Causes of these for it is an unheard of thing to learn in a tone or harmony in the presence of the refusing hinderers of Young beginners who desire to learn And they only do apprehend me as many as do understand the things or principles before recorded For they do object for their purging Medicines that it is nothing material although a laxative Medicine doth eject a laudable juice out of the veins especially because by a stronger right and a briefer compendium it will expell the Diseasie Fex or Dreg neither must we greatly care although solutive Medicines do with the more crude Blood a little diminish the strength But the Books concerning Fevers and Humours do under the consent of experience deny that purgative things do take away hurtful Humours or any Disease dedicated to the same Humours And then because there are not in nature such Humours neither likewise do any Diseases answer to the same Then also whatsoever purgatives do chase away and exterminate it doth not belong to one of the three Humours which they say do offend but it is venal Blood slain by the poyson of the purging Medicine and the stinking Carcass whereof is ejected by the Fundament And therefore neither do they dare to give purging things to drink no not indeed in sharp Fevers unless after that the matter do swell for anger which is as much as to say after that Nature hath become the conqueress to wit when perhaps the Diseasie guest which is vanquished being presently about to retire of its own free accord shall as to a part of it fall out of the Body together with other filths caused by the purging Medicine Unless the Archeus being wroth with the injected poysonous purgation doth stir up a relapsing Disease Which thing I remember very often to have happened and have recorded in my written Catalogues And that thing the Schooles are not Ignorant of who long since affirm with a serious Character that only Aloes is unhurtful Therefore every laxative is absolutely hurtful if not also together with that in vain I may be guilty therefore before God if I do not altogether perswade that we must wholly abstain from laxative things For neither if nature be not foolish is a Laxative Medicine sucked unto the veins Neither without danger doth
it rush it self headlong into danger which should draw a hurtful poyson within the veins Therefore a solutive poyson while as yet it is detained and that in the Stomach it putryfies and defiles whatsoever was a-loof of deposed in the Mesenteries for better uses and draws the refined Blood out of the hollow vein instead of a putryfied treasure and by degrees defiles it with a poysonous contagion and dissolves it with the stinking ferment of a dead carcass For from hence is there a loss of strength by laxative Medicines and a disturbance of the Monarchy of Life without hope of cure thereby But that fury of laxative things endureth not only so long as their presence But also so long as the lamentable poyson doth burden the Stomach and Bowels with its contagion So indeed an artificial Diarrhaea or Flux ariseth which now and then persisteth even until Death and laughs at the promised help and attempted succours of astringent things Unto the second and third I likewise say it hath been sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere that the Elements are neither tempered for Bodies falsly believed to be mixt nor for the temperature sake of the same Bodies and much less for a just one and as to an adequate or suitable weight Therefore the Schooles presuppose falshoods yea and contend by sophistry For although Arcanums do cure a broken bone as well as Comfrey or the Stone for broken bones yet it is on both sides required that the fracture of the bone be reposed I likewise remember that a burstness being well bound up hath been cured beyond expectation because from the breaking of a bone some one had layen long on his Loynes Neither therefore doth it want an Arcanum Unto the fourth and also the fifth it sufficeth that the Arcanum or Secret doth wipe away the occasional Causes to wit nature being holpen supplying the rest Unto the sixth let the Schooles refrain their tongue For an Arcanum cures Diseases which they under blasphemy have maintained to be uncurable Which thing the Hospitals of those that were uncurable do testifie for me if they are compared with the Epitaph of Paracelsus But the seventh reproach breaks forth from ignorant Jaws to wit from the proper testimony of a guilty mind Unto the eight and ninth it is certain that the Exclaimers do grieve while they are beaten for from a sense of grief the Mouth speaketh reproaches But if of thousands of Alchymists scarce one doth arive unto his wished end that is not the vice of the art because the endowment doth not depend on the will of him that willeth and runneth But because it is not yet the fulness of time wherein these secrets shall be more common Be it sufficient for me that the signs do no where appear but among the obtainers of Arcanums that is Adeptists and that none of the Humorists hath ever come thither neither also shall come Therefore there is no place for reproaches against the truth of the science of healing but where there is no order and an everlasting horrour doth inhabit For Owles and monstrous Bats do shun the light of truth because they are fed with a great lie to wit that they have known how to cure Fevers without evacuation When as indeed they know not by both succours as well of a cut vein as of a loosened Belly how to cure Fevers certainly and safely for let them cure a Fever as they affirm Shall they not likewise for that very cause bring rest to the sick And afterwards safely take away that which they say doth remain which was not lawful so fitly to be done as long as they believe life to conflict or skirmish with Death and the Disease with health But they shun the light of truth under the Cloak of a lie thus ignorance dictating and gain thus commanding miserable men do defend themselves For Medicine is not a naked word a vain boasting or vain talk for it leaves a work behind it Wherefore I despise reproaches the boastings and miserable vanities of ambition Go to return with me to the purpose If ye speak truth Oh ye Schooles that ye can cure any kinde of Fevers without evacuation but will not for fear of a worse relapse come down to the contest ye Humorists Let us take out of the Hospitals out of the Camps or from elsewhere 200 or 500 poor People that have Fevers Pleurisies c. Let us divide them in halfes let us cast lots that one halfe of them may fall to my share and the other to yours I will cure them without blood-letting and sensible evacuation but do you do as ye know for neither do I tye you up to the boasting or of Phlebotomy or the abstinence from a solutive Medicine we shall see how many Funerals both of us shall have But let the reward of the contention or wager be 300 Florens deposited on both sides Here your business is decided Oh ye Magistrates unto whom the health of the People is dear It shall be contested for a publique good for the knowledge of truth for your Life and Soul for the health of your Sons Widows Orphans and the health of your whole People And finally for a method of curing disputed in an actual contradictory superadd ye a reward instead of a titular Honour from your Office compel ye those that are unwilling to enter into the combate or those that are Dumb in the place of exercise to yeild let them then shew that which they now boast of by brawling For thus Charters from Princes are to be shewn Let words and brawling cease let us act friendly and by mutual experiences that it may be known hence forward whether of our two methods are true For truly in contradictories not indeed both propositions but one of them only is true But now the Humourists while any commits himself to me for cure do possess him with fear to wit least they give up themselves unto an Authour of new opinions but rather that they go in the paths of Heathens that they may not through a novelty of opinion be accounted to have put their Life in doubt and that they rather trusting in an old abuse do enter into beaten paths Ah I wish those of another Life and of the intelligible World might return that they might testifie unto whom their death is owing Presently they who being now subtile Scoffers do seem to ask counsel for their own life should acknowledge that they do incurr on themselves the destruction and loss of their Life while they had rather commit their Life to plurality or the great number only by reason of the constancie of an old errour and abuse than that they are willing to be bowed unto the Admonitions of the truth As if War were still to be waged only with Darts or Arrows and Slings because that is the most antient kinde of Weapons But nevertheless neither are our Medicines so new that there are only the thousandth of experiences in them the which
that the Life is the immediate mansion of a Disease the inward subject yea and workman of the same But seeing Life is not essentially of the Body nor proper to the Body but that a Body without Life is a dead Carcass and a Disease is in the Life Of necessity also every matter or mansion and efficient Cause of a Disease doth not exceed the Limits of Life That is of necessity every Disease doth inhabite within the Case of the Archeus who is the alone immediate witness executer instrument as also the inne of Life but Apostemes Ulcers Filths Excrements c. Are only either the occasions of Death and Diseases or the latter products of the same raised up into a new scene or stage of the Tragedy Neither surely is it therefore a wonder that together with the Life all Diseases do depart into nothing if the Life be the immediate subject and mansion of Diseases But I long since admired that no Physitian hath hitherto known in what the essence of Diseases should shine But that they have wandred about Elementary qualities Humours Complexious Contrarieties and Dispositions Neither that indeed they have once observed that as filths are not Diseases so neither are Diseases in filths but that they live only in the Life it self and being included in the same do so arise grow and perish that seeing they are no where out of the Life they ought to be the intimate and domestick Thieves of the Life These things be spoken of the proper receptacle of Diseases Furthermore seeing a Disease is without controversie admitted to be a Being existing in us as in an inne and doth enjoy its own and singular properties and different Symptoms A Disease of necessity is not of the number of accidents because an accident is not of an accident combined with it and distinct from it self in the whole Species For truly sharpness or bitterness is not a property of whiteness blackness lightness or heat But every one of them do stand by themselves Wherefore if a Disease be a Being and not an accident if in the next place it produceth from it self not only alterations diverse dispositions weaknesses c. But moreover doth generate substances degenerating from the ordinary institution of their own nature of necessity also it ought to consist of matter and its own internal or seminal efficient Lastly seeing a Disease is internal as to the life it self it also follows of necessity that the matter of a Disease is Archeal and its efficient cause is vital And that I may speak more clearly every Disease is of necessity an Ideal efficient act of the vital power cloathing it self with a Garment of Archeal matter and attaining a vital and substantial form according to a difference of the slowness and swiftness of Ideal seeds which things indeed have been hitherto unknown by Mortals and those things which follow are as yet more largely supported with this position God made not Death and so far is he alwayes estranged from Death that he refuseth to be called the God of the Dead First of all also although Death doth sometimes invade without a Disease yet for the most part Death follows Diseases so that none doubteth but that that Death is the daughter of Diseases or the second Cause whereby and by means whereof the Life is extinguished That is Death is present but seeing God is not in any wise the Author of Death to wit by whom Death entred into Man who else was immortal and that no more or by a stronger right in the beginning of the World than at this day A Physitian must diligently enquire from whence Death doth causally invade from the beginning and even unto this day that it may from thence be manifest from whence a Disease hath drawn its integrity For truly although it be sufficiently apparent that Death doth contain as it were a privation or exstinction of Life so neither in it self or for its existence it doth not require any substantial form and much less a vital one But surely a Disease as such doth not bespeak a privation but a Being truly subsisting acting by an hurtful act of Life and ensnaring the Life So also it behoveth a Disease to consist in the form of its own thingliness which the Life can receive into it and be informed by it But seeing a Disease arose from the same Beginning as Death did neither is God ever the Author of Death It by all means follows that God is not the Author or Creator of Diseases neither therefore although a Disease hath a certain substantial form Yet it hath not Life nor a vital Light but what it hath borrowed from the Life it self to wit so far as it glistens in the Light of our Life or in that of Cattel But not that a Disease doth require or hath begged a vital Light from the Father of Lights for the being of its seed the which in it self is rather to be named a deadly or mortal thing and altogether estranged from the goodness of God the Creator Therefore although God alone doth create all the forms of all things and the Father of Lights doth give every essential form to wit a vital substantial form and so also the formal substance without any mutual competitor yet that hath not place in Diseases in the forming of which indeed man alone is chief Because the Life of Man alone containeth the second Causes of Diseases and Death Therefore because the Creator God denyeth that he made Death therefore also a Disease For a Disease standeth in the Life of Man and therefore all its quiddity or thingliness depends on the Life of man and that not only Seminally even as otherwise it is proper to all the seeds of any things whatsoever But besides also formally so that the Life of the Archeus or his Flesh and Blood are and do remain the whole formal Cause of Diseases or the effective Cause of the formes of a Disease For he who from the beginning refused to have effected Death or Diseases will never at length thence-forward be willing to have made Death nor Diseases For the Father of Lights will not give his Honour of Creating formal Lights unto any Creature except the Mortal formes of Diseases whereof as neither would he be called the God of the Dead Therefore Man remains the workman of his own Death who the day before was immortal as also of his own Diseases as if he were the Creator of Death So indeed that whereas God hath made vital Lights Man Createth Diseasie Obscure and deadly Idea's or Shapes and such an Idea doth as much differ from a vital Light as a black heat doth from Light Therefore the formal act of Death and Diseases sprang from the action of original Sin and shall so spring even unto the end of the World For the same Cause which in the beginning of the World made Death or the same second natural Cause which gave a natural entrance of Death into
Favour a desire of Praying of Talking with God with humility an amorous perfect and exceeding delightful Faith or Confidence For these things the World is ignorant of For I being a Phisitian ought here on purpose to treat of Morality however others may laugh And that not onely as the indispositions of the Soul do defile and blemish or corrupt the Health But especially from that Title because seeing a Disease is the Son of Sin it cannot be perfectly known if the faculty of the Concupiscence of Sin be unknown from whence every assault towards a Disease drives it self into the Archeus But hitherto concerning Idea's conceived by the cogitation of Man of which it shall as yet be more liberally treated under the Chapter of Things Conceived Now it remains to unfold from whence Idea's made by man are of so great strength that oft-times they call for a Disease yea and also Death on the Imaginer From the Premises therefore we must resume 1. That Idea's are stamped in the Imaginative faculty by cogitation 2. That they imprint their Image on the Spirit of Life 3. That they are operative means whereby the Soul moveth and governeth the Body 4. That they are seminal Images 5. But that they are graduated according to the power and strength of the Imaginative Faculty 6. Wherefore that a humane Embryo is changed into diverse Monsters 7. That every man by the Images of Sorrow Terrour c. doth form seminal Poysons unto himself which do consume him in manner of the Plague or else by a violent languishing 8. That they do also passe forth out of the Body of the Imaginer because an Image conceived by a Woman with Child regularly wanders into the young even on the last day of carrying it in the Womb yet then it is without controversie that the young doth enjoy its own Life and lives by its own Soul and Quarter It is manifest therefore from the aforesaid particulars not only concerning the question whether it be to wit that there are in Idea's a most powerful force to operate but also because they are seminal that they do naturally pierce and operate on all things For truly if there be not a certain ruling and forming Idea of the matter of seeds formed by the generater the seed by it self remains wholly barren In the next place those Idea's ought to be immediately not indeed in the Soul of Man but immediately in the Archeus which maketh the assault because without such an Idea the Archeus should plainly remain an unpartaker of all action operation and propagation Therefore also by Idea's every motion and action of Nature as well in remedies as in poysons and every Natural power is seminally imprinted by every Parent whatsoever Yea forreign strange Idea's are introduced and those ascending into those already constituted because Idea's no otherwise than as Lights do mutually pierce each other and do keep a perpetual and co-marriageable mark of the Archeus with the Archeus which Idea's while they take hold of the matter of him a Disease is now bred For as seminal and primitive Idea's being planted in the seed by the Parents do figure a Man Bruit Plant c. So also the Idea's of inclinations affections c. coming upon them do determine or limit the countenance of a Man unto the delineaments or draughts of Physiognomy Which afterwards also are varied by the future Idea's of manners customes c. For bruit Beasts through the troublesome Idea's of lust do not wax fat even as those that are gelded do But Eunuchs if they are without care do fatten who else through the Idea of grief do also wax lean But from whence there is so great power in Idea's it is worthy to be known that the table or matter upon which even as on water the phantasie decyphers its Idea's even as on water is the very substance of the Archeus it self the which being once defiled by a conceived Idea and as it were instructed by a seminal principle is afterwards uneffectual for other Offices Therefore indeed those that are without care do slowly wax grey and in a contrary sense but many cares do speedily draw on and ripen old age according to that saying my Spirit shall be diminished and my dayes shall be shortned Rightly therefore was it said from of old That the perfect curing of Diseases consists in the removal of the Cause or Root The which if it should be the visible peccant matter it self even as the Schooles do nevertheless point it out to be now a Fever or the colike Diseases could not be cured unless all the occasional matter were first removed which thing is as manifestly false as it is most exceeding true that Fevers are silent the same occasional Cause remaining So indeed I have oft-times perfectly taken away the Colick Choler Flux Bloody-flux and other Diseases by a true Laudanum without Opium although the residing mass or lump were as yet entertained within Therefore all visible and forreign matter either happening from without or sprung up of its own accord within how degenerate soever it shall be from the very nourishment of the solid parts and a liquor separated from them it hath it self alwayes by a proper name after the manner of an occasion and a provoking Cause whether that shall be for a primary Disease or indeed shall be produced and constituted by a primary Disease consequently afterwards pricking forward the Archeus unto the erecting of a new storm or Disease And so every Disease is caused from the violent assaulting Spirit by Idea's conceived in the proper subject of the Archeus by whose fault alone a live Body but not a dead Carcass suffers all Diseases But if that this off-spring of a Disease be spred into the families of the digestions it produceth occasional matters indeed for secondary Diseases which are bred to stirr up afterwards the same Archeus unto new seminaries of Diseases For so wheresoever Hippocrates hath not found any visible matter as the occasion of a Disease he accuseth a Divine Beginning in Diseases because it is invisible from the hidden Store-house of seeds from the invisible World or out of Pluto's River of Hell or from the Chaos of successive changes Therefore I do in all things wholly admire at this Divine Beginning be it spoken by the liberty of Hippocrates in Diseases as the judge of a broken purity so also a revenger of an hidden impurity and concupiscence lurking in the flesh of sin And therefore also persevering in the radical disorder of a vital principle But as it doth immediately sit in and is awakned by a vital and seminal principle Hence also consequently Diseases have properties directions proportions durations affections and respects unto members and places which things certainly in a good understanding cannot be attributed unto the ulcerous predicaments of heats and colds as neither to Distillations and Catarrhs flowing down with a voluntary fall of weights But it is profitable to have made this
Stomatical and Aromatical things being Distilled Furthermore in as much as in fits of the Falling-sickness all Sense not likewise motion faileth Yet that doth not therefore argue that the sensitive Soul is not the Fountain of both For although all the intellectuall powers do fail and onely the Testimonies of a shaking and leaping motion do remain as long as that Eclipse endureth yet all those Powers are denoted or designed as issuing from the Soul into the Body as if they were proper to it But those Powers which it self hath planted in the Archeus implanted in the Organs are under an Ecclipse and are tumulted by the commotion of the Soul yet they subsist obscured because the Life is not taken away neither doth the Pulse therefore cease But in as much as an unvoluntary convulsive motion doth even still remain that is not to be attributed so much to the Soul as to the singular Life of the Muscles The which indeed I have elsewhere shewn as yet to persevere for some time after Death And that a Tetanus and strait Extension doth begin long after Death So that although the Life of the Muscles doth proceed from the sensitive Soul yet it obtains a certain peculiar Efficacy as also Station of place Therefore it is less wonderful or absurd for the Muscles to be therefore tumulted by their own Motion if on this side Death they have felt the common Life to be Eclipsed But in an Apoplexie and Swooning even the motion of the Muscles also doth plainly fail except the motion of those between the Ribs because then the sensitive Soul doth undergo a total darkness Therefore the Soul the directress of Life according to the divers Tragedies of its perturbations doth manifoldly dismiss its Guardians into the Organs placed under it But every Life seeing it is of the disposition of Lights descending from the Father of Lights it exceeds a humane Understanding And so by an unfit word the Father of Lights is called by the Schooles the Intelligible World who doth least of all fall under our Understanding For neither is the most Glorious Father of Lights and his whole Common-wealth wholy unknown unto us according to the Testimony of Truth to Nicodemus but also the Essence Thingliness Direction and Distribution of the vital Powers do exceed our Capacity For how astonishable is the privation of Understanding Memory yea or of Speech only especially Motion Sense Appetite yea and the integrity of Health remaining And how terrible is the fall of these at every onset of the Falling-sickness Swooning or drousie Evil And how much doth it exceed humane Industrie that so diverse Faculties do arise and inhabit in one Stomack Because so diverse Symptomes do bewray the same hurtings of the Faculties For all things do drive us unto the amazement of a Miracle or Wonder And therefore we being admonished by so many stormes on every side of our Ignorance and Fondness do confess that that one only sensitive Soul is the Fountain of Life also Life the Spring of many Powers and Distributress thereof as well in the healthy as in sick Persons Therefore also if we Physitians ought to lay the Ax unto the root of the tree we are intent for the obtaining of Universal Arcanum's or Secrets which may conserve preserve plant and build up the Life in the very Fountain of Life the Author of Death and Diseases no less than of Health For I now have regard to the frail Soul but not to the incorporeal and immortal Mind The which we believe to be Originally inspired alike and alike perfect in all And therefore Conditions Inclinations Domestick or Forreign Mild or Fierce Tractable or Teachable Humble or Proud are instilled into us by the Mortal Soul Wherein as in a Subject or Place locally disposing the Inclinations of varieties are unfolded which otherwise from the Mind or Image of God are naturally banished Therefore sleep was not in man naturally in respect of his mind but was afterwards sent into him by the Creator But before sleep was bred Sense Motion and Appetite were present Because the Mind as it was thenceforth Immortal it was also unweariable and had no need of Sleep or Rest Yet Sleep was sent into Adam before the Fall Not so much for that he stood in need of Sleep especially a few hours after his Creation as chiefly because by Sleep he was not yet made sore afraid of known Death threatned unto him for eating of the Apple Otherwise Sleep produceth from it self sluggish idleness and foolish vain Dreames and causeth the loss of almost half the Life Whence even at this day from the antient Sleep sent into Adam they have yet retained Dreams That the Old Men shall Dream Dreams the Young Men shall Prophesie And Night unto Night shall shew Knowledge For the sleepifying Power which was sent into the Mind before the Fall and the same also being after a sort free from the wedlock of the Mortal Soul would after some sort draw it into its Original Prerogative of Prophesying unless the darkness of the Soul sprung up and put in place did obscure the same But while I declaim the Stomack to be the Inne of the sensitive Soul and for that cause do dedicate the sink of Diseases to the Stomack I have indeed considered Occasional Causes near the same place to sit as well in the hollowness and bought thereof and being as it were strangers onely there to stick and likewise in the tent of the Bowel Duodenum which is the Prison deputed for the Jurisdiction of the Gaul and Pylorus and most troublesome to Anatomists for its composure of Vessels and Glandules as in the Archeal sheathes no less of that which is inbred as of that which is inflowing To wit that through the conspiring distemperature whereof the sensitive Soul is diversly disturbed and all the Vital Faculties the Chambermaids hereof to be co-shaken and so the same being weakened that an Army of Diseases doth arise as well those Radical or Chronical as those soon hastening as I long since have known being thorowly instructed by many Experiences So that I saw Hunger and unextinguishable Thirst to proceed not so properly from the sharpnesse of the matter provoking as from the very fury of the sensitive Soul For otherwise a Thorexis or Draught or Potion of generous Wine should not dissolve Hunger unlesse Hunger being as it were made drunk by appeasing should soundly sleep And therefore Thirst in Feavers doth not afflict but in its own Stations although the same matter yea and a more cruel heat doth presse more in their Vigour than at other times Now even as the Government of the Stomack hath been enlarged on So also it hath been shewn that the sensitive Soul doth there abide as in the first or chief Kitchin of the Meats and that the Life doth there Inhabit For truly the most potent Powers of transchanging and digesting do there exercise their Offices and therefore not onely Kitchinfilths are
as the first do touch at this string in healing Therefore if mortals shall dash themselves into a presumption of Faith if they depart from the Word of God and for the explications of their own consent in Opinion do as it were behold themselves in the glass of their own complacency they now thereupon do stamp on themselves staggering Idea's and those of a careless Religion they from one point being at first doubtful do dispute as being uncertain of more they proceed unâ—â—â—theism through a height of Irreligion But if they shall fall into Superstitions they 〈◊〉 Idea's agreeable unto Necromancy or Divination by calling of Spirits from whence they prepare an apt Soul for Stygian or Hellish Vanities Whereunto as unto those who are become mad the enemy of mortal men doth now very easily associate himself especially if a stubborn Superstition be defended and that with a strong desire of hatred or some other Sin For they stamp Idea's on themselves which are second unto a voluntary blindness We must here again call to mind with the first that all Ideal Images are seminal in respect of a real Being brought forth by imagination And then in respect of the Spirits as they are vital and married to a conceived Seed whose matter they do assume or table on which they are deciphered they are made the Instrument fit for executing the ends of Idea's Therefore by both these Prerogatives they pierce the Archeus and do estrange him unto the strange Scopes of their own Perturbations If therefore Faith and a confident Superstition do offend onely through credulity or a rash belief now they forge Idea's whereby they think themselves enchanted uncurable and are made the servants of a desperate madness For their strength being prostrated they are made lean and being mad do wax pale But if an undiscreet and inordinate scrupulousness doth vex them it self frameth a careful Idea on them disturbed with the fear of Hell from whence their Life is a Horror unto them Their Conversation of all things is Fearfull almost as if it were Diabolicall For they generate a foolishness the which they acknowledge confess bewail because they are not able to free themselves from it And at length they as impotent do so fail or decline that they snatch to them an Idea as it were their Soul But if a scrupulousness do run back unto the mind for deliberation before a totall victory and nevertheless doth in the mean time stamp new and inordinate Idea's It being unstable easily wanders into the opposite part and as if now abhorring its former scruple doth assume a Spiritual liberty with a presuming on desert and a despising of others For which way soever it endeavours to rise higher it is sunk so much the deeper For presumption is nothing but a vain madness hanging alwayes on others Wills or Judgements Yet is it as it were proper unto the most of mortals For by reason of Virtues Wit Learning Birth Riches Beauty Strength Boldness or Courage Arts much Talking or Voice every one forgeth Idea's applauding himself the which do make almost the whole World mad Of whom it is said That the number of Fools are Infinite But the most hurtful madness of Presumptions is in Political matters and it is that of boldness because it is that which doth oftentimes subject its own unto a tormenter Surely madness is seldom without Presumption if Stupidity be not akin to it For indeed the Idea of Faith Despair Scruple Irreligion Arrogancy Esteem c. because they respect the Powers which are more abstracted and Intellectual and do the more oppose infused Grace they do for the most part so beget a hidden madness that it is not but slowly discerned by Spiritual and those much Exercised men Which be-madding Idea's those do follow in Order which belong to the more corporeal Disturbances For first of all as an hard emulation of Jealousie is a Hell which throws a man headlong into very many Miseries Also in the next place the Idea's of Lust and Fornication do besides Madnesses stir up also many Sicknesses together But all Exorbitancies of Disturbances if they are sudden strong frequent or of daily continuance they imprint Idea's and Infirmities like unto themselves therefore also durable for Life Indeed there are some who are truly wise but if they shall pitch upon a matter whose Idea hath made them mad they do presently bewray an occult madness I say a suddain terror and grief have oftentimes extinguished some with an un-fore-seen Death In others also they have at least-wise caused a Sounding They have stirred up in many Women an Issue of their Menstrues durable for Life But if the force of an Idea shall not tyrannize on the venal blood and therefore shall not banish this as hateful but shall keep it in its possession in the place about the short Ribs it there seals the Falling-Sickness But lingring grief and that which is by intervals being interrupted with a little comfort doth stamp an Idea from whence Hypocondrial Melancholly in Women but the Jaundice in Men is bred if the Idea's be sealed in the blood But if in the very bowel of the Spleen it attemps an Asthma and Choaking But if grief be connexed with an Idea of Despair it breeds the Palsie or Convulsion especially in Virgins But lingring grief when it is joyned with premeditated anger or hatred doth bring forth Sobbing trembling of the Heart or a stubborn suppression of the Menstrues Yea if those kind of Passions shall be strong they cause the Falling-Sickness and Abortion or a Miscarrying or do Choak those Women which go with Child If anger be suddain and the which notwithstanding ought to be restrained or dissembled It stamps an Idea from whence there are Fallings down of the Womb wandrings unto its sides with intollerable pain but in Men there are Asthma's Shortness of Breath and a Fever which at length passeth over into the Jaundise or Dropsie If a violent affrightment or Fear doth rush upon one Epilepticall or Falling-Sickness Idea's are forged which do remain for Life But Hatred and Avarice do generate a Leanness or Atrophia or Consumption for lack of nourishment they stamp I say Idea's answerable to their own Desires and they decline so far to folly that they little esteem of their own Life and Fortunes of their Neighbours believing that nothing doth happen unto them more pleasant in their Life than the shameful Satiety of Revenge For those kind of Idea's do make Lean and because they are bred by slow and resolute Perturbations they increase day by day and do for the most part continue for term of Life Neither also doth the Seed being corrupted or the Menstrues detained stir up Diseases of the Womb but these are latter Products and Defects coming upon the Idea's of alterations For the Womb as it hath a particular Monarchy so also particular Diseases Because every exorbitant affect of the Womb is a certain madness or befooling of the Archeus
