of all in the book of long Life I have demonstrated at large that the entrance of Death into humane nature had its own causes in nature by means for bidden without the intent of the thrice Glorious Creatour that death being once crept in and admitted although that was not from the Creators intention yet that it was afterwards continued and un-intreatable from a necessity of nature and thereupon not only to have been permitted and consented to by the Creatour but also that the style of Nature being changed it was admitted yea and also as it were commanded under a better state being introduced in regenerating through the Divine Grace of Baptisme In which Treatise I have demonstated a necessity of the Sensitive Soul which else under immortality had been in vain whence indeed a Law in the Members was introduced contradicting the Laws of the immortal mind And a Total and unexusable corruption of the whole central nature was received Which new unheard of Doctrine to former ages I presuppose is therefore from thence to be fetched or required if so be that the knowledge of our Mind be desired For as it is now thus stranged from its own self from its own Beginning because it now seems to hearken unto the commands of the Sensitive Soul which notwithstanding in its own essence Substance and reality is unchangeable so indeed unto those who make a beginning or do repent as it addeth the knowledge of the means whereby it fell and became wholly degenerate so also it presupposeth the same Doctrine to be as it were the foundation of the knowing of it self In the next place concerning the Birth of forms I have likewise shewn how far this fraile sensitive and mortal Soul in us may differ from the immortal Mind the which surely that it is made to do no less than after an infinite manner is undoubtedly true seeing the mind indeed is a Substance not mortal but the sensitive Soul is neither a Substance as neither an accident But a neither Mortal Creature and perishing into nothing and of the nature of Lights Which Doctrine is in part that of the Gospel which speaketh concerning the Eternal Life and Death of Souls or that which reckoneth the Soul of man to be the Image of God and not hereafter to Die for the distinguishing of it from the Soul of a Beast which indeed together with the Life it self is returned into nothing no otherwise than as the light of a Candle But as to the other part the present Doctrine is plainly Paradoxal in as much as the Sensitive Soul is banished out of the predicament of a Substance or an accident For first of all I have demonstrated that the Sensitive and Beast-like Soul as well in bruits as that which is in us is not infinite and immortal yet it must needs be so seeing none doubteth but that every natural thing that is born is also Subject unto Corruption by the Law of Nature But we are obliged by Faith to believe that the mind of man is immortal hereafter And so that the mind of man is an abiding substance or a Spirit subsisting and Living in it self after Seperation from the body should not be to be pressed or demonstrated to a Christian whose understanding is subdued into the obedience of Faith but that a most prevalent Atheism had lately arose in the midst of us and in Hypocrites of the Church which by an every way renouncing of the Faith doth shake it self off from the Principles whereby such insolent rashness might be appeased And especially of them who deny all divine Power otherwise neither is it my part to Treate of the immortality of the mind it being written and demonstrated by Augustine and piously copied out word for word by Lessius and by him re-delivered because they are those who have sufficiently proved the same But not yet against those which deny all Divine Power Therefore I might desist by treading the same under foot to re-meditate of it if it had been sufficiently demonstrated by them against the first sort of Atheists and unless I had put a difference of the mind in nature from every Soul of living Creatures unless I say the integrity or entireness of the same should have repect unto the knowledge of nature and that integrity should require a designed difference of man from any other Created things whatsoever and that â—ingly and Principally only according to its cheif and lively part without which man is nothing but a stinking dead Carcase more vile then a Flint and sooner destroyed and broken than any Glass Otherwise Christianity standing the immortality of the Mind standeth and the Substance of that Substander oâ—â—emainer even as also likewise the Mortality of other Souls or their reducement into nothing which is annihilation of a Proper Name And from thence is the true and properly said difference of the same CHAP. XLVI Of the Immortality of our Soul 1. Atheism and that worse than Idolatry 2. Religious Atheists are the worst of all 3. The Life of new Religious persons which prefer themselves before others hath introduced Atheism anew under the Doctrine of the Pâ—lagiam 4. Hypocrites abuse the Scriptures 5. The Argument of perfect Atheists 6. That modern Atheism was foreseen in times past 7. The foolishness of their Argument 8 Of what the Faith of Atheists is 9. Some Arguments against Atheists from things granted 10. Every thing understood is a Lyer while it is equalized with things understood by Faith 11. It is further demonstrated by the authority of Scripture 12. The Bread which comes down from Heaven Prophesied of 13. The remainder out of blessed Augustine 14. The mind cannot be generated by the disposition of Bodies 15. A neutrality of Beings unknown to the Schools THe Jewes of old presently after the Cessation of miracles were straightway hurried unto Idolatry a mad worshiping of Idols But the modern Age being more wicked then they of the Circumcision slideth voluntarily by degrees into Atheism For Lay-men being exsecrably involued in daily Sins do not only neglect God the invisible Fountaine of all good But also some that are bound or engaged to the Church eating up in the midst of us the Sins of the people do â—coffe at God and protest that they are indebted nothing unto him Because they believe nothing Accounting the Faith it self to be a meer politick apparitions Imagination and so that all Religions are indifferent Because they are those which they believe he introduced only to restrain people under a civil Law of living and that the are therefore almost every where different and alike just they being divulged by the Statute Law of Princes or right of customes received For else it might be a free thing to believe and do any thing if the commerces of men should not perish thereby For there are those who do believe and foolishly utter these things because Priests and Religious men themselves do privily profess unto
its coming not to come and that a strange-born creature and monster is substituted in its place Of the contingencies whereof daily and unvoluntary experiences are full which power is granted to be given to a woman great with child yet not that therefore in other women the images of conceipts are not likewise brought unto the womb wherein an embryo doth not inhabite For I have taught in a particular treatise that the disturbances of men are framed in the midriffs about the mouth of the stomach to wit that in men they from thence ascend unto the heart but in a woman that they are more readily sent unto the womb because a woman doth naturally appoint vital inspirations for her Young And so every commotion of the midriffs in a woman hath continually respect unto the womb whether a Young be present or not Whosoever therefore much disturbs a woman with grief c. from a deliberate minde he willingly sends into her a disease And he that molests a woman great with young let him know that he hurts the mother and off-spring Hence maides about the years of maturity if they are vexed with the conceipts of difficulties they are wont continually to decypher the sides of their womb with the vain Idea's of conceptions and for the most part they are made unto themselves the Aâ—â—horesses of various sumptoms for inordinate lusting Because the womb doth not suffer its tranquility to be taken away by forreign images without punishment But a man formes his images in his midâ—iffs as well those of the desirable as of the wrothful faculty so that madnesse is therefore not undeservedly called hypochondrial and that thing happens no otherwise than as in a woman but he transmitts the Idea's of conceipts more freely unto the heart and brain For a certain man exspecting that on the morrow morning a Major would be sent for his houshold goods sitting sorrowful all the night with his head leaned on the palm of his hand in the morning had that side of his head grey in what part his temples had touched his hand And so the hand of a woman with