no Subtilties but those which are sifted about Charity and which regard and preserve the Life of thine own Image For I grieved at the first at so great rashness of belief of Principles and at so great a sluggishness of Mortals about things of so great moment and the pitty of this thing increased with me dayly Hence at length I having obtained a little Light I knew with great grife that the Errours of the Schools ought by me plainly to appear But indeed in the entrance that thing seemed to me to be full of untamed arrogancy that I the least of all should brand all before me with the ignorance of Phylosophical truth but should attribute to my self only the obtainment of healing Therefore I oftentimes begged of the Lord that he would re-take that his own Talent from me and vouchsafe wholly to take it away and to bestow it on another more worthy than my self For I knew that he who had well lay hid had well lived at least-wise morally and in this ulcerous age Therefore I resisted and a good while deferred to propose this ignorance of the Principles of Medicine to its own World until that now being an old Man the last necessity constraining me and being placed in an Agony of Death I promised the Lord that I would sincerely divulge his Talent least I should at sometime be accounted in the strict Judgment of God to have come into the world in vain and to have departed as unprofitable from hence For by a Vision in a Dream I understood that I was more afraid of gainsayings than of Gods Indignation that Nature was crafty as long as she made a pretence for Pride in purely obeying God by reason of deceitful humane respects Also I saw not that my own Arrogancy which was placed rather in fear did make me less freely or generously to perform what was required against Judicious Men that would rise up against me for so many ages past than in purely obeying the most glorious Giver of Truth Yea that I did not commiserate my Neighbour and that I buried my Talent in the Earth in looking back on the uncertain Censures of the World concerning me I knew indeed the doores of Medicine to have been locked and the Bars and Bolts thereof to have been covered with rust for so many ages but I doubted to open them as if I should presume the Office of a Porter to be meerly my own and not to be given to any other Therefore I resolved with my self to do what Charity not arrogancy perswaded to be done as knowing that he is not injurious who beholds a publick good although it may make those blush who have rashly subscribed to the trifles of Heathens unto the dammage of mankind At length therefore I stood as a middle man between the shame and sore fear of the greatness of the thing and many times reposed my Pen And again I seriously begged of the Lord that he would vouchsafe to chose another more worthy than my self Wherefore the Lord being deservedly wroth suffered this Evil and unprofitable Servant to be sifted by Satan For an Order whose Zenith or vertical Point is the house of Powers and whose Nadir or Point under their Feet are other Orders began undeservedly to persecute me by unworthy Wiles I knew presently that the hand of the Lord had touched me And therefore in a full tempest of Persecutions I wrote a Volume whose Title is the Rise or Original of Medicine that is The unheard of Beginnings of natural Phylosophy wherein I have discovered the accustomed Errours of the Schools in healing I have I say afforded and demonstrated new Principles as also hitherto unheard of Speculations of Diseases that the Universities leaving the Vanities of the Heathen may for the future accustom themselves to the Truth For from thence I found a rest in my Soul such as I never found in the times of my Prosperity so that I being full of suspition grieved that so great Storms did not any thing disturb the rest of my Soul or sleep of my Body Wherein O God my Protectour I am not able sufficiently to praise the abundance of thy bounty which suffered not my Soul even in the least to fall out of a full enjoyment of peace under so great straits on every side I fearing this one only thing least as an unprofitable Servant I should be buried with my small Talent Whosoever therefore thou art who interpretest my Zeal to be proud boasting thou mayest do it for me so thou shalt not hurt thy self for I will rejoyce to bear back all confusion for the good of my Neighbour and of Posterity and I shall enjoy my wish whether in the mean time my boldness shall turn unto me for rashness or not For God the Sower will water what he would have to grow And moreover in the Book of Fevers I have declared the Beginnings of my repentance and in what manner I desisted from Galen and Avicen to wit by reason of the discerned falshood of the Pillars of Medicine from whence a singular boldness of confidence thenceforth increased in me being as yet a young man whereby for my Neighbours sake I willingly exposed my self to the infurious Censures of all and the number of dayes by degrees running on the Lord beheld the Candor of my Zeal and granted me now a Man to see that whatsoever is taught in the Schools of Medicine is full of Miseries and Ruine and that it should be a laughing stock to Posterity Good Jesus how greatly was I then amazed at the greatness of thy Clemency which reveals those things unto little ones which were denyed for so manyages to men otherwise most religious and ingenious Moreover although I was from thence more assured that the manifestation of my Talent of truth received lay heavy upon me yet Nature is ready to find out excuses and deceives it self and its own Sorrows by the Props of Reason its Chamber-Maid I presently therefore fie it sâ—ames me of my own unconstancy shook off the undertaken burden again from my shoulders and said who am I oh Lord for the more solid things are defective unto me which I should substitute in the room of those that are to be depressed For what things I before believed were commanded me I again suspected to be suggested by the subtilty of Satan because secret Remedies were wanting unto me to wit the Letters Patents or Signes of my message Wherefore in my youth I had a good while perswaded my self that the very Art of healing was nothing but a meer imposture devised by the idle Greeks being at first framed for the destruction of the Romanes their subduers and afterwards confirmed for the Calamities of Men whereunto humane Credulity by reason of a conceived hope had easily subscribed and so that that Profession of Medicine had brought forth its own authority because for the most part we too readiâ—â— believe those things which we too greedily desire Indeed I knew
Matrimony were in times past dissembled Yet Phinehas being neither a Judge nor a Prince from his very own zeal slew the Fornicator Zimri and the Harlot Cosby and by that famous act not onely diverted the wrath of the Lord from the whole People of Israel But also although he were a Man-slayer and Man-slayers were repulsed from Sacrifices Yet by reason of that simple Death the Priesthood was given unto him persevering in his off-spring In the next place the Potters field Akeldama called Acheldamah or The field of blood as long as it retained the name of a Field confirms the Position because indeed by a supernatural Miracle it so consumeth a dead Carcass inhumed in it in one onely day that besides a Sceleton of Bones nothing remaineth surviving which effect that it was supernatural I prove For otherwise if it should naturally happen that thing without doubt should be done by a corrosive force of the Earth and the which therefore should be wholly a corrosive Salt or at least-wise a certain Mineral vein co-mixed with very much Salt 1. But first of all That corrosion of the flesh happened not onely at Jerusalem as long as it was a Field where there might be a suspition of some Mineral growing but also its Earth being brought from thence the same thing happened in the burying-place at Rome for that cause called The holy Field to wit wherein that Earth scarce equalizeth the depth of one Foot 2. But whether we may suppose a corrosive Salt or next the Earth it self to be Salt yet seeing it is the property of Salt and a thing unseparable from Salt to melt through Water being poured on it Therefore long ago before so many Ages that substance of the corrosive Salt being melted by Raines Snowes and Hailes had wandred even unto the bottom of the sand and the rather at Rome where it found not its native place Wherefore also that faculty of corroding should cease nor should it continue safe until now 3. And so much the rather because the corrosion of Salts is by little and little satisfied and desisteth in gnawing 4. Lastly Such a corrosive of Earth is not any where found in the Earth whether thou shalt respect a Vein of Arsenick Orpiment or any other For all the activity of such Corrosives presently after a good while waxeth mild and is satisfied Therefore the property of that Field remaining after so many Ages doth clearly shew withal against the will of Atheisme that the Field being purchased with the price of the Life Blood and Death of the Saviour presently consumes the flesh of Adamical generation Because that for the consuming and renewing whereof by the body of Christ which was sold for thirty silver pieces paid for the price of that field the coming of the most glorious incarnation is believed to be directed from God as its onely scope The unsufferableness therefore of that Earth with the flesh of sin continually persevering now so many Ages however the Bowels of the Atheists may burst convinceth of an honour to be due to the Saviour or Son of God for ever In the next place a humane dead Carcass was alwayes buried for honour and desert yet in the Law it caused an impurity for a time Because neither did it pollute the Soul but the Body onely for the meritorious fact And that impurity did indifferently affect any one not as the dead Carcass was deputed to the Wormes for the Wormes by their co-touching are not read to have caused an impurity but because Adamical flesh is horrid in the sight of the Lord who indeed promiseth that he will raise them up at the last day as many as shall reverently receive the Eucharist For all indeed shall rise again by the finger of God to wit by a supernatural Virtue Therefore whosoever in rising again shall be changed are reckoned onely to be raised up again by the Lord Jesus to wit in as much as in a Body which they have attained by the Wine which buds forth Virgins they shall rise again partakers of the unspotted Virginity of Jesus I will raise them up again at the last Day What other thing I pray you doth that Promise denote but that the Elect shall rise again changed and raised up by the Lord not indeed in the flesh of sin but in the flesh of the Lord which they have partaked of by Baptisme and the Eucharist Therefore the horrid and damned flesh of sin doth besprinckle its touchers with no undeserved spot of impurity There is therefore a distinct diversity of Virginal purity The First comes to hand before the Fall of Adam and the which therefore did contain a certain Immortality from the suffrage or consent of the Tree of Life But the Second is of them Who were sanctified in their Mothers Womb the which in it self is also twofold For such a sanctification although it dismissed Original Sin and did restore the integrity of withdrawn purity yet because they were conceived by the Will of Man and by Bloods or of the flesh of Sin they were also Mortal But the most holy Virgin Mother presently after the seminal mixture of her Parents was preserved from the knitting and blemish of Original Sin before hec-ceity or the coming of her Soul But Jeremy and John obtained the same but after quickening In these two indeed there was a Remission of sin admitted but in the God-bearing-Virgin there was a prevention before sin could touch her Soul and therefore she was taken up with her body into Heaven but not John or Jeremy Next a Third Purity is in being born again of Water and of the holy Spirit which also happens two manner of wayes To wit Unto Little Children and Unto those of Ripe Years For in these Regeneration doth not onely remit Original Sin but also every grievous Sin But in little ones it remitteth onely Original Sin because it as yet finds no other But on both sides it leaveâ—â— Death and Flesh hastening into a dead Carcass because stirred up by 〈…〉 copulation Fourthly The purity of those is regarded Who have made themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of God its sake and that as yet in a two-way-journey For they have either from a Child devoted their Virginity to the Lamb and have observed it and therefore also they follow the same whithersoever he may go do sing the Hymn c. but all that after Death For otherwise they are of the flesh of sin and therefore are of necessity also guilty of Death and corruption But they who have lost their Purity through a proper Error and afterwards rising up again have vowed or observed chastity These although they are chaste yet are they not to be reckoned among Virgins But moreover after that a Matrimonial generation was constituted by the Lord Regeneration by the holy Spirit and Water doth not fore-require Virginity Fifthly The top of all Purity and Chastity is the Lord Jesus himself who was not conceived by a