aforesaid opening causeth a sucking for fear of a Vacuum which if it be made at an undue moment it now becomes Vain For the Womb of a Virgin doth scarce shew the largness of two Fingers because it is that which wrinckled into it self by the least foldings but the opening of it doth not consist in the will of Man as neither in the tickling or luxurious desire of Pleasure but altogether in the good Pleasure of God from whence also Endowments are dispersed into nature of opening and shutting So that some Simples have obtained this Faculty Neither is it sufficient for the Womb to be opened at the set Moment unless the Guest which comes unto it be acceptable to the Place For if it be defiled with a blemish the hope of generating for the future is void with that Man because the Womb being wroth doth conceive a fury of abhorrency which is scarce appeasable CHAP. LXXXVIII A Preface I Have already demonstrated elsewhere that the Schooles have passed by the knowledge of Diseases and Things the neglect whereof is a Fault Neither is it therefore a Wonder if there be nothing hitherto of unheard of things For it hath been an unwonted and difficult matter to be willing to be wise in departing from the Opinions of the Schooles while they should fall from those things which I substituted in the room of acknowledged Errours There are few also who Phylosophize only for the sake of Charity towards their Neighbour Most of the more preferred ones refuse to learn as if the Greeks and Arabians had known all things and they despaire that more can be known And therefore they have put on sluggishness as their Skin But it is a frequent thing for him who presently after Promotion runs up and down from House to House to be intent upon Gain only and he prostitutes a saleable health for Visits Therefore he is most rare who is admitted unto the privy Chamber Many in the mean time walking before the doores of Chymistry do boast of great Matters being deluded with vain hope But indeed I first unless I am deceived have written the History of Life and Death hoping that thereby God his own Honour will redound unto him from his free gift of the Tree of Life and a useful Fruit unto those whom he reserves unto long Life after me For Paracelsus who before me hath treated of long Life hath indeeed given a Title but hath been altogether ignorant of the Matter In the mean time unless the Lord shall avert it I guess from a just fear that the Life of Mortals will dayly be shortned and at length to pass unto the Grave in its green eare through the Offence of Cutting of a Vein and Purgings Unless I say God do make almost all things new For the attainment of the Tree of Life is most difficult of much Labour and revealed unto few for it behoveth that the innocent in Hands and Heart doth ascend by the Mountain of the Lord Who hath not betaken his Soul to Vanity nor hath prepared Deceit for his Neighbour For he only shall receive this blessing from the Lord Until at length in the extream confusions of times Man shall dare to teach Man those things which otherwise for the conserving of mutual Commerces of Men do remain in secret For most Physitians at this day suppose that they know enough if they being initiated in the Paganish Doctrine of their Ancestors wax rich only and by the Rules of Writers are excused from Death among the common sort Most of them also deride at long Life because they are ignorant But these Men will at sometime be at the full and their Mocks shall fall on their own Authors Because in the Age to come it shall grieve God for so great neglect toward the Neighbour and Poor Vices also succeed one another throughout Ages in a Chain It hath already been sometimes an honour to have drunk down many large Cups elfewhere to have slain many in a single Duel Fraud and Deceit flourisheth at this day under the Title of Quicksightedness and virtue doth lay hid as Rare among Few although it be alwayes nominally esteemed It shall again wax feeble while the number of pernicious Wits shall depart from the delicate Idleness and evil curiosities of Studies unto Arts and Workmanships For a tranquillity of times shall spring up when the root of Worms living on idleness and that which is other Mens being covered with the cloak of Piety shall be driven away At length repentance to come bids us hope for reformation For which happy age I have decreed to write of long Life praysing God that my Pilgrimage is shortly to be devolved unto a period But while I open unheard of things if in any place I shall discover the Errours of Predecessors I have constrainedly done that that those who shall follow me may not dash themselves against rough places and be deprived of the scope of Truth For I my self by Degrees beholding from my Youth the empty Husks wherewith the Beginnings of Nature did incrust themselves I began to be accounted an Apostate from Galen and I exposed my self willingly unto the vile esteem of Physitians supposing it a laudable thing to have my Stupidity to be derided by ignorant Men because throughout my whole Life I have neglected the common Applause For by Haters I am called a Paracelsian and a Forsaker of the Schooles and yet I am esteemed an Adeptist the Obtainer of some Secrets And although under this Title I have been invited by two Emperours to Court yet have I refused Honours and a Courtiers Life who all my life time have despised the Sents of Ambition And now much more I being detained at the Ship of the Mote by the Bank of old Age do I as careless avoid and neglect whatsoever Posterity shall think of me alive or dead because I in dying desire the tranquillity of my Soul Therefore do I every where protest that I have never taken notice of the Errors and Neglects of the Schooles but that I might satisfie my calling and profit credulous Mortals CHAP. LXXXIX Of Time 1. Why the Author Treats first of Time 2. The Proposition of the Treatise 3. The Profession of the Author 4. That Time hath nothing common with any Motion 5. Negations of Time 6. The Error of the Schooles 7. Some Absurdities following from thence 8. What hath deceived the Schooles 9. The Consideration of Mathematical Science differs from the Truth of Nature 10. A third Error 11. A Fourth 12. A Fifth 13. A Sixth 14. Some Absurdities spring from thence 15. A Conclusion drawn from thence doth unfold the true Properties of Time against the will of the Schooles 16. A Seventh Error is proved 17. A false Definition of Time 18. A continuance of Motions is essentially included in the Seeds of Things 19. Time cannot be the internal measure of Motions 20. An Eighth Error 21. Some Absurd Errors following from thence 22. The Praise of
notwithstanding of Priofity if they are weighed in the Ballance of Truth they are onely the Atributes of Motions but never of Time or Duration because Priority Slowness c. do bespeak only an unseparable Relation unto the parts of Motions immediately following and slowness compares the swiftness of Motions with each other and therefore Priority Slownesses c. do not so much measure Time or Duration but only in respect of a dayly Motion For truly a humane and undistinct weakness hath through a certain sluggishness and dulness meted out all peculiar Motions with a diary or diurnal Motion Because they do not regard that the Priorities of Motions are not properly the duration of Time it self but rather a universal distance of a general Motion And although Duration it self of Time be and be present in all things yet that this is altogether a Stranger from the succession of Motions From hence therefore Time hath begun to be considered as it were a successive and frail Being by every instant Especially because the Schooles having imitated the blockishnesses of the Vulgar have at length accustomed themselves to confound Time with the Motion of the Heaven It 's no wonder therefore if the great Heroes or Worthies considering the thingliness of Time by such Beginnings have not been able to conceive of the same Because seeing it involveth an actual Infinite which one only thing is Eternal it is from it self of necessity not to be comprehended by that which is Infinite For Time is thought to succeed and to have parts because parts should follow themselves in Motions Seeing Time and Motion are unlike things and so far different from each other as a Mortal and Finite thing is from an Infinite For although Motion be made in Time Motion can be no more co-measured by Man through Time than Man is able to measure Man himself by God who is lives and is moved in God For if God would have the whole course of the Heaven for the future to be so unequally inordinate that no Motion could be made equal unto it should therefore Time also be in it self unequal Or should that cease to be which now is Yea if the Motion of the Heavens should cease as at sometime it shall cease shall Time therefore cease likewise Shall Now it self be no longer Now for what doth that belong unto Time which happeneth in Time For truly it hath its own free Being without Respect Reflexion or Reciprocation unto any other thing Indeed Time is not given unto us for a measure or that in it self it is to be measured but it hath a free Being in him from whence is all Essence For Example God is in every Creature For God is Good as he is all Good but not this or that Good but in as much as he is this or that Good he is not all or every Good and in such a respect he hath a Being in created Things For as God is one only Good in all things so in like manner also all Good is essentially this one true Good Likewise God is every where present in all things and his Continuance or Duration is the Duration of all and every of things In like manner also the light of the Sun is a Being and something in it self because it enlightneth and heates yet without and on this side the Sun it is nothing After the same manner eternal Duration is Time in created things Because without and besides an eternal Duration it is a meer nothing privatively and negatively Wherefore as long as there shall be any created things Time shall never cease to be The Lord hath said Thou art my Son this Day have I begotten Thee Because Eternity is nothing but one only Now but one only To day I have begotten Thee from the Womb before the Day-Star was Christ was born from the Womb in Time and yet before Lucifer or the Day-Star was Because in Time there is no Priority or Succession Before therefore denotes a Priority of the Succession of Motions and an excellency of Dignity but not a Priority of Time Because from the Beginning even unto the finishing of Age it is nothing but one only Now For so The Lamb was sacrificed from the Beginning of the World and his death saves the dead before the Lords Incarnation as the Incarnation which makes blessed hath respect unto Motion Indeed it saves the Ancestours which precede according to the course of Life and in respect of Motions conferred among each other but not by the sight or beholding of Duration That the Lyon may not snatch them nor the infernal Pit devour them For those Prayers are for the deceased long after Death when as notwithstanding Souls do for the most part undergo their Judgment presently after expiration Wherefore such kinde of Prayers should be in Vain and made too late if Time should be successive The Church triumpheth in the Comforter her Guide therefore she hath known that all future things are in the same Now of time as if her Prayers had happened before the party died For the Wise Man affirmeth That God made all things at once but Genesis writing the History of the six dayes Work saith also that as many dayes were spent Which sayings should therefore contradict each other if Succession be granted unto Time All things therefore were created in six dayes space yet one only point of time remaining For so the Devil hath known future things in the succession of Motions as they being present in the one only Now of Time The Stars indeed are for Times that is for the successive changes of Times or varieties of Motions but not for the continuance of our Life the bound whereof is appointed by the Almighty But indeed Priority or Formerliness is most difficulty sequestred from Time For although we abstract Time from Place Motion and a Body Yet by reason of an opposite custom and the novelty of the thing it is very difficult to desist from Priority in Time no otherwise than as any one who is wont to cut Bread with his left hand that thing is troublesome for his right Hand to do although he rightly performeth many other things by his right Hand Yet therefore a difficulty and unwontedness of understanding doth not change any thing in things or oblige the Essence of Time that it may accommodate it self to our Errours For what doth a Priority it self of Motions in Bodies belong to Time Or what doth Priority hurt Time which is due to Motion alone If through ignorance it be translated into Time But because a Priority of Motions in order to Duration bespeakes an immediate respect unto another Motion to wit of dayes and years whereby we measure all other Motions therefore Priority is abusively derived into duration Otherwise surely it ought first to be manifested that that Motion of the day should therefore be Time because it happens in time which being proved then Priority might be referred unto Duration and not otherwise
a distinct animosity of Diseases in contention But the Filths being ripened they desist from adhering unto the solid Parts But to what end is there so great a commentary of critical Dayes I being a Junior wrote five Books concerning Critical dayes the which I afterwards committed to the Fire if it behoves a Physitian to be instructed that he may render a dangerous Disease harmless and may abbreviate a long one that is may cut it off that it be not spun out into a Crisis A Crisis therefore as it sounds of Judgment let it be the Judge and Accuser of Physitians and a testimony of Nature alone bearing the burden because a Crisis only happens where a slimie or tough Matter doth adhere or a noysome or hurtful Matter is enclosed and wisheth to be sequestred by an ultimate or final Maturity But as to what respecteth a Climacterical year or year of gradual ascent drawn from a production of the number of seven into nine to wit into the sixty third year of Life it is a blockish invention Because seventy Years are the Dayes of a Man c. Therefore among Christians they accuse the holy Scriptures of the imposture of Falshood and so it is an invention of the Devil who being an Enemy of our Life doth procure through the fear of Death to smite Old Men with astonishment before their appointed hour For otherwise what doth the production of a number into a number make or tend unto the course of Life Years indeed do hasten and run back into their own Harvests and Maturities Wherefore also the revolutions of Years and numbers of revolutions do rather respect an identity or sameliness of recourses than the Number or Life directly and they after no manner refer themselves unto a past number because all particular years do end into their own precise singularity neither do they reflect themselves upon a plurality of Years foregoing Among the rest some one doth sottishly betake himself unto the number numbering Truly as it is a pious and Christian-like thing to acknowledge our Life from the hand of the Creatour the Prince of Life So it is the part of Reprobates to have borrowed Life from the Planets and Numbers For although God hath from his own Will and good Pleasure disposed of all things in a certain space yet let it be a foolish thing to attribute a causality to Numbers If Plants had the Faculty of fructifying before the Stars were born and do grow or flourish by virtue of the Word it is a shameful thing for a Christian to have yielded the life of man and the powers of his Duration and Existence unto Numbers numbering Therefore a Clymacterical Year whether we respect the Numbred Recourses of the Stars or a recoursive Number or next the Number numbering is a vain prattle repugnant to the holy Scriptures which call our wretched Life from seventy unto eighty Years not by reason of Years past as neither by reason of their Number numbering but because necessities are increased in the Seeds they being so appointed by the Prince of Life But they boast of a Sabbathary Number because it is the Seventh Adde to this that is repugnant to the Fiftieth Year which is that of the Jubilee and wholly Sabbathary and so the Seventieth Year because it is seven times the Tenth doth more Sabbatize or rest than the Sixty third Year because the Ninth Year is the Nintieth or the Ninth Tenth which doth nothing belong unto a Sabbatisme or celebration of a Sabbath For if the Seventh day be Critical by reason of the positions of the Moon therefore not by reason of Number neither doth any thing of the Moon interpose which is common with the Clymacterical Number of 63 Years For Astrologers do will the 56 Year in Nativities of the Night by reason of a doubled coldness of Saturn surely a shameful one but the 63 Year in Births of the Day by reason of the ridiculous drynesses of Mercury and Mars to be most exceeding dangerous But these Men besides that for one half of Births at least they bid farewel unto a Clymacterical Year they contradict the Text The Dayes of a Man are Seventy Years c. In the next place they desist from Numbers while they call the Qualities of Elements unto their help and by doating do transferre them on the Stars If Death in the Vale of Miseries be the end of Calamities the Clymacterical Year ought to be the Fiftieth which is the Sabbathary Year and that of Jubilee God indeed hath distinguished the Week into Seven Dayes not by reason of a Mystery or Dignities of the Number but because he foreknew men would scarce be at leisure for him unlesse he had commanded it Wherefore he would have the seventh day at least to be due unto himself that we might wholly be at leasure at least once in the Week But not that a Number did contain a Sacred thing or Mystery but he testified the Indulgency of his bounty that of seven dayes he required even but one onely Go to if he hath consecrated the Seventh Number to himself why dost thou adde also the Ninth which is not consecrated unto him Why do ye marry a profane Number unto a sacred Number as thou sayest that thereby ye may frame a Clymacterical Year Is it lawful to have made Dayes sacred unto God when thou pleasest At length after who manner if Seven and Nine should have a Mistery in them wilt thou make it that the Number from the Product of Seven into Nine shall be holy Seeing that according to you nothing can be added to or taken away from the Species of Numbers but that the Species it self is continually changed God commanded ten days for unleavened bread before and after the Feast But what authority doth that afford for a Denary or the number of Ten. The Lord commanded that Dayes were to be vacant for himself wherein he had been bountiful unto them yet are they not therefore to be observed by us And therefore neither hath he addicted a holiness to Numbers Therefore that Doctrine containeth the future perfidiousness of the Jewes which things afterwards from the foolish frivolousness of Astrologers and melancholly or mad thoughts they have fashioned into Arts and Rules fitted to their vain pleasure or desire and some of whom I have Cured by Remedies for madness seeing such kind of obstinacy wants not its own madness Finally therefore it is manifest that Long Life which I treat of is not in respect of Duration or Time but of Motions issuing forth from the Beginning even unto the End to wit the Measuring whereof in the constancy of Duration is not Duration it self but another Motion such as is the Day which by its plurality onely measureth the longitudes or lengths of Life Wherefore the holy Scriptures do speak dis-joyntly In those Dayes And likewise they describe the contingencies of things by the Dayes of Men but not by the Successions of Times which Paganisme
hath introduced by a speech altogether fabulous because of Time there is no Part Succession or interchangable Course CHAP. XC Life is Long Art is Short 1. The Life deservedly ought to be shortned 2. The Consideration of Long Life issues from the gift of God 3. Some Factions of the Schollars of Paracelsus about Long Life 4. An Objection for the despairing of Long Life 5. How great the length of Life is according to the Author 6. Why the term of Long Life is so Diverse 7. Long Life is proved 8. The unsufficiency of Galen is noted VVE all almost do complain of the shortness of Life but the space of Life is long enough and the plurality of Dayes great enough if the whole be well imployed For thorowly weigh thou how much sleep leisure or idleness vain imployments Parents and Friends have divided with thee of the space of Life and thou shalt presently discern that ours is a lying complaint concerning the Shortness of Life These things Seneca sometime judged But Christians who hope Death to be an enterance unto Life ought never to lament them of the shortness of their Life For there is a certain number of Elect and Reprobates the which that it might be the sooner fulfilled by reason of the Iniquities of many the Day of Life ought to be cut short as also the number to be speeded for the hastening of the last Day For else although the World should be fruitful in its whole ampleness yet it should not be sufficient for the nourishing of all that are brought forth and to be brought forth by reason of the aforesaid hastening if every one of these should attain unto the term of Long Life Furthermore although the Righteous ought deservedly to rejoyce concerning the shortness of their Life and in a contrary sense the Unrighteous do most of them wish for a long continuance of Life for perhaps they shall be amended in old age yet seeing it is manifest to none whether he be accounted Righteous in Gods sight especially because In his sight shall no man living be justified I have therefore judged that every one is to be seriously imployed for the obtainment of the antient blessing promised unto him that is obedient unto Parents Therefore Long Life hath seemed unto me to be the top of all Phylosophy because it ponders of a pleasant and most profitable Meditation The Death of a Person is first of all most greatly to be lamented which might be a Pillar unto mortals to his country or family but that by the command or permission of God he should dye for some better end For therefore every one is of his own free accord carried into the love desires and wish of Long Life and onely a miserable loss of Health or Fortunes brings on a Desire of Death and wearisomness of Life unto the desperate But a despairing onely of Long Life to be obtained doth affright those who diligently search after it Because that in the Ages preceding Paracelsus the dumb silence of the Schooles teacheth that they have meditated nothing concerning Long Life Because Death crept in through the subtilty of Satan therefore I conjecture also that Long Life hath not undeservedly even hitherto been suppressed through the deceit of the same seeing he is the sworn enemy of our kind Which scope of Long Life notwithstanding the Almighty hath of late vouchsafed to instill into the Mind of man that after an army of new Diseases mustred against us we may seriously consider of these things as those things which are glorious to his Name and necessary for us Although the gift of the Tree of Life doth remain in the hand of the Lord as long as he hath decreed to remain be the dispenser thereof The late Adeptists despising the wedlocks of the first Qualities the collections of Humours their Prerogatives and Decayings or Cessations have by little and little aspired unto a Unitone of Healing under which they at first supposing that they had found the entrance of Remedies gloried that they were made partakers of their desire whom those succeeded who could find that the subtilties of things or purities of Medicines were not as yet sufficient for so great a Spire to wit that they could enter unto the length of Life because the Offices of our growth being finished they could no longer pierce unto and comix themselves with the first constitutives of us The natural endowment I say which things have obtained in growing if they do not put it off within at their first entrance at least-wise they do not carry it far inwards towards the roots of the homogeneal parts but they are as yet far absent from detaining the vital powers from their flowing unto Death For therefore the more learned from Paracelsus have afterwards declined into divers factions of Opinions and into a despaire of Long Life Others also being allured with greater courage and hope more by the Promises of Paracelsus than as being supported by Experience the Witness of things have promised many things whereunto the events have not afterwards answered because they together with Paracelsus have not known the root of Long Life The more sloathful also have despaired in matters of difficulty in saying The bound of our Life is set the which none shall over-pass They therefore thinking it to be vain whatsoever those who were somewhat too rash have promised concerning Long Life But they do not rightly well weigh that he who hath appointed the bound of Life hath together also by the same endeavour appointed all means requisite unto that term of Life Otherwise the Tree of Life had been in vain in Paradise and in vain had the Creator created Medicine out of the Earth from the Beginning unless the natural terms or bounds of things might be prolonged by Healing or Medicine For if I use not Remedies my bound is set which I shall not pass over according to that saying We is me that my Pilgrimage is prolonged If Adam doth not eat of the Tree of Life he had a bound of Life appointed him But if he had eaten verily neither had he been Dead There is therefore a hope for Long Life but the knowledge of the Mean onely hath been wanting For neither do I speak of Long Life issuing out of the Scaiolae or four spiritual powers of the Mind such fables I leave to Paracelsus Nor in the next place am I he who extend the Years of Long Life unto the days of Mathusalem But I greatly esteem of the Age of Nestor or of Johannes de Temporibus or John of the Times But Paracelsus calls the Life of three hundred Years by a despised name a short natural and curtailed one yea if it be not prolonged unto the Year of Fire he esteems it unworthy and promiseth that by the virtue of his Arcanums the Life of Nestor should follow as it were with no difficulty But with me a Long Life hath the term of one Hundred and Twenty Years but the
foolish thing to reckon a Being of Reason a Mental Being or a Non-Being among Natural Causes Moreover I had willingly hastened unto the bound which I have proposed unto my self concerning Long Life unless Death should cut off the intended thred interlacingly prefixing its priority as it were a Remora or stop The Paradox also whereof I had willingly detained among Secrets but that the Treatise of Long Life did require its right after Death whereby it hath naturally stablished an entrance into the Inne of Man Surely this Mystery of God is an unheard of Paradox and the which therefore I humbly prostrate unto the Censure of the Church But let it be in stead of a Proposition That God made not Death But that thing I first understand to be denied for Man onely For otherwise for bruit Beasts Death was already naturally ordained before Man was Created and indeed from the same Root whereby Death entred into Man For truly most Beasts live not but by the slaughter of each other In the next place Death doth not in this place signifie a naked separation of the Soul from the Body as it denoteth a meer privation as if the sense were That God hath not made a Non-Being which is called Death For such a Declaration or Proposition in the holy Scriptures should be ridiculous For the very Word He hath made and a denial thereof is the same and respecteth that he made and they were made And so a denial thereof bespeaks the absence of a positive and not of a privative Being and is equivalent to this Proposition God made Man without an Inclination unto Death Neither made he Natural Causes in him whereby he should be Mortal In the next place neither hath the evil Spirit made Death Because there is not a kingdom of Infernal Spirits in the Earth and much lesse was there in Paradise Neither can Satan by any means change Essences instituted by the Creator invert them abolish or slay those Essences which God hath made void of Death Death began in us from the evil Spirit indeed suggestively and excitingly after a manner plainly by accident and external Neither could he produce a Cause of Mortality in a Subject through the grace of the Creator uncapable thereof Therefore if neither God nor the evil Spirit have made the Death of Man efficiently therefore from a sufficient enumeration of parts Man alone made Death for himself and hath applyed Causes unto himself as a Positive Being From whence he hath become mortal and Death hath been made natural For what the Devil could not do man having a possibility but not a necessity of dying could do For he was in the possession of Immortality and he was able not to dye if he would because Death was unto him a free Contingent but indeed because the Body of Adam had need of the Tree of Life therefore in respect of his Body he was not absolutely Immortal and therefore also he stood in need of nourishment but he was to be Immortal from the free goodness of the Creator And he who had preserved Adam from Death by Grace and had given him the natural endowment of the Tree of Life had therefore defended the same Adam from any kind of Injuries Therefore Immortality in Man had been continued by the Tree of Life and he was therefore banished out of Paradise lest also after the Apple being eaten He stretch forth his hand unto the Tree of Life and eat c. For as the Apple included the Cause of Death so the Tree of Life contained a superiority of Life over the Causes of Death For it was not convenient for Man who had eaten his own Death not to Dye and to deride threatned Death and therefore he ought to be bannished in Paradise But Man was Immortal as his Immortal Mind did immediately perform all the Offices of his Body and give from it self an Immortal Life For seeing it knows no Death neither therefore is it subject unto the importunities of frail things it behoveth if it was to govern the immediate family-administration of the Body that it should after some sort communicate a like Immortality to its Body at-least-wise as to an excellency of the ruling Powers Although in respect of the nourishments of the Body Man had by little and little failed if he had not been supported by the Tree of Life Yea in speaking distinctly all plurality of his Powers was supt up into the Unity of his Mind And at this day the Mind is not capable of suffering through Duration and the Alterations of mortal Things because a mark of resemblance is wanting to these whereby they may immediately touch at or pierce the Mind Therefore that Death might make an access and entrance into Man it behoved that the Mind did first desist from its immediate and former Function of the Offices of the Body and that another Soul to wit a Mortal one Sensitive and Seminal being as it were the Band of the Body should enter The which indeed being far different from the Mind is begged in the course of Nature by the vital Air from the Father of Lights the giver of Life even as elsewhere concerning the birth of Forms and perisheth with the Death of Man For if the Seed of a Dog doth voluntary issue even into a living Soul exclusively Therefore it was meet that Man should be conceived without Seed and a manly Copulation or at leastwise that the Seed of Man should not be without the disposition of a seminal Life but to be limited by the common guidance of created Nature into a living Soul exclusively the manner whereof I will explain afterwards Furthermore that Death was placed in the eating of the Apple that is that the natural Cause of Death the producer after a dispositive manner of the sensitive Soul which otherwise Man had wanted was by the Seed and that indeed after the manner of Bruits and that the Mind thereupon hath forsaken the government of the Body as it were abhorring the beast-like Impurity thereby contracted shall be made manifest in following Treatises For from what moment of Time Man made a Seed within himself for the propagation of his own Species he delineated at leastwise dipositively by the same endeavour the Beginnings of a mortal Soul occasionally it being the covering and wrappery of the Mind that it might receive on it self the whole ministery of the Body For truly the Creator had already obliged himself unto the Seeds of things in Nature that as often as the Seeds of sensitive Cratures had come unto the bound of multiplying the Parent himself of vital Lights might infuse meet Souls into all particular Seeds the which I elsewhere in the birth of Formes have profesly prosecuted And therefore there was in the Apple a Faculty of producing a fructifying Seed and after a brutal manner containing a seminal dispositive Archeus of the Young and by request obtaining for it self a mortal Soul from the Giver of Life For on 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