child translates her own exorbitances unto her womb and the hand of a man his feares even into the skin of his head At leastwise from hence it is manifest that there is a true growth and nourishment of the haires and not a vain signature of colours but that they are not in-bred by an application expelling from behind and then that the perturbation in men is much akâ—â— to that of a woman although far more infirme I have taught also elsewhere that the efficacy of disturbances consisteth in the spleen Wherefore antiquity hath accounted Saturn the principle and parent of the starry gods also the highest of the wandring stars to wit the which should cast his influence downwards on the rest but that the rest should in no wise reflect upwards because the stars are believed to conspire for the commodities of sublunary things but not upwards Therefore they called Saturn the origina of life and the beginning of conceptions or generations yea and they named him the devourer of a young child poynting out hereby that the images framed by the desirable faculty do make seeds fruitful and also the Inns of digestions in us even as when they are exorbitant they consume the new or tender blood and enforce very many diseases on us Therefore the imagination of the spleen hath the first violent assaults which are gâ—aâ—tted not to be in our power Saturn therefore was feigned to be as it were without a beginning but Jupiter the chief off-spring thereof casting down his father from his seat signified the brightnesse of reason subduing the first assault of imagination But an image formed by imagination is presently in the spleen cloathed with the vital spirit and assumeth it whence an Idea is fortified for the execution of works for what person is he who hath not sometimes felt disturbances anguishes and the occasions of sighing about the orifice of his stomach in which part the spleen is most sensitive even as also the touching in the fingers ends Is not the appetite taken away from an hungry man by a sorrowful message Be it observeable in this place that although the essential disposition of things aprehended in time of the perturbation be plainly unknown unto the woman with child yet she wholly formeth and figureth the same in her young while as without the trunk of the trees she frameth a cherry in the flesh in an instant conteining the internal essence and the knowledges of a seminal cherry It s no wonder therefore if that a terrour from the plague frameth an Idea of the plague from whence the plague it self doth presently bud although the sensitive soul of man be ignorant of the essence of the plague Heer an open field is made manifest to prove that the knowledges or Idea's of all things are formed in us by the power of the sensitive soul yet that they lay obscured in the immortal mind which we believe to have been present with Adam while as he put right names on the bruit beasts For if the conceipt of a woman being allured by the overflowing of some certain perturbation can decypher the inward dispositions of plants or animals yea sometimes with a total transmutation of her young it must needs be that in the mind it self as in the essential engravement of the divine image an essential notion at least of sublunary things doth inhabite only being depressed and deformed in the impurity of nature and spot of original sin otherwise the sensitive soul cannot do strange things which it knows not and hath not and so there is need for the immortal mind to have a conflux hereunto it being stirred up by perturbations It is a very obscure and difficult way whereby Adeptists by no help of books do strive by seeking to obtain some former light of sciences And therefore also they call it the labour of wisdom and Paracelsus esteems it to be ten-fold easier than to have learned Grammer Yet Picus is of opinion that unlesse the operater makes use of a mean he will soon die of a Binsica or drynesse of the brain That the spirit of life will be diminished by reason of a daily continuance of speculations Whatsoever that may be at leastwise the ignorance of causes hath neglected most things and the helpings of the sick have been exspected in vain But I have discussed in this place of images or likenesses bred in the imagination whereby it may be manifest after what manner every corporeal body proceeds from an invisible and incorporeal Beginning the which they of old affirmed to be fetcht from the intelligible world by the imagination of the foregoing parent in imitating after a certain similitude the creation of the world being from the command of the incomprehensible word Fiat once made of the infinitenesse of a nothing The which afterwards obtained its continuation from the gift of the
Van Helmont's WORKS Containing his most Excellent PHILOSOPHY CHIRVRGERY PHYSICK ANATOMY WHEREIN The Philosophy of the Schools is Examined their Errors Refuted and the whole Body of Physick REFORMED and RECTIFIED Being a New rise and progresse of PHILOSOPHY and MEDICINE for the Cure of Diseases and Lengthening of Life Made English by J. C. sometime of M. H. Oxon. LONDON Printed for Lodowick Hoyd at the Castle in Cornhill 1664. ORIATRIKE OR Physick Refined The common ERRORS therein REFUTED And the whole ART Reformed Rectified BEING A New Rise and Progress of PHYLOSOPHY and MEDICINE for the Destruction of Diseases and Prolongation of Life Written By that most Learned Famous Profound and Acute Phylosopher and Chymical Physitian John Baptista Van Helmont Toparch or Governor in Morede Royenborch Oorschot Pellines c. And now faithfully rendred into English in tendency to a common good and the increase of true Science By J. C. Sometime of M. H. Oxon. Job 32. 8. There is a Spirit in Man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth Understanding Pro. 8. 12. I Wisdom dwell with Prudence and find out knowledge of witty Inventions Aeternarum rerum seria contemplatio eò usque animum nostrum subvexit ut Divina loquuti videámur de rebus Naturae subjectis quae tantò perfectiores sunt quanto propriores Aeternis c. LONDON Printed for Lodowick Loyd and are to be sold at his Shop next the Castle in Cornhill 1662. TO THE English READER AS the bare report of Solomon's Wisdom was enough to attract the Eastern Queens attention and that to travel her to the Fountain-head it self which she relished at first as pretious Wine but then as divine Nectar so doubtless the loud Fame of Learned Helmont ringing in the ears of our as well as other Nations must needs excite the attentions and level the Affections of those that can value the Wisdom found in the true knowledge of Nature and Art and so sharpen their Appetites as to induce them to find where the Fruit grows and there to feed their fill their fill of essential not formal Learning of experimental not historical Knowledge of Hermetick not Culinary Practice So that methinks 't is sufficient to tell thee that great Helmont now dictates in thine own Dialect Wouldst thou then find a clear efflux of pure not fleshy Ingenuity here it is Wouldst thou behold acute Invention in its unmixt clarity here it is Wouldst thou contemplate the depth of exact and solid Judgement here it is Wouldst thou be acquainted with Arguments Impregnable to the production of Truth and conviction of Error here they are Wouldst thou understand the vanity of evolving unweldy Volumns of Vegetables and neglecting the utility of powerful Medicines Wouldst thou discern the vast difference between the efficacious kernel and useless shell of natural Products between potential Essences and impotent Superfluities between heterogeneal Co-mixtures and artificial Separations Purifications and Exaltations In a word wouldst thou not dwell in the Circumference of Knowledge but dive into the very Center it self here then imploy thy Faculties here exercise thy Abilities here impend thy Studies Then wilt thou moreover find to omit his Humanity Magnanimity Piety and Charity wherein he much excelled his Disputes subtile grave and of great validity his Assertions soind his Demonstrations clear and his Conclusions infallible eradicating Error and implanting of Truth and that with rare Integrity and indefatigable Industry But saith Zoilus Diruit quidem non autem Aedificat A Position well becoming the owners of it granting a Verity to infer a Fallacy As how as thus That Learned Helmont hath demolished the feeble Fabrick of an erroneous Method is apparently true not onely in it self but confest even by his adversaries but that he hath not rebuilt a stronger Structure on a firmer Foundation is as false and that it is so this his unparallel'd Works do demonstrate to any intelligent Reader that is not drunk with envy or poysoned with malice or infected with prejudice His own Works indeed do best express his worth Neither can I suppose that another