wheresoever the beginning of conceptions is felt But those are called forces which are not in our power because they are the first conceits of the sensitive soul as yet out of order and not yet diligently examined by the command of the minde But that which I write touching the seat of the sensitive soul I understand also for the immortal minde For truly the minde hath not a subject more near and like to it self wherein it may be entertained than that vital light which is called the sensitive soul wherein indeed the minde is involved and tied by the bond of life by the Command of God But the sensitive soul perishing through the annihilating of it self the minde cannot any longer subsist in the Body and therefore it hastens to the Being of Beings that it may passe unto places appointed for it Therefore the radical Bride-bed of the sensitive soul is in the vital Archeus of the stomach and it stands and remains there for the whole life-time Not indeed that the sensitive soul is entertained in the stomach as it were in a Sack Skin membrane pot prison little Cell or bark neither is it comprehended in that seat in manner of Bodies enclosed within a purse but after an irregular manner it is centrally in a point and as it were in the very undividable middle of one membranous thickness And it is in a place nevertheless not plainly locally But because every Soul is a light given by the Father of Lights and Creator of things but I have proved elsewhere that lights are immediately in place and mediately in a placed Air So also the sensitive Soul is in a place or seat whereof I write at this present But the minde seeing it is a lightsome substance it pierceth a created light which is the sensitive soul and this likewise pierceth the minde and blunts it with its contagion of the corruption of Adam of which in the Book of long life concerning the entrance of death into man Therefore the frail mortal sensitive soul is a meer vital light given by the Father of Lights neither is it declarable after another manner or word seeing that in the whole World it hath not its like besides the light of a Candle the which because it burns may be compared to a spark yet onely by an analogical and much unlike similitude and as it were by the more outward husk Therefore indeed that sensitive soul although it be locally present and be entertained in a place yet it is not comprehended in a place otherwise than as the flame of a Candle is kindled in an exhalation and the light in that flame is as it were life in the aforesaid soul yet vital lights are never parching but are separated by as many diversities as there are differences of souls And from thence is God called by S. James the Father of Lights Therefore the heat of things soulified is not of the Fountain-light of the soul but a heating light of the vital life and so it is the product of life but not the life it self And therefore also it is emulous of a Sunny light even as in a Fish the vital light is actually cold because it is of the nature of the Moon And for that cause God made onely two and sufficient lights for the life of sublunary things yet the light of which light or the souls themselves are the subjects of inherency And they are altogether neither Creatures between a substance and an accident because of the Country of the intelligible world Therefore in the sensitive soul for neither ever elsewhere in frail things as it were a spiritual light made by the Father of Lights is the Immortal minde conjoyned and the which also by the hand of the Almighty every where present or by an Angel is co-knit unto the sensitive soul by the bond of life that is of a vital light which is an unseparable property of the aforesaid light But the immortal minde it self is a clear or lightsome incorporeal substance immediately shewing forth the Image or likeness of its God because it hath received the same engraven on it in creating or in the very instant of enlivening or quickning For both souls are created at once and conjoyned by God who will never attribute his own Honour of Creator unto any Creature But before the fall of Adam there was not a sensitive soul in man but by what meanes or after what manner that together with death hath descended at once into humane nature that shall be shewed in its own place At least by the coming of the sensitive soul death hath entred and the corruption of our whole nature and the Majesty and Integrity of our former nature was obliterated or blotted out For truly while the minde did immediately perform the offices of life neither was the sensitive soul as yet present immortality was also present neither had beast-like darkness occupied the understanding And so man indeed suffered Ship-wrack in his own nature and that an unrestorable one but by the new birth under the calamities of tribulations maâ—â—s exalted in a far more excellent manner while from the image of God he is taken as adopted for his Son Furthermore it is altogether necessary that every motion of the first force and of the first conception of the soul doth happen in the chamber of the soul which thing although it be chiefly felt about the Orifice of the stomach and God be admirable in his works because indeed it hath well pleased him to dispose such admirable powers in the membranes of the stomach womb and skins that cover the Brain because they do bear before them as it were a certain image of a Common-wealth yet I have found the Spleen readily to serve for the ferment of the stomach and for the Sun Cocter and Directer thereof Therefore I have decreed to call the conspiracy of both Bowels the Duumvirate or Sheriff-dome For although the digestive ferment and the like aids may seem to shew forth a Family-service of servants yet the service of houshold-servants in vitals as it contains a power and strength so also it promiseth dignity and authority So that as in the stomach there are feelings faintings of the whole body and most sensible manifest and open priviledges of coctions neverthelesse the vital breathing-hole causing the digestions of so manifold arteries and so mightily of the stomach hath commanded that without a duality disagreement or powerful preferrence there ought to be made one Family-administration of both Bowels indeed by divers offices into one conspiring scope although both do singularly attend on their own work therefore also separated in place Truly there is one onely endeavour of the Duumvirate and agreeing and set harmony of intention Therefore the neighbouring Spleen doth lay on the stomack without as if it would nourish the same by a lively co-weaving of arteries Not indeed that the arteries do give all force or virtue to the Spleen but they have themselves as
known that the same Humours do become degenerate in the passage of Digestions and are the occasions of many Diseases But that the Liver alone in Vices of the skin doth bear the undeserved blame that is a thing full of ignorance and worthy of pity I will at length moreover commune with Christian Physitians by one only Argument To wit Iâ— is of Faith that God made not Death for Man Because Adam was by Creation Immortal and void of Diseases For concerning long Life I have explained after what manner a Disease and Death at the eating of the Apple as an Effect unto a second Cause have entred into Nature Therefore in this place it hath been sufficient to have admonished That the Concupiscence of the Flesh arose from Transgression and also to have brought forth the flesh of Sin and therefore that Nature being corrupted produced a Disease through Concupiscence I could wish therefore that the Schooles may open the Causal Band and Connexion between the forbidden Apple and the Elements or the Complexions of these Whether in the mean time they are lookt upon as the Causes bringing Diseases or as Diseases themselves To wit let them teach If the Body of Man from his first Creation did consist of a mixture of the Four Elements after what manner those second Causes or co-mixt Elements onely by eating of the Apple which else had never been to fight the Bonds of Peace and Bolts of humane Nature being burst asunder at length naturally exercise hostilities and all Tyranny What common thing I say doth interpose betwixt the Apple and our constitutive Elements But if this came miraculously and supernaturally to passe that Death was made a punishment of sin Then God had made Death Efficiently but Man had given onely an Occasion for Death But this is against the Text yea and against Reason Because Death was made with Beasts in the Beginning even as also at this day unto every one happens his own Death that is by a natural course and a knitting of Causes unto their Effect It must needs be therefore according to Faith that Death crept naturally into Nature so that man was made Mortal after the manner of Bruits For it is certain that at the eating of the Apple the brutal concupiscence of the Flesh was introduced Neither do we read at length of any other knowledge of good and evil to have been brought in which was signified under the opening of their Eyes than that they knew themselves to be naked and then it first shamed them of their nakedness Wherefore I have long stood amazed that the Schooles have never examined the aforesaid Text that they might search out the Disposition or Respect of the Cause bringing a Disease unto its natural Effect In what day soever ye shall eat of the forbidden Fruit ye shall die the Death Which indeed is not so to be taken as if God had said by way of threatnings If ye shall eat of the forbidden Tree I will create or make Death in you Diseases Paines Miseries c. for a punishment of sin or that through a condign curse of my indignation ye and your posterity shall die For such an Interpretation as that resisteth the divine goodness because that for the sin of our two Parents he had equally cursed all their posterity with an irrevocable curse of his Indignation who after sin commited and the Flood it self readily blessed Noah by increase and multiply c. Wherefore those words Ye shall die the death did contain a fatherly admonition To wit that by eating of the Apple they should contract the every way impurity of Nature as from a second Cause seated to wit in the Concupiscence of the flesh of sin But seeing such a concupiscence can never consist in elementary qualities it is also sufficiently manifest that a Disease and Death are not connexed as Effects to the Elements and the qualities of these But the concupiscence of the flesh as it infected onely the Archeus even so also it did onely respect the same In the Archeus therefore every Disease afterwards established it self and found its own onely and immediate Inne And so also from hence the Archeus is made wholly irregular inordinate violent and disobedient Because he is he who from thenceforth hath framed inordinate images and seales together with a spending of his own proper substance as it were the wax of that seal For images or likenesses are at first indeed the meer incorporeal Beings of the mind but as soon as they are imprinted on the Archeus they cloath themselves with his Body and are made most powerful seminal Beings the sealing dames mistresses and architectresses of any kind of passions and inordinacies whatsoever which thing I will hereafter more clearly illustrate in the Treatise of Diseases Finally the adversaries will be able to Object That it would be all as one whether a Disease be accounted a disposition or a distemperature of the first qualities or a disproportionable mixture of humours or lastly whether it be called an indisposition or confusion and likewise that it is as one whether the Cause which brings a Disease he called the occasional or the material Cause of Diseases or the internal and conjoyned Cause thereof For truely the one onely intention of Nature and Physitians on both sides is conversant about the removal of that matter for the obtainment of health Therefore that I am stirred about nothing but an unprofitable brawling concerning a Name I Answer Negatively and that indeed because both the suppositions are false For as to the First For that doth not onely contain a manifest fault in arguing of not the Cause as of the Cause and of a non-Being for a Being But besides the Destruction and Death of mortal men doth from thence follow For for that very Cause for which a Remedy is administred to correct the distemperature of a Discrasie or the abounding or disproportion of humours because of things not existing in Nature they at least cannot deny that our Disputation is of things but not of a Name onely when as to wit they accuse cure or undertake to cure the Disease for the Cause or this for it They handle I say things that are never possible as if they were present And then also they presse a falshood Because indeed I never said that a naked confusion or indisposition of the Archeus is a Disease but I affirme that the immediate and internal matter of a Disease is to be drawn from the masse of the Archeus himself But I call the imprinted seminal Idea which springs from the disturbances of the Archeus the efficient Gause but as to what appertaines to the other supposition the occasional or inciting Cause and the internal containing Cause or the very Body of a Disease do far also differ from each other For example The occasional Cause of intermitting Fevers is present out of the fit which should not be if the occasional Cause were the very internal matter of