known and witnessed by all the children of light in all Generations This being granted to be true it must needs be accounted the Christians Epoche or stop of Time from whence he is to reckon upon his progress in all or any other true Knowledge or Science whatsoever For as the Father knoweth all things and no man knoweth the Father but the Son and him to whom the Son will reveal him So as the Son revealeth the Father unto any one according to the measure and manner of his revelation other things are known also as in the bulk of Unity wherein the Almighty compasseth all things in the hollow of his hand and swallows them up as out of sight which is the knowledge of the blessed so also as from this blessedness a reflex act goes forth with a pure clear ray or Beam towards particular things or objects apprehending or looking thorow them according to their particular natures and properties placed in them by the Word the Creator This kind of knowledge is not the fruit of the forbidden tree but of the Tree of Life for Life is its Root and Love is its Branches first extended towards God the Creator in the measure of whose Image the Understanding doth apply it self by an intellectual act unto the particular thing understood and so in that Image adoring his Wisdom and Power therein Secondly towards the Neighbour in directing such a particular knowledge or knowledges unto the use service benefit necessity and health of the same in this mortal Life Now to bring this home unto our present purpose such a Root and Branches do I judge yea and feel to be of this present Authors knowledge For although he was as to his visible profession of Religion a member of the Romish Church after the Tradition of his Fathers and so in that respect was in the captivity in some things which may well be accounted hay stubble c. Yet as Daniel was a true Israelite yea and a man of an excellent Spirit though in Babylon who saw over the Babylonians and was hated of them even to the death for his Wisdom and Uprightness So may it be said of this Author who by a Divine gift from God in the light of sound Judgement and true Understanding out of love to his Neighbour hath as a Modern come after the Schools the Sons of Antiquity as they would be accounted and so searched them out in their principles that being weighed in the Ballance of true Science they are found lighter than Vanity Neither hath the Errors of the Chymical Schoole in divers particulars escaped his Pen yet well observe thou whatever carping self-ended partialists may say that the Author doth as well build up his own as pull down others Doctrine I do not speak this from a desire to boast in another mans Lines or to glory in man or as thinking him infallible even in the Mysteries of Nature for that were not only to derogate from Gods Honour to wrong my own Soul but also to wrong the deceased Author himself while I should seem to own the gift of God in him for I find him in his Writings wholly renouncing all vain glory self exaltation and ambition or to receive honour from man as knowing that every good gift descended from the Father of Lights and so that he had nothing but what he had received Therefore whosoever thou art who desirest to be bettered in the reading and considering of this work see that thy mind be somewhat stayed and composed out of the giddiness lightness and wantonness for Wisdom is too high for a Fool Desire above all things and in the first place the Fear of the Lord for that is the beginning of Wisdom and a good Understanding have all they that do thereafter So may Wisdom pour forth her Words unto thee and give thee knowledge of wise Counsels Secrets and of witty Inventions but the wicked shall dwell in a dry land For Friend believe me the hour is coming and the day hastens wherein all things shall be seen and enjoyed in the root which beareth them that all the Pots of Jerusalem may be holy to the Lord and holiness seen even upon the Horse Bridles and this was the Word of the Lord to Daniel concerning the last times that he should stand up in his Lot at the end of the days and that before the end came many should be purified and made white and tryed but the wicked should do wickedly and none of the wicked should understand but the wise should understand such are those who depart from evil and abide in Gods fear as I have said And as for the manner of rendring the sense of the Author I have been careful and faithful according to my ability to make himas plain to be understood by my Country-men as the Work would even possibly bear therefore have I not studied for abstruse words or high flown language For Veritatis simplex oratio the speech of Truth is simple or plain also that might have proved not a true genuine translation but a subversion to the Readers apprehension It is not Words but Things not Names but Natures not Resemblances but Realities not Sublimities but Simplicities that the Sons of Truth do seek after Yet the Jews seek a Sign and the Greeks seek after Wisdom but all in the wrong part and so wherein they think to be Wise they become Fools So that I may truly apply that antient observation unto the seeming Wise and Learned of this Age Satis eloquentiae sapientiae parum abunde fabularum audivimus Enough of Eloquence Fables abound But of true Wisdom little is to be found Wherefore be sober be watchful be humble be gentle be courteous be impartial wait in silence and desire of the Lord God in Faith and Love unfeigned unto the Truth as Truth that thou mayest receive it as it is in Jesus for there is no Truth out of him For thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the Foundations of the Earth and the Heavens are the work of thy hands they shall perish but thou shal remaine and as a Vesture shalt thou fold them up and they shall be changed but thou art the same Truth and thy years shall not fail So the God of Peace and Truth be with all the upright in heart who seek the Lord with their whole hearts in this backsliding generation and with every truly honest-hearted Reader of this Book that it may answer the laborious ends of the Author and the poor endeavour of thy real Friend John Chandler TO THE FRIENDLY READER S. D. FRANCIS MERCURIUS Van HELMONT A Philosopher by that ONE in whom are all things A Wandring HERMITE I Had at sometime concluded by reason of many wandring thoughts that it would be hardly obtained of me to Write any thing to be published for the use of my Neighbour in this present Age seeing that I have hated feigned varie-form vain and deceitful words which the Men of the World do
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
Books in great number of the Divines and Doctors of Medicine of all Europe maintaining their Athiesm consisting of blasphemous Censures the which Censures they had easily collected because they live in all Countries under every kind of habit and countenance of Religion where Money or Merchandise abounds and these censorious Infamies they did every where spread abroad in Temples and other publick Places whereby the little Book was made known and was hunted after by every one I have known many seeking to compass it at a dear rate neither could they obtain it for no Printer had any thing of it to be found seeing that they kept it only to themselves it being so often printed only for the collecting of the Stripes of Censurers they suffering the loss of above fifty thousand Royals whereby they might overthrow the Author thereof Moreover because the aforesaid little Book or Discourse was approved of by some Wise Learned and Moderate Men great injury was done to the Author God foresaw otherwise and blessed him that he should not be suppressed according to their desire And lo in this restraint suffered from above he published upon it another little Book instead of a forerunner and this other principal Book was to follow after that it may cleerly be manifest those Writings of his are not afraid of a Censors Rod. Fourthly that the Authors own original Copy of his Book or Writings in the Heirs Possession should be by craft or prize apprehended it cannot be accomplished to be abolished by the Fire before that it be printed for I certainly know that some disdainful Persons have by sending a certain Bookseller before them offered to the fore-threatned Heir a thousand Crownes in hand and besides offering an Assurance of another thousand on the condition that he would deliver up all the Writings of his Father which were in his Possession no one piece being detained the Heir smelt out the deceit as being void of the desire of Money he heard him spake he asked him many Questions he enquired into all things and plainly confounded him so that at last he imprudently brake forth into reproaches departing home with a vain Journey These and many such like Attempts being acted which the Heir hath had experience of do breed in him a distrust so that he only requires a preservation from him who aspireth unto those things that he may not be deceived Besides I have understood if I rightly remember that himself hath taken care to have those Writings imprinted by an honest and faithful Man who will be diligent to sell them into all parts Fiftly to suborn baâ—â—ard Books on the Author containing strange and false Doctrine that would be made manifest for the reason of Invention doth now every where plainly appear besides we should so awaken the Heir thereby and according to the signification of his name he would so loudly exclaim that it should be perceived by all unto whom means should not be wanting although he wants a Patrimony for truly it is affirmed and is the very truth that he hath found Elias the Artist and hath made him his familiar Friend by help of whom he shall propagate the Phylosophy of Pythagoras whose ultimate Tables he doth by unwearied Labour dig up with the signification of the Parent of the metallick Rod. The matter being thus let us not provoke him let us spare our Pains and preserve our Charges or Expences for if this Doctrin doth bear any evil intent before it it will soon goe to ruine of its own accord and if it descend from God and we resist it we could not satisfie our purpose and we should spend our pains and costs in vain bringing on our selves destruction both now and hereafter When as all the rest of the Doctors had now heard these solid Reasons they returned him great thanks and esteemed his disprovement of what the other had said for a decision of the matter except the aforesaid Seniour this man hearing those things through grief and fear was smitten with an Apoplexâ—e and so died an exceeding sudden Death his Sons cryed out with loud howlings or lamentations his Neighbours were awakened and resorted thither apace being ignorant of what was done they found all his Family exceedingly perplexed Whither likewise a studious Man approached who had observed this rout he presently sacrificed to his own profit for when he saw all those Writings there laying up and down and left he taking them up hid them under his Cloak and presently withdrew himself asson as the day shone forth he did his endeavour to read them unto every one of his Friends and Favourites who spread it abroad and made it known Hence it was further spread abroad that thou in digging hadst obtained the Will or Testament of Pythagoras and it was declared by the Supream Lord of hidden Treasures this Lord did presently commit thee to custody because thou hadst not brought forth the Testament of Pythagorus to light the which ought not to be attained by theft but by gift the Lord appointed three of his Wife Men the Seekers or Lovers of peculiar natural Science whom many of all sorts of Nations and Conditions yea and the great Ones of the World did follow or defend to go thither where thou wast detained who thus spake unto thee Be of good cheer this sentence shall be to be sustained by thee which our Lord hath brought upon thee the which begins after this manner By the command of thy Supream Lord unto whom it is certainly known that thou Mercurius Van Helmont in digging hast found a Treasure which he had commanded to be enquired after by his Subjects by whom thou being accused and convicted by certain and full proofs art condemned to Death unless thou shalt bring forth that very patched and covered Testament of Pythagoras and likewise shalt most fully discover by what way and knowledge thou hast found that These things being performed a liberty shall be allotted thee throughout all his Empire Thou hearing these things with a sorrowful Mind and being again refreshed with cheerfulness didst certainly know that by proceeding in denyals thou couldest not escape Death wherefore thou answeredst unto those that were sent in message unto thee after this manner following I intreat you oh ye Wise like as also Prudent Sirs if I can prevaile any thing with you that ye mutually attest my thankful mind unto our Lord for so clementious a sentence wherewith he hath vouchsafed to prosecute me and to demonstrate unto him that I have imprudently retained that Testament as being ignorant that it was to be delivered I now prepare my self to preform it together with all the Experience and Knowledge whereby I have obtained it and that indeed unto whom it shall please our Lord so that his Goodness may grant me the space of a whole Week within which time I am to satisfie our Lord whereby I may re-obtain my liberty according to the tenour of his Sentence hoping that that will