Pen can Preface any addition to it Canst thou Reader sum up the perfections required in a Philosopher not Traditional in a Christian not Hypocritical in a Physitian not Verbal not Superficial then art thou nearest his true Character But he that shall attempt to tell thee the Summa totalis of him or these his eminent Emanations may sooner want wind for his Words than work for his Pen and whilst he recounteth their excellencies seem to numerate the Sea's sand I therefore desist and refer to thy experience which may happily evidence thy proficiency that thy industry and both render thee gratefully joyful for so great a jewel whose due rate and proportion That thou mayst rightly apprehend Is wisht by thy well-willing Friend H. BLUNDEN Med. Lieentiat יהוה TO THE Unutterable WORD THE AUTHOR Offers up a SACRIFICE in his Mother Tongue O Omnipotent Eternal and Incomprehensible Being the Original of all Good Thou hast committed unto me a Talent the which I expose to open Usury But I acknowledge and confess my nothing impotency my vile and abusive unprofitableness Thus being overwhelmed in the Abyss of my own nothingness I pray thee O thou All-providing Good that thou wouldest clementiously accept of this Book O thou Eternal Beginning and End of all Wisdom Let thy saving Will be done O Lord in the grace of thy Love by this dry tree this meat for wormes this fewel for the flame thy unprofitable servant the son of thy hand-maid Unless at length thou perfect me and preserve all thy gifts they shall perish in me for ever This I ingeniously confess from the knowledge of my very innermost part before thee O Lord unto whom all things are thorowly known in truth and before the World unto whom most of the most excellent truths lay hid I am amazed at the largeness and greatness of thy benefits towards my nothingness So being prostrated I celebrate thy most glorious Name and that Name I invoke from above O Jebovah thou most faithful lover of Men O holy and incomprehensible Name at all times and alone to be sanctified and the onely free Sanctifier of his Saints alone Favourably behold from the Throne of thy Omnipotency the miseries of the living help the sons of men seeing it is thy delight to be present with them Remember the word of thy Promise no longer to be the God of our Fathers as in times past but now as a God declared to be our Father No longer the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Israel but as God Jesus the God of Mary our Mother and who art made our Brother in the love of thy grace All the end and scope of my desires tendeth to this that thy incomprehensible Name may be sanctified not only because thou art called the Thrice most Great and Excellent but also because thou onely art All unto whom every wish of
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
is a Body mixt from a reall Wedlock of the aforesaid Elements how can it come to passe that Gold doth exceed water in weight sixteen times at least For if there be in Gold parts of Air and fire mixt by an undissolvable and equall tempering for that thing they affirm to be altogether necessary seeing they assign the perpetuall remaining of Gold in the greatest torture of the fire to be from an equall mixture of the four Elements Therefore Water and Earth in Gold being constituted shall two and thirty times out-weigh their own matter from whence the Gold ariseth Shall therefore Earth pierce it self two and thirty times at least while Gold is made of it Therefore seeing the weight it self doth bewray infallibly a ponderous Body neither doth weight wholly consist of nothing they must resolve me of this question before they shall draw me to their own opinion concerning the mixtures of the Elements In the mean time shall be room for me to shew by way of Handicraft-operation that solid and ponderous or weighty Bodies do afford out of them water of an equall weight deprived of all manner of taste Neither that an Element in nature is as neither that the Elements can ever by any skill or endeavour of nature be knit together into a formall unity these things already more largely above Therefore it is a deaf kinde of Doctrine that there are four contrary Elements which flow together to the co-mixture of other Bodies which hitherto are deceitfully supposed to be mixt and that they fight also in such mixt Bodies wherein they are enclosed no otherwise than as in their own simplicity by reason of contrarieties and that therefore they do mutually slay each other by an uncessant War and that they do as oft rise again immediately by privation that they devour and again vomit up each other That stupidity of the Schooles is not to be borne whereby they do without scruple subscribe to each other in these trifles not enquiring what that appetite in an Element of enlarging it self should be or what the motion beyond the bound once appointed for it by the Creator For first of all there is not any hunger thirst penury or any the like defective thing to which they should be subject from their Creation Neither also do they suffer defects much lesse an actuall feeling of defects Seeing every one is in it self a first and simple Being neither doth it admit of VVedlocks neither is it wasted by nourishments and through the exchange of it self hath it or doth it cast out excrements nor doth it suffer rust neither doth it by waxing weary or declining degenerate into any Body more pure than it self more former than it self more simple than it self Therefore a necessity is wanting whereby the Elements may consume each other after a hostile manner For God saw that whatsoever things he had made were good If therefore two good things should fight against each other that fight at least could not but be a great and continuall evill the authour whereof should be the Creator himself For from thence it would follow that such a property of the Elements should not be from God as neither from sin therefore from some greater than God is But if the Elements are said to be so created by God that one should continually change another into its own nature not indeed by reason of mutuall Hostility but for the necessity of nourishment Although that presupposeth a ridiculous thing yet I have what I wished to wit the taking away of contraries Therefore it is a vain privy shift and a false devlse For truly that supposition cannot subsist together with the position it self For that excuse being supposed it must needs be that there should be a fight and resistance Else one Element should presently convert all the other that co-toucheth with it into it self Because there is no difficulty of overcoming where there is no necessity of fight or resistance Because every part of an Element should have the same passion motion and desire to consume its Neighbour such things as are supposed to be in parts akinne to themselves And so that therefore those activities should be heightned into a hugeness that it should easily and presently convert the Element subjected unto it into its own nature without a re-acting And these being thus converted afterwards uncessantly others and successively others At leastwise that uppermost Air and that which is at the farthest remote distance from the water being pressed with a most tiresome and long thirst had long agoe perished or at least should languish through wearisomness or grief as being deprived of its naturall nourishment Therefore however these things may be excused the Creatures at least should be ordained by God with a desire of troubling the order and Harmony of the Universe and of their first constitution to wit of bringing in the first dissolution and disproportion by overcoming slaying and transcnanging their Neighbour into themselves Truly humane frailties are the inventers of these fables brought in by the Paganish Schooles Because through ignorance of nature it self the common people have brought in Lawes confusions contrarieties fights hostilities reducements and repeated Resurrections that men might excuse their own angry contrariety and might apply it to things that want it Indeed the Schooles and also the common people who have been deceitfully thorowly instructed by these have esteemed that in nature it is a greater more glorious and better thing to overcome than to be overcome to subdue equalls than to be subdued But God hath taught us otherwise To wit that in the top of perfection of nature it is more glorious to suffer than to do wrong that it is a more blessed thing to be overcome of a stronger than to have cast down a weaker And seeing God cannot erre in his judgements hence the judgements of the Schooles and common people have sprung not from the truth of nature but indeed from our animosity and frailty And therefore they are erroneous and abusive as as being opposite to the divine judgements Neither also shall those which God hath despised in man be able to praise him in the simplicity of a Law and necessity of Nature if they were glorious But if there were any true contrariety in things that want sense they had rightly judged that that doth necessarily arise and presuppose a conception of hatred and hostility being radically sealed in their own first and formall beginnings by reason whereof the Agent from its own self-love should stir up to it self a hatred against the Patient or it should have that hatred singularly put into it by nature for resistance unlikeness and an endeavour of successive alteration And that which way soever it may be taken is to confess Radicall Seminal and most inward contrarieties in substantial forms And so substances themselves to be immediately contrary to each other unlesse they had rather deny forms to be substances But I am provided to teach That