of eternal Life that is a Superiority over the necessities of Death At length if death had happened from a Law from the Punishment and Curse of Sin it should be false that God had not made Death because in very deed and immediately Death had proceeded from God and not from a natural Cause or that of Nature corrupted And by so much a stronger right where the same Person the Almighty Creator is the Law-giver like as also the Executer Last of all Sin is a mental Being or a Non-Being which cannot produce a real and actual Being And therefore Death at its Beginning had not proceeded from natural Causes even as at this Day Death doth arise in bruit Beasts equally as in us and therefore Death in its Beginning had been different in the whole kind from that at this day And therefore the Text should speak that which is ridiculous God made not Death if by reason of disobedience he had cursed Nature that it should die It is therefore of necessity that the Death of Man in its Beginning began and was made from second Causes altogether natural whereby we die at this day Also at this day Death hath reciprocally invaded through the natural Causes of defiled Nature even as in times past in its Beginning Indeed although Adam became Mortal from eating of the Apple yet his Death happened not but naturally some Ages after and from Old Age as from second Causes Far therefore be a Law an opposing thereof Sin a Curse in the original of Death appearing so many Ages after from second Causes speaking as it were in our presence Therefore every and the total Cause whereby Man hath immediately framed Death for himself is to be seen in the Position For although we are now Mortal yet we die not when we will and when we desire Because Death proceeded not from the Will or from Sin but from the Apple Neither indeed because Death it self was in the Apple as in a mortal Poyson but there was in the Apple the Concupiscence of the Flesh an incentive of Lust a be-drunkening of Luxury for a Beast-like Generation in the Flesh of Sin which Flesh carried with it the natural Causes of Defects and necessities of Death Wherefore it is likely to be true if the Serpent had not been able to obtain of Man that by Sinning he should eat of the Apple that he had cast an Apple cropped from thence unto the Root of some lawful Tree that by this means the Enemy of our Life might rejoyce to have introduced Death And that thing is sufficiently gathered from the Text which doth not say If thou shalt eat of that Tree but he saith In whatsoever day thou shalt eat thou shalt die the Death As if he should denounce that that danger of Death to come was fore-ordained For for this purpose the World was created and the Instruments of Generation were given unto Man because the Corruption of Nature the necessity of regeneration in a Saviour and the virgin Purity thereof was foreseen Let therefore those brawlings cease whether Eve ate an Apple or indeed a Fig. For the Text calls an Apple That which is pleasing to the Eye but a Fig doth not so allure by the sight of it And that one only Tree was of that Property whereof then there was not the like nor at this day is there another read to exist among created Things Finally the Words of the Text I will multiply thy Miseries and thy Conceptions so far off is it that they do signifie the Indignation of God and much less his Curse Yea rather they denote his love toward the devoted Sex For truly there is none which knows not that by how much the Life of the devoted Sex shall be the more miserable by so much also that it is nearer to the Son of Man for otherwise tribulations which God sendeth on his Saints and Martyrdom it self should by an equal right be Curses I will add last of all that as the Works of the Flesh are devillish So the Text I will put Enmities between the Seed of the Woman and thy Seed doth fully or plainly confirm this Position For first of all the Woman of whose Seed God there speaketh is the God-bearing Virgin which as a Virgin hath left no other Seed an Enemy to the Serpent but the Sons of Light the Sons of God and those who are renewed by the holy Spirit who have no Enmities with the Eggs of any creeping thing but only with the Sons of the Devil and Darkness forasmuch as they keep the Seeds of Sin Therefore the Text there promiseth a future Regeneration in the God-bearing Virgin calling those that are not renewed the Seed of the Devil because they are Adamical Flesh Therefore those things being heeded which I have already above demonstrated original Sin doth not properly expect a quickning or the moment of hecceity For although the Soul cannot be guilty of Sin before it be Yet seeing original Sin is in the Contagion of the Flesh it self is presently in the supposition of the concrete or composed Body after the manner of its receiver and assoon as there is a sexual mixture of the Seeds according to that saying For behold I was conceived in Iniquities before the coming of the Soul because in Sins my Mother hath conceived me For Sin is in the same point wherein Death consisteth the which indeed is in the very mixture of the Seeds For Death is immediately in the Archeus but not in the Soul which thing the sometimes mortal indisposition it self of the Archeus proveth from whence the conception is made voide which before now was in its whole hope vital And although the impurity of the material thing supposed be before the Flesh thereby generated and therefore also before the Soul yet there is not properly Sin unless the Soul â—all put that on There is therefore a far different infection of original Sin than of any other Sins whatsoever which require a consent of the Soul For other Sins the Soul it self committeth but original Sin defiles the Soul not consenting because the Thingliness or Essence of that original Sin is the very Flesh of Sin For neither therefore is it called the Soul of Sin but the Flesh of Sin because the Soul is defiled by the Flesh But the Devil not from elsewhere than from himself Therefore Man admires mercy but not the Devil Therefore from the good pleasure of the Creator the Apple did carry in it not only the Concupiscence of the Flesh but consequently also the generation of Seed but there was not therefore a Faculty in the Apple of propagating the sensitive Soul The Arbitrator of the World in creating would oblige himself to create every living Soul in every soulified Body when corporeal Dispositions had come unto the bound of enlivening For therefore the Apple presently after it was eaten disposed the Arterial Blood unto a Seed and from thence into a sensitive Soul And that thing was
from its place descends that it may imprint a seal on the forbidden Seed for a common destruction Then although the sensitive Soul was not yet born yet every natural Disposition requisite for the obtaining that sensitive Soul from the Creator was forthwith present And seeing two Souls at once cannot perfectly preside in one only Plain or Region of the Body without discord no more than it is lawful to serve two Masters at once Therefore the immortal Mind hath departed into the innermost Parts whether that was by the Command of the Creator or grieving at the wearisomness of a bodily Impurity at leastwise it afterwards delegated the government of its Body on the sensitive Soul in which it is now bound because it is involued in it as long as we live For from hence we do afterwards for the most part wax of ripe years and live after a bruital manner But the Mind hath betaken it self into the Inn of a frail Soul and doth thereby inspire hereinto its free gifts although for the most part otherwise it sleepeth perhaps even as Coral doth now and then loose its Colour and again recover the same from whence the Body hath undergone every disorder of Impurity But the Wedlock of the mortal Soul being a forreign thing unto the ordination of the Mind is for an occasion why the Mind hath placed it self into the hidden Parts so as that the Matter or Controversie is as yet before the Judge or in dispute whether of the two hath chosen the principal Bride-bed and a Mind is not believed to be among Atheists because it by piercing hath so sunk it self into the depth of the mortal Soul because the Notions of the Mind do appear as yet to this day to be subject to the imagination do also so obey the Poysons of some Simples that the principality of the Mind seems to be sore shaken at the Pleasure and Command of Diseases which thing the Dotages of Fevers Madness in affects of the Spleen the Biting of a Mad-dog and Pricking or Stinging of a Tarantula have the more strongly perswaded in the behalf of Atheism for in the former immortal Life the Mind did by it self and immediately frame immortality and gave also a perfect knowledge of living Creatures and Herbs But afterwards in the brutal Filthinesse of generation the Image of God remained indeed safe in the Mind and its external Figure in the Body But so great a Corruption of it hath constrained the Mind to retire unto the innermost Chamber of the mortal Soul Therefore the Immortality thereof lived under the happy government of the Mind And therefore Diseases were banished with the declinings of Ages and the threatnings of Death And therefore before the Fall Man was dinstinguished from Blessedness in that he could Sin Fall and Die But in Glorification the Mind shall again immediately quicken the Body and transsume it into it self The Mind indeed before the Fall which did only shine upon the Body by its immediate Splendour shall forthwith after the Resurrection through a transchanging of it clarifie it by way of supping it up For therefore the state of the Faithful although throughout their whole Life also in Death it self be far more miserable than the primitive State yet it is more happy than that by how much it is a thing fuller of Majesty to be more like the Son of God Incarnate dead and glorified than to have lived with Adam free from Diseases and at length to be taken away without Battle because the retributions or repayings of Life are no way worthy of the Glory or Expectation of the Age to come Furthermore the sacred Text hath in many Places compelled me unto a perfect Position it making Eve an Helper like unto Adam not indeed that she should supply the name and room of a Wife even as she is call straightway after Sin For she was a Virgin in the intention of the Creator and afterwards filled with Miseries But not yet as long as the state of Purity presided over innocency did the will of Man overcome her For the translation of Man into Paradise did foreslew another Condition of living than that of a Beast And therefore the eating of the Apple doth by a most chaste name cover the Concupiscence of the Flesh while it contains The knowledge of Good and Evil in this name and cals the ignorance thereof alone the State of Innocency For truly the obtainment of that aforesaid knowledge did nourish a most hurtful Death and an irrevocable depriving of eternal Life For if Man had not tasted down the Apple he had lived void of Concupiscence and off-springs had appeared out of Eve a Virgin from the holy Spirit But the Apple being eaten Presently their Eyes were opened and Adam began lustfully to cover after the naked Virgin and defiled her the which God had appointed for a naked help for him no otherwise than as a Prince is for a help unto his Servants For so the Man prevented the Intention of God by a strange generation in the Flesh of Sin whereupon therefore followed the Corruption of the former Nature or the Flesh of Sin accompanied Concupiscence Neither indeed doth the Text insinuate any other mark of the knowledge of Good and Evil than that They knew themselves to be naked and that it shamed them of that their nakedness or in speaking properly of their Virginity being Corrupted Indeed their whole knowledge of Good and Evil is included about their Shame and within their privy Parts alone And therefore in the 8th of Leviticus and many Places elsewhere the Privy Parts themselves are called by no other Etymologie than that of Shame For from the Copulation of the Flesh their Eyes were presently opened because they had known that the Good being lost had brought on them a degenerate Nature Shamefulness Fowlness and an Intestine and unevitable obligation of Death sent also far away into their Posterity Alass too late indeed they understood by the unwonted Novelty and Shamefulness of that Concupiscence why God had so lovingly forbidden the eating of the Apple To wit it shamed them more of their Chastity being Corrupted and of the Warning transgressed than of their nakedness For Adam who had Judged of the Natures of the Beasts by their beholdance alone neither is read to have lost the same Knowledge could not be ignorant of the fowlness of his own corrupt Nature also And so that through the Shame hereof they had rather hide themselves than for their Nakedness sake Indeed so great was the confusion of so manifold a Shame that it wanted but little but that he should rush into madness the which is clearly enough to be known by the unfit answers of Adam For God called him and asked him where he was and he answereth by accusing his Companion and Help like unto him that he might excuse himself being not yet accused And by altogether a foolish Endeavour they offered their Nakedness which was known to their
copulation of the Sexes for he was truly Immortal and the first who therefore arose from the Dead by his own Power unless the amorous or loving Embassage for which he had come had made him electively to be born in the form of a Servant Therefore now the Question hath seemed to me to be decided which hath driven many that were in anguish about the unspotted Conception of the God-bearing-Virgin into many brawlings Furthermore not onely Regeneration by Baptisme is enjoyned but also unless we shall eat of the super-substantial Bread we are to have no Life in us Which benefit of a vital Purity is the supream pledge given for the Life of the World or for the frail Adamical miserable and mortal Life Because that Heavenly Bread which descends from heaven which is the Wine budding forth Virgins and the same in supposition from its own free property takes away the spot contracted from Adam and the broken Virginity of Eve Because the Merits of the Passion being participated of in that Pledge are communicated of from the unspotted Virginity of the Body of our Lord. The Communion therefore of that most Chast Body uniteth us unto his Mystical Body and makes us partakers of his Incomprehensible and Amorous Incarnation as we participatively put on his Virginity in which we ought to be saved by being born again For Christ was born that he might be crucified for us Therefore his Death was that it might give us Life and that for the whole Species of men in general But in the individual as oft as of the Bread the Body of the Lord is made as if Christ is re-born again not indeed that he is crucified again But that he may give the intended scope of his Incarnation unto that individual Body which there eats the re-born Lamb that is the Merits of his Passion Indeed there are two principal Ends of the holy sacred Eucharist To wit that the Virgin nature of Christ and the Merits of his Passion may be unitively communicated unto us Truly Children that are Baptized shall rise again indeed in a glorified Body Yet by so much the lesse lightsome by how much they were remote from the Union of the Beatifical Body And although there do not now appear the visible signes of so great an effect such as I have above related concerning Baptisme yet they are in very deed communicated unto their immortal mind Because it is that which shall therefore at some time reduce their Body into the form of a Spirit For otherwise Regeneration doth not grow anew in the Resurrection which hath not fore-existed in the Life-time by being born again Neither is Faith of feigned Non-Beings but of things chiefly true although not alwaies visible because they do primarily operate on the Immortal mind which is invisible Wherefore although the mark of resemblance of Union with God by the Eucharist be altogether unsearchable and the fruits thereof are unto us invisible Yet a Mystical aâ—â— real New-birth is reckoned to be in the speech to Nicodemus it being as yet earthly and as it were natural By which title indeed I have transferred this free endowment of Purity among natural Considerations to wit that under the Doctrine concerning Long Life I may speak also of Immortal Life as it is understood by true Christians and actually derived into a true use For I contemplate of the Regeneration of those that are to be saved and of the participation of Life in the Communion of the Eucharist to happen and be reckoned among earthly things because there is shewn something like unto it elâ—â—where in Earthly things Verily almost even as in the Projection of the Stone which make â—â—â—old For I have divers times handled that stone with my hands and have seen a real transmutation of â—aleable Argent-vive or Quicksilver with my eyes which in proportion did exceed the powder which made the gold in some thousand degrees Indeed it was of the colour such as is in Saffron being weighty in its powder and shining like bruised Glass when it should be the less exactly beaten But there was once given unto me the fourth part of one grain I call also a grain the six hundredth part of an ounce This powder therefore I involved in Wax scraped off of a ceâ—â—ain Letter least in casting it into the Crucible it should be dispersed through the smoakinesses of the coaâ—s which pellet of wax I afterwards cast into the three-corner'd Vessel of a Crucible upon a pound of Quicksilver hot and newly bought and presently the whole Quicksilver with some little noise stood still from flowing and resided like a Lump But the heat of that Argent-vive was as much as might forbid melted Lead from re-coagulating The Fire being straightway after encreased under the Bellows the Mettal was â—elted the which the Vessel of fusion being broken I found to weigh eight ounces of the most pure gold Therefore a computation being made a grain of that powder doth convert nineteen thousand two hundred grains of impure and volatile Mettal which is obliterable by the fire into true gold For that powder by uniting the aforesaid Quicksilver unto it self preserved the same at one instant from an eternal rust putrefaction death and torture of the fire howsoever most violent it was and made it as an Immortal thing against any vigour and industry of Art and Fire and transchanged it into the Virgin purity of Gold At least-wise one onely fire of coals is required herein So indeed if so be a just heat of the faithful shall be present a very little of this mystical and divine super-celestial Bread doth regenerate restore and renew a huge number of the Elect Which indeed was the one onely scope of so great a Sacrament And therefore it is said With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with yoâ— Let the Divine pardon me who being to write of the Life of the World if by a similitude I have drawn a demonstration from earthly things in the perswasion of the Lord to Nicodemus to confirm the real and Celestial Regeneration of Purity and Restauration of mans Relapse because it is by an Argument drawn from Earthly things But that person who is so regenerated and preserved against the Fire and Death the Lord will raise up the same in the last day who gave his Life to the righteous eater for the Adamical Life of the World For so a uniting of the amorous Incarnation of the Lord makes us partakers of his integrity so far as by Regeneration we participatively attain unto the Virginity of Christ in which we ought to be saved This indeed is the most proper Circum-locution or expression of the sense of those Words The Wine which buds forth Virgins And without this Remedy some shall rise again being not changed in their former and ponderous Body of Adam the wished for necessity of death being onely taken away from them I return unto the Priviledges of that purity that it may be
something concerning the first Intent of God in Man At length in the last place the Sophistical Atheists do oppose themselves by the Text of Genesis That God overthrew the World by a Deluge Because the Sons of God had chosen and taken Wives of the Daughters of Men which were fair and because these had generated Gyants being strong and famous Men in their Age And that thing is there reckoned for much Wickedness the which notwithstanding literally is seen to be none in the Words of the Text after that Matrimony was now established and lawful Yea especially because Concubine-ship was a good while after dissembled in the Law the which by reason of that Impurity especially they named the Mosaical Law but not the Law of God For truly the Text doth not mention the Sin of David but in the Death of Uriah the Adultery of Bathsheba and the proud numbring of the People Wherefore they are wont to refer this Text of Genesis unto the religious Sons of God and the free Daughters of Men. But it hath seemed a vain thing to me to have fled unto a single Life and monastick Vows and Evangelical Counsels while as a plurality of men was required from the Command Increase ye and be ye Multiplyed and Replenish the Earth which Words indeed did excuse Concubine-ship Then in the next place seeing Virgins are far more prone unto a single Life Bashfulness likewise unto Chastity and Monastick Vows than Men The Floud had rather happened from the Sex being inverted or turned on the opposite Part and it hath been Written because the Daughters of God had taken the Sons of Men for their Husbands And moreover neither can there be any thought or project of keeping Chastity probably taught which had then separated the Sons of God from Virgins nor any Apostasie in those Ages which had provoked the Indignation of God unto Floud Yet if that be so the which I can in no wise through a Dream perswade my self of at least-wise it is from thence proved in behalf of my Position that Chastity alone doth distinguish the Sons of God from the Daughters of Men and that therefore the deflowring of Virginity hath procreated Original Sin But seeing that before the Floud there was no promise of a single Life or Chastity and that a Monastick or Monkish Life came not as yet into their Mind so long as Multiplying stood in a Command and Blessing I have conjectured under a humble censure of the Church that the Sons of God were the Posterity and begotten of a Man and a Woman having the true Image of God but that the Daughters of Men were Daughters procreated by the Sons of Adam and Nymphs the Satanical-birth whereof God alwayes very much abhorred But there was an incredible Multitude of these in the Desart one whereof was sent unto B. Anthony Also in the Dayes of Constantine a live Satyr was carried about to be shewn and afterwards was shewn being seasoned with Salt So once there were also diverse Monsters drawn out from the Ocean which spake were instructed in divers Arts and therefore rational they also lived among our Country-men Indeed rational living Creatures were conceived as well in the Waters as in Wildernesses from a detestable Copulation Seeing therefore the first Monsters had begotten Off-springs by the Sons of Adam of the Female Sex they distinguished the Sons of Adam by the name of the Sons of God and these kind of Monsters they name the Daughters of men And these Nymphs Heathenism thence-forward after the Floud named Dryades Nereides Naides c. The which seeing they were fair to look upon and men had taken them to be their Wives God from so great a Filthiness and destruction of the humane kind which the Text cals much Wickednesse in every Season or Age abhorring them determined to wash away the World with a Deluge From that Copulation of Monsters and Nymphs they generated strong Gyants and those famous men of their Age and the which therefore Heathenism long worshipped as Gods and Heroes For otherwise there seem to be frivolous reasons of the Floud according to the Letter To wit because men were married with women and these had generated Gyants that were strong and famous men of their Age. Therefore the Text ought to contain the Indignation of God and a suitable Cause of the Floud The monstrousness is not only in the Figure and Forming of their Body even as in the beginning of Degenerations but their Deformity being by degrees withdrawn and diminished the monstrousness stood in the sensitive Soul the which an immortal Mind did not accompany however outwardly they were Animals using Reason At least-wise it is manifest from the aforesaid Text that the true Posterity of Adam were not Gyants but of the Stature of Christ the Lord and framed by the same Statuary But the Copulation of diverse Species hath alwayes been execrable in the sight of the Lord least Man should follow it by imitation The Law therefore forbad that many Seeds should not be sown in the same Field nor that Webs of Linnen and Wollen should be combined To wit it being mindful of that most Ample and much Wickedness for which God ought to destroy the World But the co-mixture of those Men before the Floud with Nymphs was so usual and ordinary and likewise the copulation of Faunes with Maids that a few only being excepted and saved into the Ark the whole Stock of Adam was defiled and therefore passed by in silent Therefore God decreed to destroy every living Creature that he might likewise extinguish the guilty rational Monster For besides a few which the Ark shut up there was not he who had not contracted a consanguinity with that devilish Progeny For the B. Prophetess Hildegard writeth for she is the Prophetess of this Book which was canonized in the Synod of Trevirum or Triers unto the Clergy of Triers For very many People arose from the Sons of Adam who had a forgetfulnesse of God so that they would not know themselves to be Men From whence they by shamefully Sinning lived according to the manners of Beasts except the Sons of God who separated themselves from those same Men and their Loves of whom Noah was born These things she who acknowledgeth the Sons of God in both Sexes and clearly approveth of my Interpretation of this Text. For Satan had tried by this Mean to overthrow Mankinde and to hinder the immortal Soul that there might not be He from whence the Son of God should be born Therefore there was need of the Floud not only for the Correction of Sins but for the Salvation of the whole humane kind For otherwise Cham had not been saved by the Ark for he was now wholly perverse from Atheism Wherefore I interpret the Text yet under the humble Censure of the Church to wit that the Sons of God who did bear the Image of God in their immortal Soul and in their Body Took the Daughters of Men which
God will have other Recognisances or knowing Considerations from Man than from an Angel ought he therefore less to rejoyce in the Divine good Pleasure but to proceed in praising him in an humble Adoration wherein all understanding of Wisdom and clearness of all Spirits are as it were supped up in a lively Center Through this reward therefore of Degrees the unutterable God hath since the Fall Crowned Man with Glory and Honour although degenerate and hath put other things under his Feet for neither before the Fall had Man ever aspired thither Therefore Man ought neither to have the knowledge of all things which Adam knew in his Beginning nor also of his own self if it ought to be a Desert For a Crown presupposeth a striving Desert and Victory For we cannot bring back an increase of Grace for Victory but by fighting Therefore I conclude that as we are constituted in the middle and sensitive Life we know have are or are able to do nothing but only by Grace Desert co-operating and the which Merit that God might confirm the Moments of Degrees in the adoring Understanding were to be presupposed Therefore he that is of innocent Hands and of a clean Heart worshippeth God in the Truth of Spirit and the State of that mortal Man is far more happy than was that of Adam being Immortal For that poverty of Spirit doth in truth know Wisely knowes Knowingly believes Confidently perceives or feeles Truly and confesseth Humbly that he is a meer subject of all Defects that is an unprofitable and evil Servant In this Journey the unutterable Kingdom of God meets Man the Ocean of Light which gives an un-asked-for cleaâ—ness of Understanding and much more royal things than the Desires of the Angels do wish for These things exceed the Phylosophy of the Heathens and of Modern Atheists So it is Understanding and Truth hath it self in this manner wherein our Phylosophy doth place its Alpha or Beginning The which if it shall not do long Life is unprofitable being unknown to so many Ages being neglected by so many Wits and even unto the end of the World known unto none but Adeptists alone CHAP. CII The Image of God THe Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom But the Fear of the Lord begins from the Meditation of Death and Life eternal But many with the Stoicks suppose the end of Wisdom to be the knowledge of ones self But I call the ultimate End of Wisdom and the reward of the whole course of our Life Charity or dear Love the which alone will accompany us when as other things have forsaken us And although the knowledge of ones self according to me be only a Mean unto the Fear of the Lord yet from this is the Treatise of long Life to be begun Because the knowledge of Life doth presuppose a knowledge of the Soul Seeing the Life and Soul as I have the second time said are Synonymals It is of Faith that Man was created of nothing after the Image of God into a living Creature and that his Mind is never to perish Whereas in the mean time the Souls of Bruit-beasts do perish into nothing when they cease to live The weights of which difference I have taught concerning the birth or rise of Forms But hitherto it is not sufficiently manifest wherein that Similitude with God our Arch-type or first Example is placed For most do place this lofty Image in the Soul alone I will speake what I judge yet under a humble Protestation and Subjection to the Censure of the Church It is thus The original of Forms being already after some sort known it is meet also exactly to enquire into the Mind of Man But surely there is no Knowledge more burdensome than that whereby the Soul comprehends it self yea and scarce is there any a more profitable one because the Faith doth stablish its Foundation upon the unperishable and un-obliterable Substance of the Soul I have found indeed many Demonstrations divulged in the Books about this Truth But none of them at all for what in respect of Atheists who deny the one only and constant Power or Deity from everlasting Plato indeed makes three sorts of Atheists The first indeed which believeth no Gods A second Sort also which indeed admitteth of Gods yet such as are un-careful of us and ignorant Contemners of small Matters Lastly a third Sort which although they believe that there are Gods and those expert of the smallest Matters yet they think them to be flexible through the least Dead or cold Prayer This sort is most frequent among Christians at this day even those who profess themselves to be the most Perfect and therefore they dare do any thing and believe Religion to be only for restraining People through the Fear of Laws the Obligation of Faith and Pain of infernal Punishment For these impose grievous Burdens on the Shoulders of others which they touch not so much as with their Finger they wipe the Purses of their own People they prostitute Heaven to sale to dying Men they every where offer themselves to be employed in Secular Affairs as if they would declare that Religion doth not subsist without the State It should be my greatest wish that they might taste at least but for one only Moment what it is intellectually to understand that they may feel the immortality of the Mind as it were by touching Truly I have not invented Rules or a Manner whereby I might be able to illustrate the understanding of another Therefore I deservedly testifie that they who alwayes study as enquiring after the Truth do notwithstanding never attain unto the knowledge thereof because they being blown up with the Letter have no Charity and do cherish hidden Atheism But this one thing I have learned That the mind doth now understand nothing by imagination neither by figures and likenesses unless the wretched and miserable Discourse of Reason shall have access to it But when as the Soul comprehends it self Reason and its own Image faileth it whereby it may represent it self to it self Therefore the Soul it never able to apprehend it self through the discourse of Reason as neither by Likenesses For after I had known that the Truth of Essence and the truth of Uderstanding are one and the same thing I knew the Understanding to be a certain immortal thing far separated from frail or mortal things The Soul indeed is not felt yet we believe it to be within not to be idle not to be tired nor to be disturbed by Diseases Therefore Sleep Fury and Drunkenness are not the Symptoms of the Immortal Mind being hurt but only the Pages of Life and Passions of the sensitive Soul Seeing that Bruits also undergo such Passions For neither is it a meet thing for an immortal thing to suffer by mortal Ones For as the Mind is in us and yet is not felt or perceived by us So neither are the continual and unshaken Operations thereof to be