not be refused For in very deed and according to a just computation I stand in need of two dayes to wit that of Saturn with that of Sol whereby I may with my self begin and perfect every Enterprize or that I may dispose of all things in order which in the following day of Lune and so afterwards in the whole Week following I shall distinctly signifie Whereto the wise Men answered Oh Mercurius we are instructed with a full Command from our Lord by whose authority we condescend to thy Petition as being supported with Equity thou shalt perform all things according to thy own sentence that the wise Sirs being not learned after the common manner and moderate or courteous Men may find no fault in thee when they shall hear thee in the said day or subject thee to examination and even as thou hast bound thy self to be kept in custody for thy own and that an ample limitted term of dayes until thy promises are accomplished we will alwayes remain with thee for an enquiry into thy Conceptions the which thou shalt frame in this two precedent dayes space Thou rejoycedst in their Company for whosoever he was that beheld them gathered by their habit and gestures that they were godly for truly their Countenance did carry a divine gladness before it and thou didst say unto them Seeing that the day cometh for the winning whereof my obediences are not in the least to be contested know ye oh my wise Men that I prefixed no time for the recollecting of my Memory nor any the like thing because I have no need thereof but considering that to day is the first day of the Week but to morrow the last day the Lords day the seventh day wherein he had finished all things and wherein he had rested It hath seemed meet unto me to distribute and contain my Knowledge according to the rate of the Dayes of the week I beginning the future day of Lune one the sixth day of the week after the custom of Mortals for before God all things are eternal and present so that unto us as unto Mortals the first day may be accounted the last and I beginning from Saturns day to number backwards have need of two and forty dayes for the fulfilling of the whole week that which would stir up a weariness in many through the largeness of time In the mean time I will briefly rehearse all things I Mercurius being from my tender years brought up by my Father in the select School of Hermes and there after some sort seasoned my Spirit being unquiet was not content therewith as desiringly desiring thorowly to know the whole sacred Art or Tree of Life and to enjoy it Neither would I set my hands to Work unless I could certainly understand this from the beginning to the end Moreover I concluded in my mind that through an approvement of the truth I might be brought thither at the last without the help of outward Instruction I distributed with my self all Creatures first those External and Corporeal as I may so say and then those Internal Spiritual and Corporifying ones which Parts I did again refer or reduce towards and into one I was not able to subdivide and know those Creatures called Corporeal ones without the adjoyning of the Spiritual Corporifying ones I beheld those with an unwonted Countenance even as according to my Judgment I had consequently placed all in every one his own order as being free from the anticipated or fore-possessed false and obstinate Opinions of the Heathens who have never frequented Universities as by this my unpolished Style doth sufficiently appear Nevertheless well observe ye I utter no Saying in vain but that it doth signifie something and pertain to the whole My Spirit could perceive no delight or desire of study in Temporary and Fraile or Mortal things I did alwayes thirst and breath after Perfect and Eternal ones I was taken up into admiration within my self from momentary necessary created things and from hence on God who created Heaven and Earth at once the which the Prophane Phylosophers cannot apprehend and they who desire to come hitherto they must worship God by a firme Faith with an humble Hope and in true Love then shall they obtain a perfect Knowledge of himself and of all other Creatures before their Beginning in their Being or Essence and after their transchanging the which I will more largely and manifestly make out so far as may be done by Words for the Temporal and Eternal Health and Preservation of the Soul and Body according to the measure of every ones Capacity which all have not alike nor had they And that they might be the further holpen towards Salvation God out of his Goodness raised up Moses of the Prophets who might be useful to them in a Type which after the Dutch Language is also as much as to say Books and by his Writings to wit in his first Book of Creations which containeth all of whatsoever can be desired the which I in part as the whole had sometimes learned by heart according to Jerom's Translation the rather because it comprehends all things which man in his Own-ness Selfishness and My-ness and the like Appropriations cannot understand For whatsoever God hath created he hath created free and at liberty by One and in One and he that arrogates that thing to himself makes that very thing it self his own seperates himself from God and doth in himself enter into the way that leadeth towards utter Darkness And as God is an Incomprehensible Eternal Piercing and a Filling Fire Light and Glory wanting Beginning and Ending such is he in the Men his Saints Hy-lichten according to the Dutch is as much as to say He shineth in a co-united Love and Glory and in the Godly Sa-lichten according to the Dutch expresseth He ought to shine he will be so according to more and less or a greater and less measure but in evil Men who are Eternal in the Dark and separated he is also an Eternal burning Fire even as it is said Therefore even as God is the Eternal Good in the Dutch Idiome it expresseth God so also all whatsoever was created he created Good The first Man was constituted into Light and Good as being created of God yet not united in Eternal Rest and Glory but as being created after the Image of God in a freedom of Will the which is now becomeâ— Property in us through the seducement and transgression of the Prohibition and Admonition of God in the touching and eating of Death or of the Fruit of the forbidden Tree which Hevah or Eve the Mother of all Living touched and ate Those called the wise Men did speak unto thee Run thou not out so far before we perceive whether thou hast known thy self and that thou hast told us what thy self art Mercurius I am a Man created by the Almighty God after his own Image and Likeness possessing my Body of the Clay of the Earth which
on him But after that man hath lived in the flesh as an animall or sensitive living Creature God hath said My Spirit shall not remain or alwayes strive with man because he as flesh For the proper Genus or general kinde of the thing defined in the definition of a man which the Schooles name an Animall or living Creature that very thing God nameth degeneration a turning out of his wayes the corruption of Nature and destroying of his intention in Creation But that their constitutive difference of a man or the rational part doth belong to bruites is without doubt and also the penury of Logick which is altogether destitute of all definition and constitutive difference But Reason being now stript even unto a nakedness I got its every way displeasure because it seemed to me an empty Skeleton its Masks and Coverings being taken away Lastly I beheld the narrow poverty and unquiet foulness thereof especially when I was mindeful of the confusions and uncertainties wherewith it according to its wonted manner had intangled me I began therefore afterwards to contemplate that my intellect might more profit by figures likenesses visions of the phantafie in dreams than by the discourses of Reason Yea that frequent Discourses did ordinarily render their man foolish wrathful mad stotmy in his judgement and moveable or weak and so also of a tender health And at length I more fully looked into the progress of figures and Idea's and then I found those as yet encompassed with miseries and anguishes because Images were estranged by reason of their adulterating from the very truth of the thing and of its Essence by an unexcusable disagreement of every Similitude remote from identity or sameliness And then I thus judged because the distinction between the Images of the Phantasie and the Images of the intellect had not yet been made known unto me the which after their abstractions do remain in the very Centre of the Soul for I was for the most part wearied all the day about some knowable thing the which although it was unknown to me as to its foundation and manner yet by likenesses I determined it was by much labour to be known unto me At length when I perceived my self to be hindered from further proceeding because astonished I framed inwardly that any likeness of a thing not yet perfectly known is adorned with a possible adiacence of its essence Under which I once afterwards ere long beholding that in my imagination and as it were talking to the same I being at length notably wearied with study fell asleep that at least I might stir up a dreaming Vision whereby I might draw out that desirable thing to be known According to that saying Night unto night sheweth knowledge and surely it is a wonder how much light those kinde of Visions unfolded unto me especially my Body being not well fed for a good while before For I do not deny but that the essences of the thing sought for which were for the most part covered under the Cloak of a Riddle or confused and as yet very much subject to pluralities and interchangeable courses I many times attained by this meanes of knocking especially the helps of seeking having gone before and the ayds and wings of prayer being adjoyned And a holy man to whom I had uncovered every corner of my Conscience and the wearisomnesses of labours and years through restless nights said unto me Ah I would to God I had laboured as much and had spent as much time in loving of God as thou wretched man hast done in the searching out of knowable things whereof the last day will not require of thee a reason or account Truly I then praised the Lord that he had freely bestowed on me a certain nearer meanes of knowing and learning than reason could be the which did never pierce unto the former or cause and seldom unto the latter or effect and that moreover with much uncertainty For then I believed that the original misery of corrupted nature could not proceed further unto the once tasted light than by the aforesaid Images of the phantasie By the perswasion therefore of that man I desisted from a more narrow wishing seeking and searching into any thing I stripped my self of all curiosity and appetite of knowing I betook my self unto rest or poverty of spirit resigning my self into the most lovely will of God as if I were not in being not in working in desiring meer nothing in understanding nothing most especially because I knew manifold imperfections in my knowledges I conceiving great indignation with my self because that for a frail knowledge I had bestowed so many and so great labours Therefore I my self wonderfully displeased my self therefore I begged of the Lord that he would wholly sweep out of my minde every knowable thing and the profane desires thereof the which minde with this inscription I wholly offered unto his good pleasure In the mean time after two moneths in this renouncing of knowledges and naked poverty it once again happened unto me that I intellectually understood I placed my Athanar or the Instrument of my reception and operation another way But I straightway returned into my self neither knew I how long that light had remained That indeed I knew that the newness amazedness and rejoycing of the unwonted matter then stole away that light and made me to fall out of it into my antient confusions of darkness because that reason was not yet mortified Aristotle although he was wholly void of this light yet he hath seemed from some other to have described the perceivance of another concerning the labour of wisdom or things Adeptical It is better for a man to be disposed or inclined than to be knowing by description To wit by the deaf suggestion of another he calls it a better thing to have men disposed than if they were knowing that is by the help of demonstration By meanes whereof alone he elsewhere alway boasts that all knowledge in man doth arise I likewise acknowledged that we must bid farewell to Reason and Imagination as unto brutall faculties and that by reason of the misery of our fall if by hope we are drawn into the deep for a sound knowledge of the truth I have known likewise that an easie Translation of the understanding was required and a pleasing transchanging of it self into the form of the thing intelligible in which point of time indeed the understanding for a moment is made as it were the intelligible thing it self But seeing the intellect is perfected by understanding and that nothing is perfected but by that which hath a resemblance with it in its own nature therefore I gathered that the understanding and things understood as such ought to be or to be made of the same nature but this ought to be done without labour and disquietness but with rest in the light proper to them with the withdrawing depriving and wanting of any other created help whatsoever But if a forreign