there is not a certain product like unto love wherewith a man being stricken or anointed may by so much profit by how much he is deadlily smitten by another product Whence it is manifest that that poyson however it be produced by anger and be mortall unto a man yet that doth not happen through any contrariety seeing that a direct contrary is wanting unto it which doth equivalently or equally help and promote the life even as this poyson hurts it And so if these kindes of poysons do act by reason of contrariety now the Maxim is false That so many wayes one contrary is said to be by how many wany wayes another is so said Therefore it hath now beensufficiently shewen that poysons indeed are made from the anger of Beasts but it doth not therefore follow that the poysonof a Plant if it act as was shewen above by reason of its own naturall endowment implantedin it by God and not by reason of any contrariety that the poyson of bruit Beasts is more capable of contrariety than that of other Simples Otherwise the same thing is wholly to be judged concerning the poysons of those that have the art of poysoning Sorceresses c. For although they are compounded and given to the drinker to hurt the minde yet those do operate either naturally and so without an intention of contrariety or fight or they operate by the power of the Devil which is either solitary or singly alone and so is truly a hostile effect because from the evill Spirit an enemy or naturall And then not by the force of contrariety or fight but onely by the unfolding of its naturall endowment The which I have already shewen above to be void of contentious contrariety Furthermore through occasion of these things the efficacy of poyson prepared by animosity is to be explained it is known to the common people That the bloud of a Bull doth strangle him that drinks it but not the bloud of an Oxe or Cow And that thing I have elsewhere referred to the fury of the Bull with the desire of a dying revenge after the manner of Serpents But a Hog although he perish with anger perhaps therefore God forbad the bloud of living Creatures under pain of indignation yet that is done with a fear of death But the Bull is struck with so great a fury that he suffers no apprehension of death And so although his bloud be poysonsom yet not his flesh Because his fury approaching nigh unto death hath not space enough to defile his flesh But a mad Dog because he was a good while mad before death doth also infect his flesh Therefore fearfull Animalls as the Mouse Toad c. do centrally besprinkle their fleshes and bones with a certain fear Even as I have demonstrated elsewhere in the Plague-grave But hitherto hath that Maxim regard Morta la bestia morto il veleno The Beast being dead his poyson is kill'd which surely hath place in a poysonsom living Creature because between while he burns with a fury of revenge In brief if the vertues and endowments of Simples be adverse to us that proceedeth from Divine Ordination but net from the Idea or Image of revenge or hostile contrariety For these do far differ from each other to be contrary to any thing and to have hurtfull endowments in nature For truly this proves Gods order and variety of powers appointed in nature But that declareth Hostility an enemy to God and nature therefore they differ in their end That is in the institution and direction of God in nature which is in the order intention ordination and so in the whole scope of the minde of God according to which I consider contrarieties in Bruits and in Man and not in other Simples and least of all in the Elements And therefore to conclude the question is not here about a name if I shall overthrow the contrarieties of Elements and their fights and successive courses of Complexions in things falsly believed to be mixt even as also whatsoever hath from these Suppositions been hitherto pratled in the behalf of life a Disease Death and Remedies CHAP. XXIV The Blas of Man 1. The errour of the Schooles about the first Moover 2. Aristotle contradicteth himself 3. Blasphemy in a Christian 4. An errour hath slown from Science Mathematicall badly appropriated 5. The Blas of man doth imitate the flowing of the Stars 6. When our Blas doth go before and when it followes the Blas of the Stars 7. Why the Blas of Bruits goes before that of the Stars 8. A voluntary Blas is not annexed to the Stars 9. A twofold Blas in us 10. Whence unsensitive things are moved 11. Galen resisteth Aristotle in the Pulses 12. He sought into the measurings of pulses but not into the efficient cause 13. The use of the pulses with Galen 14. A third use unknown to Galen 15. The consideration of the Authour 16. That a cooling refreshment is not the end of pulses 17. Some suppositions 18. None hath treated concerning life 19. Contradictories concerning the fire of the heart 20. Whether a pulse be for the procuring of Colds sake 21. Why the pores in the inclosure of the heart are triangular 22. Wherein the venall bloud and the arteriall bloud do differ 23. The sensitive soul is the framer of pulses 24. To what end the motion of the heart is 25. The absurdities of the Schooles concerning radicall heat 26. The motion of the heart cannot be judged to be for cooling refreshment sake 27. Why a Feverish pulse is swiftly moved 28. A Thorn in the finger teacheth that from the swiftness of the pulse heat is increased but not cold 29. Five chief ends of the pulses 30. How the kindling and enlightning property of fieryness do differ 31. That the Spirit of the bloud is not from the Liver 32. It is a rotten Doctrine which confoundeth the ends of pulses with breathing 33. The necessities of pulses have been hitherto unknown 34. The use of the pulses hath respect unto the digestive Ferment 35. The sluggishness of the Schooles about these things 36. Why healthy Sailers are more hungry than themselves not sailing 37. The Air cannot nourish the spirit of life 38. An Alcali is formed by burning up 39. The wonderfull Coal of Honey and divers speculations of Chymistry are cleared up 40. The Common-wealth of Alcalies 41. The fabrick of the Balsam Samech of Paracelsus 42. An Alcali is made volatile and so interchangeably under the same formall property of a composed Body 43. Of the labour of wisdom 44. An Handicraft Operation of distilled Vinegar 45. Some Handricraft Operations of Chymistry are re-taken for the finishing of the venall bloud without a dreg 46. A new and unheard of use of the pulses 47. There is an unwonted pulse from the part grieving through a Thorn 48. Pus or corrupt matter being made why Sumptomes wax milde 49. Whence the hardness of an Artery may straightway be made 50. What a hard