in the Womb It is false therefore that Nature is every where circular Because she is that which would every where give satisfaction to his ends who is cloathed by the glorious Work-man of Nature and not by Nature For neither after another manner is there a re-bent Reflexion put into the seminal erected Spirit by the Generater but it proceeds from the Finger of him who disposeth of all things sweetely from end even to end Therefore the Seed being conceived the Womb forthwith shuts its neather Gate least any forreign thing should rush into it which might disturb its Conception In the next place the Vessels of the Womb which are subject unto its command as if a Door-keeper were added are also shut above because then a new Common-wealth ariseth in the Womb as a new family-administration of a future Young and therefore also a singular Kitchin is erected in the confining Vessels Even so that the Embryo is a good while nourished and increaseth not by the venal Blood of the Liver but by pure and fined arterial Blood But presently after as soon as this Kitchin is furnished for the Embryo which is about to live in his own proper Orbe the Womb prepars venal Blood which it may hand-forth unto the Embryo and therefore whatsoever less profitable thing it meets withal it is brushed out So that in that whole Motion the Mother for the most part is ill at ease For truly seeing Filths can no longer be expurged through the emunctory of the Womb and the which neither are able to expect the Maturity of Delivery the Filths go backward into the Veins they obtain the condition of an Excrement and are thrust forth by Vomit and other Sinks That which is not equally done in Bruits seeing they want Menstrues and do not admit of an unseasonable Copulation Again the Conception of Men was not from the first intention of the Creator after the manner whereby we are conceived in Sins At length also because for Bruit-beasts pure arterial Blood was not equally required for Nourishment Therefore the teeming Woman alone shall pay for the Itch of one Copulation through a cruel expiation of many Punishments beyond Bruits The Embryo therefore or imperfect Young is at first nourished by arterial Blood prepared in the neighbour Kitchins of the Womb until that after the first fourty dayes he obtaining a living Soul lives of his own right But the preparatory Kitckin is exercised in the spleen-form Flesh whereby the secundine cleaveth to the Womb Therefore Succours for the Young are slow and oftentimes void and also those that are administred to the Mother by way of the Mouth because that before their entrance unto the Embryo all things are recocted And again in the Young it self before they can augment the same But the Infant being born before he is fit for bearing of the more hard Meats he is accustomed to the more gentle ones For so he is a good while fed with arterial Blood which leaves no Dungs be-hinde it For those things which fall from a little Infant that is born presently after his first Cry are the Reliques of the Blood of the Liver the which for the most part is not first admitted into the aforesaid Kitchins but after the third forty dayes And these indeed are the Excrements which do ripen and provoke the necessity of travail or delivery But moreover the Spirit that was once implanted in the Seed being sunk into the Seeds doth presently if not fore-know the necessities of the Body at least-wise perfectly learn them and afterwards draws unto it self a Consanguineal or nearly allyed Spirit or Nourishment by a certain Harmony of Affinity At length the Womb feeling the Maturity of the Young by co-wrinckling contracteth it self which the Antients have called Striving to expel the Young or Off-springs For I have oft-times with-held Abortion threatned and begun But sometimes I could not But I have known that I have detained it as oft as the abortion should be caused from a Symptomatical animosity without a fore-ripe expulsive Faculty to wit from the digression of the Womb And the Remedy did operate by restraining and sleepifying appeasing and pacifying the aforesaid Furies of the Womb But I could not prevent Abortion or miscarying as oft as there was a fall of the Mother from an high Place and much disturbance of Affrighting Grief Anger c. they being inordinate things And likewise if the Young had a remarkable Monstrousness which adds no slugguish Spur unto Expulsion Or if the Young die or pines away or failes through a notable Weakness And likewise if the Mother being strongly smitten with astonishment before the Young could live in its own Quarter hath with-drawn the Arterial Spirit unto her self The which if it shall straightway return from thence yet it finds the same Young as it were in a sound whereunto as unto a Plant so tender Life is scarce re-connexed By this means the semi-vital Conception is now and then wont to miscarry into a hard lump of Flesh or a foolish Branch But that thing scarce happens through a defect of the Fathers Seed because that a barren or foolish Seed is either not attracted and so neither is it conceived or if it be attracted it through a foolish Lust of the Womb soon fals out again and frustrates Conception But the Seed degenerates into a hard Lump of Flesh by reason of external Incidencies lighting upon the Seed whereby Hippocrates saith That Seeds are withdrawn whither they would not Therefore a hard Lump or Moale is made while as the Spirit is funk into the Body of the Seed and is spoiled of a humane Figure yet retaining its former growing Faculty The drowning or sinking therefore alone is able to command the Figure out of the forming Spirit if being to long sleepifyed within it becomes fast asleep But although the dreaming Vision did scarce fill up the space of halfe a quarter of an hour yet it at once represented all the successive Periods of Generation as it were in a Glass of the Thing To wit its Moments Fluxes Motions Aspects Diversities of interchanges and also its Errours stood collected into Unity But I being awaked alass how I sighed at the likeness of our modern propagation with that of Bruit-beasts And therefore Adam not undeservedly bewailed the Death of Abel for the space of an Age He grieving the while at the hateful bruitish Generation and knew not his Wife in all that time As well weighing that Nature being now defiled in its Root was to suffer original and of necessity durable Miseries CHAP. CVIII A Lunar Tribute SEing Woman onely among living Creatures the Ape perhaps excepted suffers Menstrues or monthly Issues and seemeth for this cause to have experience of the operations of the Moon-star but since the Schools do prattle of very many things concerning the Menstrues as if it were the ordinary nourishment of the Young Surely it hath behoved me to discover their boastings in the Treatise
equall therefore also the heat should be alwayes alike but seeing the property of Light by it self is not but to enlighten but by accident by reason of its conjunction to make hot or make cold and the dayes are now and then cold and Clowdy unto us under the Summer Solstice Hence surely I ought to have borrowed other causes from the Blas of the Heaven There is a certain action indeed hitherto unknown to the Schooles which in the proper limit of government I have taught which operates on the objects subjected unto it almost like to abstracted spirits And even as the Soul moveth and altereth its own Organs or Instruments Thou mayest call it for me an influence so that a connexion of the Stars be moreover understood of stirring up the Gas beneath according to the lawes of directions given and fixed by the Almighty for otherwise seeing that a beam of Light may be hindered by a covering every Blas also of the Stars on us should cease if they should act on us onely by light and motion yea and in an over-clowdy Heaven no action on the waters or on the things sowen in the Earth should be beheld For diseased persons do perceive a proportionable resembling motion of the Moon and for this cause do they foretell Tempests to come because there are in the very seeds of things the co-bred and allied Lights of Heaven Which do suit themselves to the motion of the nearest or Neighbour-lights and so to the most universall Blas of the Stars For therefore hot-Houses being shut the same effects are felt con-centred or harmonious not indeed because they light on us from without but we carry a heaven within in our vitall beginnings and the Almighty hath sealed things soulified with that Pledge or Signet Notwithstanding that con-centring and conformity do signifie a connexion of suitableness with the more large superiour Heaven And moreover I may easily believe if Insects do utter the foreshewing signes of seasons that we also at the time of health might foreknow all things unless corruption had bespattered our whole nature in the ground and had left us naturally so much the more stupid and miserable than those small Beasts for sin hath withdrawn the Celestial familiarities of talk from us in diseased persons onely it hath left its marks of antient foretelling whereby we may know that the marks of things to come are left us from nothing but the misery of corrupted nature which else in her purity had made us true diviners of the Heaven no lesse than Adam knew the natures of living Creatures And although the Stars do foretell the effects depending on free and contingent causes yet I would not be understood that a gift is given to the Stars of bringing in the causality of future things for it is sufficient that in this thing they perform the office of a Preacher as it were meanes depending on the fore-knowledge of God for as the fore-knowledge of God doth not take away from man a liberty of willing or judging and his tie with the fore-knowledge doth not take away the infallibility of events nevertheless it least of all contains an unavoidableness much lesse doth the fore-telling of the Firmament induce any necessity of contingency or accidentall event on the wills part although it doth altogether happen in respect of events coupled to their free causes Truly I have oft admired at those that refuse a denouncing of the Stars in free causes as though they did therefore necessitate and did take away a liberty of willing when as in the mean time they do admit that divine fore-knowledge doth not cause any thing against free will but that it can denounce Seeing the reason of necessity in the fore-knowledge of mans glorification is far greater in the power of God than in the fore-shewing of the Stars it being of its own nature tyed to change by reason of the repentance and unstable or frail nature of sinners For it hath happened that sometimes the Stars have foreshewen onely threatnings whereby the antient mortalls through the terrour of punishment do return into the way as did the Ninivites In which case although the Stars do loose much of their certainty and strength yet they do not forsake a certainty of necessity as oft as the Signes do shew forth the fore-tellings of Events Wherefore I reckon with my self that the figures of things successive throughout Ages are decyphered in the Heavens as it were in Tables which figures they name the lawes of destiny and that not indeed by an Hebrew Alphabet as some of the Rabbins Dream but that Provinces Kingdoms and men have their Stars on which the Stage of things accidentally happening to their Subject appointed for every one of them in the revolutions of dayes is decyphered wherefore neither is it a wonder if evill Spirits shall know how to foretel many of these things And so much the lesse if to every one of us are designed good Spirits our keepers Even as the Mountain Garganus Kingdoms and Common-wealths have Spirits for their own Rulers and Defenders For so the fore-shewings not onely of the rising and period of Kingdoms are therein painted forth but also the races and ends of all men are historically figured out by their peculiar Star which are also typically decyphered Which knowledge indeed although it being known to Spirits naturally forbidden to man I do oftentimes read it by its true name the divining of the Heaven yet I finde it granted onely to the Servants or Prophets of God according to his good pleasure For your old men shall dream Dreams and your young men shall have Visions and shall prophesie for this which containeth all things hath the power of a voice it openeth future contingencies shewed by their Stars onely to whom and when it will On some in the mean time he bestoweth a figurative knowledge of the Stars even as to the wise men of the East but to others he giveth Dreams as to Joseph and the same wise men and that the same may be truly interpreted as to Joseph and to Daniel a man of desires Also there are some at this day as mad men and drunkards fore-telling things to come and not knowing what to whom in what manner or by what meanes or why they do presage For so according to Josephus Jesus a certain man foretold the destruction of the holy City with a continuall cry and for that cause he was beaten But the Apostles spaâ—â— from the Comforter with the Tongues of all Nations which were then under the Sun but by the Hebrews and Pagans they were accounted to be drunk with new Wine Although there was no new Wine then to be found in Palestina For they prophesying glorified the Lord Jesus for neither is it read that any was then preached unto or converted Therefore they were accounted to be drunk with new Wine but not with Wine because drunkenness by new Wine among the Gentiles did stir up those that kept