judging or willing 21. The figures of the windes are described in the Heaven 22. The knowledge of the signification of the Stars is unknown to man 23. The Magitians or wise men of the East 24. From new Wine Sooth-sayers or Diviners of God 25. The Prophesie of Feasters was from new Wine 26. That the drunken or besotted gift of Paracelsus was made known to the Hebrews 27. Three histories of predictions 28. The Stars onely to incline resisteth the Scriptures 29. The inclining of the Stars how far it reacheth 30. The Stars the solemn prayses of God do not necessitate as causes but as signes bewraying the will of the Lord. 31. A solving of an objection 32. The common explaining of the Proverb derogates from the Grace of God 33. That the Heaven doth not incline 34. The seed of man doth of its own accord deflux into a living animall and dispersing soul 35. VVhat the seminall properties of inclinations are 36. A fourfold inclination 37. The inclination of calling is onely from God but not from the Stars 38. The morall inclination is from the seed and from education 39. The inclination vitall or of the life is from the seed and education 40. The vain and proud presumption of Astrologers 41. The inclination of fortunes is immediately from the hand of the Lord. 42. The Schooles seduced by the evill spirit of Paganisme 43. The sloathfull or careless negligence of Astrologers 44. How the sensitive soul of man differs from the soul of a bruit beast 45. How custome brings forth inclination 46. How a wise man shall have dominion over the Stars 47. Why predictions from the Stars are fundamentally vain 48. The error of the Authour 49. Astrologers confess their deceipts 50. They suppose astrall or Starry effects from causes not in being HItherto concerning the Elements their qualities Complexions and contrarieties in order to the Science of Medicine without which indeed I have thought the Study of naturall Philosophy to have lost as it were its end no otherwise than if a Clergy-man shall treat of the State politique or of War-like affaires For why S. Paul drives every Sacrificer from the like things No man he saith going a warfare intangleth himself with the affaires of this life Therefore the Studies of naturall Philosophy have I directed to a farther end to wit to the profit of men but not to the delighting of the Readers For this cause also I declame concerning the Stars because they are thought to be the causers of any kinde of Diseases Inclinations and Fortunes And indeed Paracelsus at length consented in this thing although he be refractory in all other things to the Study of the Antients First of all I will take the Text The Heavens declare the glory of God and the Firmament sheweth his handy works For that soundeth that the Heavens were chiefly created that they might declare the large Majesty Power Goodness and Wisdom of God to wit on which four Pillars the whole Globe of the Universe stands and is supported but the Star-bearing Heaven doth as it were a Preacher shew the wonderfull works of the Lords hands to intellectuall Creatures For thus far the Church admitteth of Meteorical Predictions the barrennesses of years and their fruitfulnesses the stations of sowings the dangers of sailings the deaths of chief men Plagues inundations yea whatsoever things do not depend on the direction of our will or judgement to wit as all those things are believed to be connexed with the first qualities of the Elements by a contingent or accidentall consequence even so that although it doth admit of the deaths of great men the tumults of Wars and fires to be prognosticated of in Ephemerides yet it will have those things to be beheld not as free contingencies or arbitrall and much lesse as necessary ones but nakedly as it were the effects of the first Qualities and Complexions Wherein how much they have erred I have already demonstrated in the premises And moreover how far they have in this thing gone back from the holy Scriptures I will here shew If the Heavenly influences do obtain the reason of a cause surely their effects shall of necessity be connexed to their causes and so also thus far at least necessary after the manner of other second causes whose effects the causes being placed do necessarily succeed unless they are supernaturally hindered or changed Which thing is alike proper to all causes neither doth it include a singularity for the Heaven but if the Influences of Heaven are onely after the manner of a sign and fore-shewing surely neither shall they import a lesse necessity but a far more strict one if we believe the certain foreknowledge of Divine Providence and do believe the Handy works of the Lord to be fore-signified by the Stars Therefore after what manner soever it may be taken the Stars do necessitate The Stars shall be unto you for Signes Times or Seasons dayes and years But these Works of the Lord shewed from a necessity by the Stars and by the Firmament are not the works of the first six dayes For neither could the Stars shew forth either themselves or what things were created straightway after them without an absurdity of speech In the next place the Stars ought not to foreshew Winter and Summer which they actually cause by their Blas and which we do ordinarily know and perceive to invade us by degrees but they ought indefinitely to foreshew the Handy works of the Lord and rather those which are called contingent ones than otherwise necessary and ordinary Revolutions Which contingences do not therefore respect the fruitfulnesses of Victuall which they do cause but for the Majesty Wisdom and goodness of the Creator the Stars ought to foreshew those future Handy works of the Lord whence he hath taken to himself the name the God of Armies by whom Kings reign a zealous God a revenger translating Kingdoms from Nation to Nation by reason of injustice which kinde of works are contained in the life birth vertue or power continuance change interchange motions and interchangeable courses of successive things And so the preachings of the Stars must needes have place in the removing of Scepters and by consequence in the foreshewing of the meanes by which those things are done framed do depend and subsequently follow as it were by second causes For such kinde of effects are not to be taken away from the Handy works of the Lord without blasphemy Therefore of this sort are also Tempests Earth-quakes wonted and unwonted flouds of waters For the Lord of Hosts giveth Scepters to the Shepherd which he taketh away and translates from the King by reason of the injustice of Kings of Clergy and Judges Therefore by consequence the Stars do foreshew this injustice also If the translations of Crowns are the works of the Lord if the lots of all men do stand in the hands of the Lord For neither doth Faith permit fortune or misfortune to be else-where or to
be expected from elsewhere For he is the Prince of life and death the Alpha and Omega of all things He giveth and taketh away Victories Wars Famine and Pestilences also second partaking causes also free mediating con-causes and occasionall ones accompanying them over all which notwithstanding God is sits as chief as the totall immediate and independent cause Therefore the Firmament is a preacher of all these Works for neither doth God more erre in these free contingent things than in animall accustomed and necessary things if the Firmament was made by God the Mover and knower of all things to foreshew The Land of Libyssa shall over-cover the dead Carcase of Hannibal as Appian relates it to have been foretold by an Oracle of the evill spirit Hannibal hoped he saith that he should therefore die in Lybia or Africa who died in Bythinia near the River Libyssus For the Devil cannot foreknow the lots or events of future Wars which are in the hand of the God of Armies and as yet in the future will or judgement of man unless he shall first read them decyphered in a fore-telling Star Which Picture of the Stars while they no where finde mentioned but cannot deny but that the Devill declares things to come they have meditated of a privy shift and do say that the knowledges of future things are nearly related to Angels and so are co-natural to them but that they differ according to the Quires or Regions from whence they were expelled so that they which fell down from the highest Hierarchy of the Angels should have a much more clear understanding of future things which understanding because it was naturall God had not took away from an evill Spirit For neither is it more naturall to the Devil to have known the enlightnings concerning future things than to have known the natures and names of living Creatures not seen before like Adam But I conceive with Dionysius that the inferior Angels are enlightned by the superior but this light continually to beam forth from the wisdom of the Father and never to have been natural to Angels but to be a free and beatifical gift Next that every good gift doth descend from the Father of Lights that the gift of the Counsels of God and of his future works is not to be searched out by Creatures by their gifts of nature else the naturall knowledge of evill spirits should be almost infinite if it should include in it self the fortunes of mortall men to come distinguished in their second causes yea if an evill spirit otherwise had had this natural participation of divine counsel he had not been ignorant of future effects which he himself as the fire-brand of all evills was to raise up and suffer and so he could scarce have sinned Therefore it is more safe to believe contingent or accidentall things to be painted out by the Stars not indeed all but perhaps those of one age and likewise the Tragedy of every man to be deciphered in his own Star the Picture whereof ceaseth with the closure of his life They will say Hannibal took poyson Satan perswading him But this he did not certainly know as neither could he foretell it if man hath free will and therefore neither did he know that Hannibal would certainly obey his perswasions neither doth Hannibal die by the foolish perswasion of Satan which could not be knit to its causes depending on the divine will For neither doth he die by the poyson but first he is a run-away from many adverse battels But the Lord the onely God of Armies hath Victories in his own hand neither is the evill spirit chief in Battels Therefore to have foreknown the issue of Wars is the same as of free contingencies For truly Victory doth for the most part arise occasionally from a contingent thing not premeditated of therefore I conclude that the infernal enemy doth read the Pictures of the Stars whereby the Firmament is said to foretel the Handy works of the Lord. But thou wilt say whence do the Heavens make Predictions which no mortall men have known and the which to be known by the evill spirit is wickedness In the first place it should be sufficient that the fore-tellings of future things do chiefly declare the glory of God and the infiniteness of his wisdom and fore-knowledge to wit that it may not remain unsignified And then The Lord hath not done a word which he doth not signifie to his servants the Prophets Lastly if the number of mortall men be scarce the hundreth of Angels that are good Spirits it sufficeth that these at least do read the foretokens of future things and therefore do they praise the Lord anew Lucifer indeed hath waxed proud by the much knowledge of things both of those that do exist and of things afterwards to be and it was naturall to him the which he breaths in without grace But it doth not therefore follow that he hath known all mortall men to come and their fortunes vices defects sins grace and whatsoever things should be hereafter like to a second cause as neither the secret mysteries of God that are revealed in succession of dayes and added to a connexion of causes But whether Plagues do arise and rage or Tyrannies Wars destructions tumults or the beginnings of arch-Hereticks the Lord permitting them at leastwise those things shall be as well connexed to their own necessary and second causes although arbitrall and occasionall ones as otherwise Meteors are to theirs For neither is the office of foreshewing the Handy works of the Lord to be restrained to the changes of the Air alone but absolutely unto all the works of the Lords hands Because if the Stars can be preachers of the threatning effects of the wrath of God which without second causes should be committed to the smiting Angel why shall they not also in like manner shew the works of the Lord deputed or reckoned to second and free causes For truly what things soever God foreknoweth he can also if he will shew them by his Instruments but those proper Instruments of God are the Firmament and the Lights thereof as the Scripture witnesseth Yea truly I have been bold to attribute more Authority to the Heaven than what hath wont to be given unto it by the holy Scriptures To wit that the Stars are to us for foreshewing Signes Seasons or changes of the Air lastly for dayes and years wherefore the Text takes away all power of causes besides in the abovesaid revolutions of seasons dayes and years Neither do they act I say but by a motive and alterative Blas But the Stars are said to act by motion and light onely but motion in the Schooles is said to act onely by reason of the divers Aspects of Light for that the motion of the Heavens even the swiftest as well as those remote from us should produce as well heat as motion is a devise or fiction For truly the daily motion of the Heavens is almost