are also nourished by it Yet I have discerned that the nourishable Moisture as long as it is homogeneally admitted for Increase within the Root of the Mixture is wholly the same with that which is radical But if afterwards by accident it be no longer admitted into an unseperable Fellowship because growth ceaseth Yet that this doth not in the least change vitiate alter or alienate the Nature of the former Moisture Because that abundance of it is in every part eminently cast forth by Dreams it being of the same kind with the original and radical Moisture which two names are distinguished only in this that of the original Moisture the Young is formed But the radical Moisture is that same and moreover that from whence we grow and are nourished For as long as we are increased there is made not only a solid Application of the moisture but a solid Application and Assimilation of that which is applied for that thing happens daylie under every Nourishment but moreover there is made a radical Union of the thing nourished with the Nourishment which is presently afterwards sealed by the Spirit of Life and vitally illustrated by the Form Therefore the sealing contains a Character which fixeth and confirmeth that Moisture into the homogeneal Substance of the similar Part to wit from whose Archeus the Nourishment it self is converted and assimilated and so that by transchanging it departs into the Family of the Part containing which before was only contained under which Flux a true Information of the Soul happens From its lot only there and happy success the radical Moisture is distinguished from the Dew of the secondary Humours but not in Nature To wit because the Dew being as it were a new and young Humour is consumed as to a great part of it in time of growth and as to its whole after-growth neither is it ever united into the Root of Mixture that it may be made a partaker of the aforesaid sealing and attain the Dignity of a part containing For example Calx-vive or Quick-lime when it is quenched or appeased becomes a Pluss which most intimately couples the Water to the Calx But if more Water than is meet be poured on it the same Water abounding is straightway rejected and swims a top In the mean time notwithstanding in fulness of time that Calx is dried and stonifies even under the middle of the Waters But that hardness being once attained although it be afterwards most exactly beaten into the most fine Powder or Dust yet for the future it keeps the Shape of a Powder and despiseth the intimate Wedlocks of Water it assumeth not the Disposition of the former Pulss neither is the Water thenceforth radically co-mixed with it Notwithstanding the Moisture of the Water it self is individually the same whether it be secluded from the co-mixture of the Calx or be admitted unto it And that because it is contingently contingent to the Water by accident not so much through Defect of the Water as of the Calx or root But yet the aforesaid Pulss of the Lime is plainly more slowly dryed than the Powder of the Moisture is from without on every side watered with the Waters I therefore considered that however the Schools do resound many things concerning the radical Moisture yet that the nourishable Humour doth not any way differ from the radical Humour it self as long as it pulsifies and is solidated within the Root of Mixture being conjoyned unto the first constituting parts by a radical Union Because that both the Liquors are the same in Matter Virtue Substance Purity formal Identity and Participation of Life the which when our solid Parts do no longer pulsifie and admit of they at least-wise for the future hinder an intimate Connexion of the Root so much as they can and fore-slow the dryness of the solid containing Parts by reason of their continual bedewing For when that Pulss of the sound Parts hath obtained a just Solidity to wit because the power of Increasing defluxing from the Brain is exhausted then the Moisture is only made nourishable which before was made radical For however Old Age cause dryness yet Death is not from a more dry Habit or State of Body For truly we may rather conjecture Dryness to be from a Defect of the vital Powers than the aforesaid Defect from dryness For the Moisture of the solid Parts however in an Atrophia and Diseases of long continuance it be equally and throughout the whole entire Body consumed yet it is easily restored by a due Nourishment and the more bountifully by taking the milkie Element of Pearls So also the Ulcers of the Lungs are solidated or made whole by the sweet Corollate of Mercurius Diaphoreticus to wit by Virtue whereof the Epitaph of Paracelsus publisheth that the Tabes was often restored For I remembered that I in the great Heat of the 5th Month called July bored the Head of a Toad with a sharpe Stick or Staffe and that I fastened the Staffe at the other end into the Ground that the Toad being hung up might be dryed But it happened that full four dayes after I returned to the same place found the Toad alive contracting his Thighs as if he had been there only the day before because the hole was not with a straight Line in the middle of his Head but inclined a little the more unto the left side Wherefore I drave the Staffe into the middle of his Head and returning about the evening I found the Toad not only Dead but to have been wholly dryed up From whence I the more firmly perswaded my self that a Defect or Failing of the Vital Powers was not from the Dryness of the solid Parts but rather that Dryness was and did Increase in us according to the proportion of a Piece-meale extinguishment of the Vital Powers Let therefore the Radical Ignorance of the Schools depart whereby by an unrepaitable Penury as they will have it of the Radical Moisture they cover their Fault under the Ground of the Place of Burial For the Diminishment of the Gifts and Vital Powers alone sealed in the Family Administration of the implanted Spirit bringeth on Old Age as also the Extinguishment of Death intestine Calamities which is to say My Spirit shall be Diminished and my Dayes shall be Shortned Therefore let the Consideration of the Radical Moysture for the Study of Long Life depart For truly Hippocrates cals Natures themselves or the Vital Powers the Physitianesses of Diseases and the which therefore Languishing dayly Miseries of Infirmities wax strong and these departing do proclaim with lofty Shoulders a Despaire of Life as oft as the Faculties or Powers fail whether in the mean time plenty of Radical Moisture or a scantiuess of the same be present For they cease not to extend a Crow and a Stage which are dryer than any toothless Old-man unto some Ages and to be Incumbent on the laboursome gain of Reverence For because dryness begins from the Bones
be the primary Foundation of Life but not an adjacent and concomitant thereof God forbid that we should not know that there is one Consumption of the Moisture by Heat but another which is promoted by an extenuating Ferment For truly this leaveth behind it no Lee or Dreg or any Remainder but that leaves a sandy Stone or Coal And therefore the former tends unto a thickning but the latter unto an extenuating But if a great Heat doth sometimes arise in us which scorcheth the Members with the Fire-coal or burning Fever and Persian-fire and doth gangreen them move an Eschar and sometimes gnaw the Flesh like a Dormouse For so are the Works of Corrosive Salts the Acts of the Degenerations of Out-laws banished from the vital Common-wealth Truly that is even as by laxative Medicines the whole venal Blood is resolved into Putrifaction for they are Errours to be ascribed unto the violences of strange kinds of Seeds under which the vital Light doth degenerate no otherwise than as the pressing together of Hay stirs up Fire Moreover the vital Spirit climbe into the Head through the principal Arteries But there is one only Bosom in the very middle of the Brain which being beheld from above seemeth to be double but its Arch or Vault being lifted upwards it sheweth a Unity But in this Bosom an Artery endeth into a wrinckled Vessel and that of another weaving than the other compaction of Arteries Hereby therefore vital Spirit flows forth into the Bosom of the Brain for the service of the Imagination Memory and the spiritual Faculties their Chamber-maids all which are likewise founded in the implanted Spirit an inhabitant of the Brain But if the inflowing Spirit proceedeth from hence into the Mouths of the Sinews beginning from the Brain or the Cerebellum it attaineth Properties fit for the Functions of the Parts there ordained I have said elsewhere that this Spirit doth not essentially differ from the vital Spirit but that in the latitude of its Essence it is capable of very many Properties according to the latitude of Idea's imprinted on it for that which defluxeth to the Tongue causeth tasting the which notwithstanding in the Finger doth not taste because it puts on a particular Limitation of the Organ without the transchanging of its Nature least there should be as many Sub-divisions of the Animal Spirit as there are Services divided by pluralities of Offices In the mean time call the thing as it listeth thee CHAP. CVI. The manifold Life in Man I Have shewn elsewhere that there is in the Womb a Monarch-ship and therefore also a singular Life To wit whereby after the Death of a Woman it as yet casts forth the Young I have also seen a Woman which was never taken with the Falling-evil but when the Pain of Travel was urgent neither also did it cease but after delivery I have shewn also that there doth live a certain piece of Flesh of a spleen-like Form grown up indeed between the secundines and hollow places of the Womb and that its Life is proper to it self so as that it lives not by the Life of the Mother or Young but by a certain promiscuous Life not indeed by a sensitive Life although it flourisheth with a certain vital Power but not through favour of a certain herby or vegetative Soul At length also that the Veins have their own Life as yet remaining in them after the Death of a Man whereby it preserveth the Blood detained in them from coagulation and in this respect illustrates it with a certain Life for many dayes after the Death of the Persons Wherefore that there is another Life of the Veins whereby they not only live but do also conserve the Blood it self in Life Last of all I have also demonstrated that there is a certain peculiar Life in the Muscles together with the sensitive and motive Faculties whereby they all extend themselves with a fearful Convulsion at the percievance of Death As is manifest in a Tetanus in Rigours or cold shaking Fits and Convulsions wherein as well in those that are alive as after Death the Muscles are moved with an unvoluntary will even after the extinguishment of Life And although these Lives are distinguished by their various Subjects and are manifested by their diversity of Offices yet they all arise originally from the Seed they are furious or cruel ones they are implanted in their own Subjects and are in the whole or entire Life as in the total Form of the Parts Wherefore neither are they to be considered in the Treatise of Long Life because they are those which perish without the hope of Fewel at least-wise presently after the Death of the Man Yet are they memorable in the successive Alterations and curative betokening of Diseases CHAP. CVII The Flux or flowing unto Generation I Have seen the Beginnings of our Generation by way of Dream and I will describe them with my Pen so far as can be expressed by Words First of all I saw a Womb contracted with Folds or Plates after an unimitable artifice and in time of Conception to open it self by a proper attractive Blas and that suitably according to the extension of the Seed To wit which Extension or opening of the Folds causeth a sucking and attraction of the Seed by reason of a Vacuum And therein layeth a Rhombus or Figure on all sides equal of conception for the femal Sex For truly it contains the immediate Cause of complacency and attraction of the Seed into the Womb. For neither otherwise in Copulations however voluptuous they are is there made any enlargment of the folded Womb except in the very instant of Conception For from hence it is that the Conception of Bruits is almost infallible For truly there is not any voluntary Extension of the Womb as neither is it subjected unto Artifices or Crafts But rather it after some sort exceeding Nature plainly sheweth that God is the president of humane Generation continued on Posterity according to the Word of blessed Propagation Increase and Multiply Because it is the Finger of God which extendeth these Purses without an organical Mean The which is called in the holy Scriptures God opened the Womb of Sarah Truly the whole History of Generation should seem to exceed Nature unless it had been received within Nature from the right of an attained Propagation and a continued frequency of it self Whosoever therefore meditates on the expectation of Off-springs let him expect not the tickling or leacherous lust not the abundance of Seed yea nor health but altogether and primarily the aforesaid Magnetisme or attraction of the Womb And on behalfe of the Male Sex that the Seed be not infamous through any Contagion For otherwise the Womb once receiving a Seed badly seasoned doth reject that Seed neither doth it thenceforth open it self that it may suck the Seed of that Man inward for Life For the Womb doth oft-times conceive in second Marriages which in the first
nativity wherein the Lord took on him the Form of a Servant But how much he departed from that former and proper or natural dignity of his humane nature wherein he was conceived in the Womb himself sheweth Because he who came forth into the World the Womb of the Virgin being shut and the bolts of dimensions being contemned presently prostrated himself to the ordained condition of Death and willingly felt every necessity of a servile nature For both Adams in their beginning were immortal For the first Adam ought to be preserved by the Tree of Life But the second did wholly contain the Tree of Life in himself Both of them indeed chose to dye before a possibility to live For the former chose it from a Vice but the second from Charity The Tree of Life therefore and wholsomness of the place of Eden had vindicated Adam in his antient vigor from Death until that a number of years being finished he as happy had departed translated without death unto the Country of Glory Moreover it is of Faith that Adam never tasted of the Tree of Life and that lest he should eat of it he was cast forth of Paradise who ought to dye the death Yea he being now banished out of the Garden of Pleasure was of so perfect a constitution that he had lived unto some thousands of Years who was immediately formed by the hand of the Almighty without the commerce of Nature and had far exceeded the age of Mathusalem from the voluntariness of his own nature but that through the continued mourning and grief of one Age he had cut off the thred of a most Long Life from himself The Death therefore of Adam is not to be bewailed as otherwise Paracelsus badly perswaded himself because that the vital Spirit and knowledge of Long Life had fallen at once together with him For those are contradictions to enjoy Long Life from Knowledge and likewise to be Immortal from the forming of the hands of God and the suffrage of the Tree of Life also after sin to have retained the gift of Long Life by reason of his most perfect and noble constitution of Life and Body From whence the Spirit of a flourishing and abounding Life being at length translated on Posterity its vigor by degrees declining through a passing over of Generations the injuries of Life and Diseases and through the rottenness of Years the Curse co-operating manifested it self as a Magnum Oportet or a thing of great necessity The which having once entred into the Bowels of Mortals presently took possession of the same For the Life of those which at first was by the Tree without Death presently also without that Tree languisheth as being enrouled in a short term of Time and underwent an increase state or height declining and cessation after the manner of other things For so indeed Death through the perswasion of the Devil stablished it self into its Empire For Poysons that were harmless under the Tree of Life were afterwards supported for a Medicine of Destruction For I think that the Conditions and presence of the Tree of Life were hidden from Adam Else that he had extended his hand unto this sooner than unto the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And although the Tree of Life which the bounty of the Creator hath of late discovered may be so prepared that it may proceed unto the first constitutives of us with a refreshment of the decaying faculties yet I do not understand it to be that which is read to have been implanted in the Paradise of Pleasure whereunto no mortal man shall ever stretch forth his hand But ours is a shadowy one and the Vicaress of the other To wit the which hath nothing excellent and famous unless that under a retainment of properties it be reduced by Art into such a juice which may be able by its least parts to co-mingle it self with the solid parts Neither indeed doth our Tree of which I as the first do treat contain a non-sufferance unsensibleness of the pain of Diseases and an uncapacity of Death as the other did And moreover although the Tree of Life of Paradise should at this day be present with us yet it should not cause immortality Because the condition of the receiver is changed For indeed man is become composed by the bond of another generation of corrupted Nature and of another Long Life wherein the immortal mind hath no longer immediately sustained in it all the actions of Life but a frail or mortal sensitive Soul succeeded exercising the Vicarship of the mind and providing for the necessities of Life it self being like the flame slidable and extinguishable every hour CHAP. CX Short Life THe Air which is the former in the Seed ascending by degrees unto its Maturity at length conceives the Light or essential Form of its own Species which is made immediately by the Father of Lights and is of a proper name Life For as many things as differ in their particular Kinds which are involved in Darkness so many also ought the Forms to be under the species of Light For if a thing is what it is by reason of the Form in diversity from any other things whatsoever But the Form of living Things except the Mind and Life are Sunonymals there must needs be as many Lives as there are vital Forms Therefore the Light of Life is by it self every where simple and specifical but not fiery because vital formal and essential But that the Light of Life is hot or cold it denotes that the Life hath not married Heat or Cold but accidentally so that Heat or Cold proceeds from Life but not Life from Heat or Cold Life therefore cannot be otherwise understood than under the Conception of Light And neither Light is more demonstrable from a former Cause than the Forms of things themselves and whatsoever issues immediately out of the Bosom of the Almighty A vital Light therefore by its species wants a proper name We may indeed make a fiery Light to be given unto us for great necessities but it is not in the Power of the Artificer even immediately to produce a vital Light from himself Which thing the Chymists say The Artificer cannot introduce a substantial Form The Generater indeed is the begetter and producer of a vital Air forasmuch as he contributes Matter after the likeness of himself and Dispositions thereof in order unto Life but is in no wise able to produce Life or an ultimate perfect Art In Diseases also sometimes the Light of Life ascendeth unto the degree of Fire Because the Archeus from a threatned distinction or nothing of difference strikes out a fiery Light Not that the Archeus produceth this Light as he that generates his Like But the Archeus through Fury presseth together the moist Hay and it is enflamed the which being dry comes not so to pass After another manner also Woods by a co-rubbing and Iron by striking against it do conceive the fire
to be after some sort like them the which transchangeth almost an infinite quantity of impure Mettal into the best Gold and by uniting it to it self doth defend it from cankering rust rottenness and Death and makes it to be as it were Immortal against all the torture of the Fire and Art and translates it into the virgin-Purity of Gold only it requires Heat The Soul therefore and Body are thus regenerated by Baptisme and the communion of the unspotted Body of the Lord so that a just heat of Devotion of the Faithful shall be present Let the Divine pardon me if I as being beyond my Last have spoken of Life eternal by way of a Parenthesis For I willingly confess that a regenerated Body is not belonging to my Employment I treat only of prolonging the Life of the World This only I have said that Baptisme doth bring with it a real Effect of Purity perceivable by Sense and that the holy-sacred Communion of the Eucharist hath something like it in earthly things whereby we may the more easily believe Regeneration CHAP. CXI The Occasions of Death I Have compared the Fire and Light unto Life because it bears something before it which seemeth to be vital For vital Forms are either the Lives or Lights of things Therefore there shall likewise be as many occasions of Death as there are withdrawings of Light First therefore the Light is blown out and likewise the Flame perisheth by pressing together which they call through defect of Air. But I have demonstrated that that happens through want of a new Magnal but not that the Fire is nourished by Air So also by the constriction of a strange Smoak So indeed in Vaults and Burrows Lamps are extinguished but the Light is blown out by the Wind or another Flame For oftentimes Candles are extinguished by a filthy or deformed Flame being stirred up by the Powder of Rosin or Gun-powder Lastly Fires die through want of Nourishment Death in like manner doth many wayes rush on us For either a live Body is suddenly dashed together or sore shaken by weight Also a speedy pouring forth of Blood from a large Wound pours forth the Life and blows out the Light of Life So an inordinate Prodigality of corrupt Matter Water or Wind being abundantly made likewise Baths Hunger loosening Medicines introduce an untimely Death Also by the pressing together of the Breath in Burrows of the Asthma of a Cord of drowning of Smoak and by the Symptoms of the Womb likewise by the Resolutions and Palseys of the Sinews subjected to breathing In like manner by Burnings Destructions Coalifyings Gangrenes and Congelations of Cold. Also by Poysons Alculies gnawing Things Escharrers Putrifiers or Things that trample upon us by a fermental Contagion Likewise by retained Excrements Obstructions and the denied Commerces of Parts Likewise through Defect of some certain Digestion an Atrophia and Consumptions of a Part or of the whole Body Also by over-pourings of the Blood within the Skull Breast bottom of the Belly by corrupt mattery Impostumes Pleurisies affects of the Lungs c. Likewise by displacings of the turning Joynts Contractures of the Parts apppointed for expurging of Filths At length by reason of a Feeble Decrepit and woren-out Death of the Seeds and Powers And also by reason of the more grievous Passions of the Mind and Enchantments Death therefore doth so many manner of wayes steal away Mortals whose Life notwithstanding is alwayes simple and single For therefore there is a diverse and differing Consideration of Life and Death for a Sword takes away Life Yet there is far different Speculation of preserving Life than of healing of Diseases by the removals and hinderances of the Cause For truly Causes are partly external as a Wound the Plague Scorching c. the healing whereof therefore doth not depend on the removal of their Causes For neither therefore is the Fire which had burned any one to be extinguished from the Hearth that he may be cured even as neither is the Sword to be broken that the Wound may be healed up But for the preservation of Long Life the contemplations and removals of external Causes do no less occur or come to hand than those of a vital Fewel For indeed although no Infirmities should molest yet Death should not for that Cause cease dayly to strew a way for its entrance For although health hath respect to Life as its Foundation yet Life doth not include health For a Blind Lame Gowty Person c. doth no less live than a Healthy or Sound Person What if Life ends through a Disease that is forreign and by accident unto the Life as a Sword contains Death but not but by Application Otherwise Death doth by it self respect Life but diseasifying Causes become Mortal only by accident or by their Application unto the Spirit of Life For from hence it is that the Impediments of Long Life are seriously to be heeded and diverted if we expect length of Life From the Beginning therefore the meditation of Life consisteth not without but in the Life it self To wit after what manner Life may be preserved in the Body For the sensitive Soul now forthwith after Sin as I have said drew the whole property of Life unto it self and became the bond of Life with the Body But seeing that very Soul is in it self Mortal it must needs be first of all that all the vital Powers co-aeval or of a like Age with the Life should be slideable and mortal From hence at length Death For a long continuance of Life therefore first a curing of Diseases is required as well of those which touch at the Life of the whole Body as those which have regard unto the Dammages or preservation of a Part and Functions and which in this respect do lay in wait for the Life For truly seeing there is a single conspiracy of the Members certain principal Powers cannot chuse but at length go to decay also the subordinate ones being only diminished Wherein I disagree from Paracelsus because he thought that every Disease was of necessity to be taken away by a Medicine for long Life Because that good Man was no less ignorant of a Medicine for Long Life and the use thereof than of the very Essence and Properties of Long Life And therefore his Arcanums do very much conduce into a healthy or sound Life or unto a removal of Impurities yet they do not any thing directly and primarily tend to long Life as unto their ultimate end Because that as the Life So the Tree of Life chiefly concerns the preservation and renewing or making young again of the vital Faculties implanted in the Arts. In this therefore the Arcanums or Secrets which are for the taking away of Superfluities differ from the Tree of Life That those indeed do cure Diseases even those which our parent Nature doth by her self never Cure To wit the Leprosie Stone Palsy Consumption of the Lungs Dropsie c. but
hath given Milk for Food unto every one alike For he hath sent an Army of Diseases into Nature that a thousand fore-ripenesses of Death might bend unto the Foundations of Life for Ruine Nature therefore by Milk satisfies the ends of her Author and hath afforded a beast-like Nourishment But the Doctrine of long Life is exceeding diverse in its unfolding and I know that it hath remained in secret even among those that have been divinely chosen the Sons of Art The present Doctrine therefore hath not regard unto the ordinary course of Nature but unto a new mark Therefore I do not think that I am injurious to Nature if I shall prefer an unwonted Nourishment before Milk For truly in Milk very many Discommodities do invade First of all Milk waxing clotty very often produceth frequent Vomitings Wormes Wringings of the Bowels Fevers Fluxes Falling-sicknesses Convulsions and contains many unthought of Occasions of Death For Milk in the Stomack obeying the proper Ferment of the place doth of necessity wax sour before that it turn into Nourishment whereunto if a new sucking of milk succeedeth an hard clot of milk lays on the little tender Stomack which becoming callous or brawny hard into small clods counterfeits tough Cheese not much otherwise than as milk doth oft-times grow together within the Dugs and breakes not forth but with an Apostem the which seeing it stubbornly resists Digestion if it shall not also be exceeding hurtful at least-wise it presently putrifies growes bitter waxes yellow becomes green contracts a burntishness and estrangeth the Pylorus or lower Mouth of the Stomack from whence the aforesaid Slaughters of Diseases are often stirred up For an Infant sucks long and frequently repeats it The first Milk is curdled another new milk is sent in the third and sixth time and there is made a co-mixture of them all and a strange one being sharp or four besides Nature is stirred up with howlings and a common curd is made of them all In which are the manifestations of Heterogeneity or diversity of kind and a co-resemblance of a cheesed burntish and putrified matter follows the new Milk These Vices are almost unavoidable and they are the material offences of the milk which the new Young being brought forth begins from the beginning to expiate as though from the birth the Mother doth frame snares and the threatnings of Death for her little Infant There are moreover other faults of the milk pernicious by a more hidden gore For not only the Pox Leprosie Plagues and Fevers infamous through contagion are sucked from the Nurses but also a diseasie Inclination of the Nurses is stamped on the Child from his Cradle no otherwise than as if it were hereditary Surely it is a Character to be bewailed from his Life time I knew a certain Governour blessed with a Sixth and sound Off-spring whose seventh because he was nourished by a Nurse who was subjected to the Stone of the Kidneys with a mournful Disease of the Stone finished his Life on the 13th Year of his Age under cutting for the Stone at the third cutting In the next place it is not sufficient for the material Diseases of the Milk the hidden Consumptions of Diseases and their hereditary Roots to be transplanted by the milk into the sucking Infant and to be most stubbornly incorporated into the Life But also the morral Seminaries of any kinde of Vices do pierce inwardly with the milk and preseveres for the term of Life So I have observed that a leacherous theevish covetous and wrothful Nurse hath transferred her Frailty on the Children So an unwonted blockishnesse anger madnesse and many Passions of the Mind also beside moral Defects sleeping a long while and at length being under the maturity of Dayes unfolded do bewray themselves on Families they being begged from Nurses and propagated by the Milk Then in the next place the Milk being as yet in the Nurse is in danger to be mortified or wax stinking if the Nurse be privily gotten with Child doth partake of Fevers and Maladies which are after some manner bred for the infecting of the Milk Lastly the Milk undergoes diverse Impressions every hour from all the disturbances of the Mind from whence it not only waxeth clotty and putrifies or stinks but also by an unsensible quality it puts on Deformities which the guiltless Infant drinks and is held to pay the punishment of For the Nurse doth not alwayes bridle her Mind with one tenor but she failes being sore smitten with a thousand Apprehensions of Anger Sorrow Agony Envy Wantonness Theft Covetousness c. all whereof there is no doubt but that they badly dispose the Milk as well in respect of the Body as the Soul For they are most of them unavoidable yet dangerous Whosoever therefore would study long Life from the Birth let him not expose his Children unto this sort of voluntary unthought of and certain Dangers By how much the rather because a Medicine for Long Life as it is dayly from the Cradle extended for a long and healthy Life by drops cannot be digested as neither Penetrate if it be burred within the gross clots of Milk Because so also Poysons in the Milk do well nigh become unhurtful and being as it were gelded become barren I therefore have hated the oft extended nourishing of an Infant by Milk For this Cause I am not wont to eat milk unless it be meer or unmixt alone without other Meat and Drink until that it being fully digested hath slidden out of the Stomack I praise for our Child Nourishments which are made of Bread boyled so long in thin Ale with clarified Honey if not with Sugar until they shall come together into the likeness of a Museilage or Glew or Jelly Then as much thin Ale is mingled with and washed on this Jelly as is sufficient for it to serve instead of Drink Nevertheless he must abstain from Rye-bread if he be nourished with Honey because it breedeth Wormes Yea a piece of that Bread being cast into a Vessel of Honey it passeth into Ants. After this manner I bad among others the Son of an Earle to he nourished from his Birth who far exceeded his three Brethren in Strength Health Stature Wit and all Valour and so that if he had not died in war as being pierced thorow with a Bullet by a warlick Hand he had been of great hope For indeed as the aforesaid Meat and Drink is harmless not putrifying not coagulable not stubborn against Digestion for whatsoever things are fetch'd from living Creatures do easily putrifie in the more tender Stomacks as neither a partaker of Malignity or of a forreign unstable Disturbance or the Heir of an induced vitious Impression So it is alwayes equal like and constant to it self becomes most familiar to Nature not wormy not sharp not stinking or of a burntish Savour in the next place not tart acute feverish yea nor ever hurtful although it shall exceed in quantity for more or