required than those which nature hath of her own accord produced At length perhaps I shall by many be judged to have strived about Goats Wool and onely about a name And that what the Schooles do call a contrary I have strove to mask with the Etymologie of an opposite But this punishment remaineth with me from the ungratefull onely I speak to the Physitians and Schooles which admit onely of those Remedies of Diseases which by a contrary hostile property are reckoned to set upon Diseases by fighting And who by a contrary distemper as they say do diligently teach that a temperature is onely to be obtained of which sort of things that none hath at length hitherto been and plainly appeared in nature I am satisfied Neither is it sufficient that they do require in a Remedy superior forces related to the Disease but also they will have that to come to passe with the VVar of contrariety strife and a Crisis if Victory be thence to be hoped for Truly I have shewen that such powers are not found in nature Likewise that neither do the seeds of things act from a hope and endeavour of Victory or of trampling on their Patient as being contrary to it Nor also of overcoming the activity of the Patient And so that there is not any contrariety striving hatred VVar combate of arrogancy or superiority to bear any shew or be preferred in naturall things but that they act without an intention and foreknowledge of the end as they were so created by God their Umpire and were so endowed and so commanded by him to act Therefore it is clear that contrariety as it is taught in the Schooles to be implanted in any kinde of things is banished from whole nature except from the wrathfull faculty of living Creatures and so although self-love sympathy antipathy choice yea and some sense or perceiving may be attributed to things without life Let it be an Analogy or proportionable resemblance re-shining rather in their effects and causes than in the direction of the Creator or Ordination of ends because in a proper sense they are deprived of choyce intention of acting and foreknowledge of ends But seeing any of these sort of things do plentifully witness that they have a directer strongly moving and sweetly disposing the ends of all things even to their bounds the unfoldings of their properties are Testimonies that the most glorious God doth rule the rains even of things of small esteem by powers given unto them ignorant thereof And so that they are wholly right withut a knowledge of the end that is without their violent force anger strife and hatred So far is it therefore that I judge the actions of things and remedies to be made by opposites in the room of contraries that I have equally banished as well opposites as contraries from nature but I have admitted opposites after the manner of a Relation of termes But not in the way wherein they act on each other For I have alwayes from the Age of a man supposed that if there should be contraries or they should act as such nature should not totally exemplarily formally and dependantly respect its Creator And that of such a Creature it could not be fitly said And God saw that whatsoever things he had made were good if it could not unfold the properties planted in it without hatreds after a hostile manner At length how much opposite things which I have reckoned among repugnant or resisting ones may differ from contrary ones those Physitians have known whosoever do not burn with a pleasure of reproaching Therefore let young Beginners mark whether he who overthroweth the first principles of healing from the intent of the Creator striveth with me about a naked name who would have all things operate according to the endowment of nature conferred on it not by contrariety or a desire of destroying each other but for the ends foreknown to God alone who is love and peace but not hatred strife or the fewel of contrariety Therefore from the intention of the Creator are created things to be weighed The VVoolf hath deceived the Schooles who kills if he could not one Sheep onely but also the whole flock Contraries are in man and Beasts by a power of animosity or angry hear which is banished as well from the Minerall as vegetable Kingdom At length in mortall men sins are opposed to virtues privatively seeing Sin is reckoned a non-being I may think habituall virtues not to be contrary to vices as they do as yet reside in the understanding but onely when the issuing of them out of the understanding is in the consent wherein it is opposed to an animosity willing another thing which in the Progress doth at first bring forth anger hatred grudges that is contraries For out of the heart proceedeth Murders Adulteries c. But a meer non-being doth not proceed as neither doth it fall under a conception seeing it hath not a Species of its own wherein it may represent it self Therefore sin is not onely a turning away from the Creator but also a mentall or mindelike act of a determined wickedness or malice but an act of the minde doth alwayes put on matter whereon it decyphers its own Idea which it hath formed by conceiving or imagining and thus far it springs forth according to the Soyl of the Soul into the faculties of the Body Hitherto I have discoursed of Faculties created from the intent of the Creator to wit that there is not given an incentive or inciting Faculty of contraries and enmities unto things existing without the animosity of sensuality But it shall be profitable to shew in this place that by the same animosity some things are made which express a beast-like hostility as by the spittle of a mad Dog the stinging of Serpents Bees c. yet the same things do operate after the manner of poysons and poysonsom Plants which divine goodness hath not created to hurt or kill or unto an ill end but for other ends directed for the glory of his Majesty But it will be very hard to attribute the contraries of Hostility to inaminate things by an accustomed and wanton analogy of powers to consider a matter or thing to wit the Spittle of a mad Dog or of Serpents to be imprinted by anger on a man without that contrariety which we of our own accord grant to be in a bruit Beast from whence it sprang But surely he shall with me easily perceive it if he consider that poyson whether it be created by a Beast or prepared through the contagion of animosity doth not therefore cease to be poyson and to act according to the nature of poyson The property whereof is to act by a naturall force or power yea although having risen from the impression of anger yet this quality is no more anger to it but a certain naturall product and so wherein there is indeed a mark of anger and contrariety but not anger it self And therefore
ceaseth from a sumptomatical motion toward the Pleura as long as shee remains enfeebled And therefore the Pleurisie not increasing for a while nature as it were repenting of the rumor and storm thinks of a ripening of the corrupt Pus that is to be framed of the out-hunted blood All which things would more successfully follow the blood being retained wherein the life that is the strength dwells because the life is nature which is the alone Physitianess of Diseases and she failing the Physitian takes away his shoulders Therefore the Schools have not hitherto taken heed unto the impulsive cause which pours forth the blood out of the veins into undue places beyond bound and measure and which furiously plucks away the Pleura from the Ribs and prepares a wound and hollowness Which causes being co-knit together are iddeed before the effect yet do they so persevere in the same effect that they are materially and efficiently the very effects themselves Unto which effect indeed slow and impotent is the race of false and salt Phlegm out of the head and the dreamed rheumy defluxions through channels or continuations of passages not existing But Paracilsus meditating of this pulling away of the Pleura and being willing to square a cause thereunto hath brought in other follies that he may defend his own mad laws of a little world in us For he feigneth anew and Ogertine salt else never named by him however variously he itcheth in himself concerning salts in Ulcers and Apostemes even to the fetching off of the skin And first of all he teacheth that this Ogertine salt is of the property of Arsenical Sulphurs in the mean time he is silent concerning its mines veins property history etymology and reason of its etymology because it was dreamed by him But at leastwise he had acted nothing more cleerly herein seeing he dawbs no less with the same elay than that wherewith the Schools are defiled For truly none hath hitherto declared why the Pleura departs from the Ribs whereunto it is adjoyned by a continued thred of fibers to wit whether it be pulled away of its own free accord or indeed by another tearer they are content as satisfied in the doubt if they shall say it is rent from the Ribs by the weight of a down-rouling Catarrh in the resolving nevertheless of which doubt as of the root the whole cure and prevention of a Pleurisie doth consist For the root of every Disease is worthy of the dumb silence of the Schools to wit I shall shew in a peculiar treatise that the very essence of any kind of Diseases whatsoever hath been hitherto unknown in the Schools it hath seemed to suffice them if they have applyed their doctrine unto without unto artificials unto the latter sumptoms unto the consequent fruits or products as though the stage of causes and essential roots were ridiculous and in vain Paracelsus also if he reckoned to confirm any solid thing toward a Disease of so great moment and to add his doctrine thereto if he determined not to derive his Ogertine salt it self from a power unto act out of the blood at leastwise that unwonted unnamed and unknown salt ought to have brought a necessity of its invention and of its generation that at least some place might be afforded for prevention For this the pretended title of the Monarch of secrets doth require But all things have remained neglected because the chiefdome of healing hath stood founded upon empty stubble I promise therefore that whatsoever hath been built thereon shall fall to the ground For whether a fire the searcher out of truth be built or next whether the voluntary corruption of dayes shall consume the stubble at leastwise I know that at length that building will fall to the ground But I in a Pleurisie consider the first inward moover or spur and afterwards the tearer of the Pleura And both those being one and the same efficient cause of it I call the Pleurisie it self But the venal blood flowing thither and that which is poured out thither and the aposteme sprung from thence I consider as the product to which end I will bring common experience for an example Let a Thorn be thrust into any part of the Body the which pain instantly succeedeth from the pain there is presently a Pulse from the Pulse an afflux of vendl blood whence ariseth a swelling a fever an Aposteme c. the Thorn therefore mooves the other things after it Therefore the Metaphorical Thorn of the Pleurisie and by speaking properly the Pleurisie it self is a forreign sharpness conceived in the Archeus the which if it chaseth or layes aside into the blood of the hollow vein surely that is expelled unto the vein Azugos yea or into the very flesh near the Ribs from whence ariseth an Aposteme as the product of the Pleurisie In the next place as an Aposteme which is bred from a Thorn fastened in the finger a not but rashly cured by cutting of a vein but it promiseth a cure by reason of the plucking out of the Thorn only so it happens in the Pleurisie For as sharpness in the stomack is an acceptable and ordinary savour so out of the stomack all sharpness is besides nature and hostile which hath been hitherto unknown in the Schools For so from a sharpness are wringings of the bowels there is a strangury in the Urine a corroding in Ulcers in the skin a scab in the joynts the Gowt c. And the which if thou wilt experience to thy hand mingle some drops at least of sharpish Wine with the Urine that hath been newly pissed out without pain and cast it in with a Syringe Thou shalt experience against thy will that I teach the Truth In the humor Latex also of which afterwards in its own place it raiseth up a bastard Pleurisie the which they altogether through the same carelessness of narrowly searching as in other Diseases do call a windy one but if the Archeus hath laid up a gentle sharpness into the lap of the venal blood unhappily applied to it it as despised is presently hunted out and cast out of the veins and brings forth an Aposteme in whatsoever place that shall happen but if that doth happen to be the deeper or lavisher in the veins a certain pestilent affect ariseth The which I prove for the venal bloud or flesh do never wax soure or sharp without an actual obtaining of putrefaction the which I have els-where on purpose proved by the fleshes of Beasts which do most swiftly Putrifie under the Dogstar therefore yielding soure Broath for the bloud waxing soure is contrary to the nature of the Veins and to the disposition of the whole flesh as long as it liveth presently coagulated For the venal bloud in a dead-Carcasse is preserved by the Vein a good while from coagulating out of which if it shall fall it waxeth presently clotty which is more largely declared els-where Hence it follows that of an