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
he hath remained uncertain and unconstant whether he might rather determine the three things which by his own Authority he called The three Principles of all corporall things to wit Salt Sulphur and Mercury for the general cause of all diseases than his own brought in Tartar And therefore he hath left both of the aforesaid assertions to strive Neverthelesse the more famous Physitians have at this day yielded themselves unto Tartar Wherefore seeing there is not in either at this day the truth of the Causes and Remedies of Diseases I have held it worth my labour and for the good of my neighbour to brush and sweep away both those errours of Paracelsus out of the Schools That Physitians who while they do now incline unto the Doctrine of Tartar all errours being at length removed they may betake themselves to the true knowledge of diseases and remedies And that from thence my neighbour which thing I onely have wished may receive profit For the knowledge of things according to the Principles by me delivered is drawn by the definition But a definition is to be taken from a knowledge of the causes And therefore in so great darkness on every side and ignorances of Medicine I will endeavour to bring those that shall succeed yea and likewise modern young Beginners into the true knowledge of diseases and remedies For I have long since lost my hope of the Seniours who will refuse to learn being brought to that pass as well by reason of sluggishness of assenting to the inventions of Pagans already drunk up and converted into nourishment and of labouring about Furnaces as through a bashfulness of learning of me a poor man of little esteem the last of Phylosophers The father of Paracelsus being a Bastard of the master of the Teutonick Knights went for a trivial Physitian rich in a famous Library who committed his son Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus of Bombast to Tritemius of Sphanheime Whence he being rich in the substance of Secrets went unto Spagyrick or Alchymistical works under Sigismund Fugger For he was not there given to Venus indeed a Sow in a place where three wayes met had gelded him Secondly not to sloath nor spent he his life in flattery being earnestly desirous of knowledge For he about the twentieth yeer of his age searching into the divers Mines of the Minerals of Germany at length came into Muscovy in whose borders he being taken by the Tartars our gelded Physitian is brought to the Cham from thence with the Prince the Chams son he is sent away to Constantinople At length about the 28th yeer of his age he obtained the Stone that makes Gold it being given unto him for which things sake he took up his Inn in Basil where when he now became famous through many cures of diseases he obtained the Chair of Medicinal Phylosophy that he might give himself wholly up to Spagyrical labours Indeed as the stone that makes gold lifted up his mind and he saw the narrow substance of Physitians and wandring errours of the same he had long since aspired unto the chief-dome of healing Indeed he taught at Basil full three yeers space and expounded a Book concerning Tartar and likewise of degrees and compositions surely Both the work of his owninvention and burdened with many Anxieties In the mean time as every one 's own pleasure draws him he indulging drinkings more than was meet began to despise the Chair yea and the Latine whence he had almost forgotten it and he supposed that he ought to speak truth only in the Germane Tongue Therefore although he was born with a rare wit yet he was more happy in the gift of the Azoth or Practick than in the searching out of the Theory He I say first obtruded Tartar on us into the cause almost of all diseases and accused us when he perceived that neither in the Schools of the Antients as neither in his own three first things he was sufficiently credited To which Patron the Schools at this day have subscribed I also at sometime thought my self wholly gratified as it were with a found Treasure till the Lord otherwise instructed me First of all the pages of Galen and Paracelsus have disputed whether the matters of a Tartarous humour and phlegm were not the same and onely pure Sunonymal things But at length being amazed at coagulations or neither daring to ascribe so great a Troop of Diseases unto one onely phlegme the more learned Galenists admitted of a tartarous humour and began to use Remedies which they begged from fugitive Servants Which things although they were all poysonous base and adulterate and are at this day as yet more nevertheless they have invented a knowledge with pots or Boxes that they may be daily drawn forth for uses Likewise Tartar rising up the humours have almost failed among the more refined wits Therefore the disgrace or reproach of Physitians from the ill success of curing hath perswaded them to look back unto Chymical Remedies and the grounds of their own Art being neglected they began promiscuously to use as well those Chymical Remedies and most miserable poysons indifferently as those which their Dispensatories do describe as well to abolish heats as to shave off the phlegms of the stomach so that the sloath of the Remedies and speculations of Galen being well perceived the Galenists do by degrees decline unto Tartarous humours Therefore what things I have read out of many Books which Paracelsus writeth concerning Tartarers I will contract into a brief tract Nature being at first a beautiful Virgin was defiled by sin not indeed by her own neither therefore for a punishment to her self but seeing she was created for the use of ungrateful man she was as it were defiled with the fault of her inhabitant that even by the defect of nature he might in some sort purge the guilt It after some sort repented the Creator that he had commanded nature to obey the disobedient Therefore he appointed that the Earth should hence-forward bring forth Thistles and Thorns under the allegory whereof the curse and rise of Tartarers are designed unto us To wit their matter which should exceeding sharply prick us For the words do shew the progeny of the Earth by the use whereof they do signifie that Diseases should at length be incorporated in us For first of all the hostile Tartarers do trayterously enter with meats and drinks they pierce into the bottom are radically co-mingled and shut up with a hidden Seal Therefore some of them do even presently separate themselves within from the pure noutishment but others do remain together with the nourishment which being wasted away the surviving Tartarers are coagulated under the form of a Muscilage Clay or Bole next of Sand or a Stone which then are not onely uncapable of receiving the breath of life but moreover they keeping their wild Thorn have become as the most inward immediate causes of all Diseases the daily Nurses of the calamity of mortals For
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
not for Man a fatherliness of his Mind but in God alone and therefore his original Generation and Propagation was reserved in the Power of God the Creator And especially while as its knowledge of it self is wanting to the Mind which is immortal and infinite in Duration whereby it may represent it self to it self to wit that it may decypher a sealed similitude of it self in the Seed Therefore indeed neither can the immortal Mind ever bring the Seed of Man unto that which it self shall never have in it self to wit out of it self to decypher the Image of God For Man is so made the Image of God that he is the cloathing of the Deity the Sheath of the Kingdom of God that is The Temple of the holy Spirit Man therefore being essentially created into the Image of God after that he rashly presumed to generate the Image of God out of himself not indeed by a certain Monster but by something which was shadowily like himself with the Whoredom or Ravishment of Eve he indeed generated not the Image of God like unto that which God would have therefore unimitable as being Divine but in the vital air of the Seed he generated Dispositions careful at some time to obtain a sensitive discursive and motive Soul from the Father of Lights the Fountain of all Paternity yet Mortal and to Perish into which nevertheless he of his own goodness inspires ordinarily the substantial Spirit of a Mind shewing forth his own Image And so that Man in this respect endeavoured to generate his own Image not but after the manner of Bruit-Beasts by the copulation of Seeds which at length should obtaine by request a soulified Light from the Creator and the which they call a sensitive Soul For from thence hath proceeded another Generation conceived after a beast-like manner mortal and uncapable of eternal Life after the manner of Beasts a bringing forth with Pains and subject to Diseases and Death and so much the more sorrowful or full of misery by how much that very Propagation in our first Parents dared to invert the intent of God Therefore the unutterable goodness forewarned them That they should not tast of that Tree And otherwise he foretold That the same Day they should die the Death and should feel all the Root of Calamities which accompanies Death Deservedly therefore hath the Lord deprived both our Parents of the benefit and seat of Immortality To wit Death succeeded from a conjugal and bruital Copulation Neither remained the Spirit of the Lord with Man after that he began to be Flesh Furthermore because that defilement of Eve shall thenceforth be continued in the propagating of Posterity even unto the end of the World From hence the Sin of the despised fatherly Admonition and natural Deviation from the right way is now among other Sins for an impurity through an inverted carnal and well nigh bruital Generation and is truly called Original Sin that is Man being sowed in the Pleasure of the Concupiscence of the Flesh shall therefore alwayes reap a necessary Death in the Flesh of Sin But The knowledge of Good and Evil which God placed in the disswaded Apple did contain the Concupiscence of the Flesh that is an occult forbidden Conjunction diametrically opposite unto the State of Innocency which State was not a State of Stupidity because he was he unto whom before the Corruption of Nature the Essences of all living Creatures whatsoever were now made known according to which they were to be named from their Property and at their first sight to be essentially distinguished And moreover S. Hildegard unto the Moguntians or those of Mentz saith Adam was formed by the Finger of God which is the holy Spirit in whose Voice every sound before he sinned was the sweetnesse of all Harmony and of the whole musical Art So that if he had remained in the State wherein he was formed the weaknesse of mortal Man could not have been able to bear the virtue and shrilness of his Voice But when the Deceiver of him had heard that Man from the inspiration of God had begun to sing so shrilly and that hereby to repeat the sweetness of the Songs of the heavenly