humane Nature The same Cause also doth wholly at this day make Death and a Disease For it is repugnant with the Glory of the Creator not to have made Death from the beginning and afterwards when it was made by Man for him to have assumed to himself the Glory of knowing how to make it as if he ought to have learned that thing from Man But what hath been already spoken concerning Death that is by an equal right to be understood concerning Diseases Because that seeing Death and a Disease have issued from the same piont of their original therefore if God be said to give Diseases or Death it is not that now he will be the Creator of those things whose Fabrick he before wholly refused But he is permissively called the Author and Prince of Life and Death Because as he is the true and alone Author of Life and therefore doth govern it and suffer it at his Pleasure So he permits that this man doth yield or depart and the other Man fall and that second Causes do happen as well directly as irregularly whence Man dieth or a Disease groweth But the Creation of a Disease as of a Being subsisting from a seminal matter and efficient and of an Ideal and deadly evil never proceeded from God For while he had placed it in the will of Man that he might remain without Death or the same day to die the Death by the same step also he put it into Mans hand to frame Death and a Disease it self as a fore-runner and preparer of Death The entrance of Death into the nature of Man being considered even as I have elsewhere explained it by a remarkable Paradox doth most exactly prove that a Disease doth nor only consist in the vital part of Man but also that a Disease it self is bred by a seminal Idea out of the Archeus himself But I will briefly prove that thing From the concupiscence of the Flesh arose the flesh of Sin and therefore also a mortal Archeus in that Flesh and from thence by consequence also the Archeus forasmuch as he is vital acts in the flesh of Sin every action and produceth every formal hurtful and deadly act which God hath refused to do and hath suffered Man to stamp on himself the Causes of Death and Diseases Yet Man is not therefore a Creator although he maketh formal acts to himself or the substantial formes of Diseases or the hurtful ones of Life For truly that was granted unto him by virtue of the Word That on what so ever day he should eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil he should die the Death and should make guards-men appointed for his own Death And that from the very Nature of Death it self necessarily brought forth in the flesh of Sin The act therefore which is of the Essence Exsistence and Subsistence even as also of the propagation or fruitfulness of the contagion of Diseases doth altogether depend in the Life from the Life by the Life within which it is also enclosed Surely miserable are Mortals and most exceeding miserable are the Sick who have hitherto hired Physitians at a great and dear price who know not what a Disease may be from whence it may arise and in what it may consist and subsist But I admire that before me the more Antient as neither Modern Physitians have smelt this out because their sacred Anchor being for the most part in the hope of a Crisis and concerning Crises's they have devised very many things to excuse their own Ignorances For truly a Crisis or judicial sign in Diseases proveth nothing besides the Archeus if they believe their own Hippocrates who saith that Natures themselves are the only Physitianesses and helpers of Diseases For the Moon doth not make Crises's causatively but the Archeus alone who follows the Harmony of the Moon For the Moon measureth dayes hath more regared unto the proof of the actions of the Archeus than unto causality For the Moon is alwayes on the fourth day in an opposite place to that which she was in on the first day Therefore also the Archeus hath opposite powers or faculties who doth imitate the Harmonious motions of the Moon So also on the seventh day c. I conclude therefore for the knowledge of a Disease that a Disease hath either a Fewell or an excitement only from the occasional Cause or doth arise from a voluntary and proper motion and perseveres in its own contagion of a seed as while an Epilepsie or the falling Evil is once con-centred or the Gowt hath taken root doth indeed awaken of its own free accord as oft as it listeth Even as also the Disease ceaseth for two or three dayes or more and again returns at set Periods although the occasional cause in the mean time be alwayes present and so after a hurtful solutive Medicine being taken although it be expelled a few hours after yet the Archens being thereby defiled rageth and is obedient to the drunk contagion of the venom So also ready inclinations and hereditary Diseases Proper or Natural unto some one whole Family are co-bred with us Because they are Con-centred in the Life it self and are as it were the Characterical marks and imprinted seales of hurtful Diseases CHAP. LXVIII I proceed unto the Knowledge of Diseases 1. Medicine is the most occult or intricate of Sciences 2. Therefore the ignorances of past ages are excusable 3. In what thing Diseases may inhabit 4. The rise or original of Diseases 5. Whence a Disease began 6. Why a Disease is immediately in the Being of the first Motions 7. Why the essence of Diseases hath been unknown 8. A Disease hath married a vital Being 9. After what manner all seeds do issue from the invisible World 10. The rise of Efficient Causes and the property of seminal Idea's 11. All the seminal Beginnings of things are from an invisible Idea 12. How a seminal beginning receives its compleating 13. The Ideal power of seeds is declared by their ranks 14. Although Death and a Disease began from the same Beginning yet they differ in that a Disease hath Idea's but a Death not 15. The Schooles will laugh at Idea's But the Author carps at the ignorance of the Schooles 16. He proveth their ignorance at least by one Example I Have already oftentimes nor in vain asserted that Arts and Sciences have hastened unto a pitch but that the art of healing alone if it hath not gone backwards at leastwise to have stood at a stay and to have whirled round about the same deceitful point Hence also I have conjectured that the knowledge of Diseases and a Medicine depending thereon was to Man most difficult On which so many flourishing wits have for so many ages vainly bestowed their endeavours and that thing I do not hereby conjecture to be from a contingency or events alone to wit because the knowledge of Diseases hath even hitherto stood neglected But because in respect
Spirit far from the Mouth as that their dissolutions by Vegetable are difficult they promise full Hospitals wherein the continual mournings or waylings of the unfortunate Sick do dolefully sound Wherefore from hence also every one doth almost dayly behold in his own House a stubborn and uncessant Disease amongst those of his Family and Physitians are made the Comedy of stages because they have scarce done any thing worthy of thanks For some of them confess their own and their Authors weaknesses and many do unwillingly flee unto Chymical unknown Remedies most of them abounding with their adultery and ravishment they fly back to Books not likewise to Furnaces for their unexperiences do promise most ample Fruits and they boast of all illegitimate and ridiculous Remedies The which while University Men do not understand and on the other side they do behold their withered Galen so destitute they as full of doubt flee over unto Cauteries sharpish Fountains and Baths Alas for grief what an unhappiness to the Sick and a vain refuge to themselves hath so great a stumbling of darkness in the Schools produced I will therefore shew that the text and that great boasted of virtue doth by the name of Stones understand all Minerals wholly and mettals the Marrow of these before the rest Because they are those things which do scarce shew themselves in any other Image than that of small Stones or great Stones For indeed this is the most rich and constant off-spring and chief treasure of Nature So that therein the conjunctions of the Stars are laid up or hidden and moreover in speaking properly and out of the profound Idiotisme of the Gentiles the Stars do excel or are chief over Meteours only causally but Mettals in their Excellencies or Remedies do far exceed the Stars For truly I have taught according to the text of the holy Scriptures That the Stars are not unto us for Causes but only for Signs Seasons Dayes and Years Neither is it lawful for Man to extend the Offices of the Stars any further Wherefore I have never in my desire married the number of the Stars unto the wandring Stars or Planets as neither have I enclosed both their Offices and Dignities in a like equality or resemblance For as they are at a far distance from each other so also they have unlike Offices and ends of Offices divided from each other But this one thing I willingly admit of to wit that Mettals do exceed Plants and Minerals in healing by long stades or distances And therefore that Mettals are certain clear or shining glasses not indeed by reason of their brightness but rather because that as oft as their virtues are opened and set at liberty they do act by an endowed light and a vital co-touching Mettals therefore do operate after the manner attributed to the Stars to wit by an Aspect and the touching of an alterative Blas which things will by handicraft-operation more clearly appear For Mettals themselves are Glasses the most excellent off-spring I say of the inferiour Globe to wit upon which the whole central virtue hath for some Ages before prodigally poured forth its treasure that it might most rightly espouse this liquor of the Earth this duggy nourishment and this off-spring of divine providence unto the ends which the weakness of Nature did require Therefore the Glasses of Gold Silver Mercury Lead Copper Iron and Tin and the fire-stones of these are not yet shut up or closed c. But I call those shining Glasses which have such