the assisting and co-operating Work-man of all Diseases an angry Parent and revenger For he saith that the unknown Star Zedo is the immediate and containing cause of the Dropsie So he affirmeth that to the Consumption Gout Apoplexie c. doth belong their own peculiar yet unnamed Star and unto every Epilepsie or falling Evil it s own proper constellation But in his Paramires he affirms the three first things to be the immediate causes of all Diseases that is all things confused Let him explain and excuse him that will for I have not dedicated my life to the interpreting of others dreams Therefore have I seriously searched into Nature and the particular kindes of Diseases and it hath happened unto me no otherwise than as to all others before me until that the Doctrines of all Authors being cast off I had seriously implored the Divine Grace For then I suddenly knew that unto every Disease hath happened its own matter which may nourish a Vulcan proper to it self within the which although he doth sometimes imitate the courses of the Stars yet that the enforcing cause thereof did not depend on the Stars For all Seeds do possess as it were their own Common-wealth especially their own vital light whereby of their own proper vertue they do shew forth a proportionable resemblance of the Stars Be it a ridiculous thing that the Consumption or Dropsie although they may be stirred up more severely and mildly under diverse starry positions are caused or made by the motion and light of the Stars the which do after another manner generate by a manifest occasion through so clear a collection of filths and the which being removed Health doth also follow without leave of the Stars The exposition of which Doctrine by me thou shalt read in the Book of the Plague and elsewhere But the matters of Diseases with their seminary Vulcans from the first even unto the last I have prosecuted with all their duplicity and interchangeable courses in respect of humane life The Almighty grant that so much as he hath bestowed on me I may nakedly refer unto his Honour and the profit of my Neighbour and that he may bestow another more able than my self on the world For Paracelsus hath framed divers Books concerning long life to have chosen death for himself that he would by a Divine priviledge have comforted his own old Age by his Elixiâ— of propriety but not by Remedies prescribed by him for long life who died in the 47th year of his Age. So great boasting therefore and unconstancy of this Man have hitherto made me a little careful In the mean time many difficulties have long since held me in doubt about the three first things until that I having obtained help from God knew that Woods and Herbs were to be distilled without any Dead head For I did long ago wonder that out of the coal of Honey no ashes and by consequence neither the salt of ashes could be had Which things afterwards I willingly through an universal resolving of a Body beheld For it was sufficient for Paracelsus to have forsaken all things involved under doubting who in a slender draught had drunk down anothers Invention and had not yet converted it into nourishment and making it his own of robbery hath he striving to flie unto a Monarchy slipped out of his Nest before he had sufficient feathers For he snatching unto himself the glory of the Invention hath well pleased himself in dispersingly repeating one and the same thing often although in the mean time he made little progress in things of his own For it is a ridiculous thing and like a Fable that Sulphur should be distilled sublimed reverberated calcined resolved in us and that from hence divers Diseases should be caused only indeed by the boldness of the Man without a Pledge or Surety of greater authority than himself For he knew not nor durst to draw Diseases into an open profession or publishment he being not yet sully committed hereunto by his Inventer It is also a childish dream that salt is distilled sublimed calcined circulated and doth undergo other torments in us or that Mercury doth sustain these strict examinations in us and for every interchangeable course of variations that it doth of it self alone bring forth other Diseases pains and defects and that others again be infolded with its other two fellow beginnings or masked with divers degrees and doses They are also trifles that Mercury by reason of the highest circulation of its subtilty might be the cause of all sudden death which we have known to be constituted by its causes to cure and prevent For first of all eight ounces of venal blood are daily blown away in nourishing without a Dead head pain and defect yea without feeling while they pass thorow and whereby they pass thorow But whatsoever hath once been dedicated unto expulsion in the shew of Water Mercury or Sweat or whatsoever hath been once reckoned unfit for nourishing or the offices of nourishment being now once performed is designed for scattering or blowing away that is never afterwards distilled sublimed calcined or circulated in us For the works of Nature are too serious because they do ultimately respect God For Nature doth not play at Ball that it should again receive excrements into favour being once rent from the commerce of Life It never returns into the same point because it proceeds and never keeps Holy-day In the next place if any watry liquor be a hundred times re-distilled it shall not therefore be the sharper or subtiler but rather by degrees the Seed of its middle life being worn out it passeth more and more unto the simplicity of an Element For rain water which now falleth down from above is not more subtile or fine than that which rained in the beginning of its Creation But if any watry thing should exhale by our luke-warmth and should obtain a sharpness through dreamed returns that should not be the fault of subtilizing of Mercury but of an adjunct Surely I wonder that so great a Chymist hath not known that the venal blood is not circulated nor that it doth bear the circles of subtilizings in us and that it doth not persevere in us above one only course of the Moon and the which tribute of feeble blood a Woman doth therefore pay Because she is she which ought to abound with very much blood as well for an increase of the Young as for the sucking of Milk But that Paracelsus might the better overshadow his own Fiction he supposeth that one of the three first things being separated doth presently assume from a Microcosmical Nature an actuality in that which is casual to any and one Being of those which are infinite a thousand Seeds whereof being collected into one it did contain and therefore that by reason of a monstrous and strange Nativity a hostile thing is for that very cause in us and is made the cause of Diseases And so that there are
arguments have believed every efficient Cause to be of necessity external and that therefore it cannot be united with the thing caused and therefore that neither is the thing generating a part of the thing generated when as otherwise in Nature that which mediately generates a Being is alwaies the internal vital Governour and assisting Architect or Master-workman of Generation and so he who for an End directeth all things unto their scopes causeth all things for himself and for himself acteth all things Therefore they being also deceived in Diseases have believed that the diseasifying Cause is external in respect of the body of man or at leastwise in the beholding of the Family-administration of Life For it hath not been known that Generation bespeaks nothing but a flux of the Seed unto perfection maturity of properties an unfolding of things hidden and a consummating of Orders unto their own ends First therefore Aristotle hath deceived the Schools teaching that Corruption and Generation do throughout whole Nature and that alwaies and of necessity by steps succeed each other And therefore he hath made a mental Being a meer negative non-being a naked privation the immediate Principle in Nature between Generation and Corruption Neither could ever the Schools understand that the same Workman which hath made a Plant of a Seed hath not failed in the generating of a Plant hath not as being banished departed as being worn out not died nor lastly that another hath been surrogated in his stead for the coming of a form whereof that Workman remains the immediate executive Instrument for ends foreknown by God or a participation of life but that he himself doth even onely and alwaies remain in the government of Life Hence indeed neither have they understood that the thing generated doth proceed from Causes really and suppositively not distinct from the essence of a thing yea nor indeed with any interchangeable course of causality Because the Schools have hitherto more diligently considered of Operations demonstrable by Sense Science Mathematical I say and artificial things diverse from Nature than the natures of things themselves seated in the Cup or bosome of essentiality For they have never heeded that the Instrument of Art the Artificer himself yea the Measures themselves of things measurable cannot generate any thing seminally in nature or introduce a seminal substantial or essential disposition for the transchanging of products Consequently also neither have they understood a disease as a real and substantial Being but onely in manner of an accident when as otherwise a disease is not a disposition not an accident hurting the actions and much less the hurt of an action it self proceeding from a duel of hurtfull Causes with out ruling Powers But a Disease is a real Being having its Causes the Material and Efficient stirred up by occasional Causes For if a Disease and Nature or our Faculties do stand in a diameter for so they will have them a Disease and a sound or healthy Life cannot be at once in the same immediate Subject therefore a disease cannot be a disposition which doth even bring a detriment unto our powers but such a disposition should be rather a fruit of the disease and a consequent more latter than the disease and the mother and nurse of weaknesses I therefore distinguish this disposition from the occasional causes and products of diseases But the fruits of a disease seeing they have respect unto the term unto which the disease generates those its own products they may also be co-incident or happen together with the Life and therefore some symptomatical fruits are among dispositions which thing the Schools have not yet explained To wit the defects of digestions motions c. And likewise weaknesses are dispositions which proceed indeed from the products of diseases even as by and by in its own place yet they are not diseases because they light into nature whereinto they are introduced by the strange violences of diseasie seeds and thus far are unially entertained in the life neither therefore can they have the nature of a disease because a disease cannot remain together with the life in the same point of identity But a disease retires out of the bosome of life no otherwise than as it separates it self out of health But Life is in it self a certain integrity or sound state of light with which a disease cannot co-habite as neither doth a disease subsist but in the vice of life or in life that is degenerate The which indeed is separated from the vital light it self and therefore also from the central point of life it self For as light which the Soul it self is is not life it self So neither is the light of life it self a disease it self But this sits in the ulcerous degeneration of the vital Archeus and so also vitiates the light hereof and therefore by reason of a mark of resemblance it participates of life and doth sometimes render it conformable to it self and doth wholly vitiate it which thing in the Plague is ordinary and manifest It hath not been known therefore in the Schools unto what predicament they might attribute a disease But I say that a disease consisteth of Matter and an efficient Cause no otherwise than as other Beings of nature do For the essicient Archeus in labouring by his own disjointings of passions and in bringing forth the Idea's of his own disturbances for whatsoever things are made in nature do arise are propagated by Idea's inclosed in seeds for otherwise the progresses of nature should be foolish which want an internal guide or leader procureth to dispose of some portion of his own substance according to the hostile ends which he hath proposed to himself and to the whole Body in that very kind of his estrangedness and at that very moment wherein the matter comes down unto the bound proposed to the efficient Idea a disease is bred Even so that every seminal disease consisteth in a real act which causeth an indisposition of the matter proper to it self that is of the very Archeus which makes the assault and being applied unto us I therefore have learned that every circle of predicaments are in very deed in Diseases after the true manner of other Beings by themselves subsisting in Nature For by this meanes I have found not Diseases in Predicaments but all Predicaments in Diseases For truly in all seminal Diseases I find an occasional matter which like a violent guest making an assault doth violate the Inne and right and disturbes the administration of the Family From thence I find that the Archeus himself is disturbed in all partitular Diseases for from hence also I consider another internal matter of a Disease to wit that part of the Archeus which he hath defiled by his own exorbitancy on which part he hath fashioned the Idea of his perturbation and the seminal efficient Cause of a Disease So indeed a true and real Being doth conserve in it self the respects of all the