no longer coagulating even as otherwise under growth was wont to be done it wholly exhales without a residence lee or dreg or remainder of Reliques That therefore is the conclusion of the Venal blood that for the end of its Tragedy it is at length wholly expelled by way of an Exhalation through an unsensible transpiration after that it hath undergone the Offices of moystening Therefore while as that Liquor being now co-mixed through the innermost Parts and the Dgestion having thorowly performed its Office doth by way of effluxing exhale it cannot but have assumed the disposition of an Excrement From whence it alike unavoydably follows That the vital Spirit inhering in and conjoyned to the Bowels and also the implanted Powers of the same are by a continual and necessitated Fumigation blunted alienated and at length extinguished This therefore is the containing and natural Cause of short Life Therefore the whole consideration of long Life is conversant about the conserving of the vital Powers For it is not sufficient that venal Blood be present with all the Members to be delightfully nourished with their desired venal Blood Neither again doth it suffice that the implanted Spirit be thus far sufficiently refreshed from the inflowing Spirit by a continued substituting of Nourishment For nothing is done in the Stage of Life unless the seminal Powers the vital Characters I say be preserved from the destruction already mentioned For otherwise the Spirits are reduced unto nakedness and are lessened from whence our dayes are of necessity abbreviated For truly it by degrees looseth the Character of the Powers or Gifts of the Seed and is made a Spirit like unto that which is not soulified or like unto a Gas For although in Figures and Engines a perpetual Motion doth not fail because there is not required in the Powers moving a subsequential proportion of a greater unto a less that it may move some other thing Yet surely this hath not place in things which shall not move themselves nor are of ability to grow or be strengthed by moving And therefore they are things unworthy to be considered in seminal things For truly natural Generations which are constant even unto the Worlds End shall be sufficient to wit that the Species and Strengths of these do continue entire and that they do beget a Seed from them which is never diminished By consequence also if a Man of forty Years old doth generate one in times past like unto himself his Life of forty Years shall be able to be continued being co-equalized in Vigour unto himself being a young Man if the vice of a broken Thred doth not from elsewhere rush on it as I have said Therefore we must diligently search into whether the Reliques of the Tree of Life or its surrogated Substitutions are to be hoped for in Nature to wit by which whatsoever doth at length vanish out of us may be unto those Powers instead of a nourishing warmth nor may any longer through its sorrowful Fumigation bear before it the condition of an Excrement But it listeth us to acknowledge the quality of our aforesaid Fumigation not only in the Odours of some Sweats but especially because Wall-Lice Lice Gnats and the like Insects proceed from thence indeed the meer off-springs of filthiness and stink First of all it hath seemed to me an unprofitable Question Whether the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life thereof have ceased or indeed whether they do remain even unto this Day and in what place Whether Enoch Elias and John do there even till now live happy under the fellowship of Angels without the Discommodities of old Age and Infirmities It is sufficient for me that the Tree of Life began from the Creation that it was in Nature but not fabulous or parabolical It sufficeth that that Tree was and should be unknown to Mortals and so also that the impossible obtainment thereof deprives us of hope In the mean time I search into a succeeding Plant although inferiour by many numbers Yea there is no doubt but that if there be any Plant in this Vale of Miseries which resembles the Faculties of that primitive Tree a Place may contribute its Parts unto long Life as well in respect of the Plant as of the Man using it For that the same Plant is ennobled through the Variety of its native Soile and that our Life is prolonged by places of the better nourishable Juice and through the Drink of the more sweet Air Climates themselves do afford me Credit For neither is it to be believed that that thing happens altogether from the favour of the Heaven for that in the same degree of distance from the Aequator and altogether in the same Circuit of Heaven the Parts subjacent to the East do bring forth more noble Fruits than those which decline more toward the West And moreover much Variety is oftentimes planted nigh under the same Circle both which Parts notwithstanding the same aspect of Heaven doth sometimes dayly affect with the same Motion For Paracelsus promoting it a hope is raised up in some Physitians for long Life For every one promiseth himself to have been an obtainer of long Life by his Writings if he had not described his Medicines in so great darkness of Words Wherefore most do diligently search to have his obscure Novelties of Names signified unto them Also others deservedly suspecting his every where simple and curtail'd Description heartily wish for a more manifest method of operating But none the Vaile being uncovered hath attempted to dig unto the bottom of the Matter and Basis of the Truth promised For every one either derides or despairs or being too credulous admires all things with a bending Nose Yet if these are better than those because they have not cut off the way of the hope from themselves None notwithstanding hath chosen a middle way to wit of doubting and diligently searching how much of truth the things promised may contain For indeed Paracelsus promiseth that he could attain extream Old Age by his Elixir of Propriety and boasts that it was granted him from heaven to designe or chuse the Condition and Hour of his Death but vain are his boastings of long Life his knowledge and choice of Death who the while dies in the 47th Year of his Age. In the mean time his own followers are astonished and wonder by what Disease or chance the true partaker or obtainer of that Stone which maketh Gold was snatched away being as yet in his flourishing Age and who with Hercules Club slew thousands of the more grievous Diseases up and down as it were by mowing them down with a Sithe Truly I make no Apology for any I willingly confess that I have profited much by his Writings and that he was able by Remedies ascending unto a resembling mark of Unity to heale the Leprosie Astâ—hma Consumption of the Lungs Palsey Falling-sicknesse Stone Dropsie Gowt Cancer and such like commonly uncurable Diseases Yet I have gathered
Life For neither hath Renovation long Life as a necessary Adjunct nor on the other hâ—â—d is Renovation annexed to long Life As is manifest in the Stag Goose c. Be it therefore that every of the Arcanums of Paracelsus do take away almost all Sicknesses renew the Nailes Haires and Teeth yet they cannot first of all make equal the unequal Strength of any failing part much less vindicate the failing Powers from Death and least of all restore the same into a youthful Vigour Therefore those Arcanums or Secrets do not respect the Powers of the Organs as neither long Life depending thereupon but only the greatest cleansing or refining of all the Members and Health sprung from thence All Diseases indeed which either issue from Filths which lurk in the Filâ—â— themselves or lastly which do further propagate Filths by their Contagion are cured by the aforesaid Arcanums but not those which do primarily concern the vital Powers Not those I say which contain a weakness inbred or attained from a Disease or Old Age together with a diminishment of the Powers For those of this sort return not into their antient State but by the Remedies of long Life neither yet into their antient â—tate with a perfect and full restoration For otherwise this thing should conclude an absolute Immortality For the Weaknesses which invade Men from Gluttony or Drunkenness Leachery c. are very little restored by the Secrets of Paracelsus but not unless an infirm Nature doth accompany them For Madnesses which arise from an evil framing or composure are not any thing restored but those which have arisen from a remarkable Animosity of Pride stand alwayes in fear of a relapse But otherwise the Phtensie Doatage Falling-evil Raging Madnesses of the Womb of the Hypochondrials and whatsoever Weaknesses are made from some off-springs of Impurity are perfectly and compleatly healed by the Remedies of Paracelsus Madnesses therefore which proceed from a notable Arrogancy are indeed presently cured but with the fear of some less relapse because those do argue a meer Defect of the imaginative Power and therefore they so defile the Seed that they being thenceforth translated into some Generations do oft-times shine forth So also the Sons of Drunkards do oftentimes retain the Tokens of vitiated Powers as though the Sons being Heires of their Fathers Crime ought to pay the Punishments thereof That is strong or valiant Men are generated by strong or valiant and good Men. And on the other Hand a bad Egg of an Evil Crow For the Sons of Drunkards are for the most part drowsie in searching into things stubborn or stedfast in their Conceits Cup-shot or giddy in things to be done and easily to be drawn aside into Vices At least-wise I doubt not but that Paracelsus made use of his Arcanums because he was he who saw not only prosperous Cures to succeed but also that some who the longer used them were renewed in their Haires Nailes and Teeth Notwithstanding seeing he had not a long Life his aforesaid Arcanums shall be for a Testimony unto us concerning my Judgment delivered For indeed a Will or Testament of Paracelsus is born about the which because it contradicts the publick Authority drawn out of his Epitaph which is seen in the Hospital of Saltzburge in a Wall near the Altar of St. Sebastian and the which mentions That he appointed his Goods to be distributed to the Poor and to be honoured thereby Therefore that Testament I believe was feigned by the Haters of Paracelsus Others therefore of that leaven affirm that Paracelsus a limited term being compacted with Satan died in full Health The which contradicteth the aforesaid Testament from the published Language of his Enemies To wit wherein it is said that himself was some dayes before his death Diseasie And that Act of so great Guilt contradicteth that he was so bountiful to the Poor There are also others who say that he was taken away by Poyson For which seeing Remedies were no less known unto him and in readiness than for other Diseases they supposed him to have been slain by the Powder of the Adamant eating out his Bowels But I no way admire at the untimely Death of the Man who was solicitous or carefully diligent from his Youth about Chymical Secrets Most especially if a too much Curiosity of searching into Science day and night hath vexed those who were careless of their Life For which of Mortal Men may not the Fumigations of live Coales infect those of Aquae Forte's graduating or exalting and Arsenical things And likewise a new dayly examination of Antimonials The which we through the long tediousness of experiencing being not yet experienced draw in from the malignity of those things as being not admonished but by late experience For what can the somewhat curious and undaunted Young Beginner in an Art so abstruse otherwise do and he refusing any other Master besides the torture of the Fire Where indeed the Speculations of Art are obscured from his desire not indeed that they may be abruptly known but rather that they may not be known For Understanding is given only unto those that are chosen through a long preparation of Dayes and Works to those that are furnished with sufficient Health and Money nor those that have deserved Indignity through the load of Crimes I grant that there are some Universal Medicines which under a most exceeding grateful Unifon of Nature do unsensibly lead forth the bound Enemy after them together with a famous clarifying or refining of the Organs I grant likewise that there are some appropriated ones whereby they imitate the largeness of a Universal Medicine in the Specifical directions of Diseases take away the forreign Society of Impurities and plainly lord it over the already contracted Vice no otherwise than as an Axe plucks up a Tree with authority An Index or Table of the Secrets of Paracelsus is First of all the Tincture of Lile reduced into the Wine of Life from an untimely mineral Electrum or general composure of Mettals one part whereof is the first Metallus but the other the Essence of the Members And then follows Mercurius Vitae the off-spring of entire Stibium which wholly sups up every Sinew of a Disease In the third place is the Tincture of Lile even that of Antimony almost of the same efficacy with that going before although of less efficacy In the fourth place is Mercurius Diaphoreticus being sweeter than Honey and being fixed at the Fire hath all the Properties of the Horizon of Sol for it perfects whatsoever a Physitian and Chyrurgion can wish for in healing yet it doth not so powerfully renew as those Arcanums aforegoing His Liquor Alkahest is more eminent being an immortal unchangeable and loosening or solving Water and his circulated Salt which reduceth every tangible Body into the Liquor of its concrete or composed Body The Element of Fire of Copper succeedeth and the Element or Milk of Pearls But the Essences of Gems
great an heap neither doth he rain down Fountains nor lastly hath poured forth Fruits worthy of so great Borders but that he hath exalted it above all Turbulences of Air and Clouds whirlings of Windes and monstrous omens of Thunder-bolts into a most pleasing rest of Air Surely that thing seems to me to be dedicated unto a famous Mystery For the promised blessing did of old for the most part respect long Life and the Commodities thereof and the fruitfulness of off-springs that thou mayest be long lived upon the Earth c. Blessing therefore unto those that ascend into the Mountain of the Lord according to the Letter seems in Nature to have respect unto the Endowments of long Life For he who is alone and wholly the Life and Prince of Life doth likewise give long Life unto none not so much as by natural Means who hath betaken his Soul to Vanity Therefore the blessing of ascending into the Mountain of the Lord seemes to contain a long continuance of Life Therefore those most high Mountains which are read to be endowed by Nature for no Fruits sake and the which pertain unto the sweetness of a not much disturbed Air seem to promise a singular 〈…〉 or Likeness of the Mountain of the Lord and of a long Life And that thing is from a certain singular prerogative before other Mountains and that they may as it were by that right have the surname of the Mountain of the Lord for if it reach beyond all the incidencies of inferiour things it after a singular manner promiseth unto me that God is there after a peculiar manner For he that was not in the Whirle-wind but in the sweet Air was perceived by Elias He he I say hath his Mansion in the same place that is the Prince of Life doth there give his blessing Not indeed that which may be communicated in a few houres but being signified to Moses in Mount Sinai in the revolution of forty dayes to wit by two full Moons For he who could every year continually stay for forty dayes in the Mountain of Rest about the Feast of the building of Tabernacles the Commodities of living being called unto him from elsewhere I divine that he might much profit himself for long Life especially if he were there daily refreshed with a Medicine prepared of the Tree of Life because that in such a Mountain by reason of a notable Purity of the Air there is a greater co-mixture of the Nourishment with the Body nourished and a more piercing access unto the first constitutive parts Lastly although the highest Mountains do bear before them the priviledge of long Life Yet those that are less high promise some singular thing from the sense perceived in the Alpes Nevertheless I alwayes reject Mountains which breath forth some Mineral Gas For therefore in Chymical things Arsenick hath obtained the name of the fume of Mettals But unto whom the Commidity of living in a healthy Mountain should be granted and that not great with Child with the Fruits of Minerals they certainly should rejoyce in the benefit of long Life so far as the Nature of the place hath bestowed CHAP. CXVI The Tree of Life I Am constrained to believe that there is the Stone which makes Gold and which makes Silver because I have at distinct turns made projection with my hand of one grain of the Powder upon some thousand grains of hot Quick-silver and the buisiness succeeded in the Fire even as Books do promise a Circle of many People standing by together with a tickling Admiration of us all But it was not a thing extracted out of Gold because it should change as many weights of Quick-silver as there were of Gold from whence it had been extracted First of all that being granted as yet at least-wise a true transmutation of one thing into another and that indeed a manifold one should stand Secondly those that work on Gold and Money-makers have known that nothing which is not Mercurial can enter by flowing into Mettals or be co-melted with them but swims a-top in the flowing Therefore thirdly that Extraction should be fatter than any Mettal is if it ought to tinge so many thousand Parts Fourthly that Extraction should be no longer a Mettal seeing it should exceed the perfection of the purest Mettal so many thousand times For a Mettal doth not suffer so many degrees of largeness in its perfection by how many times the Powder which maketh Gold converts an inferiour Mettal into true Gold Fifthly He who first gave me the Gold-making Powder had likewise also at least as much of it as might be sufficient for changing two hundred thousand Pounds of Gold But there is none who may have more than a tenfold quantity of Gold and if he should have it he should destroy it that he might at length make as much Gold from thence For he gave me perhaps half a grain of that Powder and nine ounces and three quarters of Quick-silver were thereby transchanged But that Gold a strange Man being a Friend of one evenings acquaintance gave me However therefore the Phylosophers Stone be in the Nature of things yet I have alwayes supposed for the reasons aforesaid that no Metallick Remedy contains the blessing of the Tree of Life I willingly confess in the mean time that that Stone is in its Beginnings partaker of the Life of a Zoophyte or Plant-animal and that it hath that Life distinct from a vegetative and sensitive Life the which for this Cause is an un-named Life For according to the unanimous Writings of wise Men The Principles of the Stone being once conjoyned to a glassen Egg if through the Vice of interrupted Warmth it once happen that they are even but a little while plainly cooled they so die that there is no remaining hope of a future Stone the which likewise happens also in the nourishing warmth of Eggs And therefore I have judged that it is to be believed that these do live also in a like Life with the Beginnings of the Stone And that is a true Life which a true Death testifies because that that errour is never to be corrected by any Paines it being thus once dead there is no hope of restitution left for the future I know in the next place that the Tree of Life is in vain to be â—ought from Animals how long lived soever In all which I have found a voluntary Death a frail Body and slideable every hour or the way of all Flesh For how shall they give a long Life the which they contain not in themselves Seeing if they are long lived at least-wise they have put off their own Life while they are taken into use I have sometimes beheld Stones that they did contain sometimes live Creatures within them that they live for the space of five Years and are preserved from Death without Nourishments Paracelsus thinks that the whole heap of Stones and the whole World was at sometime one only Stone or at
leastwise a single stony Liquor the which being by degrees distinguished into Mettals the fire-Stone great or rocky Stones small Stones and Salts afforded the beginnings of Vitality by many creeping things and so that if they detain Toads and Salamanders alive perhaps for an Age without Food and as it were snorting with a deep drowsiness I doubted whether the Stones the Sheaths and Wombs of those living Creatures might be the partakers of long life But the Scripture perswaded me that the life of creeping things is horrid and hateful unto us Wherefore I lookt back unto the more pretious Gems Notwithstanding neither have I found in those the Foot-steps of long Life whether they were Essences or next the magisteries of those because they cannot be immediately assimilated or adjoyned unto our first constitutive Parts or if at length they are after some sort adjoyned unto them and as long as we grow at least-wise they are spoyled of their former length of Life after the manner of other Nourishments they nourishingly put on the Nature of Flesh and are constrained to follow it I have learned therefore that Gems or pretious Stones however they might be endowed with a medicinal Power to make for long Life Yet that they never wholly put off a mineral disposition and so that neither are they co-mixable with the first constituting Parts Yea although they should be co-mingled with them yet they should not be serviceable for a long Life Because whatsoever refresheth not the vital Powers doth not also withstand the intestine necessities of Death and much less if it resist the Wedlock of our solid Members But Aromatical or spicie Herbs should snatch away this victory from their Companions if the Tree of Life should be herby as they are the more grateful and spiritual But that which is the most refined Liquor and whatsoever contains the whole Crasis of the Herb doth notwithstanding respect only Singularities and Healing for that the composed Body from whence it issued is not it self partaker in it self of long Life For the Liquor which knowes not how to preserve its concrete Body the which it from the Beginning married through its least parts from destruction after what sort shall it be able being spoyled of its Virtues or Faculties to defend our Flesh which is soon flowing abroad with a hastening Corruption from Death And so from hence the Tree of Life began to be accounted immortal with me not subject to Old Age not to the discommodities of Ages and the which should contain or admit of no Excrements and much less should propagate the same But rather should by a certain excellency if any had once at sometime lighted on it brush them off by reason of the Virtue of its expelling and repulsing But seeing it is the property of Poyson by corrupting to convert Good into Evil it hath seemed meet to me to search diligently into the Tree of Life wherein the Poysons themselves might die being overcome by the goodness of the Tree Wherefore also it should refuse them being not yet admitted and which should correct and overcome those Poysons which were once admitted For if it ought not to admit of Excrements which are certain Poysons of the lowest degree much more shall it divert drive back and weaken those which are of a more profound and manifest hostility or enmity For unless it shall do that it shall assume the name of the Tree of Life to it self in vain I have observed that the Colts which were generated of a labouring Beast and an old Horse were soon enfeebled or barren weak in the vigour of their Life and that they had deeper Pits above their Eyes than he which had sprang from a younger Horse But that an old Willow yields new Sprouts nothing more barren if they are planted than the Sprouts of a new stem Therefore I have found that together with the Seed of living Creatures Old Age departs into their off-springs but that thing is not so easily manifest in the Young of a Tree Yea if there be a Long Life in some Beasts yet it is so enclosed that it doth not depart from a singularity and is not communicable out of the Species In the next place I have examined Dew by a resolution of its Parts For it afforded a sugary Salt helping great Diseases but surely not any thing profitable for long Life For by reason of the unlimited generality of its goodness it contained not so much Life as the Properties of Nourishment At length I concluded with my self that whatsoever it were that should supply the Place of the Tree of Life it was the Young or Off-spring of a Tree And then that this Medicine was to be fetched out of a most wholesom odoriferous balsamical and almost immortal Shrub And the which should be of the subtilest and purest Parts from a proper Endowment and native constitution of its composed Body and the which should every way resist any kind of Corruptions bred or obtained through the Errour of Art or Nature At length that by Art and labour it should obtain the utmost bound of perfection and a liberty of co-mixing with us wherefore it was chiefly necessary that that manifold natural Endowment should not any thing be broken in time of its preparation or be changed by the Fire and so that there is need of a not burning Fire for the exaltation of its Faculties and sequestration of Impediments to wit that it may make any Mortals partakers for the compleating of uncorruptibleness or for the long continuance of Life to take us by the hand so far as might be possible for the receiver corrupted Nature by a communicating of its Faculties or Virtues Surely it cannot therefore feel any singular Property of passion of a Member or obey partialities But it is of necessity that it be an entire Balsam of Life reduced unto a seminal Being remaining in its natural Endowments grateful in its Odour throughout all the diligent examinations of its middle Life and Magnum Oportet So that when as the Nourishments at length thorowly mingled therewith are dead to their Office at least-wise the smoakiness of the same may by their fumigation no longer batter and extenuate the implanted Spirits but rather may refresh them and thus far it emulates a certain permanency of uncorruptibleness and keeps it continued and propagated in the nourishable Humour under our middle Life The favour therefore of its native Endowment procures its Love with the sealed Powers of the implanted Spirits its preparation therefore refuseth an alteration of its native Virtue and performeth a more full entrance and application of Virtue So that as it were an Out-law and besides an accustomed wont it is admited as conscious within the secret Chambers of Life that it may there undergo an Information For in some Climates all things are produced more strong and excellent by reason of the nobilities of a nourishable Juice and the which therefore it is certain do very much
excel as for long Life For so the Sweat of some Persons smells of the Goat or Rank but that of others doth not far differ from a Fragrancy That one thing I say in long Life is only to be procured least the nourishable Humor after that it hath ceased from its Offices being dismissed by transpiration looseth its Grace through defect whereof I have described a short Life For I have taught elsewhere that a Sow or a Goose being nourished only by Fishes do yield Fleshes which tastingly resemble the detestable Grease of Fishes Wherefore let the Medicine of the Tree of Life be an odoriferous Balsam Spicie grateful to Nature seasoning the Blood with an excelling goodness and a nourishment now applyed after the manner of a Dew Even so that through the vigour of its uncorruptibleness its balsamical Faculty may be continued even unto the utmost Limits of its exhalation out of the Body Wherefore we must beware of this one only thing that the fire do not alter this Fruit by a seperating distillation but that a proper division of that which is heterogeneal be appointed as being sequestred into its bottoms for a greater subtilizing of Purity and Simplicity and sealing of its Virtues For in Eden the Stomack subdued the Food from a proper vigour or force for all things willingly obeyed the Stomack without the strife of a middle Life it being that which they through the decision of the Stomack kept after some sort sase even until the deluge of Waters till that through a succession of Years and Propagations all things by degrees went to ruine Then the seminal Being was no longer drawn out of Meats after that the term of Life was restrained unto 120 and afterwards unto 80 Years For the Being of Essence which before was fetcht out of Meats bewrayed it self no longer because the Stomack had enough to do only to draw forth the Being of Nourishment From hence it is manifest that although the Tree of Life was present with us from Eden yet that it will not profit us as it did the first of the Fathers By consequence also that the Balsam of our vital Tree is not so profitable unto Persons of ripe years as unto Children For he that hath almost run out the stage of Life every such one perceives an help according to a Model or after a small manner Seeing all things in Nature are received after the manner of the Persons and place receiving and of circumstances For the Friends of Job wept with him seven dayes and nights without eating drinking and difference of health The which is now at this day scarce possible for any mortal Man to do Therefore the strengths of such a life should more profit by our Tree than I an old Man who almost worn out with the offences and labours of Chymistry and the injuries of Tribulations and Persecutions So we Bees do not provide Honey for our selves Whereunto is added that Eden was of it self a preserver of Long Life through the wholesomness of the place but that but a few Paces from thence there was the command of Death Corruption and Infirmities For if Credit be to be given to Histories there are also places at this day whereunto a Life of three hindred years is ordinary For where long-lived Persons are born they are also nourished But there are other places near at hand where a renewed tyranny of interchanges shortens the Life for so some Provincial Diseases are accustomed Therefore mountainous Places which have not the Gas of Minerals as the Forrest of Arden Asturia or the Pyrenean Mountains c. nor those subjected unto the natural Moisture of Lakes because the bountiful Communications of the Stars do reflect and breath a pure Air and do make for Long Life Even as also a plain Field which knowes not the Incitements of the Throat adds as much to long Life as fulness is an enemy to long Life for the stuffings of Meats do weary the miserable Powers to wit that they being as it were worn out with labour die or go to ruine before their time which things being thus revolved with my self for full three dayes space from whence a Medicine for long Life was to be fetched Opobalsamum notably smiled on me not indeed that of Peru or the Gums of Capaida of Brasile But the true Aegyptian opobalsamum noted in the Scriptures and primitive it being the Queen-tear of a low Shrub scarce saleable to Kings For I confess I have worthily attributed very much perfection to this Being And although there were enough of it to be found yet it doth as yet decline from the perfection of the Tree of Life because that Shrub is so frail or mortal And while I variously wandred in Nature that I might view the Tree of Life at length without the day and beyond the beginning of the night I saw in a dream the whole Face of the Earth even as it stood forsaken and empty or void at the beginning of the Creation then afterwards how it was while as it being fresh waxed on every side green with its Plants Again also as it lay hid under the Floud For I saw all the Species of Plants to be kept under the Waters Yet presently after the Floud that they all did enter into the way of interchanges enjoyned to them which was to be continued by their Species and Seeds I saw I say in the top of Mount Libanus the Cedars to have remained whole under the Deluge by the Word of the most Glorious God and that they in a certain number did as yet there remain And presently afterwards I returned to my self But I afterwards considered at leisure that the Ark which ought to save Mankind from destruction was commanded to be framed of the incorrupitble Wood Cetim For the World had endured perhaps 1652 Years but Noah proceeded slowly in its building for an hundred solary years And therefore he took Wood and Rafters which were not to undergo any dammage in all that time A leprous Person being separated from the People coming to the Priest bare the Wood Cetim in his hand that he might be cleansed In the feast of the building of Tabernacles every Hebrew carried Cedar and Branches of Myrrh that God might be mindful in the rain of the whole Earth that he appointed the manners of the Times and the Stars I therefore understood by the Cedar long Life likewise the blessings of the Times or Seasons and of the Stars and also that in a mystical sense cleansing was denoted but that in this Age it was also to be obtained For other vital things do soon wither with Old Age but the one only Cedar in number by a famous mistery through the uncorrupted substance of its Wood and its vegetative Faculty surviving promiseth long Life because it containeth it For the folding Doors of the Temple of Salomon were commanded to be framed of the Wood Cetim with Gold as it were a more vile covering or involvement
Moreover it is without controversie in the Church of God that the Cedar in Libanus in the Temple in the Figure of the Ark in the cleansing of the Leprosie and in the feast of the building of Tabernacles did represent the Mother of God the Virgin Queen of Heaven an incorruptible Vessel a Tree which brought forth for us Eternal Life in the Flesh the Patroness I say of the Poor and Mine But the place of the Cedar in Libanus exceeding the coldest folding door of the Air covered with Snowes denotes the unspotted Integrity of the God-bearing Virgin And so if the Tree denotes the holy Virgin especially conjoyntly with so many mysteries it s no wonder that the Cedar doth signifie the Tree of this Life also in the world For indeed there was in the dayes of David an aged Cedar in Libanus because it was that which by reason of its excellent taleness was from that time worthy of a mystical sense Wherefore either it being there planted after the Floud doth as yet hitherto continue the same in number safe or a good while before and perhaps from the cradles of the World according to the Vision of the Dream Which thing after what manner soever it may be taken at least-wise it shews that the Cedar despiseth the discommodities of Old Age But he is not from a Cedar his Parent planted after the Floud because that Parent also of the Cedar was preserved under the Deluge and much more easily afterwards than that which remains from the daies of David even until this time Let those laugh that will at that age of the Cedar in Libanus and let them say that Modern ones were raised up by a new Branch or by Seed falling down But that being supposed at this day also new ones had dayly come forth into a great Wood where notwithstanding no new Cedar growes But moreover from thence I gather that the same Cedar in number doth now persist which was even before the Floud yea even from the Creation of the World Because it was given for a Mark of resemblance to the blessed Virgin But moreover for our Magistery the Fruit of the Cedar is not to be taken for that the end thereof is not for a simple Being in the appointment of the Properties of the Cedar but only for a propagation of the Species which contradicteth long Life from the Foundation The Wood Cetim it self therefore is to be taken which is so much exalted in the holy Scripture Therefore not the Bark not the Fruit not the Root nor the Leaves are the ultimate end whither Nature hath had respect for long Life And so that the Cedar perhaps also is herein distinct from the Tree of Life in Eden A matter therefore of a Tree which knowes not how to die is found whose unputrifiable Wood and by reason of its many Properties being in a mystical Sense designed to the holy Virgin is that which brings forth Life to the World that it may redeem Death But the preparation thereof is the most exceeding difficult of all those things which fall under the Labour of Wisdom For this Cause indeed Monarchs want a long Life because there is none which hath known how to prepare it For none who is truly a Phylosopher is a Minstrel neither doth he follow Princes and flatter them for because he stands in need of nothing he despiseth whatsoever a Prince can give The Tree of Life therefore alone refresheth the decayed Faculties and for some time detaineth the Life in its flowing But the difficulty of preparing it consisteth in this that the Wood ought to be resolved without a dissolution of its Faculties by a luke-warmth such as is that of the Sun in March even unto its first Being In which Being only is granted unto it a fermental Power of preserving and seasoning with an ingress unto the first constitutives of us and of insinuaring it self into the familiarity of the Spirits implanted throughout all the Organs But there is in the Juice of this kind of resolving the entire Virtue of the Cedar to wit a vital one together with every seminal and formal Property of long Life For the whole lump of the Wood is dissolved into a Juice which being otherwise distilled is transchanged and made a certain new Creature the which Aqua Vitae being distilled out of Graines or Ales doth also prove likewise the Oyl that is distilled out of Woods yea out of the very Oyl of Olives it self The practise thereof is this Resolve the pieces of the Wood Cetim with a like weight of the Liquor Alkahest in a sealed Glass under a nourishing luke-warmth and within seven dayes thou shalt see the whole Wood to have passed over into a milky Liquor But presently about the fifteenth day a twofold Oyl distinctly swims a top the which is increased even for a Month and is more clearly separated But then let the Oyl be separated from the Water by manual Operation Then distil thou the Water in a Bath and the Liquor Alkahest remains in the bottom in its own original weight but let the Oyl be nourished with the Water for full three months space with a slow luke-warmth and the whole Oyl assumes the Nature of a Salt and shall thorowly mingle it self with the Water and it is the first Being of the Cedar But as yet a few things concerning the length of Life because I being an old Man do pursue these things and I my self am about to die My Mind breathed some unheard of thing within but I as unprofitable for this Life shall be buried Because the Spirit the Porter withdrew the Bottle by the command of him before whom the whole World is as a Mushrom Let the praise be to him who hath given and who hath taken away that which was his own The Schools therefore may deservedly upbraid me Thou miserable Man a Man of small note a Man of great ambition an old Man hast paradoxally come to late that with thy Song in the commendation of Cedar thou shouldst over-spread the World with mists The Histories and Virtues of Plants are known to our Herbarists But thou that thou maiest vaunt of an unheard of devise concerning long Life as a Paradoxal Man proceedest to be mad with thy Cedar Go to if there be so great Power in the Cedar for Life why are not all Kings long-lived From whence dost thou as a new guest come produce thy Learning and experience whereby thou wilt be believed For as a Lawier blusheth to speak without Law so doth a Physitian without Experience For thou canst not deny but that the decoctions of the Leaves Kernels Wood Bark Root or Rosin of Cedar had long since produced a continued Life But nothing of these things is manifest by our Herbarists Thou there fore dost deter or fright us away through an hidden manner of preparation and by a crabbed Style of a smoak-selling Art desirest to involve a feigned mistery of Cedar Which thing the Alkahestical