a force of piercing and enlightning the Archeus from his errours furies and defects that they restore him into a brightness through the tincture of an endowed perfection For although these Minerals are not for food or of the condition of the Body of Man Yet they have the internal faculty of a Glass and a Power most chiefly efficacious co-touching with or very near to the Archeus of man being entire and appeased such as was the Archeus before the mind was conceived the which mind indeed was afterwards estranged from its right path after that the sensitive Soul wherein the mind sits drew the government of the Body on it self the which indeed was wholly frail and brutal in it self But in shining Glasses for a distinction to wit of Vegetables which do not shine a certain figure of our former immortality hath as yet remained resident and in this respect those Glasses are not only communicated but are willingly received by our Archeus Yea and which more is the restauration of the Archeus should the longer continue if the Glasses themselves were not presently banished which thing is manifest in the preparation of Copper Iron c. These things concerning the Tree of Life I do prosecute in the Book of long Life that there may be a stable Remedy transchangeable into mans Nature to be taken from ones childhood especially as long as the growing faculty doth flourish This Remedy I say doth exceed the force of a shining Glass for long Life but not likewise for a healthy Life Furthermore whatsoever is further to be spoken concerning Stones that was either so far as they do partake of a certain Metallick Sulphurous Tincture or of a Mineral Salt But as a mineral Being is neither for food nor nourishment neither could it be Vital or for Life but before that I shall pass over unto Arcanums which is called the great virtue of Stones in this place surely it is profitable to enter into the very seat of the Body and inwardly to view how much any Remedy can there operate To which end that which I have already said above comes first in our way To wit that the Stomack doth not coct any thing but as from a single aime it doth from thence at length frame a nourishment for its whole Body and for that very cause it hath an intention to make thereof a nourishable Liquor to wit venal Blood and afterwards a spermatick Humour fit for the nourishing of the chief constituting parts So that it may be turned into a substance fit for the nourishment and increase of the parts To wit as long as they are appointed within the bound designed for growth or increasing From whence it necessarily also follows that none but fit and foody matters concocted and digested by the Stomack are transmitted into the more remote shops of the digestions Wherefore I have first of all withdrawn every Plant by whatsoever cruelty being infamous from the border of the Mesentery because every thing that is unfit for these borders is for that very cause driven downwards by the Stomack and adjoyned unto the excrements But whatsoever hath now passed over into Chyle hath presently laid aside every strange quality whereby it may act as it were by choice But if from Magnum Oportet any kinde of quality of its antient concrete Body shall as yet remain surely that is drowsie feeble sluggish loose and vain and therefore it doth for the most part deceive Physitians in
of a Procatarctical or foregoing principal Cause or next the Family of a Product it is wholly altogether nothing but occasional To wit at the importunities whereof the Archeus himself being sore shaken doth represent the true Tragedy of a Disease From whence first of all it is evident that Diseases are as well real while they are silent and sleep as those which happen being awakened in the meditation of their fit I ought indeed thus repeatingly to press the Tragedy of Diseases if fruit be from a thing so unheard of and of so great moment to be hoped for unto those that shall succeed The Tree therefore and Fruits of a Disease being known together with the connexion and progress of concurring Causes the Tree of Remedies is afterwards to be contemplated of which is so greatly breathed after and unknown hitherto First of all indeed I have considered of a six fold Invasion of a Disease and liberty of taking its possession as if it were at first stirred up by the evil Spirit therefore also should follow the Week of Creation From whence also a sixfold houshold-stuffe of Remedies in Nature was continually to be considered unless the Super-eminent Divine Goodness had rather to communicate the figure of his Unity every where issuingly erected in Nature unto mans Understanding Because it is that which through the Unity of simplicity hath most powerfully every where erected most rich Remedies against the slaughter of Diseases Whereunto therefore the more weak nature of mans Understanding being cherished by sloath also easily hearkening hath searched into the Secrets of Paracelsus Whereby it might powerfully relieve all the Errors of defective Nature We being now especially the more safe through this prop shall hereafter attempt the vanquishments of Diseases after that we shall behold the one onely Fountain of Life now wandering from its scope to have erected the whole entire predicament of Infirmities I deny not in the mean time but that a Disease doth diversly enter into our harvest daily But that I say it is daily received in divers Inns and occasional Causes which attempt treachery To wit First of all They do of necessity break in by a voluntary declining race of Nature through a defect and extinguishment of the vital Faculties from whence at length difficulties of the Functions and their afterwards awakened Superfluities do arise 2. They do happen unto us from an unequal strength of the Members from whence there is presently an unequal temperature or disorder very much like to that aforesaid 3. From the received Inordinacies of Life burthening the Faculties and the Offices of these by their immoderateness Under which slipperynesse or unconstancy of Life Venus or carnal Lust Blood-letting and what sort soever of Lavishments of the Strength do war and after the beginnings of Diseases do at length hasten an untimely Death 4. Diseases do most manifestly proceed from Perturbations or Disturbances or Passions of the Mind And far more occultly from the Riotous or Immoderate and Voluntary Disturbances of the Archeus himself or those being drawn or sprung from an occasional matter stirring them up Of these especially there is a large Company and a numerous Army led on us being even hitherto not attributed to their own proper Causes because unknown 5. Diseases do break forth from the unclemency of the Heaven through the Injuries of unstable tempests and the unhappy draughts of Endemicks whereby a hostile guest is drawn and admitted within that it may make it self a Familiar 6. Lastly A Disease enters by external things rushing on us to wit Wounds Breakin gs of Bones Falls Bruises Burnings Freezings Stingings of Asps c. But at least-wise all of them do lay in waite for the one Life and from the Archeus its Defender from whence they derive their Beginning Therefore in perpetually aiming at Unity we shall contemplate of God as the one only most glorious Fountain President of Life and one onely Permitter of all Diseases whatsoever So also we shall occasionally and the more amply reverence the same Giver of a Remedy in the Unity of his own Type or Figure Wherefore although I have elsewhere written by the way concerning Arcanums every one whereof in particular doth mow down almost all Diseases with one onely Sythe to wit by a separation and cleansing from superfluity Yet those Secrets even as they are most difficultly prepared yea and ought to remain in secret for ever in the possession of those of the Privy Counsel So also the Cure through the instituted help of the same doth not so immediately respect Diseases as in the first place either the foregoing occasional Cause of the same or at least-wise the later product of a Disease And likewise those Arcanums of Remedies are most sparing whereof the most part of Mortals is deprived and destitute of hope And therfore it doth not seem to me that the Infinite Goodnesse of God would not be so issuingly or largly communicated and made known by so scanty a Remedy Wherefore I conjecture that the time is at hand wherein the Almighty Goodness will manifest unto his Faithful ones the knowledge and essence of Diseases hitherto unknown But he hath not discovered the aforesaid Arcanums but for the glory of his own Power only unto a very few least the Commerces of the World should otherwise perish For neither is it otherwise to be believed that the Divine Goodness after this intimate Essence of Diseases being discovered that he will afterwards also hide the endowed