Predicaments through the ignorance of which or one only point heathenisme hath overwhelmed the Schooles of Medicine with the contagion of blindness And all curing hath been believed to be subject unto naked qualities excesses of degrees relative respects and actions For from hence they have feigned Contraries to be Remedies of Contraries and no Disease to be mitigated by the goodness of Nature the mildness of Medicines and by the appeasing and repentance of the Archeus that was first disturbed but only by fighting skirmishing and war to be reduced into a mean or temperature of the first qualities So that seeing they think every Disease to be a Disposition likewise that all Remedies ought to be a naked Disposition or they are deceived in their position whence it follows that the taking away of the stone out of the Bladder shall never be able of it self to import a cure of the sick For truly seeing it is a Remedy onely privative whereunto an appeasing of the Archeus belongs but it is not a Disposition contrary to the Stone And much lesse a prohibitive of the foregoing matter which they suppose of necessity to be supplied from elsewhere uncessantly to flow thither nor to cease the Stone being taken away by the knife to wit if the Disposition generating the matter whereof shall not first cease Therefore according to the Schooles He that is cut for the Stone should be cured onely for a little space to wit as the Impediments of Functions are taken away otherwise produced and cherished by the Stone being present and also as the disposition mentally interposing is secondarily casually and by accident obliterated But the mattter is far otherwise For truly a seminal Disease is a creature which made and found out its own matters and its own Idea's in us after sin by an hereditary right of the Archeus neither had he it originally in Nature And therefore the root of Diseases ought totally to be unknown to all Heathenisme And seeing an essential definition is not to be fetched from the Genus of the thing defined and its constitutive difference even as I have taught in the Book of Feavers by reason of the manifold perplexities of Errors and ridiculous positions but altogether from a connexion of both Causes which are Beings in Nature and therefore that the primitive and Ideal cause of Diseases hath stood neglected hitherto It follows also that the definition knowledge essence and roots of a Disease have remained unknown And finally that curings have been instituted by accident with an ignorance of the universal disposition of internal properties their efficacie and interchangable course Truly I know as a Christian that a Disease is not a Creature of the first Constitution because it is that which hath taken its rootes from sin in the impurity of Nature which afterwards in their own spring have at length budded in Individuals For neither were created poysons Diseases as long as they were without us but then when the Archeus of the same was made domestical unto us through the forreign disposition of its middle life it raised up seminal Idea's in our Archeus even as Fire is struck out of a Flint Then I say Diseases are made unto us the fore-runners of Death from an occasional poyson Diseases therefore do continue with us when they have their provoking occasions subsisting in our Nature until neither their occasional matter be wasted away or at least until the Archeus be rid of his own perturbations or of his office For Diseases indeed came on us by Sin and afterwards in Nature now corrupted by Sin the ferments and ready obediences of matter waxed strong and so they pierced into the number and catalogue of Nature and even unto this day do most inwardly persevere with us after a singular manner Yet alwayes distinct from other created things in this that the created things of the first constitution have a proper existence in themselves but diseases neither are nor are able to subsist without us Because they proceed as it were from a formal light and the vital constitutive Beginning of us And therefore the natural Archeus and a Disease do pierce each other because they have a material co-resemblance But the Schooles when they heeded that Diseases do never exist without us supposed that our Body was the subject of Inhaesion of Diseases and consequently that Diseases were only accidents and therefore to be stirred up from an elementary distemperature because they apprehended them in a most prompt and rustical sence also for that cause they hoped that they should sufficiently and over vanquish Diseases by Heats and Colds And therefore they likewise decreed that every refreshment aid and help which nature being informed did require of the Physitian was not to be administred in shew of a refreshment in peace and tranquility but herein onely to prevail and that wars strifes contraries and discords were to be appointed whereby the hostile elementary qualities being cobroken in us they might by constraint return into a mediocrity of temperature that so they may restrain the injuries of Nature now corrupted by contrary injuries and subdue them by revenging Which thing surely they have thus judged nor have otherwise understood because that they knew no other action than that which from a superiority of the agent rules over the patient But surely those things do not savour of an help neither is the Law of Christ by whom all things were made conformable to those Lawes of the Schooles And so as elsewhere more largely either Christ is not the parent of Nature or an adversary to himself in Nature or such Heathenish speculations of healing are rotten The Schooles therefore have not considered that the matters of many Beings do not consist but in a strange Inne whereunto they were appointed Wherefore by reason of their different kind of manner of existing they thought a Disease to be a meer accident but predicamentally seperating the matter which a Disease might carry before it from a Disease As if an Embryo should be an accident because it is no where but in the womb Indeed it pleased the revenger of sin that Diseases with their matters as well that occasional as that equal and inward unto them should not subsist but in those whose the Diseases and offence should be and that without respect of the Being of one unto another For neither have the Heathenish Schooles ever considered as neither the Moderns who have been established on Paganish Beginnings that this relation of existence came unto them from the condition of sin and the procreation thereof from the Archeus sore shaken with perturbations Because such thoughts never entred into Heathenisme neither is it a wonder that the Gentiles knew not the force of Transgression although they do deliver by the Fable of Promotheus and Pandora that they learned something from the Hebrews Yet it is a wonder that they were ignorant that a Disease before it should be made ours ought to proceed from the
Heavens And a man by a voluntary Blas and likewise the Archeus by an ideal and seminal Blas stirs up divers alterations But a seminal Agent being inordinate doth through a strange Blas bring forth a Monster which is properly a Disease For although a Disease according to its causes be natural yet in respect of us it ceaseth not to be against nature as well in as much as it began from a forreign Blas as that it carrieth a hostile Blas and raiseth it up from it self And therefore neither doth this Monster generate a Young like it self unless it by serments doth transfer its own seminal contagion and so causeth Diseases in others by accident But as to that which belongs to the efficient cause of Diseases There is in an abortive Birth a certain efficient cause bred within as is a Cataract in the eye the stone in man a Feverish matter the which although it be called by the Schools the efficient immediate and containing cause of a Disease yet it is only the occasional cause of Diseases and external in respect of the life wherein every Disease alway is And therefore neither can such a visible matter not only obtain the reason of a true efficient but neither also can it be of the intrinsecal matter of a Disease it self to be any part thereof It remains therefore the conciting and occasional cause of Diseases Because the efficient and seminal matter if it ought immediately to reach and pierce the vital faculties and so also the life even as also in a point it is altogether necessary that it doth contain a resembling mark of life Even so that also that thing is perpetual in seminal Diseases that a Disease as it is never in a dead carcass so it cannot but be in a living Body Furthermore of efficient causes there is a certain one which is and remaineth external As a sword having obtained an impulsive force maketh a Disease in the divided matter which is called a wound After the like manner is the fretting of the bladder which is made by the Stone For although some external efficients have their own seminal Beginnings whereof they are generated as the Stone yet in respect of the Disease which they produce they want Seeds and therefore are they external and forreign to the Disease it self But internal occasionals have a Seed whereby they nourish the Disease stirred up by them and are also oft-times shut up or finished in their being made As is manifest in a Fever an Imposthume c. In the next place there are occasional efficients which do defile by a continual and fermental propagation As Ulcers the Jaundice c. And there are internal occasionals which do now and then sleep a long time As in the Falling-sickness Gout Madness Asthma Fevers c. Of internal occasional causes also some do uncessantly labour that they may estrange the matter of our Body from the Communion of life Whereto if a Ferment shall come which thing Hippocrates in Diseases calls divine co-meltings of the Body are made But in a Fever the efficient occasional matter according to its double property doth stir up the Archeus unto a propulsion or driving out for the consuming of it self Wherefore neither doth it leave any other product behind it unless a new Idea shall from the Archeus being provoked spring forth by accident In like manner as the Dropsie followeth Fevers c. But let pains drowsinesses watchings weaknessses c. be symptoms and dispositions so also a strange seminal efficient doth beget the Stone and there ceaseth although it thenceforth stirs up troubles every moment and new motions But the product of the Stone are excoriations or gratings off of the skin and new Diseases which are Monsters unlike their Parent For in speaking properly the generation of the Stone is not a Disease and much more the Stone it self which in it self is a natural composition but in respect of us diseasie Wherefore also in the Chamber-pot or Urinal and without the life it is generated by its own causes of putrifaction or stonifying And so it is a monstrous and irregular Disease because it is that which is bred in us by accident and without the life In the next place as soon as the effect or product in its being made hath lost its occasional efficient that product is no longer the very connexion of both causes or the former Disease but it hath its own causes more latter than the connexion of the first causes For so an Imposthume hath brought forth an Ulcer but this weeps a poysonsom liquor this in the next place doth oft-times excoriate changeth the former Ulcer or raiseth up a new one But it nothing pertains unto the causing Ulcer whether its liquor doth afterwards ulcerate or not because there is not in it an effective intention to produce an Ulcer by the liquor Because the corrupt Sanies or liquor it self is the product of the Ulcer causing it which received its effective and seminal intention in its own essence but not for the propagation of a new Ulcer which is therefore unto it by accident The Stone also is the product of its constituting causes which it encloseth and terminates in it self Because the causes thereof being brought unto the end of their effecting do cease in the product and are shut up as if they were buried Although that Stone be an occasional means whereunto the generation of a new Stone happens by growing In the mean time it is to the Stone by accident if it produce other Diseases more cruel than it self yea than death it self But in the Dropsie the efficient Archeus of the Reins in the conception of an Idea begotten by his own perturbation closeth up the Kidneys and a Dropsie is made Yet the former efficient doth not cease even unto the strangling of the person In that Dropsie being caused and the water being produced and dismissed there is not a further intention to produce any other thing After another manner oft-times the product of a Disease seeing it is an in-bred Monster it hath an occasional propagative faculty from the property of the efficient Archeus not enclosed or bound up in the product but free in the Organs of life Whence indeed other products do now and then successively spring forth At least-wise the lavishments of the faculties and life ought not so much to be accounted the products of Diseases as their ordained fruits and symptoms and the periods of these Neither in the mean time is that a Disease by a less priviledge which is produced by a diseasie ferment than was the Disease the Parent of that Product Neither indeed doth it more sluggishly corrupt some vital thing or part by strange efficients being received than that in the primary efficient of whose action the Disease it self is But the Schools do suppose a contrariety of the Disease with health with life and again with the Remedy it self Therefore unto one term they apply many contrary