Mask being laid aside it being taken up only to hide thy improvident rashness almost all the learned will laugh at who suffer not themselves to be led aside into new precepts by Dreams or feigned Exstasies This Argument springs partly from an invâ—terate hatred towards us and partly from an antient Simplicity For how much soever it concerns my person of writing unwonted rashnesses God hath known that I write those things which I know to be true I give him thanks that when as he had conferred on me five Talents and I had made my self unworthy and for this Cause had made a divorce before him it pleased his divine goodness to take from me three and to leave me as yet two that so he might expect me for better Fruit He had rather I say impoverish me and suffer me not to be profitable to very many so he might but save me from the Perils of this World Let eternal Sanctification be unto him But as the argument of the Schools is supported with the appearances of Decoctions and Broaths surely that had proceeded from a simple rudeness For truly none hath hitherto in acting plowed up the Faculties of things Therefore it is supposed that although many things are made more acute by distilling and so the more active yet by that very thing that they depart and are estranged from the genuine Property of the Seeds because the Fire is an artificial Death the which if there be made an open Flame happens through an extinguishment of the Seeds and the Archeus But a natural Death of things presupposeth a weariness of the Seeds But an artificial Death which is not made by a consuming of the Flame separates indeed things volatile from things fixed together with a dissolution and death of the last Life of the composed Body But therefore also the former Faculties are altered and estranged by the Fire and a new Creature riseth again out of the fire from a material Disposition from the antient Properties of the Being through an inversion or turning in and out which is easie to be seen in the artificial Death So indeed most volatile Salts which by a co-melting do make a conjunction with the Oyl of the thing are fixed into a Coal the which at length the fatness being burnt up returns into ashes There are also fugitive Salts which do act by lurking within the fatnesses of Oyls do attempt a new product So that Oyls otherwise sufficiently slowing are changed through the combination of Salts Some things therefore become soapy some things lay up smoakinesses at least-wise all adust things contract a Corruption of Matter and are throughly changed into another thing for nothing of the old remaineth Because that is the property of Fire not indeed simply to separate but by its own authority to alter and change under it self Therefore it is not lawful to weigh the Faculties or Virtues of distilled things by the composed Body from whence they issue neither is it lawful to believe that although the Virtues of things are not abolished not extinguished or plainly killed by the fire therefore the antient Virtues of things are not renewed within by Adustion But those things which are made new by the fire are oftentimes made worse but also they are oft-times so distinct from themselves as they were before that they are made an hundred-fold better In the next place there are Simples which by seething do melt their Muscilage or Gum and in this respect do transmit their Virtues into the Broath of the Decoction First of all they do not therefore notwithstanding retain the same Faculty which they had in their entire composed Body but their Action is alwayes feeble For first of all they ought to be concocted in the Stomack after the manner of Meats Most of whom although from the property of Magnum Oportet they do in savour shew forth some thing of their former Virtues yet these are either cast forth of doors together with Excrements or being rashly concocted and appropriated do stir up nothing but the brawlings of an unaccustomed heterogeniety or diversity of kind instead of a Remedy Or at leastwise if they affect the Blood and Flesh with their Odour they promise nothing but a feeble help So that also from hence a Quartane the inhabitant of the Spleen doth hitherto remain untouched to the mockery of Physitians But that something may be admitted into the Family-administration of the Spirits and Family of the solid constituting Parts it is not that that may any way be hoped for by Decoctions as neither by Distillation which through the intervening of an artificial Death wholly puts off every perfect Act of long Life which the Wood encloseth in it self But the Juice Powder or Conserves fetched from the Cedar are such strangers unto us that unless it be subdued by the method of its first Being it promiseth not any thing of Familiarity with us Far off surely that it should overcome our Nature and endow it with its uncorruptibleness Distilled things therefore have nothing of moment and crude Simples nothing of moment with whatever noble Faculty they may shine for long Life For it behoves that the uncorruptibleness of the Cedar being exactly preserved as ignorant of Death nor the bounty thereof toward us being in the least worsted or diminished every forreign impediment be separated from it the which else through the much strife of our Archeus is reflected into the Being of Nourishment but not into the Being of Essence Yet so that a Penetration Communication and Conspiracy with the first constituting Parts of uâ—e and refreshment of the in-existing Faculties be over and above added thereunto 〈◊〉 the Schools of Galen be in the mean time amazed at the unwonted manner of prepaâ—â—â— and describing it and let them laugh at my promises let them believe them to be â—eer Dreams let every Bird sing according to his own beak be it lawful for me to be vilely esteemed by them For truly I have long since covered my Ears with a thick covering against aged Obloquies expressed for the sake of Gain alone I have written concerning long Life what I know to be true not indeed for Young Beginners as neither to be comprehended by readings for God hath known why he hath given unto the Goat a short Taile There shall at sometime be an Adeptist in its own maturity of Dayes who shall understand that I have spoken Truth But as to that which pertains to the Sentence attained in the Dream He may read the Dream of Nebuchadnezzar which was known to Daniel alone Yet he had commanded all his wise Men to be limited to the Fire unless they should shew the undoubted Explication of the Dream surely such Dreams do promise a certain certainty within neither that they are vain He who oft-times gives the Dreams may presently also unlock the same with so great a certainty of them that Death nor Hell are able to bring in a doubt But although I prefer the
out the Stain of Ignorance yet the Integrity and Sincerity of my Intention deserves pardon For truly in healing the truth of every thing comes to be judged or esteemed from the Work which it leaves behind it For neither ought those to be accounted Calumnies if the Errours of Predecessors are discovered their names being suppressed A publick humane affair is treated of by me for the sake of Charity alone If therefore I shall say that the first of those who fetch the Fundamentals of Medicine from the Heathens who hath known not only the root of Fevers but also of any Diseases whatsoever and their just Remedies is as yet desired and I shall demonstrate that thing I am void of blame neither shall I seem to be injurious But if not I pray let those who take pitty of my Ignorance instruct me even as I suppose my self to have been moved only from a compassion on mankind lest any one should hereafter entrust his Life in the hands of unfaithful Helpers who hitherto have made none free from a Disease from a certain knowledge but as many as have escaped that they have recovered through the bounty of God alone and the goodness of their Nature For this is that Paradox which I promise that I will demonstrate and in promising to stand to my Promises But I had said in the aforesaid Book of Fevers that I owed to the Stone also it s own Treatise because the Disease of the Stone is like unto a Monster and therefore that it was to be separated in a fold or section by it self For other Diseases are no where bred but in our possession but the Stone alone doth also grow together in the Urinal It becomes stony indeed as it were the product of Universal Nature but it growes in-as-much as it is the product of Nature changed to another use and that it may be made a Stone in Man but not a rockie Stone it requires a matter disposed by Man By this entrance therefore the Universities will see that they have not touched at the Causes of the Disease of the Stone so much as in its utmost coasts and they who grieve that they are blamed for their Ignorance of Fevers will acknowledge that they have more Companions of their Calamity For I would never be injurious to all that went before me and it is sufficient for me to protest that I want a mind of doing injury For far be it from me to be ignorant that an unknown matter demonstrated for the uses of ones Neighbour should want reproach especially while the ignorance of Physitians hath it self in manner of a crime and Man is at sometime to render Skin for Skin No otherwise than as a Preâ—or or judicial Officer accusing any one of a Crime is excused from Calumny I have alwayes greatly grieved that in the devout Profession of Medicine alone it hath been subscribed to so 〈◊〉 fluggish and â—rivolous Principles But that in other Professions they have so ingeniously laboured For indeed what of subtilty hath not been attempted about the five Words of 〈…〉 which they name Predicables and what subtile wiles have they 〈…〉 about 〈◊〉 things Prattles I say the witnesses of a discursive industry Raymand 〈…〉 not contented with these invented nine other most Universal Words and afterwards added unto these same nine twenty eight other Words less Universal and lastly he at length subjoyned seventy two other Universal Words whereby any things may seventeen thousand four hundred forty six times be described predicated of and distinguished Those unprofitable pratlings are the great Husks of Sciences without a Kernel Surely humane Wits are of their own accord prone to subtilties without Spurs if the ends of those subtilties are vain But in things that regard Life and Health they have snorted with a continual Lethargy The Law also is so incumbent on subtilties about the Explications of Decrees as the Sublimities wherewith the Wit of Man is snatch'd away with so wonderful an Admiration and beholds it self in its own delight that by a singular Prerogative they are called the Subtilties of the Law These indeed are less vain than talkative Faculties because that they are provided to attain and defend right But in matters of Divinity what famous things do not the Chairs hope for by their accute discussings of Questions I would to God that Mans necessity might want all these things that meum and tuum or mine and thine might be rendered to every one without any false Paint that the Faith also as in Mahometism might stand without disputation that every subtilty may depart whereof an account will not be required in the last day for so Apostolical Sincerity should return So I have received and so I have delivered unto you At least-wise they shall undergo the milder Judgment who in their Life time have been most estranged from these Subtilties But in Medicinal Affaires alass for grife where a diligent feâ—rch is most necessary profitable and commended for charity almost all things have remained untouched because careless sloath is on every side readily inclined to subscribe unto the antient blockishnesses of the ignorant it is also more damnable among those who wander through the Streets and run thorow them from house to house that they may prostitute Health to Sale and put a Disease unknown unto themselves to flight For it hath not been once by the way doubted by the Universities hitherto about the belief of the Speculations delivered by the heathens which otherwise vail a folly even with their facility alone and at the first view ought to stir up a suspition of themselves because nothing in humane Affaires hath been now for so many ages received which is more hardened in shame and blockishness nothing more full of lying and deceit nothing more wonderful in cruelty and also in credulity than a profession which maketh Experiments dayly by the Deaths of Men under a con-centrical subscription unto the Wills of the Heathens For the Nations who live without a Physitian do confess that thing with me by what a Life they lead That thing I say the more refined Physitians also do confess For a godly and sober Man but a very famous Physitian Doctor Johannes Vander Wegen being not so long since asked by me Why for truly he dwelt at Lovain and had Friends in the Court and Potentates which he cured and he was most fit for the Chair He did not desire some Lecture He ingeniously answered It was not lawful to give a tast of any other kind of Doctrin unto Youth besides that of Galen and so said he I should knowingly damn my Soul I knowing better things and teaching worse Therefore others know what I discover that I know but they dare not to discover what they know Good Jesus how long shall the drowsiness of Physitians remain and so great cruelty against the Works of thy Hands Grant grant thou oh Infinite Goodness that mortal mankind may know that the Devil Moloch envieth
phlegm to wit their Drawers out of phlegm or Phlegmagogalls being received to this purpose hence also they will ban themselves as for a speedy prosperous health at leastwise a cloakative or dissembled one to the sick by reason of the foregoing matter of the stone being cast out Nevertheless thus are the weak by degrees more weakened they proceed to live medicinally and miserably so long as they subject themselves as obedient unto such helpers But it hath already befor been sufficiently answered to such trifles when as I removed phlegm and a muscilage from the number of the causes of Duelech Paracelsus in like manner doth alike unsavourily trifle about the first matter of Tartar and of the stone and being unmindful of his own Doctrine lately delivered flees over unto the phlegmie muscilage of the Humourists whom he first notwithstanding so named by a mocking name But I that very name being now everywhere received do so name them from pity but not from an Ironie or Scoff But Paracelsus being else where unwary doth again oppose these things promising that within the fifteenth day of the curing of Duelech it may be seen of what a bigness it was if all the urine be daily dryed up which thing cleerly infolds it self with the foregoing matter of Tartar and such a drying of urine would be a meer deceit and juggle if together with the dissolved Duelech the foregoing matter of a stonie Tartar should be expurged For truly he promiseth that whatsoever dissolveth Duelech that very thing doth much more briefly dissolve the foregoing matter of Tartar which daily increaseth for the stone I surely have hated sluggishness and blockishness in healing stubbornness in a learned man ignorance in a Professor a lye in a Writer as also a contradiction in one seeking to compass the Chiefdome For truly all those things include a deceit and unskilfulness in the Teacher if not malice besides and an ignorant rashness in such a Prince and so they render all that religion or conscientious profession suspected of much defilement I at leastwise even from my youth have even unto tears grieved at the condition of the weak or sick who under uncertain hope did as credulous entrust their life family wife and children yea their fortune and goods to be governed by him that is a bold Boaster of any thing Therefore at first I ran through the Monarchy of Vegetables but I found not that which could dissolve Duelech in the Bladder But whatsoever of those would make Duelech to melt in a Glass was either hostile or at leastwise it came not with those qualities unto the Bladder but if it might seem to be cast in by a Syringe it was not by the Bladder to be endured Therefore Vegetables being distilled and decocted and likewise their ashes Calx's or Limes pouders and all things being extracted I learned but vain and slender Remedies against so great an Enemy The more sharp ones indeed did diminish Duelech in his entireness but being taken in at the mouth they entred not under that power unto the Bladder but being cast in from without however they seemed mild like unto Wine yet they imitated bright burning Iron in the sense of pain Therefore I wondered at Parcelsus and others that they commended Liquors distilled out of Honey Sugar Dew c. Since no mortal man ever endured those being injected by a Syringe Indeed I have observed by experiment that a Pigeon did dissolve Duelech being cut out of man into a juyce by the sharp Ferment of her stomach even as also the fragments of Bricks Therefore the more inward membrane of the stomach of Pigeons and Hens was given to drink by Seniour Physitians but surely with much deceitfull hope As well because the fermental power of the Bowels is extinguished together with the life of the Bruit as also it being granted that that pouder did preserve its primitive and antient faculty after death which in life it obtained yet that it should come unto the Bladder wholly spoiled of those virtues in the Kitchins of our Digestions although in very deed Pouders are scarce turned into a Uriny-Latex Although many things of that sort are with a constant ignorance on both sides prescribed to the sick Yet this I have learned that the spirit of Spanish salt being distilled with the utmost fire of a Râ—verbery together with Potters-earth and being drunk every morning with white Wine which was the day before drawn out of the Vessel takes away not onely the mortal stranguries of old people and that it being wholly Diuretical hath cured some But moreover in whom the Stone which is bigger than is meet falling down out of the Kidney had stayed for some months in the Bladder that it hath been at length diminished and voyded out by pissing the which notwithstanding in its oftentimes repeated entrance into the neck of the Bladder had been needfull to be before as often repulsed backwards by a Catheter But it is prepared of that salt being first poured forth or spread abroad and freed by the fire from its extraâ—agant filth and presently the salt being bruised and dissolved between thin plates of Radish and at length being again dryed and distilled with a like quantity of Potters earth and at length with the sharp fire of on Reverbery and that after a due manner that nothing expire or breath out of it even as I will teach below concerning Vitriol For thou hast the Balsame of Salt which thou shalt never sufficiently esteem But in my Young Beginning I had seen the old pieces of rubbish of â—uious Houses to pour out Salt-Peter and that the pouder of Bricks being once freed from the Salt-peter and afterwards being for some yeares kept under a Roof or Covering did put 〈◊〉 through continuance and yielded Salt-peter afresh and soot that the whole pouder except the sand might at length be turned into a salt I had seen also a 〈◊〉 Brick inclosed in the middle of a more broad Wall to bring forth its own Salt-peter outwards beyond all its neighbour stones on both sides and so that it was the destroyer of its neighbour stones and Bricks I therefore being mindfull of the name of Salt-peter knew that that very salt was the Brick or stone it self being resolved Especially her also it doth voluntarily drop down in the Caves of Rocks but elsewhere because it hangs forth in long drops or Sycles Wherefore I divers wayes prepared Salt-peter for the Disease of the stone but in vain Because I was then as yet ignorant that Duelech consuled of far other principles than Mineralstones did I saw likewise Palmer wormed and Infects that were bred in nitrous places and which there abode to be applyed for use against the stone of the Bladder but in vain But after that I knew that so many Ages had dreamed in the knowledge of the Causes of the Disease of the stone I confidently believed that all the errour stood in the possession of our sluggishness
recourse how variously the Life glistens in nature to wit as it is seminally in the very vital spirits but as it were fountainously in the sensitive soul it self Therefore in speaking properly of Sense and Sensation the Sensitive Soul it self is the primary and also the immediate Being which acteth all Sensations and in acting undergoes them in it self And therefore the spirit of the Brain is only the immediated Organ but the life is the Organ or Medium whereby the Sensitive Soul perceiveth external Objects rushing on it For Sensation is not immediately in the thing contained nor in the things containing nor also in the spirit diffused through the Sinews into the vital parts Because that spirit which makes the assault differs from the Sensitive Soul no otherwise than as a fat material smoak doth from the flame by which it is enflamed But the Soul the immortal Mind is wholly unpassable by humane conceptions as it is the Image of the very incomprehensible God himself But the Sensitive Soul although it begins in nature from an occasional seed that is dispositively yet seeing it is the nearest Image of that Image it is also after the manner of men unknown and altogether scanty For therefore indeed neither can it be defined by its causes but only is described by an absurb or incongruous Circle of reflexions own its own actions and properties To wit that the Sensitive Soul is a formal light whereunto the properties of a Sensitive life do chiefly agree but in man that it is the Prop and Inn of the immortal Soul and its immediate bond with other created corporeal Bodies besides it self Therefore there is as yet a more remote aspect or beholding of the Soul as being related to the life Seeing life and the Soul are distinct things as it were the abstract and the Concrete or rather as the property of a Being and a Being it self This same Soul therefore through life perceiveth in the animal Spirits and seeth immediately in the Optick or visual spirit which inhabits in the apple of the eye the visible Species conceived For the Optick Spirit there is a transprrent glass the light whereof is the very Sensitive Soul it self present in the same place being the Seat and Chamber-maide of the immortal mind Therefore there is no need of a recourse of the received Species that are to be perceived thorow the Sinews to the Brain But the Soul being immediately present and bestowing all vertue from it self upon the visual Spirit she her self sees and discerns But the Brain is only the Shop and Cup of those spirits wherefore the sinews do not serve for the conveighing of the Specie's drawn unto the Brain in the act feeling or perceiving But for bedewing of the spirits illustrated in the Brain for the refreshing and confirming of the parts wherein themselves are implanted Neither is there also altogether a like reason of the external Senses with the imaginative power and its Sisters For the sensible Specie's outwardly perceived by the Soul are abstracted by sensibility and then at length as it were of the matter whereof Specie's or shapes are from thence forged into the Image of the thing to be perceived After another manner Sensitive Objects entring from without are conceived after a Concrete or conjoyned manner in the Organs of the senses and therefore they do not only displease but moreover do now also pain But concerning the seat of the Soul it is variously disputed for the Heart and the Brain But I may suppose that the Sensitive Soul is conformable to its own seeds and by a real Act distinguished from the immortal mind the image of the Divinity Yet that the Sensitive Soul which is the carnal old Adamical man and Law of the flesh is not on both sides distinguished from a formal and vital light neither that it sirs immediately in the inflowing Spirit the which indeed is wholly slideable and flowing But the Spirit which increased in the Organs presently after their first constitution although it live in the last life of the seeds yet it doth not as yet truly live in the middle animal life which is the Sensitive life until that a vital light comming upon it shall actually shine The dispositions whereof are indeed gradually premised But notwithstanding they are in one only instant enlightned by the divine goodness of the Creator Even as in the Book of long life For that happens no otherwise than as in the co-rubbing of the flint against the Steel Therefore an undeclarable light is kindled by the Creator in the spirit of the more noble Bowels and first indeed in the heart which light as it attaineth strength by degrees is more powerfully enlarged no otherwise than as the smoak of a lower Candle doth visibly receive the dismissed flame from the upper Candle So that although the Organs are divided in diversity of Offices yet by a mutual conspiracy they readily serve for the necessities and ends prefixed by the Lord the Creator Notwithstanding there is one only Harmony and continued Homogenial Life and Sensitive Soul of all the Bowels and Members which in every one of them receiveth and presently after cloatheth it self with certain limitations or properties which it had prepared for it self by the seeds For as the flame of a Candle is not extended above or without its own Sphear nor perisheth as long as it lives within that Sphear although the smoaky fumes arising from thence being void of flame did fly far away out of that Spheare so likewise the inflowing spirits although they are illustrated by a participation of life are pufft away do wander far and therefore are materially diminished in their Cup or Buttery yea and for this cause the liveliness of a vital Light growes feeble yet nothing of the essence of the Sensitive Soul perisheth because Life is not attained by parts and degrees as neither doth it subsist like accidents but is alwayes life although more or less liveliness may appear in that light For no otherwise than as a fire where it is never so small is as well fire as another that is heightned In like manner also whatsoever exhaleth from the body which before rejoyced in the participation of Life yet looseth life so soon as it departs out of its own limits So also Excrements do not indeed keep Life but a co-participation of the vital spirits Wherefore also from thence the order of the inferiour Harmony slides into disorder according to that saying My spirit shall be diminshed and therefore my dayes shall be shortned Therefore a more immoderate evacuation of corrupt Pus and the like brings sudden death As indeed they do not contain the Soul but only the last seminal life of vital spirits For as concerning the immediate existence of the immortal Mind or Divine Image the matter is as yet in controversie between the Heart and the Brain For I who know that even Quickning is made at the very instant wherein the Sensitive Soul
sometimes made in these so ready and stubborn a perseverance of affection that it presents a Spectacle of Admiration to the Beholder especially if any one doth examine the attributes of the Life and spiritual Seed For how most suddenly are Children Women and improvident people angry do weep and laugh For the sensitive Souls of those do freshly as it were immediately even adhere unto sensible things It is therefore a natural thing that the sensitive Spirit is voluntarily and easily carried into these kinds of overflowings because that Soul being easily received by its own sensual judgement slides into the voluntary passions of material Spirits and as even from a Child these same exorbitances have encreased so afterwards that Soul growes to ripeness as wrothful furious and wholly symptomatical the which otherwise would far more safely perform all things under meeknesse or mildnesse than as by reason of furies to aspire into Diseases and now and then unto its own death which is frequent and most manifest in Exorbitances of the Womb and in the Symptomes of some Wounds and of other Diseases Anger therefore and Fury in this place are not of the man but of that Sensitive Soul brought into the Life which begetteth the animosities of a natural Sensation and the which therefore doth oftentimes ascend unto a great height that it burns to an Eschar and blasts the part with a Sphacelus or mortifying Inflammation like fire Pain therefore is an undoubted Passion of the Sense of Touching wherein the sensitive Soul expresseth a displeasure with the Object according to the differences of the conceived Injury brought on the parts Furthermore Whether that Passion be the Office or Performance of a judicial power from whence the Soul is by a proper Etymology named Sensitive no otherwise than as the motive faculty moveth only by the beck of the Soul without an external or forreign Exciter Or indeed whether pain be a Passion immediately produced from a sensible paining cause the Schools might have sifted out if as great a care of diligent searching into the truth as of receiving a Salary from the sick had ever touched them But with me that thing hath long since wanted a doubt For truly Seeing the Sense of Pain is the Judgement of the Soul expressed by the act of feeling in the Sensible Faculty whereby the Soul bewails it self of the sensible hurtful and paining Object Therefore both of them being connexed together do almost every way concur and both also stand related after each its own manner unto pain For indeed the cause being a sensible injury is the motive of pain But the sensitive Soul it self gives judgement of the painful Object with a certain wrothfulnesse and impatiencie of Passion The which indeed in a wound Contusion or Bruise Extension or Straining Burning and Cold as being external Causes is altogether easie to be seen But while the motive Causes of Pain are neither applied from the aforesaid impression of external Objects or from a proper Exorbitancy within and the Sensitive Spirit is from thence made wholly sharp gnawing biting degenerate and forms the blood like it self Then indeed the Sensitive Soul in paining doth not only give a simple judgement concerning Pain But moreover she in her self being wholly disturbed brings forth from her self a newly painful product no otherwise than if that Product proceeded from an external occasional Cause And although both these do in a greater Passion and more grievous Sensation for the most part concur yet in speaking properly Pain doth more intimately respect the Censure brought from the Sensitive Soul the Patient Or Pain doth more nearly reflect it self on the property of the Soul than on the paining cause Because many are grievously wounded without manifest pain even as also a furious man shewes that he scarce feeleth Paines from hurtfull Causes Some things also do oftentimes delude the paines of Torture and Unctions do also deceive paines although the parts are beaten with injury Wherefore Sense doth more intimately and properly respect the Censure of the power of the sensitive Soul than the injury of the painfull Cause But truly I am diverted elsewhere as for the cause of the aforesaid unpainfulnesse in the Leprosie and unmoveablenesse in the Apoplexy c. The Schooles indeed contending for the Brain as the chief Organ of Sensation and pain do therefore take notice that the Brain being by its own property of passion immediately and as it were by one stroak touched doth lose even both sense and motion at once yea that it doth contract either of the sides But the manner of making they thus expresse The fourth bosom of the Brain it being a very small little bosom beginning from the Cerebellum the beginning of the Thorny marrow is stopped up by phlegme from whence ariseth an Apoplexy in an instant For Nature being unwilling or not able to draw back or reduce that phlegme once slidden down thither being diligent is at leastwise busie in laying aside that phlegme into either side of that pipe from whence consequently a Palsie of that side begins These things indeed we read concerning the Apoplexyand Palsie yet nothing of the contracture arising through the stroak of the Head Paracelsus also not being content with this drowsie Doctrine of three Diseases is also tumbled in unconstancy For sometimes he saith That the Apoplexy and Palsie following thereupon is bred for that the sensitive Spirit in the Nerves or Sinews hath from the Law of the Microcosme after the manner of sulphurous Mines contracted like Aqua vitae a flame from the fire of Aetna Through which inflammation the Sinewes and Tendons being afterwards at it were adust burnt and as it were half dead are dryed up together with the muscles and therefore they do thenceforth remain deprived of sense and motion To wit he Constitutes these two Diseases considering nothing the while of the Contracture or Convulsion from the stroak not indeed in the Case of the Brain but in the utmost Branches of the Nerves as though they were affects hastening from without to within But in another place he judgeth not a certain sulphurous or inflamed matter to be the cause of the Apoplexy but he accuseth Mercury onely to wit one of the three things which he calls His own Beginnings of Nature as being too exactly Circulated and affirmes that through its abounding subtility or finenesse it is the conteining Cause of every sudden Death Elsewhere he recals the Apoplexy unto the Stars of Heaven And in another place again being unconstant he teacheth That every Apoplexy is made of gross vapors stopping up the Arteries and restlesse beating Pipes of the Throat and that there is also an Eclipse of the Lunaries or Moon-lights of the Brain in us from a Microcosmicall necessity Therefore hath he in like manner whirl'd about the causes of the Vertigo or giddinesse of the Head unto uncertainties To wit himself being wholly Vertiginous But I have otherwise proceeded Whatsoever doth primarily feel