Country he counterfeited behold how far now Man hath departed from thence with his hoarse Voice the Engines of Craft seeing his wrath against him was in vain he was so affrighted that he was not a very little tormented thereby And he alwayes afterwards busily endeavoured by the manifold Devises of his wickednesse to invent and search out that he may not only cease to interrupt or expel divine praises from the Heart of Man but also from the mouth of the Church These things she It is a devoted Opinion of mystical Men That Birds do sing Praises unto God I under a humble correction do think otherwise For if that should be true they should sing all the year neither should they cease assoon as the lust of generating is fulfilled which argument is serviceable unto our Position For truly seeing the Males only do sing but not the Females That from a common Nature Adam was the more leacherous and incontinent and from his Sex more lustful than Eve whose Chastity therefore being beloved of God seemeth proper to that Sex Man therefore through eating of the Apple attained a knowledge that he had lost his radical innocency and that instead thereof he had made an empty exchange of the sordid Concupiscence of the Flesh For neither before the eating of the Apple was he so dull or stupified that he knew not or did not perceive himself naked but with the effect of shame and brutal Concupiscence he then first declared that he was naked For the sacred Text is every where so chaste that the most High would not name the Concupiscence of the Flesh it self at least-wise by a proper name yea nor also accuse of it while he forewarned of the eating of the Apple for a necessity of Death that that brutal Concupiscence might not be made known unto Man even so much as by name And therefore neither would he have Concupiscence to be named in Genesis by reason of the prompt perfidiousness of that People but he called it innocency lost from a gotten shame the which he would afterwards have to be weighed in the Church by its own circumstances And so that therefore he presently translated Adam after his Creation from the Earth into Paradise and for that Cause also he formed the Woman in Paradise least she whom he had made and appointed to remaine a Virgin should behold the copulation of Bruit-beasts in the Earth For in the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth and every Creature contained therein But he made and formed those things materially by the passive and commanding Word Let it be done to wit he spake that Word and all things were created But in six dayes space after he made the Forms of things created and all things were orderly made into the
changed for those only shall rise again changed who shall rise again glorified in the Virgin-Body of Regeneration which change the Apostle understood because that He who is not born again cannot enter into the Kingdom of God And therefore He that shall rise again being not born again by consequence also shall not be changed from his antient Being if he shall rise again from Death neither therefore also shall he have entrance unto Gods Kingdom because by the new Birth the whole Man is made Spirit And therefore he which shall rise again from the new Birth shall rise again in a spiritual Nature Otherwise He that is born of the Flesh and not born again of the Spirit shall hear indeed the Voice of him that is born of the Spirit but shall not know from whence it may come or whither it may go This indeed is the changing of Bodies into Spirit and the change of Bodies in the Resurrection or it is the Glorification of those that are to be saved after the Resurrection But other Sins were expiated indeed through Repentance with the victory and triumph of the Lamb but the loss of that Virginity and primitive Purity doth without Regeneration reserve an Eternal Spot of Impurity and Uncapacity No otherwise than as a virginal conservation and Integrity of the re-born Faithful gives unto Virgins that are born again a Golden or Laurel Crown equalized unto Martyrdom Christ therefore as he is the Father of this Virginity so also the Father of the Age to come But those that are to be saved are his own new Creature and new Regeneratition Who to wit hath given them Power to become the Sons of God unto these who believe in his Name who are born not of Bloods nor of the Will of the Flesh nor by the Will of Man but of God after a most chast manner of the holy Spirit by whom before the brutal Concupiscence of the Flesh arose it was decreed that altogether every Man ought to be born of his Mother being a Virgin Therefore Christ being the Top and Lover of Chastity doth distinguish Men as well in this Age or Life by Chastity as in Heaven and will grace them with an unimitable and eternal Priviledge For a great Company followed the Lamb whithersoever he should go and Sang the Song which no other was able to Sing But these are they who are not defiled with Women For there are Virgins of both Sexes Because there shall not be there Jew or Greek But they are all one in Christ For the Almighty hath chosen his Gelded Ones who have Gelded themselves for the Kingdom of God its sake of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven Therefore married Persons are reckoned to be defiled with Women and Mothers to have conceived their off-springs in Sin and in this thing are far inferiour to Virgins For indeed because the Gospel promiseth unto Mortals not only that the Son of God was Incarnate and suffered for their Salvation But that moreover these two Mysteries least else they should be frustrate are to be applyed unto individual Persons I indeed contemplate thus of this Application that as man through the Sin of lust brake no less the Intent of God than his Admonishment and the humane Nature was therefore afterwards radically Corrupted and that thereupon another and almost brutal Generation thereof followed Therefore the joyful Message hath included as well an Abolishment of Original Sin as of other Sins consecutively issuing from thence Who by dying destroyed our Death not his own because he had none The which is not understood of temporal Death for the righteous Man as yet to this day dyeth just even as before the Passion of the Lord but of Eternal Death Therefore seeing man since the Fall ought to be Born Increase and Multiply no longer from God but from the Bloods of the Sexes by the Will of the Flesh and of Man nor from thence could ever be able to rise again of himself and to re-assume his lost and antient purity nor cease that he might again begin to be otherwise and better therefore the joyful message hath brought an assurance unto us that Baptisme should be unto us for the remission of sins through a new birth of Water and of the holy Spirit That our mind as it were through a new Nativity of its Inne by Regeneration might be partakers of the unspotted Virginity and humanity of our Lord. Which New-birth doth indeed repose the Soul into its former state to wit by taking away the sin or debt and the stinks or noisomenesses thereof but by reason of the continuance of Adamical flesh in which the Immortal Mind liveth the antient possession or inclination unto sin is not taken away nor is there a translation of the corruption drawn from the impure original of the blood of Adam But that this is really so we are perswaded to believe For God doth manifestly daily grant a testimony of that actual Grace and attained Purity to be derived into the Body of those that are Baptized through a true and substantiall Regeneration as well in Body as in Soul For truly for this end and in this respect alone Mahometans are Baptized for a proper reproach because Baptisme from the fact or deed done however unlawfully it be administred and received takes away from them for the future the noisomness inbred in them otherwise to endure for their Life time such as in all the Hebrews or Jewes in many places up and down we do daily observe to be with loathing and weariness The true effect therefore of Regeneration and its co-promised character doth much shine in Baptisme even outwardly also in a defectuous Body And the enemies of the Christian Name do serve us for unvoluntary witnesses unto this thing Yea the perpetuity of the same Effect confirms the unobliterable Character or Impression of Baptisme and the wickedness of it being repeated But the New-birth by Baptisme doth not yet for that Cause take away a necessity of Death For Baptisme forsaketh its own with the fardle of a defiled and Adamical body begotten by the Will of Man And for that Cause also the Soul as subject unto the Vices of the corrupted Body and of a Will long agoe corrupted Wherefore by reason of the frailty of Impure Nature also an easie inclination and frequency of Sinning Baptisme hath been scarce sufficient for those of ripe years otherwise for the more younger sort it is abundantly sufficient Therefore the Sacrament of the Altar is Wine which buddeth forth Virgins Which is as much as to say the end and scope of the Lords Incarnation or of the instituted Sacrament of the Eucharist should bud forth Virgins as demonstrating that the intent of the Creator from the beginning esteemed of and reckoned upon Virginity alone and of how great abhorrency Numb 25. Luxury is in the sight of the Lord. For although Bigamy or a Plurality of Wives and likewise a dismissing of ones Wife and much loosing of
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
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
and Herbs are far less Arcanums than those aforesaid Lastly the volatile Salts of Herbs and Stones do shew forth a precise particularity neither do they reach unto the efficacy of Universal Medicines But his Corollate the which one alone is purgative by Stool cures the Ulcers of the Lungs Bladder Wind-pipe Kidneys by purging so that it also utterly roots out the Gowt Indeed it is the Mercury of the Vulgar from which the Liquor Alkahest hath been once distilled and it resides in the bottom coagulated and powderable being not any thing inâ—reased or diminished in its weight From which Powder the Water of the Whites of Eggs is to be cohobated until it hath attained the colour of â—oral I praise the Lord of things in an Abject or lowly Spirit because he reveals his Secrets unto the little Ones of this World and doth alwayes govern the Stern least these his benefits should fall into the hands of the unworthy I have therefore discerned that the Secrets of Paracelsus do take away Diseases but that they reach not unto the Root of long Life I have also discerned that Mineral Remedies unto whatsoever the highest degree they are brought yet that they are unfit for yielding Nourishment unto the first constitutive Parts because they reserve the middle Life of the concrete Bodies from whence they were extracted For for that cause they never wholly lay aside a mineral Disposition Yea and therefore they depart from the tenour of long Life Yea neither shall I ever be easily induced to believe that the Phylosophers Stone can vitally be united with us by reason of its exceeding immutable substance which is incredibly fixed against the tortures of the Fire being undissolvably homogeneal or simple in kind that is by reason of its every way impossibility of separation destruction and digestion so far is it from conducing to long Life Histories subscribe unto me that none who obtained that Stone enjoyed a long Life but that a short Life hath befalleâ— many by reason of the dangers undergone in labouring But moreover neither let Hucksters hope that Meats which do mightily nourish will perform long Life For although they may afford strength unto those that are upon recovery yet they afterwards weaken them being nourished The which Caesar also testifies For the more tender Meats are easily consumed breed tender Flesh and suffumigate or smoakiâ—e the vital Powers through their more greatly adust savour But the Studies of Physitians are buisied about the delights of the Kitchâ—â— which they name the Dietary Part for they have been misled into errour by thinking that if Food of good Juice and tender being administred in a due dose doth profit those upon recovery they have thought also that the more strong Persons being manifoldly nourished with the same Food shall be raised up into the highest increase of strength For there is not a process made in seeding as in Arithmetick where ten Pounds lift up nine and by donsequence a hundred Pounds ninety But he that eats very much and drinks abundantly shall not therefore become stronger than he that shall live more moderately For truly Nature keeps noâ— so much the proportions of Numbers as the proportions of the Powers of things alterable according to the Power of their own Blas However it is at least-wise it succeeds with Physitians according to their desire Because plenty of venal Blood breeds Excrements Physitians are called for and so they command the rules of Food at least-wise to profit