Fall Again neither do these Words sound of a Curse that the Woman should be thenceforth obedient and subject to her Husband although therein the intent of the Creator doth clearly appear to wit that he had appointed the Woman to be the head top and ultimate Creature above the Man But now by reason of a double Sin that she ought to be subject to her Husband But that signifies rather a deserved Punishment than a Curse Even as a Superiour is not cursed who is laid aside for an Errour committed But whereas it is said In Pain shalt thou bring forth thy Sons the Text expresly confirmeth the mistery of the Paradoxal Position For from thence it manifestly appears 1. That Eve was not created nor appointed as that she had brought forth in Pain Wherefore this Message is not decleared unto her for a Curse But there is set before her eies how much Calamity she had caused unto her self that she should hereafter conceive and bring forth after the manner of Bruits in Pain For it is not to be doubted but that Bruit-beasts are not guilty of Sin yet do they bring forth in Pain Not indeed that they have sinned in Adam as their Father or that they are partakers of his Sin because they had brought forth in Pain whether Adam had sinned or not Neither also is it agreeable with divine goodness that Bruit-beasts should bear an undeserved Punishment while as they from a Faculty of Nature and from an appointment of Creation do bring forth in pain 2. If Bruits bring forth in Pain a likenesse of Conception and bringing forth in Bruits and in Woman after the Fall is denoted which Likeness seeing it was not before the Fall therefore this Text strengthens the Position 3. If Eve had not eaten the Apple and consequently from the Apple the concupiscence of the Flesh from the tickling of a corrupt Seed verily she had brought forth without Pain Where the Text promiseth a Virginity in conceiving and bringing forth and so a perpetual Virginity appointed in propagating To wit that she had conceived and brought forth her Womb being shut For what other thing is this than that which others think to be the Curse of Eve is in very deed only a commemoration of the good lost through the copulation of Man of Seed and of the concupiscence of the Flesh in the Flesh of Sin after the manner of Bruits henceforeward The hope I say was lost of conceiving by the holy Spirit after that she had conceived by the will of Man as every Mother in Sins doth For otherwise if Death had been of the punishment of a broken Law and not from the concupiscence of the Flesh there should be every day as many new Deaths as there are Transgressions or God should not make so much account of his Commands of the Decalogue as of the Admonition of the caution or avoiding from the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil For he would not have those Laws to be alike seriously observed which he would not have to be chastised with an equal Punishment Therefore it being as yet supposed that there had been a Law concerning the denyed eating of the Apple even as there is a Law of forbidden Worshipping of Idols Adultery c. But these Laws are not punished with a continued unpurgeable Impurity on Posterity in such a manner as the opposition of that eating is From hence therefore it most easily appeareth that original Sin was not so much from the force of disobeying a command as from the effect of a defiled divine Generation being changed into a beast-like one For else there is not an equality of distributive Justice nor therefore a conformity in the goodness of God whether we have respect unto the ingratitude of our first Parents or next unto the disobedience against a Law Because the first disobedience should pay a punishment derived on all even on the innocent Posterity rather than any tenths or hundreths afterwards and than innumerable and far more great or haynous Sins Indeed I think that there is the same rule of Justice with the same Lawgiver of every command preceptively and defensively given and pronounced that the breaking thereof ought alwayes to draw after it an equal Fault neither therefore to be punished in all the Posterity and those that are innocent and then that none of Mortals nor any one of them had been sufficient for the original punishments of their Ancestours and a hundred-fold of Deaths to wit if Death had taken its original effectively and immediately from the opposing of a Law or the unchangeable God had not appointed his future Commands to be alike observed as at first if Death should not have its root in Nature the application of which root had been onely from man Therefore If Death should be immediately from God alone from the curse of Sin Now God had made Death and so by Faith we should believe a Falshood In the next place if Death had proceeded from a Curse and had been from a supernatural Root So also neither should our Death find natural Causes in us or our Death should not be of the same kinde with the Death of Adam Yea which is far more absurd our Death should not proceed from the same primitive Beginning from which the Death of our first Parents began And by consequence our Death should not be the effect of original Sin And so unless Death do happen from elsewhere than from the punishment of a Law and the curse of Sin that is unless the Adamical or Beast-like Generation of the Flesh from the Concupiscence of the Flesh and its Copulation doth naturally containe Death in it like unto Beasts in very deed Innocent Children should pay an undeserved Punishment Again if Death should be immediately caused from a Curse or from Sin should not the Text unfitly say On the same Day thou shalt die the Death while as it should not say Presently in the same Moment thou shalt die For a Curse doth not want twenty four hours that it may operate as neither likewise doth Sin require an interval for the Guilt and deserved Punishment of the same which was expresly seen while an impure Man endeavouring to vindicate the reeling Cart wherein the Arke of the Covenant was carried from a fall payed the Punishment of his boldness by sudden Death But seeing Death consisted in the procreation of forbidden Seeds and of the Concupiscence of the Flesh it presupposeth the eating of the Apple and its Digestion And therefore those Words On the same Day thou shalt die the Death or shalt be made Mortal also thou shalt suffer punishment by Death doubled in thee and thy Posterity do strengthen the proposed Truth of our Position But there is no original Sin accounted of from the first afterwards or unremissibly derived on all Posterity but that which from the eating of the Apple thenceforth defiled the whole Nature because it tranferred the Propagation of mankinde on the Flesh
from its place descends that it may imprint a seal on the forbidden Seed for a common destruction Then although the sensitive Soul was not yet born yet every natural Disposition requisite for the obtaining that sensitive Soul from the Creator was forthwith present And seeing two Souls at once cannot perfectly preside in one only Plain or Region of the Body without discord no more than it is lawful to serve two Masters at once Therefore the immortal Mind hath departed into the innermost Parts whether that was by the Command of the Creator or grieving at the wearisomness of a bodily Impurity at leastwise it afterwards delegated the government of its Body on the sensitive Soul in which it is now bound because it is involued in it as long as we live For from hence we do afterwards for the most part wax of ripe years and live after a bruital manner But the Mind hath betaken it self into the Inn of a frail Soul and doth thereby inspire hereinto its free gifts although for the most part otherwise it sleepeth perhaps even as Coral doth now and then loose its Colour and again recover the same from whence the Body hath undergone every disorder of Impurity But the Wedlock of the mortal Soul being a forreign thing unto the ordination of the Mind is for an occasion why the Mind hath placed it self into the hidden Parts so as that the Matter or Controversie is as yet before the Judge or in dispute whether of the two hath chosen the principal Bride-bed and a Mind is not believed to be among Atheists because it by piercing hath so sunk it self into the depth of the mortal Soul because the Notions of the Mind do appear as yet to this day to be subject to the imagination do also so obey the Poysons of some Simples that the principality of the Mind seems to be sore shaken at the Pleasure and Command of Diseases which thing the Dotages of Fevers Madness in affects of the Spleen the Biting of a Mad-dog and Pricking or Stinging of a Tarantula have the more strongly perswaded in the behalf of Atheism for in the former immortal Life the Mind did by it self and immediately frame immortality and gave also a perfect knowledge of living Creatures and Herbs But afterwards in the brutal Filthinesse of generation the Image of God remained indeed safe in the Mind and its external Figure in the Body But so great a Corruption of it hath constrained the Mind to retire unto the innermost Chamber of the mortal Soul Therefore the Immortality thereof lived under the happy government of the Mind And therefore Diseases were banished with the declinings of Ages and the threatnings of Death And therefore before the Fall Man was dinstinguished from Blessedness in that he could Sin Fall and Die But in Glorification the Mind shall again immediately quicken the Body and transsume it into it self The Mind indeed before the Fall which did only shine upon the Body by its immediate Splendour shall forthwith after the Resurrection through a transchanging of it clarifie it by way of supping it up For therefore the state of the Faithful although throughout their whole Life also in Death it self be far more miserable than the primitive State yet it is more happy than that by how much it is a thing fuller of Majesty to be more like the Son of God Incarnate dead and glorified than to have lived with Adam free from Diseases and at length to be taken away without Battle because the retributions or repayings of Life are no way worthy of the Glory or Expectation of the Age to come Furthermore the sacred Text hath in many Places compelled me unto a perfect Position it making Eve an Helper like unto Adam not indeed that she should supply the name and room of a Wife even as she is call straightway after Sin For she was a Virgin in the intention of the Creator and afterwards filled with Miseries But not yet as long as the state of Purity presided over innocency did the will of Man overcome her For the translation of Man into Paradise did foreslew another Condition of living than that of a Beast And therefore the eating of the Apple doth by a most chaste name cover the Concupiscence of the Flesh while it contains The knowledge of Good and Evil in this name and cals the ignorance thereof alone the State of Innocency For truly the obtainment of that aforesaid knowledge did nourish a most hurtful Death and an irrevocable depriving of eternal Life For if Man had not tasted down the Apple he had lived void of Concupiscence and off-springs had appeared out of Eve a Virgin from the holy Spirit But the Apple being eaten Presently their Eyes were opened and Adam began lustfully to cover after the naked Virgin and defiled her the which God had appointed for a naked help for him no otherwise than as a Prince is for a help unto his Servants For so the Man prevented the Intention of God by a strange generation in the Flesh of Sin whereupon therefore followed the Corruption of the former Nature or the Flesh of Sin accompanied Concupiscence Neither indeed doth the Text insinuate any other mark of the knowledge of Good and Evil than that They knew themselves to be naked and that it shamed them of that their nakedness or in speaking properly of their Virginity being Corrupted Indeed their whole knowledge of Good and Evil is included about their Shame and within their privy Parts alone And therefore in the 8th of Leviticus and many Places elsewhere the Privy Parts themselves are called by no other Etymologie than that of Shame For from the Copulation of the Flesh their Eyes were presently opened because they had known that the Good being lost had brought on them a degenerate Nature Shamefulness Fowlness and an Intestine and unevitable obligation of Death sent also far away into their Posterity Alass too late indeed they understood by the unwonted Novelty and Shamefulness of that Concupiscence why God had so lovingly forbidden the eating of the Apple To wit it shamed them more of their Chastity being Corrupted and of the Warning transgressed than of their nakedness For Adam who had Judged of the Natures of the Beasts by their beholdance alone neither is read to have lost the same Knowledge could not be ignorant of the fowlness of his own corrupt Nature also And so that through the Shame hereof they had rather hide themselves than for their Nakedness sake Indeed so great was the confusion of so manifold a Shame that it wanted but little but that he should rush into madness the which is clearly enough to be known by the unfit answers of Adam For God called him and asked him where he was and he answereth by accusing his Companion and Help like unto him that he might excuse himself being not yet accused And by altogether a foolish Endeavour they offered their Nakedness which was known to their