the scope of pain Because they are onely abstracted Names and for the most part not in the least point conteining the cause thereof even as I have demonstrated in the Treatise concerning Diseasifying Causes as it were in the combating place of exercise For in the Urine-pipes for an Example in the tearms of the Disease of the Stone there is no necessity dependency of Dominion Clients-ship Usurpation Possession Custome and no community of the Pipes and Excrements with the bowels or stomach For if when the left side of the Throat is in pain not so much as the right side thereof in such an angiport or narrow passage be now and then afflicted why shall we not deservedly suspect the nearness and dependency of parts which are unlike and differing in the Ordination of their Offices and Scituation It is therefore sufficient hitherto that all pain the author of a Convulsion or Contracture presupposeth a hatefull Guest For there are also unpainfull Contractures as before concerning the Cod and the which draw their original not so much from pain as from meer trouble But painfull Convulsions are made from Hostile Causes For so Those things cause paine which smite the Spirit called for the Soul Sensitive with sharpness brackishness or degrees of heat or cold But the most intense pain is from fire and then from Alcalies and corroding things because they are the nearest to fire after that from austere or harsh brackish and four things because they are the nearest to Contracture Presently after from salt things then next from sharp things and lastly from some bitter things But from poysons as such cruel pain ariseth the which in the Plague is ordinary and because so great pain oft-times ariseth without sharpness a Truth is denoted To wit That pain issues from the judgement of the Sensitive Soul For Corrosives since they gnaw the sensitive Soul it self they wast the parts themselves like fire But Alume Vitriol Aqua Fortes's next the juyce of unâ—ipe Grapes and also any sharp things as they do by themselves crisp and pull together the Fibers of the Organs therefore such Excrements are Convulsory and painfull There are also Alcalies which sleepifie paines To wit in Cases where they break the greatest sharpnesses of Putrefactions For under the Dog-star while as Fleshes threaten corruption at hand the Broaths of fleshes are made sharp with an ungratefull savour whence in the Gout Colick and gnawing and putrifying Ulcers I conceived paines to proceed at first from a sharpness Likewise the sensitive Soul at first feeles pain the which being at length accustomed waxeth the less wroth even so as an accustomed Horse refuseth Sâ—urs For Nature in her self is wholly furious and Sumptomatical and being by degrees accustomed to paines waxeth mild Wherefore Self-love and Revenge are before or more antient than sense or feeling because they are intimately in Seeds in the bosome of Nature before Sense For the Characters or Images of anger agony fear revenge and sorrow do bring forth Convulsions like to those their own Idea's For from the knowledge whereby a Mouse abhors a Cat not before seen the Spirit being provoked is stirred up into anger fear c. The which by its own Idea uttereth its fury on the members as it were by a Brand. 1. The hand waxeth cold because the heat there cherished by the Life is extinguished by cold but not that the vital Spirit retires inward as having left the arterial bloud whch it had married and much less that heat as a naked quality passeth departeth and returneth inward as it were in a Comedy 2. The heat being now diminished cold also persisting the cold waxeth strong and then Sense in the hand is stupified For the sensitive abstracted Spirits are pressed together To wit those which are in the sinewes but not those which are in the Arteries because the Spirit hath the more firmly married the arterial Bloud and it is the property of the Veines even after death to preserve the Bloud from Con-cretion or Coagulation For the vital Spirit is sustained from behind by the fewel or cherishing warmth of the heart as much as may be and therefore in that stupefaction Life is as yet deteined 3. Motion languisheth in the Hand because the Spirits being grown together in the flesh seeing they are not sufficiently nourished from behind by the heart they by degrees perish and by degrees are altered 4. And then together with the perishing of Motion Sense also is extinguished To wit while the Bloud being chased out of the Veines threatens a clotting Life as yet remaining 5. And so at length the joynts are by cold totally deprived of Life To wit when as the venal bloud hath now departed into Clots and dyed Therefore in the third and fourth degree aforesaid pain springs up in the Hand being heated For as the Heart inspires a new sensitive Spirit from behind the which while it takes notice of death to be readily at hand it being as it were enraged in the same place presently frames the Idea of its own indignation and so puts off its native sweetness or Complacency Even as in the Treatise concerning diseasie Idea's in the work concerning the Rise or Original of Medicine I will more clearly demonstrate So the sensitive Spirit which was not trampled on by cold but repulsed by pressing together in its return stirs up another Idea of its own indignation and another pain as it were like that of the pricking of a pin Let the Reader in the mean time pardon me in that I ought to borrow the Name of an Icy or freezing Poyson without the necessity of fore-going Cold For I call not that an Icy poyson as if it were made cold as I have already spoken concerning the stupefying astonishment of the Hands but I call it a cooling and also a stupefying poyson and that which takes away sense and motion Therefore the similitude of the Name draws its Original not from the Root but from the Effect And last of all in this By-work for a Conclusion of this Work and Sensation Let us meditate at least of the Remedies of Physitians in the Apoplexy in astonishment or beâ—ummedness giddiness of the Head in the Catalepsie Catochus Coma Convulsions plucking of the Eyelids Eyes Tongue and Lips For thou shalt find that presently cutting of a vein and a Clyster are prescribed They doubting in the mean time Whether the dung of the Fundament may pluck the Tongue and Lips in the mouth may likewise stamp drowsinesses and astonishment in the sick As it hath brought forth blockishnesses and neglect in the Physitian Or indeed whether these arise from the venal bloud therefore they are presently intent upon both at once And then on the day following they administer purging things And thirdly as being full of uncertainty after Rubbings they provoke Sweats For their Succours are universal because others are wanting and they are ignorant of such And therefore their total usual Medicines are general
some other place namely in the heart alone Again from the same position it followes that that there may be a Fever it is not-required that the offending and feverish matter be enflamed but some other inflameable thing primarily residing in the heart and from thence slideable throughout the whole body For this inflameable body I together with Hippocrates call the spirit which maketh the assault But this last matter I have brought hither not from the minde of the Antients but it is extorted and by force I have commanded it to be granted me Whereof in its own place when I shall discourse of the efficient cause of Fevers At least wise that being now violently begged it followes that the peccant matter of Fevers is not properly enflamed neither that it is in it self primarily or efficiently hot nor indeed that it makes hot besides nature if the first inflameable body ought to be kindled in the heart Therefore neither is the peccant or offensive matter in a Fever hot beyond or besides the degree of nature But that which is kindled in the heart was not kindled before the comming of the Fever and so it every way differs from the peccant matter in Fevers At length it is also from hence fitly concluded that in whomsoever they intend to slay a Fever by cooling things as such they do not intend to cure by a removal of the causes by a cutting up of the Root and a plucking out of the fountaine and fewel of the Fever but only they intend to take away and correct the heat which is a certaine latter product entertained with-out the feverish matter To wit they apply their remedies unto the effect but not unto the cause For truly the heat of Fevers is kindled in the Archeus which maketh the assault and the root of Fevers is the peccant matter it self They have regard therefore only unto the taking away of the effect following upon and resulting from the placing of that root for the sake whereof the Archeus is enflamed not indeed by the root but by heat drawn from elsewhere while as indeed he enflames himself by a proper animosity and by his own heat being beyond a requirance extended unto a degree wherein he is wholly troublesome as he is enlarged beyond the amplenesse of his own necessity Foâ— neither must we think that any heat is so in a hateful feverish matter which with me they name the offensive one that it afterwards makes feverishly hot the whole entire body For truly that for which every thing is such that very thing they will have to be more such And then also because every calefactive or heating agent doth throughout its own specie's more strongly act on a near object than on an object at a distance wherefore if a feverish matter should make the other parts hot by its own heat it should of necessity be that the center or nest wherein that peccant matter of a Fever is received should be first roasted into a fryed substance before that any distant object should be made hot thereby Yea if the peccant matter should be hot of its own free accord and the Fever should be that meer heat besides nature every Fever as such ought to be continual nor should it have intermission until that all the offensive matter were wholly consumed into ashes Neither therefore should there be any reason of a repetition or relapse seeing the peccant matter should even from a general property always make hot for the consuming of it self And moreover a dead carcase also should be hot as well after death and be more ardently tortured or writhed with a Fever than while it lived because the same matter in number from the obedience whereof death happens even still persisteth in the dead carcasse and seeing they suppose it to be hot by a proper heat of putrefaction and since it is more putrified after death as also after death more powerfully putrifying and affecteth more parts co-bordering upon it than while it lived therefore also it should be more actually hot after death than in the life time But surely this errour is bewrayed For a Fever which made a live body hot ceaseth presently after death and all heat exspires with the life The which ought to instruct us that the heat of a Fever is not proper unto the peccant matter or its inmate and that the heat of the offensive matter doth not efficiently and effectively make hot in Fevers Therefore it is perpetually true that the peccant matter makes hot occasionally only but that the Archeus is the workman of every alteration and so by this title that which efficiently primarily immediatly always every where maketh the assault and that he alone doth not make hot according to the maxime Whatsoever utters healthy actions in healthy bodies that very thing utters vitiated ones in diseases For that spirit heats man naturally in health it being the same which in Fevers rageth with heat For example The thorne or splinter of an oake being thrust into the finger and actually and potentially cold presently stirs up a heat besides nature in the finger Not indeed that hot humours do flow thither as if they being called together thither by the thorne had exspected the wound of the splinter and the which otherwise as moderate had resided in their own seates For truly the blood next to the wound first runs to it and preventeth the passage for other blood coming thither And that blood also by it self is not hot but for the sake of the vital spirit Therefore the inflamation and swelling together with an hard pulse pain and heat do proceed from the spirit alone causally but from the infixed thorn occasionally only Surely it is an example sufficient for the position manner knowledg and cure of a Fever To wit the cause offending in a Fever is not hot of it self but it makes hot only occasionally and upon the pulling out of the thorne or occasional cause health followes The Archeus alone every where effectively stirs up the Fever and the which departing by death the Fever ceaseth with it Therefore heat is a latter accident and subsequent upon the essence of a Fever For indeed the Archeus enflames himself in his endeavour whereby he could earnestly desire to expel the occasional matter as it were a thorne thrust into himself But whosoever takes away this thorne whether that be done by hot meanes or by temperate ones or at length by cold ones he takes away the disease by the Root and it is unto nature as it were indifferent Because for that very cause the animosity of the Archeus is appeased and ceaseth Wherefore heat however it being besides nature increased may be a token of Fevers yet it is not the Fever it self neither therefore must we greatly labour about it in time of healing For from hence Hippocrates hath seriously admonished that heat and cold are not diseases as neither the causes of these but that the causes to wit the
of the enemy and wine add heat therefore he who proceeds by Wine heals according to the conformity of nature Notwithstanding let us grant that Heat Wine being administred is the greater yea also that the Fever is the sharper For what other thing follows from thence than that the Wine shall increase the vital constitution And that that state is nearer to the constitution of young folks than that which proceeds by cooling things or without the administration of Wine for cooling means are more like to death to cessation from motion and to defect But heat from moderate Wine is a mean like unto life and a means which the Archeus himself useth For the Constitution of heat increased by Wine is nearer to the Vigour State and Crisis than if the strength being weak there shall be the more feeble heat by abstaining therefrom These things concerning the drinking of Wine But concerning the drinking of water Let the decision be that feverish persons desire not hot water nor do they thirst after that which is luke-warm but cold water is to be admitted in a slack degree in the highest heat of the state of the Fever Neither must we be afraid as I have said of a co-mixture of the extreames Because experience hath long since successfully shooke off this fear But in other stations of Fevers neither is cold water as neither is abundance to be drunk yet thirst is never to be endured not indeed under sweat But then let the drink be hot If thirst be urgent and the Fever hath not the fodder of drink the in-bred moisture is wasted But moreover That which they accuse concerning the crudity of water take thou thus Water springing out of sand is simple and the best and it is to be taken from the fountain it self But that which runs thorow Pipes or issues out of a clayie spring is now partaker of a mixt malignity But this water I call not so much crude as infected For water by it self deserves neither to be called crude nor cocted as neither is it ripened by heat nor doth it attain any thing thereby for it is sufficient so that its highest cold be blunted but none may use infected waters as neither any cold drink in the Plague and malignant Fevers But there is a larger reason for an hot remedy But neither do I ever perswade a remedy which may moderate Fevers only by heat but as Wine profits by comforting and by more throughly introducing succours coupled unto it So do remedies by cutting resolving and cleansing and in that respect the more prosperousty because they have the Archeus in operating agreeable to themselves For thus far he co-mingles his own powers with the powers of remedies that the occasional cause may be put to flight and that the more firm health may not presently receive its strength prostrated At length perhaps they will object against these things That since heat in a Fever is the effect of the spirit that maketh the aassult his being wroth It also followes that from the measure of heat the wrothfulness of the Archeus is to be measured and by consequence that whatsoever increaseth a feverish heat doth also increase a Fever I have answered before that there are many branches effects or various Symptomes of one root And that oft-times doating delusions Coma's or sleeping Evils intermittencies of pulses to wit things denoting an increased Fever do happen under the more mild heat Even as from a tender branch of an Acorn there is a greater leaf than from an old Oak There is therefore an Elenchus or fault in the argument to say the Fever is the greater in the man for I abhor that encreased Fever the which mortal increased symptomes do follow But I in no wise fear the Fever to have increased because the Archeus doth the more strongly rise up for the expulsion of the root of the Fever And if they in conclusion call that thing an increased Fever I little dwell upon it For so also the Schools perswade that we are not greatly to be afraid of accidents unexpectedly happening besides reason It is therefore to be noted That the Archeus is never enflamed in his whole For otherwise about the end of the fit the whole Archeus being dissolved or wasted should be the cause of fainting The Archeus therefore is enflamed in much or a little portion of himself And therefore the Archeus being encreased by Wine if more thereof be enflamed yet more of him is not lost and yet he more strongly strained the occasional cause than if the Archeus be not strengthened and encreased and a less part of him be enflamed CHAP. XIII The Essence of a Fever 1. Of what sort an Essential and Natural Definition is 2. Diseases are Beings subsisting by themselves and not accidents 3. Why Diseases inhabite in a strange Inn. 4. A Disease is not only a Travel nor a Motion nor a Distemper nor a Disposition 5. The Essence of a Fever which the Schools are hitherto ignorant of 6. There is therefore another Scope of healing than what hath hitherto been 7. That the occasional Cause alone distinguisheth Fevers 8. The cure of a Physitian is made easie THE definition of a thing is not to be framed from the general kind of the thing defined and from the constitutive difference of the Species's or particular kinds even as I have elsewhere demonstrated in Logicks Because besides rational and irrational if so be they are as yet the constitutive differences of living Creatures no differences of like sort appear in the Schools But a natural definition ought to consist of the material and internal efficient or seminal Causes Because those two are those which constitute the thing it self and that the whole and they remain unseparably essential in it as long as it self is and so they explain a thing by its causes and the properties of these Truly Fevers have a matter and an internal efficient cause after the manner of other Beings subsisting in them although all diseases inhabite in a living body because they are not Beings of the first Creation but begun from the curse of the departure out of the right way And therefore neither have they properly their own seminal Being which constitutes and nourishes them But they have an occasional Being from whence they are stirred up instead of a seed The which ceasing the Disease ceaseth As oft therefore as that which is not vital is inserted into a vital soil the Archeus is angry and becomes wroth that he may exclude that forreign thing out of his Anatomy The which I have perfectly taught in the entrance of this Treatise by a thorn thrust into the finger Therefore a Fever is not only an expulsive endeavour or alterative motion and much less the alteration and disposition it self as the Schools have otherwise thought but a Fever is a material part it self of the Archeus defiled through indignation For a part of the Archeus is defiled through anger
those shall either be ungrateful to the nature of the stomach and therefore they stir up vomit and stools So that only the incongruity malignity and ingratitude of things taken into the body are the cause why they move vomiting and stool and are forthwith expelled with those things which they threw down into their own Faction Therefore they procure perplexities and troubles But if the things dissolving are acceptable to Nature they are willingly admitted inwards yet the composed body suffers not any thing thereby as well in respect of the thing dissolving as of that which is dissolved For truly both of them are undigestible Therefore that composure remains safe as before it passeth through all the shops of the veins and at length for truly it cannot be changed nor by consequence pass over into the Family of Life is expelled with the sweat by transpiration In which journey whatsoever of filths those famous Secrets do touch at they dissolve them and snatch them away with themselves and so they heal Fevers and most Chronical diseases Whosoever therefore ye be who in healing have cordial charity towards your neighbour learn ye a certain Dissolver which may be homogeneal or simple in kind unchangeable dissolving its Objects into their first liquid matter and thou shalt obtain the innermost Essences of things and shalt be able to look into the natural endowments of these But if ye cannot reach unto that Secret of the Fire learn ye at leastwise to render the Salt of Tartar volatile that by means hereof ye may perfect your dissolutions The which although as being digested in us it forsaketh its dissolved bodies that are safely or unharmedly homogeneal yet it hath borrowed some of their vertues which it conveighs inward as the subduers of most diseases But for the obtainment of these things it is not sufficient to rub over Books but moreover it behooves you to buy coals and vessels and to spend watching nights in order So have I done thus have I spoken let the praise be unto God Because the Universities in their eighth Potion forbid to wit the Cutting of a vein except in the fulness of blood but they admit of it only in this because then the vice of Blood-letting cannot be sufficiently manifest and because in their tenth Position they now implicitely grant a Fever not to be a meer heat but that it is to be cured by heating and corroborating remedies they being all hot things Surely one of the two must of necessity be true To wit either that a Fever is not heat in its root or that they must not heal by contraries any longer Out of the Positions of Lovaine disputed at Lovaine under the most discreet Sir D. Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius on the 26. of November in the year 1641. CHAP. XVI The Essence of Fevers is discovered 1. The life of Mortals is the efficient cause of Diseases 2. Herein is the raging Errour of the life 3. A proof of the foregoing particulars 4. The Authour wherein he disagreeth from the Antients 5. The internal efficient and its matter are proved 6. In what sort the Thingliness or Essence of Fevers may be formed 7. A Proposition 8. That Immortality once consisted from a natural cause 9. The Original of diseasie Idea's 10. What hath deceived the Antients 11. That the Archeus in his own Idea's of perturbations imitates the Imagination 12. The aforesaid Proposition is proved 13. A two-fold fountain of the Beginning of Idea's 14. A necessity of Idea's in a Fever is proved 15. The same thing by a numbring up of parts 16. An examination of the occasional cause HItherto I have disputed against the Schools as if I dared not to teach the Essence of Fevers Therefore since the fruit discovers its tree I am compelled for the sake of the Lovers of Medicine to add a supply whereby the Essence of Fevers being hitherto unknown may be the more illustrated and a manner of distinguishing between Judgement and Judgement and Remedy from Remedy may be granted to the young Beginner First of all I have shewn ably enough that the definition of Fevers have been hitherto unknown and therefore that the Essence and essential causes of those are as yet unknown And seeing the knowledge of things is not granted unto us from a former cause at leastwise it is strongly to be admired at that nothing hath been devised for the Essence of a Fever besides heat while as notwithstanding the History it self of Fevers might have been able sufficiently to have opened the Necessities Agreement and Constancy of Causes and at leastwise to have reduced Mortals from the ridiculous errour of heat unless a sluggishness it self of Mortals had been allured through the tediousness of a diligent search and the easiness of subscribing First of all I speak of the nature of man being corrupted such as it continues since transgression successively For a Disease was as yet an Exile as long as death was absent So indeed that a disease had not yet any hope for it self in possibility But after that death entred into the life every disease stood in a powerful army directed against the life it self so as that a disease intended to establish its nest in the vital Beginning not indeed by fighting as a certain external thing on and against the life But the forreign Guest drew his sword in the very life it self whereby he might cut off the Life his Inne and the Patron of his Essence For such was the corruption of mans immortality that he afterwards drew his own death out of the life it self For neither do I speak in jest far be it when I write of preserving the life of Mortals For indeed every Disease perisheth presently together with the life For neither do matters however hostile they may be feigned to be combate or wax hot any longer after death Wherefore every direction of the internal efficient cause ought to depend on the life it self For that which the Ancients have even hitherto before me called the Duel of nature also the lot of an Elementary complexion with solitary qualities or with the very offensive matter of supposed humours among each other All that I affirm to proceed effectively efficiently and immediately from the principle of life that is from the inordinacy indignation tumult terrour and abhorrency of the vital spirits But the excrementous matter and that which they have thought to be and called the offending or diseasie matter I call that which is produced detained or introduced besides nature from an erring or forreign occasional cause And so I call all such matter only the occasional matter indeed the inciting one and plainly external to a Disease because the presence of which matter as yet remaining the whole Fever doth oft-times cease and utterly perisheth Therefore the internal efficient and immediate formal Being is the very life it self and the immediate matter thereof is drawn and departs from the vital air as to a part of it wherein the
in separating And so seeing both Cholers accuse of a necessary access in a just temperament as they call it these could never be made fit for nourishment Since moreover we are daily nourished by the same things whereof we consist to wit of a temperate and lively seed refusing both Cholers And there shall be the like reason for both Cholers which there is of Phlegm That if this be perfected into the blood within the veins Choler shall no less be made blood in the Arteries For if Phlegm be changed into blood out of a natural proper and requisite shop much more shall yellow Choller be fit that in the heart it may degenerate into the more yellow blood of the Artery and into the spirit of life and the heart shall be the restorative shop of a gawly excrement But alas how miserable an Argument is it while as the blood let out of the veins disposeth it self to corruption sometimes two three or more liquors are seen therefore there are as many constitutive Humours of us For blood is wholly changed into milk and then after its corruption it hath only three subordinate parts to wit Whey Cheese and Butter nor ever more For sometimes it is totally coagulated in the Dug into a hard swelling in the form of Cheese now and then it wholly passeth over into a white yellow somewhat green c. corrupt Pus Sometimes into a pricking gnawing watery liquor as in the Disease called Choler Ulcers c. Elsewhere also it totally departs into a salt Wheyish liquor as in the Dropsie and many Hydragogal or water-extracting Medicines Oft-times also it waxeth wholly black like pitch as in blood that is chased out of the veins in a Gangreen c. but frequently into an ashie and stinking clay of slime as in Fluxes At another time also it wholly passing over into a yellow poyson shews or spreads forth the Jaundise in which manner also it boasts it self in those that are bitten with a Serpent Elsewhere also the blood is without the separation of an Heterogeneal matter wholly changed into sores issuing forth matter like honey called Melicerides into swellings of the Neck or Arm-holes conteining a matter in them like Pulse c. And in the Pâ—ssing-Evil the blood is totally changed into a milky liquor Even as under a Tabes or Consumption of the Lungs it wholly passeth into a yellowish spittle Are therefore perhaps as many Humours to be constituted in the blood as there are beheld degenerations thereof And shall there be as many Liquors in Rain-water as there are things growing out of the Earth For the blood is in us like unto water neither had it need of divers seeds in the Liver that it may be one only equally nourishable Humour But in the last Kitchins it attaineth its own requisite diversities whereby it performeth the office of nourishing And so it should in its beginning in vain exceed in divers seeds and diversities of kind the which at length ought totally to be Homogeneally reduced into one only glewie white and transparent nourishable Sperm or Seed for the support of the similar parts or to remain red for the flesh of the Muscles and substance of the bowels Wherefore I stedfastly deny That the blood as long as it liveth or is detained in the veins although after the death of a man is coagulated and by consequence that it bath integral unlike parts with any Heterogeniety of it self But that all diversity in the blood is made only by the death or destruction of the same Therefore the diversity of Humours is the daughter only of death but not of life Neither is that of concernment that Excrements do now and then occur in the body which dissemble the countenance of blood To wit from whence they are made by degeneration For Urine is no longer wine even as neither are corrupt Pus or Snivel or spittles as yet parts of the blood Because Excrements are no longer that which they were before their corruption Because every thing assumes its Essence and name from the bound of transmutation For what doth it prove if blood by Phlebotomy separates water or other soils in time of its corruption if the same water be thereupon neither Gaul nor Choler nor bitter and wants the properties of Gaul Or what a rash belief is that Water swims on dead blood Therefore it it is gauly Choler which under a false taste dissembles the bitterness of Choler For that Water swimming on the blood is not an entire part thereof nor of its Essence or Contents or more near akin to the Blood than a Chariot in respect of a man sitting therein It is therefore to be grieved at that for so many ages none hath ever tasted down that water but that they all have engraven their names on the trifles of their Ancestors that I say under a shew of healing the Schools have delivered the destructions of the sick under false Principles For truly Humours are destructive Ignorances sluggishnesses and shamefulnesses introduced by the Father of lies and celebrated by the loose credulity of his followers For although the bottom of the blood doth sometimes look the less red it shall not therefore be black Choler Even as neither is the sediment of the Urine Phlegm But while the life of the blood departed it s no wonder if all particular things which were kept in the unity of life do re-take the material conditions whereto they are obliged For the variety of soils in liquid bodies depends on a preheminency of weights Because they have a latitude in weight which after death become Heterogeneal or of a different hind and by degrees do hasten into a disorder of confusion For will a man that is of a sound judgement believe that Wine Ale and the juyces of herbs do lay aside their own black Choler at the bottom together with their sediment For what hath black Choler common with the heterogeneal substance of a sediment But as to the Colour every Aethiopian hath his Blood almost black but for the most part without whey yet none of them is Melancholy but all wrathful For the blood which by the encompassing air is presently cooled in the Basin waxeth more red than that which being sunk unto the bottom hath the longer continued lukewarm For this also is ordinary that any blood being chased out of the veins presently waxeth black in the body For whatsoever things do readily putrifie do easily admit of the companions of putrefaction and that part of blood doth sooner putrifie which hath the longer continued warm after its death Therefore neither is it a wonder that the part of the lower ground thereof becomes more intensly black But that black blood is not a separation of weight in the Blood and much less black Choler I have separated nine ounces of fresh Blood and that as yet liquide into Porâ—ingers One whereof I exposed to swim in cold water but the other part being equal to the former