themselves and they shorten the Life in those that live medicinally and miserably CHAP. CXVI The Mountain of the Lord. VVHo shall ascend into the Mountain of the Lord Or who shall stand in his holy Place He that is innocent in his Hands and of a clean Heart who hath not betaken his Soul to Vanity nor hath sworn in deceit to his Neighbour this Man shall receive the blessing from the Lord and mercy from God his Saviour The Words sound Eternal blessedness It is so Notwithstanding nothing hinders but that that figural and typical Speech may also unfold its Truth according to the Letter seeing it must needs be that the Type doth co-answer to the thing signified by the Type Truly I have alwayes observed that almost all the Mysteries of God were celebrated in mountains For Abraham was commanded to ascend a Mountain and there to sacrifice his only begotten Son for a Figure of the Sacrifice that was to be offered in Mount Calvary God commanded Moses to ascend up into a Mountain that he might talk with him and he gave him the Law And Moses talked with him face to face for the space of forty dayes and nights In Mount Horeb the Lord was transfigured c. All which things might have been done in the Desart and the God of Armies could have encompassed Moses with Lightning and Fire as well in a Plain as in a Mountain that no Mortal might have approached thereunto but a Mountain was alwayes chosen from a priviledge And the blessing from the Lord is promised in ascending unto the Mountain of the Lord For the Lord could have signified his Precepts unto Moses in a shorter space neither was there need of forty continual Dayes and Nights but that also delay might by its weight for delay in natural things is required for a just or due Efficacy of the maturities of things denote some hidden Mystery For naturally I understand that in Mountaines wanting an endemical malignity there is not only a most pure Air far remote from Dreg and Corruption commonly seperated from Errours and Defects and by reason of Colds most refined from all defilement but also that there is the Place from whence through the continuation of its Magnal there is a most dispatched in-beaming of the heavenly Bodies or Influences because a drinking in of a most pure Skie For I remembred that one Morning I being fasting felt in the Alpes the sweetness of an inbreathed Air the which I never before nor after felt in all my Life For it is certain that the Almighty hath not framed so great a Bunch in Nature in vain And it is certain that all the Riches of the World are issued out of Mountains And then the best Fountains and most famous Rivers are conversant with us out of Mountains by reason of their steepness In the next place all Nations which are the inhabitants of Mountains are of an hardier Body and of a more vigorous or flourishing Life than those who inhabit pleasant Fields Which Effects do manifest their Causes because a more sweet and purer Air is there in-breathed and every Gas being deprived of its Filths returns into the pure matter of Water But that God lifts up so great an Earth or the very face of the Earth into an heap or hath built so many great or rocky Stones upon the same or hath conjoyned it into one rocky Stone nor yet hath enriched it with any Mineral in which respect he might seem to have collected so
a Crook followed at my back making a path the rule of my return Therefore I insisting only in my own footsteps I there saw far other things than the foregoing company of Ancestors had described But because I was alone strength was wanting for so difficult weights and I having endeavoured many things the rout of Bats being against me at length after the manner of the former I departed without fruit yea far worse because through long delay the light was darkned unto me and my eyes afterwards refused to bear any further light for why because they had now too much accustomed themselves to darkness Even so that unless I had wholly abstained from my stubborn intent the heavenly light of the day had profited me nothing at leastwise this one only and most true thing I had learned that we all having trusted only unto humane aids did walk in thick darkness through unknown ways most difficult windings and paths of the night imitating the industry of a few and those badly to be trusted in neither that at length we did bring any fruits from thence except the light badly consumed be-darkned eyes cheeks looking pale with greyness confusions of mind presumptions of vanity and the image of the night at hand full of terrour and despair Moreover I discerned that all sorts of Knaves and Harlots Deceivers Jews and Tormenters when as they had once intruded themselves by their own rashness they were soon by boldness raised to a degree For I have not found in any a greater liberty more ample rashness more cruel credulities more thick darknesses and more frequent confusions than in the most noble of gifts wherein it is free for any one to kill if the murder be involved in the Cloak of a succour and the party slain be covered with earth Therefore I begged of God that he would vouchsafe to set a bound in so wicked naughtinesses which they committed against the Divine Image of his Majesty But soon after I discerned the vanity of my desire For truly as long as mens own profit holds the superiority and medicine is exercised as a Plow they contend in vain who endeavour to compose my Christ the Father of the poor with Mammon I praised those Cities in times past wherein it was not lawful for an undiscreet Colledge of Physitians to rage in a drunken manner on the health of their Neighbour But afterwards I laughed at my own blockishness because they were excepted who cured freely Whence I learned that the gain of Physitians had provided that Law for themselves and that mans own gain would every where vitiate the Laws of Charity that none would from a certain hope be found for the future unto whom that exception might square I saw therefore that in the custome of Laws defects grew over and that Laws were rendred barren of juice or virtue and surely my stupidity was by so much the greater in this because more gross errours in curing are no where committed than those which even Chair-Physitians do through a punishable ignorance commit even as in my whole work I have endeavoured and been ready to shew mechannically by the fire practically and by all kind of demonstrations And indeed but a few ages ago arrogancy sloath and the extinguishment of Charity sequestred a Chyrurgion from a Physitian wherefore afterwards servants handled manual instruments and operations as if it unbeseemed a Christian to help his Neighbour with his hands In the mean time some Noble Matrons healed many defects with their own hands that were despaired of by Physitians Truly after that the Studies of ambition and gain were practised Charity grew cold Mercy was extinguished Art perished and the Giver of lights withdrew his gifts the number of our calamities increased and Physitians were made the Fable of the vulgar Truth remained buried in the grave of Science and instead thereof a confused kind of brawlings arose being discursive which was accounted for doctrine For Physitians described and drew to themselves the whole Army of Diseases almost grieving that the Catalogue of them was as yet so small For they being allured with the facility of the Art of Galen promised to measure all diseases by the Geometrical demonstrations of degrees of heat and cold and to heal them all thereby Chyrurgions also as well the Modern as Antient from an imitation and emulation of these largely and widely treated promiscuously of all diseases snatching the cures of them all under themselves in the sight and despight of their former Masters Because at first and from the root of Medicinal Ordination all things belonged to be cured only and alone by Physitians but unto Chyrurgions afterwards only by permission and from favor Both of them have remained under a confused strife the which I cannot nor do I intend to put an end unto as being assured That a Physitian chosen by God his own signs shall follow and wonders for the Schools For he shall prepare to the honour of God his free gifts to the comfort of his Neighbour and therefore compassion shall be his Leader For he shall possess truth in his heart and knowledge in his understanding Charity shall be his Sister and the mercy of the Lord shall enlighten his ways For he shall employ or bestow the grace or favour of the Lord and the hope of gain shall not be in his thoughts for the Lord is rich and liberal and will give him an hundred-fold in an heaped up measure He will fructifie his works and anoint his hands with blessing He will fill his mouth with consolations and with the Trumpet his word from which diseases shall flee He will fill his life with length of daies his house with riches and his Children with the fear of the Lord His footsteps shall bring felicity and diseases shall be in his sight as Snow in the Noon day of Summer in an open Valley Curse and punishment shall flee away and health shall follow him behind These are the promises of the Lord unto Physitians whom he hath chosen These are the blessings of those who walk in the path of mercy Because the Lord loveth those that work mercy and therefore will he enlighten them by his Spirit the Comforter For who is liberal as the Lord who gives many things freely and for some small matter bestoweth all things Blessed is the Lord who saves only the merciful man and who saves him that is to be saved freely But consolation shall meet the merciful man in the way of hope because he hath chosen a faithful Master But indeed the Greeks and soon after the Arabians instituted the cures of infirmities without the distinction of the person of a Chyrurgion from a Physitian And those Heathens rising again from the dead shall at some time confound Christian Physitians for their sloath covetousness and pride For God reserveth the choice of a Physitian to himself But the Schools being willing to ease God of this work have taken on themselves to instruct
Schollars any and without difference and have proposed unto them an Art placed in the daily reading of books and in disputations wherefore they have read the books of Galen Avicen and their Interprerers and then they have rowled over Herbarists the images of Herbs being deciphered to the life And the which if they have not yet therefore known from thence the studious are dismissed to the shops and to the gatherers of Simples with a command that when they have well known the Effigies of Simples they return unto their Lectures which they by much and long study have collected out of divers Authors that they may learn the powers or virtues of Simples and Compositions and also their applications In the mean time perhaps ye shall see the dissections of dead carkasses and ye shall hear as they say Galen's method of Healing his use of the parts and differences of the Pulses Likewise out Commentaries on the ninth Book of Almanzor according to the common rule of Practitioners In the mean time learn ye problematically to dispute subtilly upon any proposition and so within three years space ye shall be transchanged into learned men The Schools in the mean time being as it were ashamed laying aside the name of Physitian promise some higher thing unto their young beginners when the three years are finished which is that of a Doctor Therefore after that Art was raised up into a Faculty Religion and Profession pride crept in covetousness intruded gain whence also there was a mutual hatred betwixt Physitians which things brought with them all inclemency on the sick Moreover at length pride for the most part super-excelled covetousness in those that were blown up with the letter and lucre wherefore a Physitian promoted his houshold servant who had known how to comb and shave a Beard into a Chyrurgion accounting it a shameful thing for him who had rowled over so many books to bind up an Ulcer or repose a broken bone For all vices have that that they associate themselves with shame and fear and cover the fault with the shadow of decency And therefore also pride hath by degrees chosen sloath for its companion the coupling whereof hath soon bred ignorance So that indeed a Doctor being called unto the outward deformities of an Erisipelas hath been ignorant of the kind and name of that affect the which when he had warily understood by the Chyrurgion he late at night rowls over some books that on the morning following he may declame many things concerning the affect therefore he bids a vein to be opened he commands Whey with Rose-Vinegar or Soap to be applyed for mitigating of the burning heats and describeth a potion against the day following for the drawing out of Choler The Chyrurgion smiles as oft as the event answereth not his promises and the Doctor by degrees shifting of external diseases because he is ignorant thereof as being content with his