Remedies of his Unity from the Faithful ones and that the healing of Diseases ought to be planted into Arcanums alone Therefore it is meet or seasonable diligently to search into a Remedy with my self which by a single endeavour may have respect unto the Tree of the vitiated Archeus after what manner soever he be altered For truly a certain entire thing is more formerly Nature than a corrupted thing And therefore the Life and the Archeus as they are simply the cause of its Being they are more antient than is a Vice conceived in them For as the immediate Cause of any indispositions is the very Life it self So surely the speculation of curing and renewing of the Life being altered or weakened without all discomodity and burden or pressure is more principal more intimate more formerly by right and more noble than the curing which is perfected by Arcanums or by the most excellent mundificatives or cleansers For those Arcanums although they do oftentimes respect and cut off the more formerly occasion Yet it is as it were secondary as to curing which proceedeth from internal Causes primarily altered and affected And the which therefore do first and most principally require an appeasing of themselves by a natural indication and that a most capital one of all For truly Natures themselves have been of old known to be the Physitianesses of Diseases even as also the vital Nature was reverenced under the covered Cloud of the Etymology of the Spirit making
seeing the work of Butlers Oyl to be vain on me and being willing before some Gentlewomen to mock my credulity anointed one only drop of that Oyl on her right Arm and straightway it being freely moved was beyond hope restored together with its former strength we all admired at the wonder of so sudden an event wherefore she anointed the Ankles of both her Legs with one only drop on both sides being spread about on the circle of the Ankle and presently within less than a quarter of an hour all the Oedema vanished away she also through Gods favour liveth as yet nineteen Years since in health A certain Hand-maid as soon as she heard that thing to have happened in her Mistris required some drops of that Oyl because she had thrice suffered an Erisipelas in her right Leg it being badly cured she shewed a leaden-coulered Leg and swollen from the Knee even unto the Toes in the evening therefore at her going to bed she rubs four drops of that Oyl on the hurt part and in the morning there appeared no footstep of the former Malady so that she who now before could scarce go into the Market in one day the same morning went unto the Temple of the holy God-bearing Virgin in Laken and cheerfully returned and broguht me Water from the spring of Saint Ann being far remote from thence Which thing being heard a certain Gentlewoman a Widow being now afflicted for many Months in both her Arms that she could never lift her hand upwards was by a few drops of that Oyl in one only evening presently restored into full health and so remained Afterwards I asked Butler why so many Women should be presently cured but that I while I most sharply conflicted with Death it self being also environed with Pains of all my Joynts and Organs should not feel any ease But he asked me with what Disease I had laboured And when he understood that Poyson had given a Beginning unto the Disease He said Because the Cause had come from within to without the Oyl ought to be taken into the Body or the little Stone to be touched with the Tongue Because the pain or grief being cherished within was not Local or External I observed also that the Oyl did by degrees uncloath it self of the efficacy of Healing because the little Stone being lightly tinged in it had not pithily changed the Oyl throughout its whole Body but had only blessed it with a delible or obliterable be-sprinkling of an Odour For truly that little Stone did present in the Eyes and Tongue Sea Salt spread abroad or rarefied and it is sufficiently known that Salt is not to be very intimately mixed with Oyl Butler also cured an Abbatess sufficiently known who for eighteen years had had her right Arm swollen with an unwonted depriving of Motion and her fingers stretched out and unmovable only by the touching of her Tongue at the little Stone But very many being witnesses of these Wonders presently suspected some hidden Sorcery and Diabolical compact For the common People hath it already for an antient custom that whatsoever honest thing their ignorance hath determined not to know they do for a privy shift of Ignorance refer that thing unto the juggles of the Evil Spirit But I could not decline so far because the Remedies were supposed to be Natural neither having any thing besides an unwonted quantity For neither Ceremonies Words nor any other suspected thing was required for neither is it lawful according to Mans power of understanding to refer the Glory of God shewn forth in Nature unto the evil Spirit For none of those Women had required aid of Butler as from Necromancy any way suspected yea the things were at first made trial of with smiling and without Faith and Confidence Yet this kind of easiness and speediness of curing shall as yet long remain suspected by many for the wit of the vulgar being unconstant and idle in hard and unwonted matters is alwayes ready for judgements of the same tenour by reason of their facility and therefore also is weak or flaggy for they do more willingly consecrate so great a bounty of restitution unto diabolical deceit than to divine goodness the Framer Lover Saviour Refiesher of humane Nature and Father of the poor And that thing indeed not only in the common People but also in those that are learned who follow and rashly search into the Beginnings of healing being not yet instructed or observing the common and blockish Rule Because they are alwayes wise as Children who have never gone over their Mothers threshold being a fraid at every Fable For indeed they who have not hitherto known the whole circuit of Diseases to be concluded within the Spirit of Life which maketh the assault or if they hereafter reading my Studies by the way shall imprint on themselves this moment or concernment of healing nevertheless because they have been already before accustomed from the very Beginnings of their Studies to the precepts of the Humourists they will easily at length depart from me and leap back unto the accustomed and antient Opinions of the Schooles For look what Liquor Men do once in a new Vessel steep Its Odour whether Sweet or Sour it will long after keep They will again easily betake themselves unto the importunities of Decumbent or falling down Humours But I in a more near search being unwilling to refer the benefits of God unto the Devil have first of all certainly found that all things in Nature do consist of an invisible Seed That they begin I say are supported and ruled by a Being which the great God began from an imaginating Desire or derived Power and which remains afterwards throughout the whole duration of their Essence and being But that afterwards things are made visible or are this something onely by the cloathing and apparelling of Bodies espoused unto it self But I have taught that Diseases do by a stronger reason arise from a more invisible Seed Wherefore that the Diseasifying Idea is only to be Vanquished Abolished and Extinguished because a Disease is a monstrous and equivocal or doubtful generated Being and off-spring of Sin not adhering therefore to the Humane Species but only to individual Persons after an irregular manner Because seeing that after the fall it began almost from a non-being For in more fully looking into the matter first of all very many Maludies do depart by reason of Amulets or Pomanders being hung on the outside of the Body even as is plain to be seen in the Plague Falling-sicknesse and other Diseases In the next place whosoever he be who shall rejoyce to have a Towel which was withdrawn from a pestilent Ulcer or desiled with the sweat of him that hath the Pestilence applyed unto himself nor doth fear in himself that the Plague can thereby naturally be communicated unto himself we have seen health restored as with the anointing oâ— Butlers Oyl For truly a Sympathetical Remedy hath been of late