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
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
the steel be lighter than the Load-stone it is drawn to the Loadstone but otherwise if the stone be lighter than the steel Because the drawing is not in the one and the obedience of the drawing in the other but there is one only mutual inclinative drawing and not of the drawer with a skirmishing of the resister And so from hence it is manifest that a desire is in nature before the drawing and that the drawing followes the desire as some latter thing as the effect doth its cause If therefore according to the testimony of truth all things are to be discerned by their works and the fruits do bewray their own tree truly such attractive inclinations cannot subsist without the testimony of a certain co-participated life sensation knowledge and election Moreover neither is the life of minerals lesse than the life of vegetables distinguished from the animal life by their own life and their generations among themselves Because that which is vegetable and that which is mineral do not operate but one or a few proper things and the same things as yet with a precisenesse interchangeable course property inclination and necessity as oft as a proper object is present with them but a living creature operates many things and those neither constrainedly as neither by accident of the object but altogether by desire well pleasing appetite will and choice of some certain deliberation Seeing the first operation of the same is life but the second a proper appetite desire or love or delight At length thirdly there is a deliberative and distinctive choice of objects So I have seen a Bull that was filled with lust to have dâ—spised an old Cow but an heifer being offered him to have again presently after wantâ—nized But the first operation of things obscurely living is a power unto a seminal essentialnesse Next the second is an exercise of powers and properties At length the third operation is a greater and lesse inclination motion and knowledge The which indeed flow not from a deliberative election or choice but from a potestative interchangeable course strangenesse likenesse appropriation purity or unaptnesse of objects wherefore it was a right opinion of the Antients that all things are in all after the manner of the receiver But those powers by reason of their undiscerned obscurity and the sloath of diligent searchers have been scarce believed but by predecessours and moderns were not considered and by reason of the difficulties of accesse they have circumvented the world with a wandring despaire and with the name of occult properties have hood-winkt themselves by their own sluggishnesse But my scope in this place hath been that if in Herbs and Minerals there are such kind of notions the Authoresses and moderatresses of hidden properties the same by a far more potent reason and after a more plentiful manner do inhabite in flesh and blood To wit excellently with a particular and affected notion motion inclination appetite love interchangeable course hostility and resistance as with that which occurs in us through the service of the five senses Even so that in flesh and blood there is a certain seminal notion distinction imagination of love conveniency likenesse and also of fear terror sorrow resistance c. with a beholding of gain and losse offence and complacency of superiority I say and inferiority and so of the agent and the patient Because those necessary dependances of a consequent necessity do flow from and accompany the aforesaid sensations or acts of feeling The which surely in the vital blood are characterized in a higher degree by reason of the inbred Archeus the Author and workman of any of these passions whatsoever than otherwise in the whole kind that is not soulified or quickned For a tooth from a dead carcase that dyed by the extinguishment of its powers constraineth any tooth of a living man to wither and fall out only by its touching because it compels it to be despised by the life The which a tooth from a dead carcase slain by a violent death or presently extinguished by a sharp disease doth not likewise perform In like manner the hair of a dead carcass whose life was taken away by degrees by a voluntary death makes persons bauld only by its touching Watts and brands brought on the Young by the perturbation of a woman great with child through the touching of a dead carcase that died of its own accord and by degrees untill part of the branded mark shall wax more inwardly cold the mark also doth by degrees voluntarily vanish away Observe well with me whether these are not the testimonies of another act of feeling than that of cold Moreover whether in that same sensation there be not a natural knowledge and fear of death connexed which things are as yet also in the dead carcass For truly a Tetanus or straight extension of a dead carcase or stiffnesse thereof is not a certain congelation of cold But a mear convulsion of the muscles abhorring death and living even after the departure of the soul For from hence the dead carcases of those who die by a violent death because they die the faculties of their flesh being not altogether extinguished they feel not the aforesaid Tetanus but a good while after CHAP. X. A living creature imaginative I Have said that Herbs and Minerals do imagine by a certain instinct of nature that is after their own manner so in the next place that the blood and mummie have certain native conceptions in order and likenesse unto man which things that they may be directed unto our purpose concerning the Plague thou mayest remember after what sort the perturbations of a woman great with child her hand being applied unto some certain member although unadvisedly rashly and without a concurrence of the will do decipher the member in the Young co-agreeing in co-touching with the image of the object of that perturbation with the image I say but not with an idle signature But suppose thou that her desire was to a cherry verily a cherry is deciphered in the young and in a co-like member such as the child-bearing woman shall touch with her hand which cherry waxeth green yellow and red every year at the same stations wherein the cherries of a tree do attain those interchanges of colours And which is far more wonderful it hath happened that the Young so marked hath suffered these signatures of colours in the Low-countries in the moneths called May and June which afterwards expressed the same in Spain in those called March and April And at length the Young returning into his countrie shewed them again in a bravery in those called May and June Also under a strong impression of a woman great with child not onely a new generation of a cherry is brought in thereupon but it also happens that the old one is to be changed and it constrains a seminal generation to give place yea and the image of God being now lively or in the readinesse
plants and animals as if the plague of man should be a poyson to the Toad and if this should happen the Toad should not command the Pest but the Pest the Toad Neither also doth a dryed dead carkass feel what were poysons unto it while it was alive Nor doth a dead carkass swell being smitten by a Serpent For a dead carkass if it shall not be sensible neither hath it retained the efficacy of tumefying Therefore Paracelsus was ignorant that to swell up is the property of the vital Archeus and that swelling proceeds not but occasionally from poysons I admired at the insolent boldness of Paracelsus writing this thing for a Toad that is dryed however he may be six hours steeped yet he always is uncapable of tumefaction or swelling For the delay of steeping in a swift disease is full of danger and loss I therefore have steeped him in a small quantity of warm water who being applyed unto the paining place hath presently asswaged the pain Truly if any thing should exspire out of us into the dead carkass of a Toad which was there materially detained it had breathed out the same way whereby it had entred into the Toad therefore swollenness is the action of the Archeus of life efficiently and effectively but it is the occasional action of the poyson and the which therefore can be none on the Archeus of a dead and dryed Toad The Archeus therefore since he is wanting to a dryed Toad cannot be the cause of swollenness in that Toad For poyson ceaseth to be poyson in respect of a dead thing seeing poyson be-speaks a relation unto something that hath life I know that Paracelsus had no actual practise of the plague indeed that he hath written many things and those little suitable thereunto he having promised most things from a rashness of belief drawn from the relation of others Butler the Irishman to my knowledge had cured some thousands at London of the plague and afterwards through the accusations of enemies he being deteined in the Castle of Vilvord by my asistance obtained his liberty For he had commanded a great Toad to be taken after noon-tide in the month called June I hung him up by the legs nigh the chimney and set a dish of yellow wax under him Atlength after three days hanging the toad vomited up earth and some Insects to wit walking flies their wings shining with a greenish colour as though they had been guilded But presently after vomiting the Toad dyed neither vomited he up any thing before three days space although he hung with his head downward But he said unto me that I had remedy enough for the curing of forty thousand that were violently taken with the Plague and promised that he would shew me the hinge of the matter But being suddenly banished he deparâ—ed At leastwise I commanded these excrementitions filths cast up by vomit and likewise the dead carcase of the toad being dryed to be beaten apart into powder and with Gum dragon I formed Trochies which I have successefully used as well for the prevention of the plague as for curing of the same Afterwards in the month called July in the decrease of the Moon I took old Toads whose eyes abounded with white worms and hanging forth with black heads so that both their eyes were wholly transformed into worm perhaps there were fifty worms in number thickly compacted together in every hole of their eyes whose heads hung out and as oft as any one endeavoured to go out or to hang over the Toad presently by applying of his fore-foot forbad his utterance But these Toads being constrayned to vomit as I have said by hanging them up by the legs I found to afford a most excellent Zenexton or preservativeâ— amulet against the Pest But I reduced the wormes falling down in the waxen dish and together with that which he rejected by vomit into smal Trochies the dead carcase of the Toad and waxen dish being added thereunto But the Trochies being born about at the left pap drave away the contagion and being fast bound to the place infected presently drew out the poyson And the Trochies were more ready and of more validity if they had returned diverse times into use than when more new But I found them to be a most exceeding powerfull Amulet or pomander for the plague For if the Serpent eateth earth all the days of his life because he was the instrument of sinning the toad eats Earth which he vomits up all the days of his life But according to the testimony of Adeptical Phylosophy the Toad bears an hatred against man so that he infects some Herbs that are usual with man with his corruption and that in hope of his death But he differs from the serpent in this that at the sight of a man he from a natural gift conceives a great terrour or affrightment which terrour from man attains for and imprints on himself a natural efficacy against the images of the affrighted Archeus in man For truly the terrour of the Toad kils and annihilates the Idea's of the affrighted Archeus of man because the terrour in the Toad is natural and therefore radically and throughout his whole body incorporated in him even when dead but the Idea of terrour in the Pest is only accidental and flowing The Toad therefore being in his own nature afraid of man increaseth the image of hatred and heightens his powers that at leastwise he may privily hurt and that like the Pest But this sealed property of hatred and also of terrour he carries in his head eyes and in the place of the power of concupiscence therefore his head and eyes while he is as yet a living creature are transchanged into live and true wormes such as are bred in cheese but that the extream part of their head looks somewhat black For at length together with his life so great a multitude of worms fals out because while he was as yet a living creature the whole sheath of his brain seems to have been wormy Surely a terrible and sealy signate dedicated to the most terrible and of deaths Health or safety from our enemies and from the hand of those that hated us to wit a remedy For truly the hatred and terrour of the Toad towards us prepares a medicine of health for us For therefore an hatred of us is proper to and naturally incorporated in the Toad that he carries an Idea of hatred wholly throughout his whole even so as the spittle of a mad dog doth by accident the fear of an Hydrophobia But besides whereby the terrour of us and inbred hatred towards us in the Toad may the higher ascend and the more strongly imprint their images the Toad is hung up aloof nigh the chymney in our sight and therefore even his hatred and terrour increaseth unto death But that the Toad doth by his ownconceptions generate Idea's I will by and by shew by the sudden death of the Toad himself Now at least
manifest how most nearly a single Life doth come unto the Primitive state of Innocency and so that also from thence we may learn that the intention of the Creator was in a single Life For now and then that word of Truth comes into my mind which requireth the state of little Children in those that are to be saved under the penalty of infernal punishment and that we must despair of Salvation unless we are made or become like unto them In whom notwithstanding I find a suddain speedy undiscreet and frequent anger stripes kickings lyes disobediences murmurings reproaches a ready deceit and lying in play an unsatiable Throat impudence disturbances disdaines unconstancy and a stupid innocency lastly no acts of devotion attention or contribution But yet those are not the things in little ones which are required for those that are to be saved under pain of an Eternal loss In the next place neither do little Children want their pride of Life and despising of others and especially their hatred of the poor also a frequent desire of revenge cruelty an itch of getting or attaining the concupiscence of the Eyes and are wholly and perpetually addicted to and drowned in self-love But neither are those the things required in them that are to besaved under Gods indignation But they want the concupiscence of the Flesh alone This indeed is the Mark which with so loud sounds it required for those that are to be saved Because it is that which was of a primitive intention in Creation And therefore from an opposite sense I argue That the chief fault of the Fall of the Apple being eaten was convenant about the infringement of that chast bashfulness that is that Original sin was scituated in the breaking of Virginity in the act of Concupiscence and propagation of feed But not in the very act of disobedience and despised Admonition and distrust of the truth of the divine Word For B. Hildegard also in the Third Book of her Life seemeth to have testified the same thing The Author saith She freed the Matron Sibylla of the City of Lausaâ—ium beyond the Alpes who required her help by a Messenger from a daily Issue of Blood by the subscribed Letters being sent unto her Thou shalt put these words between thy Breast and 〈◊〉 in the 〈◊〉 of him who rightly disposeth all things In the Blood of Adam arose Death In the Blooâ— of Christ Death is extinguished In the same Blood of Christ I command thee Oh Blood that thou contain or stop thy Flux And the Matron was cured by these written Words the which others have many times experienced Therefore Death was extinguished by the effusion of the Blood of Christ and the particiâ—â—â—â—on thereof in being born again that is by the offering up of Chastity to God the Father for those that are to be renewed in his Blood And moreover if we do well mind it is acknowledged that God hath loved women before Men in their Sex by reason of an inbred bashfulness Unto which Sex therefore he hath freely given Devotion as a gift of Nature whereby â—ere should be some kind of natural faculty and virtue proper to that Sex a Medium unto Salvation For the first Apostoless before the coming of the Comforter by one onely Sermon converted Samaria the head of the Israelitish Kingdom otherwise most stubborn Only the Women from Galilee being constantly although disgracefully serviceable adered to Christ at his Death and under all ignomiâ—â—y he being left by his disciples the witesses of so many Miracles and that at the first blast of adversity For the poor Women rejoyced in their reproaches so they might but follow Christ carrying his Cross upon his back Magdalen also first preached the Gospel of his Resurrection unto her own who did not believe and confirmed them in Faith who doubted and deserved to be the first beholder of Christ after his Death because she sought the same with the fervor of the greatest Devotion God I say hath heaped very many Diseases Adversities and Subjections on this Sex that it should be by so much the more like and nearer to his Son But the World despiseth Women and preferreth Men But in most things the Judgements of God are opposite unto the Judgements of the World so that also the World despiseth the Poor of whom Christ calleth himself the Father but not of the Rich. Then in the next place Christ calls himself in many places The Son of Man But seeing he had not a Man unto his Father therefore by an Antonomâ—sia he calls the Woman the Virgin Man by an absolute dignity of Name and worthy of or beseeming the Femal Sex as if for that reason the name Man ought thenceforth after sin to be proportioned and stands for the Woman in the more famous signification Shewing at leastwise that in thing the Mother-Virgin was after the sin of Adam the one onely Man such as the Divinity had espoused unto it self in the Creation of the Universe for the replenishing of the places laid waste by the Evil Spirit And that what Eve ceased to be through an infringing of Chastity that Mary the most glorious Virgin was to wit The one only Mother of those that are to be saved in the Regeneration of Purity But neither 〈◊〉 I undertaken a laudatory Oration in behalf of that Sex Only it is sufficient to have shewn that God hath loved the Femal Sex by reason of its love of Chastity For a Virgin thinâ—â— on the things of her God The Apostle also Commands Widows which are truly Widows to be honoured And in the old Law those were reckoned impure as many as even conjugally had known their Wives if they were not seriously washed and were to be driven from the Temple unless they were first duly rinsed He also violently fell by a sudden Death because such an impure Man although from a good zeal put his hand to the tottering Cart wherein the Ark of the Covenant the Image of the God-bearing-Virgin was carried Indeed on both sides the Truth being agreeable to it self doth detest and attest the filthyness of impure Adamical generation For the Impurity which had conceived a contagion from any natural Issue whatsoever of Menstrues or Seed and that by its touching alone is reckoned to be equal to that which should by degrees creep on a person from a co-touching of dead Carcasses and to be expiated by the same ceremonious right That the Text might agreeably denote that Death began from the Concupiscence of the Flesh lying hid in the fruit of the Apple Therefore also the one only healing Medicine of so great an impurity contracted by touching consisted in washing under the likeness whereof Faith and Hope which in Baptisme were poured into us are strengthened For as soon as Adam had known by Fratricide that the first-born of Mortals whom he had begotten in the Concupiscence of the Flesh had slain his guiltless and righteous Brother and fore-seeing the wicked Errors of
moisture in us and the radical heat may be for synonymals But moreover all do with one consent presage that our Vital heat would never fail us if there might always be enough and to spare of that moisture and fodder Which moisture because they believe to be hereafter wasted by a necessary action of heat they finish the hope and Treatise of Long Life by a denial But alas with what pernicious blindness hath the Schoole of Medicine through thinking stumbled in all things It had also seen the Flame of a Lamp to be nourished with Oyl and that through defect hereof that also failed but that it was continued by the pouring on of Oyl Wherefore a plausible Invention smiled on them and therefore they drew that Invention into the History of Life Especially because they by sense took notice that heat was no less in the four-footed Beast and Bird than in a Man So greatly with the Patronage of Aristotle have they confounded heat under the Etymology of Life And then they presently drew out of heat the token of true and presential Fire Yet the Question remained under Controversie The Aristotelicks indeed attribute this Fire unto the Element of the Stars and contratrarily distinguish the sublunary Element of Fire in its species But others attribute it unto the Element of sublunary Fire And have about this and the other their own Arguments of Brawlings In the mean time the Schoole hath been wholly dumb about mute and cold Fishes and although it confessed that Fishes do live are moved and nourished no more unprosperously than four-footed Beasts yea although it knew that they are enriched with a far more fruitful race of Off-springs in the next place that they live a more healthy Life and notwithstanding that Fires and heats are wanting under the Sea especially the frozen Sea wherein in the mean time there was the greatest and most populous Common-wealth neverthelesse it would not forsake the embers of the vital spark drawn in from its tender years although it took notice that it was deluded through a Patronage of truth Wherefore the miserable Schooles flee unto Decrees or Authorities Therefore they would have Man Birds and also four-footed Beasts to be indeed in a Trine Number and that the Fish might be involved as a Fourth and consocial thereunto and be constrained under their large Doctrine That they might determine of an equal right concerning the Fish as absent in the participation of Radical heat But because the Soul comes as a Servant unto established pleasures and doth also administer Reason even for a non-Being at pleasure they have devised a privy shift and determine to wit That hot living Creatures are actually hot with a palpable Fire but that Fishes are onely potentially hot As if therefore Fishes should onely potentially live if the Effect doth not badly square with its granted Causes The Schooles I say do feign Heat to be the total Cause of an actual Life to wit they substitute an equivocal or doubtful Quality like unto heat but an irregular unnamed one because an unknown feigned and dissembled one to be received under the name of potential Heat For the Schools by imagining have abhorred to enter into the Depth of the Sea wherefore the Speculation of Fishes being left as barren because it was resisted by a plausible Devise they have well pleased themselves as it were wandring in a Dream in hot Animals with the Application of Lamps and Life Shall the radical Moisture thus be no longer with Aristotle Spermatick Froathy and Muscilaginous but now to let it be Oylie Fat and Combustible Shall thus therefore a Fat Belly which through much Grease shall afford Fewel for the radical Moisture be only of necessity Long-lived A Capuchin in our Country was Cold for almost an whole year at least-wise in both his Legs and Arms because he shall loose less of his Moisture he shall of necessity retain his Oyl the longer in his Lamp But at least-wise here a certain wan Stupidity of the Schools elsewhere by me demonstrated is adjoyned To wit that the Action of Heat especially if it shall not be kindled by a lively Flame doth indeed dry up all Moistures into a Sandy-stone and Coal but never consumeth them without the remainder of a residence even as is easie to be seen in us so that it is even a wonder that they have not hitherto observed that Consuming is not made in us by Heat alone But at least-wise there should be need of a torch in the Heart which thing also the Schools have not yet considered least otherwise the feigned and vapo rous fatness of the Moisture because it is that which in the Heart should be wholly Spiritual like Aqua Vitae should in a small moment and great breviary burn up all at once and cease to be For else without a torch neglected by the Schools the feigned History of Life shall badly square unto Fires built from the first-born Liquor which are on every side kindled at once However they shall say at least from one Absurdity drawn out of the Latex or Liquor of Life there are many Anguishes But let us freely feign that this idle Devise of the Schools might stand To wit that the Life is a certain Fire wasting the radical Moisture because it is Fat and doth thereby live and that Lean Persons alone are of a shorter Life But from whence is that Moisture in us Is it not from the Nourishment materially and from the vital Archeus efficiently Certainly our Lamp shall never be extinguished if the Power of burning or blazing Heat as they will have it be for the making of Oyl out of the Bread and Drink and if nothing of a Residence remaineth from the fatness in the Torch which may stop up and stifle that Torch To wit even as nothing at length remains from the Blood in Persons of ripe Years which may have it self in manner of a superfluous Coal And indeed in a Feast hath it not its abundance of Nourishments and heat the Workman of that fat Moisture resulting within from thence Seeing that Light proceeds from Light and an uncombustible Fire from Fire with no difficulty Why therefore doth the Man die For I find from the Positions of the Schools a perpetual Motion in the Theory but not in the Practick Therefore Fraud and Deceit do subsist in their Positions or at least-wise a shameful Rashness But they will say that after growth nothing is any longer applyed from the radical Moisture unto the solid Parts Therefore it must needs be that the true radical Moisture seeing it doth now no longer co-here to the Root therefore also the sound Parts do by degrees wax dry and so that the Fodder of the Heat failing the same Heat dyeth But first of all from hence is drawn that the Death of Old Age doth not happen but by reason of the dryness of the similar Parts When as a Stag of one Year old is dryer than a Man of
eighty Year old and yet he easily extends his Life unto one or two Ages In the next if the Moisture ceaseth to be radical because it reacheth not the end or Application unto the Root That indeed is to the moisture by accident and therefore it doth not change the Essence thereof For neither doth the Heat of the Fire cease to be propagated in the Neighboriag Wood although the burning Wood shall not receive a fewel of fatness from without Neither in the next place doth the aforesaid excuse subsist For truly for every Event the solid Parts shall have themselves in manner of a Lamp or Torch which is sufficiently able to burn in what part Oyl is supplyed unto it and so that Oyl being supplied from without the Fire should be able to live for ever For they teach that the Heat of the solid Parts is from the Element of Fire the which they think to be for the mixture of Bodies and to be enflamed in the fatness of the radical moisture or humour First of all that Moisture is spermatick and muscilaginous but not Oylie And then if the Fire passeth out of the solid Parts unto the Moisture which it enflameth it shall be sufficient for the Moisture to be consumed and alwayes to be applyed from without nor to be incorporated in the Root throughout the whole Because if it pass out of the solid Parts unto the unsolid Parts applyed unto it during the whole life time it shall alwayes be able to pass thorow the un-solid Parts applyed unto it neither doth that excuse availe that it ceaseth to be radical while it is no longer United unto the innermost Root Because then prefently after growth the vital Vigour should be extinguished because the Moisture doth not then any longer receive a Union with the solid or sound Parts But why do I stay any longer in refuting of Absurdities It hath been so sufficiently and over-shewn that the Fire is not an Element that the mixture of the same for the Subsistence of all Bodies whatsoever is false because those of mixt Bodies are meer and antient Fables The Fire therefore if there were any in us should be primarily in the vital Spirit for the which enough Moisture doth alwayes supply it self out of the venal Blood Wherefore indeed I grieve that they have hitherto so sloathfully stumbled in the Subject of Life and Doctrine of Integrity or Health For I after the time of my Youth conjectured that there was an Errour altogether shamefully committed and omitted in the Consideration of Defects and Diseases Because none truly knows that which is crooked who hath not first known that which is right This therefore is the feigned Doctrine of the Schools concerning Life which they endeavour to establish by the supposed Authority of a little Book feigned on Hippocrates concerning humane Nature Which saith That we on the first day of our Birth are most hot and likewise at length on the last day most Cold As if there should be a different Condition of our Heat from that of any other things For whatsoever things do arise from elsewhere do presently after assume an increase and that without ceasing and at length decline and fail Wherefore if according to the Mind of the Old-man Heat should most greatly abound on the first day yet neither is the Life tied up to Heat For truly I have demonstrated that Heat is rather an Effect of Life in hot living Creatures than the Life it self or the Cause of Lise and therefore Fishes can most safely want Heat and now for that very Cause it commits an Errour in arguing of not the Cause as for the Cause Truly I am alwayes wont to behold search into believe and measure Heat as Heat and as a Quality neither also to implore any other Witnesses or Judges besides the Sense of Touching and an Instrument of Glasse which I have afore taught for the searching out of Degrees and Moments of Heat in the encompassing Air In which Sense I have found a Man of thirty Years of Age to be hotter than any Child however in the mean time they may doat about the diverse particular Kinds of Heat For let them dispute of Qualities known by Sense as of Fables and under potential Considerations but I have accustomed my self to divide open look into and esteem of things even as they are in themselves But moreover Paracelsus being ignorant of the radical Moisture of the Schools doth now and then confound that with the Mummy of our Body but elsewhere he reputes it to be as it were the inward shadow of our Body from whence he would have shadowie Flames to shine round about us To wit that the radical Moisture is the Image of the Man extended throughout the whole Man and deferring or prolonging his Life In another place also he judgeth the radical Moisture to be the Mercury or one of his three Beginnings not divideable in living Persons which is equally participated of throughout the whole For the Life being extinguished by the Plague for Death takes away the Mummial Goodness the Mummy indeed hath very cunningly failed or forsaken the same Moisture in the Body At length although the Schools confess that younger People are oft-times extinguished the radical Moisture being not yet consumed as neither through Penury of Heat and in this respect they are not very careful for their own Position whereby they may equally measure the Life by Heat and radical Moisture yet they remain in the Bounds of their Ancestours by reason of a custom of Assenting a sloath of diligent Searching and despair of Learning For indeed they have been ignorant of lightsome Lights of Life but that they are indifferent by reason of the distinction of the two greater Lights For that they may be hot like as also cold That is they have not Learned that Forms and Lives are Synonymals But I have alwayes greatly pitied the confused Tradition of this Moisture which is of so great Moment although in the Moisture of the Root they confess both the Hinges of Medicine to be rouled I bestowed much Iabout in my younger Years by the Resolutions of Bodies that I might find some certain Messenger of the radical Moisture And at length through the Favour of God I was at last more assured that not any of those things were in Nature which with a lofty Brow are promised by the Schooles in this respect I acknowledge indeed that there is a seminal Original Moisture which is the constitutive Moisture of us but altogether of the same Species Property and Identity with that whereby we grow and are afterwards uncessantly nourished And so that the Bones Bowels Nerves Tendons of Children do consist of an un-different and do increase from a like Moisture whereby young Folks their Increase being now finished are nourished According to the Maxime of the Schools We are nourished by the same thing whereof we consist But we consist of Original or first-born Moisture therefore we