Super-eminent Title that he had read most things in Chyrurgical writings and could declame most exceeding ample things among the common people the Chyrurgion conniving thereat He in the mean time who without the advice of the Physitian takes to him his own Disciples who can sometimes pull out a Tooth who have known how to open a Vein to spread Basilicon and Diapalma and have learned in three years time to bind up a wound they are reckoned the Free-masters of Chyrurgery against the will of the Schools But the Doctors have too late learned the Fable of him who had endowed a Serpent frozen with cold with his own hosom and being pierced thorow by the same miserably perished And that thing at this day is so far extended that Chyrurgions henceforward have their own Doctors or Teachers Professors and Writers in their Mother Tongue amongst themselves Then I say the Schools and that too late re-considered so that they who at first blushed to repose a broken or displaced bone and afterwards knew not how to do it are now glad to poure back the Urine and to stir stinking dung with a stick that they may divine their humours to have been chased thither And that unless they shall do that verily they know that as idle at home they ought to grow mouldy beside their books For in the mean time the ignorance of Chyrurgery is encreased among Physitians Truly God hath every where punished pride by ignorance or madness Galen indeed wrote books of the Therapeutick or practical part of healing which they interpret to be a method of healing But who is he that knows not that Therapeuta sounds as an houshold servant and so that they should serve Nature and the sick with the humble Title of Family-service and we will glory in the Lord who taking on him the nature of a servant would that his own Physitians should in this humble vocation be made partakers of the most Noble Science of the whole Universe And indeed I at sometime asked a Canonical man why he would not sing together with the rest at the hours of singing who from their Institution were the Singers of Divine Praises the imitators of Angels but not the Heads or Directors of Ecclesiastical Hierarchy He answered that would be an unbeseeming thing for great Canonists to sing that they had their lesser Beneficiated ones and Chaplains For the one through a possession of a larger alms denieth unto God his praises as a thing disgraceful unto him but the other accounts that it would be uncomely for him to handle cleanse and bind up the torn Members of Christ But I am assured that within a few transitory daies the Lord will say Unless ye become as one of these little ones I know not you Lamp-bearers without Oyl Wherefore I exhort you my Brethren take away gain and in the room thereof drink in charity and ye shall feel that every good work which now seems to be base unto you is not only laudable honest and Noble but also that it sanctifies and ennobles its Operater Was not the great High-Priest of the Jews a Prince a Butcher of Herds a Killer of a Flock of Cattel having bloudy hands But it is far more decent to bind up the Ulcers of the poor than it was in times past to offer Sacrifices For no good work in charity shall ever be able to detract any thing from the Reputation Gain therefore and Pride were introduced by Satan But thou wilt say the Labourer is worthy of his reward If thou art a Labourer let it not therefore shame thee of thy work The wise man saith a Physitian shall receive a gift not a stipend or reward from a King not from a poor man Therefore if the intention of the Operater be pure God shall provide according to his promise who deceiveth none promising an hundred-fold in this time and the life of another Wherefore I will describe by the way an history of my own life and the magnificences or sumptuous provisions of the Lord imitate ye the same if
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
whose hands't shall come this Book to view See that your hearts are simple to the pure No filthinesse true wisdom can endure The milky way must be the paper here And th'Inke Nectar from th' Olympick sphere And then 't may open unto you a path For finding that which long been hiden hath For there 's a way by Simples for to cure Unto Simplicity the nearest sure If not Antiquity at Scriptures note Solomon for ' n example may be brought The Author opes a gate in that Divine Chapter that treats â—'th power of medicine And not a little of Moses Câ—â—â—lism He hinteth at that in of Magnetism So truly doth the Saviour report That to the carkasâ— Eagles do resort In former time thy younger learning years Thou as a tender heart yet void of fears People that had the plagues infection Didst visit and by them wert spew'd upon Some breathing forth their life within thy arms Unto thy grief because thou then their harms Wert not so able to repair untill Thou hadst attain'd a great Adeptist skill For thou by Revelation dost show What Co-us us'd two thousand years ago All which supposed I can freely wink At some mistakes whereby thine eye did blink As to Religion because thou wert Honest upright sincere and sound in heart For if the folly of them thou hadst seen As other things deâ—y'd by thee they 'd been And if in Nature thou art ought mistaken Thy many truths are not to be forsaken For why ye Schools ye cannot neither dare ye Deny but that humanum est errare Until the minds perfection in the Light Which he believ'd yet would not claim it quite And so his candour is to be commended In not assuming what God had not ended Yet know that where one truth is you among In Helmonts breast there lodged ten for one And that not taken up by hear-say trust As ye are wont but stamped by the Iust For Reason Dialectical he saith Must vail the Bonnet unto light in faith Sith Reason savours of an earthly soil Dies with the sense our Parents did beguil And therefore Logick may no longer center Within mens minds as Sciences Inventer And Nat'ralists must needs go to the wall As those of Athâ—â—s in the daies of Paul Since that four El'ments Humors and Complexions Are proved plain to be but childish fictions Which Ethnicans by phansie blind misled Have rashly plac'd in seeds and ferments sted This is some liquor pour'd out of his bottle A deadly draught for those of Aristotle Astrol'gers also will be soon undon Since Herm's and Venus circle with the Sun And since the Planets common Ordination Was to stir up a Blas for seasons station And since the Heavens can no forms bestow To th' Prince of life all creatures do them owe. Ye Theologians look what will befal ye Since man is not defin'd by Rationale But by a Spirit and Intellectual light Now every one may see by his own sight And living waters out 's own Cistern drink Need not â—ew Cisterns that do leak and chink Nor tug with pains to dig for earthly Wells The Spring 's within him as Christ in him dwells Nor run to Temples that are made with hands Himself 's the Temple if he contrite stands And cause a New-birth is requir'd of all Since brutal coupling entred by the fall And so your follow'rs can't be reputed Christians by birth nay but must be transmuted And since the mind of man may be compâ—eated In this lifes time as sin and self 's defeated Since Char'ty not to dwell by many's known In those that with the letter up are blown For as from mud or dung ascends a stink So Pride from Leathing sents up like a sink He did refuse to be a Canon great Least as saith B. he peoples sins should eat What will protracting crafty Lawyers doe Since Christ against them hath denounc'd a woe He would not bâ— a Professor of the Law Enough for man to keep 's own self in awe And what will come of Atheists since 't is true That there 's a Power Eternal who in â—â—e Of fallen Angels did mans Soul ereate In mortal body an immortal state To live in h's hand in weal or woe as they His call of Grace shall or shall not obey What of curst Hypocrites who in deceit Take up Profession for a Cloak and Cheat Better for Sodom and Gomorrah than For such when Christ doth come the world to fan But stop my Genius run not out too far Although thy shackles much unloosed are And vitals subtil while thou tell'st the story Of what concerns mans good and God his glory Least Prince of th' Air like Poets Pegasus Prevail to make thy wit ridiculous By mounting thee too high upon his wing Of fleshly pride and Aeolus thee fling Down from the quiet Region of his skie In the Icarian waters for to die Or whirl thee higher in his stormy hail And sting thy conscience with the Dragons tail For if an inch be given so they tell It is not safe for one to take an ell Wherefore retreat in time of thy accord Least thou incur the anger of the Lord And throw thy self along down at his feet After the Author thou shalt once more greet I b'lieve thou wert a Medel-master made By the Creator of the Root and Blade Of healing virt's the Father of lights I sing Whence every good gift doth descend and spring Thou livedst well and in the Belgick Nation Wert a tall Cedar in thy Generation A good memorial thou hast left behind Of what in daies now coming men shall find Writ in Christ's Bosom and in Natures spread As they are worthy in those books to read Thou diedst in peace in Anno forty four I doubt not but thou liv'st for evermore My friend is also gone yet I survive Lord grant that to thine honour I may live And as my life thou gayâ—st me for a prey When in a gloomy and despairing day I thought I should have died without the fight Of thy Love-tokens and thy face so bright So I intreâ—r upon my prostrare knee That I thy way and Cross may never flee Than turn a new unto Apostasie Or thee dishonour raâ—ker let me die Than to depart again out of thy fear Better wild horses me in pieces tear If the remembrance dwell not in me rife Of thy great goodness pity of my life But as large mercy is to me extended So what is faulty may be fully mended That perfect righteousness may cloath my back And I to sound thy praises will not slack In life or death or suffering by the world Who in transgression up and down are hurl'd And Topheâ—s pit shall surely help to fill If they in time repent not of their ill But as he did for 's en'mies pardon cry So do all Chrictian hearts and so do I. O holy holy holy holy God! Whos 's Name 's exalted in th' Ascendant Jod My self doth tremble and my flesh doth quake While I the King of Saints my Subject make I dread thee Lord I dread thy Sov'raign fame I love thee so I can't express the same My Spirit 's on site and my heart doth flame With a desire to sanctifie thy Name My Soul is melted and my heart is broke In feeling of the force of thy Love-stroke Father I thank thee that thou didst enable Me to convey the dish from Helmontâ— Table And if some crums or drops have fell beside 'T was what a careful servant might be tide It being weighty full of divers fare If none should over-fall or flow 't were rare A Corydon I h'd rather some me deem Than t' use dark-phrases that would not be-seem Rather a Tautologian be dained Than to the meanest leave words unexplained Rather a home-spun Patcher wanting Art Than th' Authors meaning willingly pervert And if his tongue could speak out of the dust Hee 'd justifie this Translate all almost For though his learned Art I don't comprize Yet in the Root our Spirits harmonize The Dish lest somewhat of its crums and drops As it was carried through the Printing Shops Yet what the Press hath nipt off by the way It here returns again by this survey ERRATA IN the Authors Dedication to the Word Pag. 2 lin 6 read except In the Translators premonition P 2 l 35 r and is p 3 l 19 dele other In the Preface to the Reader P 11 l 46 r Eternally p 12 l 28 r the work p 13 l 35 r world In the Poeticall Prophesie P 1 l 4 r spiting P 14 of the Book l 10 r knowingly ibid. l 28 r vain ibid. r give p 17 l 37 r it with p 7 l 32 r Nuns p 34 l 55 r first 〈…〉 p 57 l 25 〈◊〉 as r is p 295 l 2 r 〈◊〉 p 298 l 60 r Watchman p 407 l 28 r whereof they are said to have been the p 477 l 26 r vital p 504 l 31 r it is p 518 l 50 r this is â—oheaped p 535 l 41 r efficacy p 537 l 38 r Plato p 519 l 28 r 〈◊〉 p 575 l 5 r But be sides p 577 l 61 r Lile p 515 l 18 r anothers cherry p 621 l 53 r 〈…〉 710 l 30 r the God p 739. l 28 r Mols p 741 l 22 for any r and. p 825 in the Title of the disease of the Stone r root p 838 l 55 r by p. 1073 l 13 r voice p 1150 l 12 r worms ibid. l 44 after terrible dele and. p 1157 l 1 r the plague Medicine Aesculapius Hippocrates Pandora Latine Er Greek Ro Hebr. Res Errours Eccles 1. 11. On Psal 140. 143. 1. The essentiall Form 2. The Vitall Form 3. The substantial Form 4. The formall substance N Lib. 14. De Civitate Dei Cap. 17. Lib. 4. Contra Jul cap. 10. Lib. of Marriages 12. Flesh of Sin cap. 24. Lib. 5. Cont Jul. cap. 15. Lib. 5. Cont. Jul. cap. 12. * Of his Testament Chap. 26. * The signs of a true Physitian * Bernard
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
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