Paracelsus described in his Books of the Faculties of the Members I here do hear Whisperers who are wont to swallow nothing but afore-chewed things accusing the unthought of darkness of Words Those Coale-men they say do expose their Medicines unto us hand to hand and afford unto us ocular Demonstrations But that is a new rule of learning the Phylosophy of Pythagoras Let them first buy Coals and Glasses and let them first learn those things which watching successive Nights and Expences of Moneys have afforded us the Gods do sell Arts to Sweats not to Readings alone Therefore the Example of Acâ—aeon affrighteth me from daring indeed to expose Diana to an open view being spoyled of her Garment He that can apprehend it let him apprehend it Depart thou therefore from thine own self and bid farwell to accustomed things who presumest by an easie Compendium of readings to search into the innermost Chambers of Nature But besides whereby we may give satisfaction unto the former head of a full Cure a searching out of a Medicine for the every way safe and secure Dissolution of the Stone did remain 1. Therefore it is fit that it be changed into Urin to wit that it may touch the Place affected 2. That it have in it a Power of loosing the Bolts of the Stone For it is the Gift of God which Art doth not provide but only sequestreth and extracteth 3. That it possess that thing in a specifical and appropriated Property but not in second Qualities because they are for the most part frail things failing in time of Preparation or Infamous through the Cruelty of Qualities 4. That it be subtile that it pass on every side and be able to demolish its Object at a far distance 5. That it be friendly to Nature least indeed it pervert all things For not every Messenger approacheth unto the Mines of Stones but he alone who being loosed from his Bands hath known the wayes being fited for his Journey being a Friend to the Places and which hath Virtues They erre therefore who ascribe this single Combate only unto Corrosives to wit they too much trusting unto second Qualities as being badly secure do sleep thereupon and through a neglecting of specifical Properties also appropriated ones which are only extended on their proper Object being sleighted they have gone into Obscurity For the Oestrich doth not break or digest Iron or little Birds Flints Unions small Stones through an emulous quality of Corrosion There is a Virtue of loosing the Bars and Bolts of Tartar It is convenient this Virtue to meditate of and this to imitate I have spoken Blessed be ye God of Wonders who at sometime converteth the Waters into Rocks and at sometime the Rocks into Pooles of Waters CHAP. CI. The Understanding of Adam ADam put right Names upon all living Creatures and therefore he had an intimate or intuitive or clear speculative Knowledge of these which is called the Attainment of Nature Perhaps he had likewise a most full knowledge of Herbs Minerals yea and of the Stars For truly an Object not before seen being presented unto him he had known the innermost Properties thereof From hence therefore many do conclude that the same Knowledge is given to us by a natural Property as to the successive Heirs of Adam but to be obscured through Sin But others contend that it is wholly withdrawn through eating of the Fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Of these things I being long since badly perswaded alass I also believed them For I left something untryed that I might reach unto the promised Labour of Wisdom the Paradise of Long Life through the knowledge of Adam But at length I observed many things which might subvert these very principles For First of all I could scarce perswade my self that Adam in the State of Innocency knew those Things and more which afterwards he through eating of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil was ignorant of That indeed was when he had eaten of the Apple of Oblivion Drowsiness or Ignorance But not when he had eaten of the Apple of Knowledge But if in Original Sin the Original Transgressour and Defiler of humane Nature himself as yet knew what he knew before after what manner indeed by a super-attained new Knowledge and that of another Disposition being as it were laid up in the forbidden Fruit had he withdrawn all knowledge from his Posterity And moreover how had not he who from his Creation had all Knowledge except that which by a hidden Paraphrase and Emphatical manner of speaking is called by the holy Spirit The knowledge of Good and Evil traduced this likewise on his Posterity For if through eating of the Apple His Eyes were opened the which was even made known to him before after some sort they were closed and he became a knower of Good and Evil and saw himself to be naked why was there not at least-wise in his Seed as much knowledge as there was in the Apple Why if through his Seed Sin be translated is not also Shame translated that it might naturally Shame the Indians of their Nakedness That likewise a Child of three years old should be ashamed of its Nakedness no otherwise than Adam was presently after the Apple was eaten In the next place if he were endowed from his Creation with the knowledge of the Natures Societies and Properties of Animals and from hence it was pithily essential unto him How had God who is so great a Lover of us withdrawn our essential intellectual and natural Gifts whereby he will be worshipped in the Spirit of Man but hath left natural Gifts unto the evil Spirit the most vile despised and worst of Creatures Had he so greatly impoverished our Spirit and favoured the Devil more than the Sons of Men with whom to be he cals it his Delights I indeed after that I conceived in my Soul the Knowledge of long Life and the Causes of Death knew that as long as Adam was Immortal his Mind did immediately quicken his Body and governed it Yea that for that Cause also he perfectly understood whatsoever things are read to have been put under his Feet But after that the sensitive Soul was seminally introduced as a Mean between the Mind and the Body Adam afterwards lived in the Soul and middle Life that is after a modern or mean manner And his Mind for the support of the sensitive Soul dispersed from it self only a darksom Light through the Mists of the Flesh upon the Life of a new and impure Generation But the former Knowledges which he had before the Fall were in the sensitive Life laid up though remembrance yet over-clouded with the Dim and wretched Discourse of Reason when as he had now generated after the manner of Bruit-beasts and had seminally transferred a middle Life then all his Knowledge as well former as latter of Good and Evil to wit the remembrance of the same were obliterated and Man thereby was
and receives an image or Idea of indignation the which is clearly expressed in a woman great with Child fearing or desiring any thing while she conveighs the seal of the thing desired on her young and whatsoever of the Archeus is defiled by that forreign Idea this ought to have been rooted out by the fit so that that is the cause of wearisomness in Fevers because the spirit being marked with a forreign likeness or hateful image as unapt for the performance of the wonted Offices of its government totally vanisheth For so those that profoundly contemplate are tired with much weariness For the Archeus if he hath an image brought into him is unfit for governing of the body For therefore persons void of care the more healthy more strong ones and those of a longer life do slowly wax grey The endeavour therefore of a Physitian is not to direct unto the effect or unto the alterations naturally received in the Archeus For as I have said in Diseases all things depend on the occasional cause implanted into the field of Life because Diseases have not in them an essential root of permanency and stability as other Beings have which consist and subsist by their own seeds Because in very deed all do immediatly consist in the life therefore in a dead Carcase there is no disease and therefore all the destruction and cessation of these depends on the removal of the occasional cause The Scope therefore of healing cannot turn it self unto the cooling of heat or to the' stupefying of alterative motions as neither unto the expectation of Concomitant accidents and produced effects For the Physitian shall labour in vain shall loose his labour time and occasions as long as he shall not be intent on the withdrawing of the occasional cause yea by how much the more he shall do that by so much the more delightfully and acceptably there will be help In all Fevers there is one only inflaming or indignation of the Archeus whence also they agree in the Essence and name of a Fever being distinguished only by their occasional cause Indeed the Matter and Inne distinguisheth Fevers yea it is of no great moment with a good Physitian to have curiously searched into the diversities of Fevers according to the properties of the matter and places since it is neither granted him to have prevented them neither can it be said to a remedy Go thou unto such a vein or unto that place For it is sufficient to have known what things I have already before in general concluded And let the whole study of a Physitian be to have found out remedies with whom all Fevers are of the same value and weight as I shall presently declare CHAP. XIV A perfect Curing of all Fevers 1. The property of the occasional cause 2. Why it becomes not putrified 3. Vomitory and laxative Medicines cure only by accident 4. The Schools why they have not had meet remedies 5. None cured of Fevers by the Physitians 6. The Authors excuse 7. Of what sort the Remedy of a Fever is 8. The successfulness and unadvisedness of Paracelsus are noted 9. The Description of an Vniversal Remedy 10. A Remedy purging Fevers and the sick but not the healthy is described 11. The most rare property of the Liquor Alkahest 12. Particular Remedies of Fevers THerefore it is now manifest and be it sufficient that the occasional matter of a Fever is to be vanquished and that that matter if it be not food corrupted as in a Diary at least that it is an excrement not indeed a putrified one unless in malignat Fevers wherein putrefaction is as yet in its making but a strange forreign one not vital being deteined against nature and so brought into anothers harvest And by this title altogether hostile to the Archeus For if it were putrified it should not be tough neither should it adhere as stubborn for by putrefaction the stedfast Fibers decay and so neither should it afford daily Fevers but it should presently make to putrifie and mortifie the vessel containing it together with it self whence death would be necessitated The occasional matter of Fevers therefore is detained besides the desires of nature in undue places wherein there is not any sink of the body therefore vomitory and laxative remedies if ever they have performed any profitable thing another prone neighbouring matter is thrust out together with it for otherwise the occasional matter of Fevers doth ordinarily reside in the hollow of the stomack or bowels because they are sinks and places appropriated for expulsion unless perhaps in a Diary Fever the disease called Choler the Flux bloody Flux and other Fevers of these pipes stirred up from a matter adhering unto them For I speak especially of the primary or chief Fevers First of all the Schools could not seek meet remedies for Fevers they being seasoned with First of all the Schools could not seek meet remedies for Fevers they being seasoned with bad and false Principles But they not seeking after remedies neither also could they find them Therefore Physitians being hitherto destitute of a true remedy have endeavoured to cure Fevers going into a Circle But if any have been cured under them that hath been by accident Let them give God thanks who hath bestowed strength on the sick whereby they have tesisted the Fever and their succours Physitians therefore instead of curing Fevers have neglected them by exhaustings of the strength and blood Far be envy from what is spoken for not boasting or the vain desire of a little glory I call God the Judge to witness but mans necessity and the compassion of Mortals hath constrained me to write and make manifest these things I have bestowed my Talent let him believe me and follow me that will It shall no longer lay upon me if Mortals being rash of belief perish by Fevers Indeed the occasional cause of Fevers is cut off by one only hook That remedy is sudoriferous or a causer of sweat which cuts extenuates dissolves melts shaves off and also cleanseth away the occasional cause in whatsoever place it at length shall exist And it is a Universal Medicine of Fevers Diaphoretical or transpirative indeed causing the aforesaid effects unsensibly and without sweat For indeed Paracelsus although he had Arcanum's or Secret Medicines whereby at one only draught he alike successively cured the Quartane Ague and all Fevers yet the knowledge of their causes was not granted unto him He being contented to have introduced into us all the particular Creatures of the Microcosm and so under a rashness of belief to have applied the Species Numbers and Properties of all Simples and Stars unto the Medicinal Art and that not indeed by similitudes but he would have them to be so precisely known by a simple identity under the penalty of convicted Idiotism Therefore I distinguish not a Fever if there be the greatest goodness of a remedy For that remedy is the Diaphoretick Precipitate of Paracelsus
and erronous in all and in every thing In abstinent and likewise in dry parched persons as also in bloodless and in Feverish ones there is daily an offence committed in the excess of either Choler as also in the penury of blood Whence it follows that the primary and principal scope of nature is conuersant about the framing of both the aforesaid excrementous Cholers Who therefore from so many absurdities shall not see and discern the falshood of the supposed position I therefore supposed further that the Schooles teach black Choler to be sharp But they prove that because it being rejected by vomit and falling on the earth if it be over-covered with Earth it ferments it The foundation of this blockish argument I have already above oppressed Secondly they reach that black Choler is now and then made of yellow Choler being re-cocted or abundantly cocted as if yellow Choler did at length of its own free accord flow down into black as it were its ultimate end which positions of the Schools many absurdities do accompany For first of all the Schools contradict themselves in this that they determine four Humours and also those to be bred or made by the same motion of digestion to wit if the composition of the blood doth happen from four Humours being conjoyned Secondly they struggle with themselves while they teach that yellow Choler in cocting is terminated into a Leeky and Cankery Choler That is to put on a green Colour and in the mean time to increase in bitterness Therefore black Choler is not sharp from an overcocting of yellow Choler neither doth that arise from this else either the coction of nature is not single in the same body and promoted by the same ruler of digestion or surely that which is rejected being sometimes sharp and black is not black Choler Unlesse that perhaps both may be alike deservedly denied And then where and after what manner shall yellow Choler be overcocted For not in the Liver where the slender little veins do not undergo the delay of cocting to wit they being filled with continual blood and urine passing thorow them Neither in the next place shall black Choler be made of yellow Choler re-cocted in the veins of the mesentry seeing these are continually extended with sucking of the meats and with the passing of drinks thorow them and the recoction of yellow Choler should not only be for an impediment but moreover for a contagion to the fresh Chyle tending unto the shop of Sanguification But if indeed yellow Choler be recocted neither beneath nor above the Liver nor at length in the little branches themselves of the Liver that from thence it may be made black Choler but yellow Choler be brought to the Spleen that in that Bowel a transmutation of yellow Choler into black and of bitter into sharp may happen then at leastwise they ought to have remembred that that being granted now black Choler or a fourth Humour should fail for the Composition the blood and that the blood should be only composed of the other three Which thing utterly overthrows the position of the sanguification of the Schools At length to what end shall the recocting of yellow Choler into black serve If an hostile Element and earthy sayling in the blood should a while after arise from thence Is nature so greatly buisied in preparing of Humours that are forthwith to be banished And the which a little after I shall shew to be Non-beings Meer fictions designed to no end Next by what means shall yellow Choler draw that sharpnesse to it self from bitternesse they being hostile qualities unto all bowels out of stomach If it directly passeth over into an ordinary and natural Humour How shall a fiery Humour through a delay of coction assume the heat of cankered rust especially under the same slow and vital luke-warmth And shall be made a black sharp and Earthy dreg Is therefore perhaps Earth materially bred of a fiery Water being re-cocted In what part of the world also doth a sharp thing proceed from a bitter thing being thickned And from whence have the Schools learned this feigned Metamorphosis Is happily that sharp black and earthy Humour a certain singular Humour one of the four Elementary humours of the three Elements But therefore it is false that they have affirmed the same to be made of re-cocted and burnt Choler Yea moreover it is to be feared least it be to be called a fifth Humour which as yet hath not had another like unto it self and that this shall be no lesse necessary than the other four if they as yet dare to devise four other Humours For truly this is a sharp one unworthy of the family of Choler The which is wholly spoiled of every property hereof to wit which is a sharp grosse black thickned re-cocted cold Earthy and leaden Humour But where have the Schools learned to call Earth a black sharp cold and dry fire that they may begin a fourth and Elementary Humour requisite for the integrity and consistence of the blood Consider Reader with pity whither the enfolded absurdity of a fiction hath driven the Schools that through the penury or scantiness of names and truth they have made two Elements and feigned Humours from thence a cold Earth and also a bitter sharp soure and fiery liquour And that they have called it yellow Choler and also the same presently black sharp bitter and foure Choler Alas they may fear a deadly chance will befall them since they have now proceeded in stumbling for so many ages and in running away so miserable lyed But at leastwise I conjecture that this new branch of black Choler hath not a sure assertion in the constant dulnesse of the Schools the which I at first demonstrated to have been the nourishable blood of the Spleen sometimes becoming degenerate through a sinister event nor to be requisite from the beginning and for the constitution of the blood but that it is said to be produced from degenerate Choler by re-coction in stead of a privy shift to wit that they may after some sort free themselves from so many perplexities of absurdities At least wise they are compelled rather to grant that that black sour liquour being now and then rejected through the vice of the Spleen is an excrementious unprofitable dreg and not an Humour made from the intent of nature However otherwise it is if they say it issues forth from the intent of nature although that be the more rarely beheld and not likewise from yellow Cholet being first re-cocted at least wise it hath attained the underserved name and property for neither do the Schools sufficiently explaine themselves they wandring in an unconstancy of their own recieved opinion of Choler which is of a fiery and Gawly property Now earth shall sometimes be nothing besides fire being thickned if the feigned Humours do fitly square with the Elements attributed unto them Also yellow and black Choler shall be made at once and
â—â—â—gth returning to me and being cured staid with me at Vilvord for the space of half an year neverthelesse on the same day wherein she returned home the hidden Leprousie in Scalds again re-budded I have also known women who were readily inclined to a miscarriage although they travelled the Country in a Coach and the journy had prosperously succeeded yet in the river they felt a commotion in their womb and being carried from the bank by a Coach that thy slide into an excessive flux of menstruous blood And so the river strivingly imitating the heaven steals away the believed honour from the Planets I speak of Summer and so neither is cold in the tiveâ— then somewhat suspected to be accused Also the cold of Autumne in travelling the country withstood or hurt not so much as in the month called August the river nor the shaking of the Coach brought not so much hurt as a quiet saying At length not a watery vapour wandring about in the river For truly in journying the Countryon rainy days the declared calamities happened not As neither by living about fenny places but in rivers fit for flowing and ebbing a few hours hath brought on them these troubles of the Plague Wheals Leprousy and smal Pox which on lane did not arise For the water twice every day for sakes the ships and banks and the bottom is of a strong smelling stink through an hoary putrefaction wherefore the river speakes in silence and proves the hurts of its odour putrified by continuance which I shall by and by shew For that thing also is therefore proper not so much unto the sea shoat as to the bank of rivers For there is no hoary putrefaction at the falt Sea and sand of its bottom such as is in half-sweet or breachy rivers wherefore their waters are scarce ever altogether clean and they want an odour proper to themselves The Heaven therefore is free from our contagion as also being innocent of the accusations of the ignorant it wants the fault of revenge They are the Reliques of Paganism the which unlesse the School of medicine shall shun let it know that the giver of lights will not reach forth his benefits unto them CHAP. IV. A forreign new Plague or contagion ALL diseases have not come at once into the place of exercise surely the ages of our Ancestours were happy wherein but few infirmities had bent their sword against man weaknesse And the product following upon Adams transgression hath by degrees adjoyned the principles of nature with us For Astrologers do as yet to this day flee together unto the limited positions of the stars unto the wraths and un-co-sufferablenesses of their oppositions and the conjoyning combates of malignant lights whereby the first Fever first Apoplexy or first was bred For although I am not wont diligently to search into things past which may not profit but hurt and much lesse have I accustomed my self to enquire into those things the demonstrations whereof I could not obtain give make or hope for yet I could not but deride the folly of Paganisme referred on the stars For I could the more easily assent unto Astrologers if a Fever being once bred and an Apoplexy having arisen they had ceased when that constellation ceased Also if they could demonstrate in what Inn the while they should inhabite the displacing of severish stars being once divded or drawn into diverse parts Wherefore in the book of long life I first was constrained to describe the entrance of all diseases and death into humane nature from their original And so I clearly understand and seeingly behold that they were the reliques of paganisme whosoever hath dared to extend the offices and ordinations of the Stars beyond the text of the Holy Scriptures which saith that the stars are to us only for signes seasons days and years For if I should assent unto judiciary Astrologers I should suppose a feverish or Pestilent seed being once bred to have afterwards entred into nature not indeed that its generation did continue thence-forward as the off-spring of a certain curse but of creation But since most diseases do at length end into health if at leastwise they do not die with the sick themselves and for the most part without the raysing up of a new off-spring it should of necessity be that if they had at sometime begun by reason of unlucky lights a ridiculous or blasphemous word for a Christian neither could then begin without them at this day if those lights having thus con-joyntly encountred are to be judged the efficient causes of diseases Therefore I beleived after that I had more fully unfolded the re-solutions of hidden bodies by the fire that there were from the beginning the same principles and rootes of diseases which there are also at this day The which I have cleerly enough demonstrated in the section of the original of medicine in the treatise concerning diseases in general I have also believed that some diseases in the beginning were as it were in their infancy more gentle and that they had more swift progresses and also more easy extinguishments by reason of the former strength of humane nature yet that some diseases were in their beginning more fierce the which indeed do not so adhere to the root of humane frailty but are attained as companions with a Plague or contagion as being forreign For as natures were in times past more strong the which as they are the recievers so also the Physitianesses of diseases so now I experience the seeds of diseases daily to profit to make a more strong impression and to wax very fierce and that our nature by how much the longer it goes on and the more unseasonably proceedes by so much the more negligently also it hearkens unto remedies For indeed in the days of our Fathers the Lues venerea or foul disease till that time hitherto unknown arose together with its chambermaids and lackeys But the 1424. year and the siege of Parthenopolis or Magdeburg and the age of that Lues and the first nativity thereof is taken notice of At length whatsoever hath once grown tough in our possession although it may perish in those individuals yet it afterwards keeps its particular kind and scarce knows how to dye as long as the command of him remaines who sendeth a spot into the flesh As the Scurvy Plague of Hungany c. unknown to our Ancestours but our stripes increase daily because impieties also are multiplied Truly diseases are changed are masked are increased and do degenerate through their coupling therefore henceforward we must deliberate with a more earnest thought concerning more profound remedies but from the growing worse of a disease I have conjectured that a more secure art of healing ought to arise than that which hitherto by frequent blood-letting and the poysonous resolving of laxative medicines their bonds being conjoyned fore-timely draws mortals into the place of burial For I guesse at it because I see the Lues