made manifest which cureth at a far distance A certain Doctor of Divinity related to me that seeing he could not conceive that in Vitriol there did subsist a natural faculty of curing an absent Wound if it were besprinkled on a bloody Towel Therefore also that he reputed that curing to happen through the work of the Devil but on the other hand that he had seen some experiences made by honest Men Therefore in a doubtful matter and case of Conscience that he had made trial of the thing in this manner To wit he sprinkled the Pouder of the best Vitriol on a bloody Towel with an express protestation that he was unwilling to experience any thing or to be hereafter cured if there were even the least co-operation of a contract or of the evil Spirit yet that he saw the Wound to be healed sooner than was wont and the Blood also to be presently allayed And therefore that afterwards he believed that natural Causes although unknown to us did operate in the aforesaid Sympathetical Cure The which nevertheless being not yet sufficiently understood by its Causes is as yet rejected only as for the enticements of Satan by this Argument A natural Agent that it may act ought to be applyed and most nearly to approach unto the Patient But a Sympathetical Remedy ought not to be most nearly applyed unto the Patient Therefore a Sympathetical Remedy is not a natural Agent I Answer if it be understood that a natural Agent ought immediately to touch the Patient whereon it most nearly acteth with an immediateness of Supposition but remotely through the mediation of other Bodies laying between or interposing whereby that immediateness is communicated to an object at a distance The Major Proposition is granted Because it is sufficient that the Agent doth touch the Patient or its proper Object and that at a distance immediately with an immediateness of virtue And therefore then the Minor Proposition is denyed Because a Sympathetical Remedy ought immediately to be present by an immediateness of supposition in that subject into which the action is first received but not in the part affected whereinto it is secondarily and ultimately received by supposed mediating Organs wandring and being extended by an interval For Fire is not in the hand of him that is heated nor is the Sun or the Heaven in the Chamber But Sympathetical Remedies have at this day been made known to be like unto influences in this to wit that not only the Air but a covered Rock and thick or dark Bodies are the capable Subject and Organ of this action no less than of a Starry influence For neither doth any thing hinder in sublunary things whereby God could not or would not have made those in some sort less alike in this thing Seeing that the manners of the Grand-Father do sometimes not shine forth in the Son but in the modern Nephew A sound also doth â—iâ—rce far c. thorow the Bodies suitably or exactly shut Wherefore if thou art amazed â—â— the sphear of activity in Sympathetical things and dost allow of them in Astral or starry Bodies thou mayest either grieve for thy Ignorance of those or for thy credulity of these For truly the principle of an action of Sympathy is a faculty akin to influences acting by an in-beaming into an object appropriated unto it self And God hath known why those things are thus made or do thus come to pass Who hath endowed his created things according to his own Pleasure For he was at liberty to deliver his natural Endowments even to the most abjected thing s neither can a Christian derive those gifts into the Devil without Punishment But neither do I in this place contemplate of Sympathetical Remedies as that I believe the little Stone of Butler to act by a Sympathetical faculty For truly this Stone takes away a distance of the object and gives an application unto the object To wit it is a Remedy familiar unto Mans Archeus and its virtue is graduated unto a thousand fold by the goodness of God And therefore it hath respect unto the peace and quiet of the Archeus in his own Simplicity For let Young Beginners before the Terrours of their Judgement have regard that a Member at the biting of a Snake doth presently hugely swell with great pain by reason of the storm of the imbittered Archeus and that the Angry sting doth by its stroak presently stir up an hard painful and composed Tumour For what if the Leprosie or Plague can speedily defile us with its Contagion what shall hinder whereby our Archeus shall the less willingly receive the Contagion of so most powerful a Remedy if he be defiled by Poysons against his will If at least there ought to be in Nature a like authority of a Remedy and of Poyson of divine goodness and of Maladies Let us consider I pray you that so sudden a Flux of Maladies may in like manner presently go back or return being appeased by an opposite re-flux For I have seen one whose Fingers had promised the Disease Panaritium being devided perhaps unto the largness of his Arm and had miserably tortured him for some restless Nights whereabout the Blood and fresh Skin of a mold being wrapped they by the morrow morning had restored the Finger together with rest in the Night For reason required that the Antidote ought even at the least to be equivolent with the Poyson For the most swift Antidote of Ornietanus in Poyson being taken and that raging even unto Convulsions doth so presently suppress all Anguishes and instant soundings as if there were no Poyson admitted within Because as a Disease is a defect of Nature and the straying Archeus So a Remedy is of meer divine goodness the which also having slidden down into Nature ought as to equalize every defect so also wholly to overcome it Therefore in one respect the Remedy is far more powerful and famous than the fault and therefore also less in quantity and far more swift than delay And that largeness and nobleness of Power doth not so much concern a superiority which with growth or increase is attained by little and little through the obtainments of Maturities as a present and effective majesty of things whereby the medicinal thing it self being unfolded by an endowed virtue doth free and restrain the Archeus from Impediments and Furies and also doth imprint an eminent excellency of a helping faculty for which things sake it was created These things it performeth by the manner and swiftness of its operation But besides as to that which concerneth the Remedies of so great goodness and the efficacy of these First of all it is manifest that that little Stone of Butler however lightly it be tinged in one only spoonful of Oyl if that spoonful of Oyl be poured into a Can of Oyl yea into an Hogshead of Oyl it shall also be made a Remedy no otherwise than as a pestilent Odour doth infect a whole Vessel with its
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
because it is that which is besides and against the appointed government of its own Life Wherefore from a sufficient account or enumeration I conclude that before the Apple was eaten neither could the Mind have generated an immortal Soul neither that it intended to generate a mortal one nor indeed any seminal disposition or substance of Seed And therefore neither had there for that Cause been made any Generation by Man neither had he felt in himself any inclination to generate And in this respect the Cause of natural Death of necessity lay hid in the eating of the Apple being unfolded by carnal Generation in which Generation there is a seminal Disposition co-operating for the obtaining of a mortal Soul by request and that Generation doth prevent and pervert the intention of the Creator about the propagation of his own Image So indeed the mortal Soul hath through a brutal Concupiscence of the Flesh produced for it self a Seed dispositive unto a Soul which is to perish after the manner of Bruit-beasts To wit the which Soul hath also introduced with it a brutal condition of mortality For Death was undoubtedly co-natural unto Bruits from their Creation the which indeed have only mortal Souls But it is lawful to confirm by the rule of a supposed falshood that we are bound by Faith to believe that indeed the Mind is created immediately by God but not to be kindled by the Soul of the Parents even as Light being taken from Light For if the Soul of the Person generated be made of the Soul of the Generater this shall be either from the Soul of the Father or from the Soul of the Mother or from both but none of these is true Therefore the Soul of the Person generated is in no wise made or derived from the Spirit of the Parents It is proved as to the first For truly seeing the Speech is of the progress of Nature the which therefore ought to be ordinary And therefore also that thing should constantly happen in Bruit-beasts but this doth not happen therefore not from the progress of Nature The subsumption is proved by a Young from its Father being a Dormouse and its Mother a Coney to wit the which except that its Taile is like a Dormouse is wholly a Coney as well within as without also in its Skin and Haires But if any Faculty of its Soul should issue from the Father it should of necessity have a fatherly and not a motherly Faculty But by the Example proposed the contrary is manifest therefore not from the Father Yet neither therefore are the Souls of off-springs begged from the Mothers Soul For otherwise from that which the Soul proceedeth from the same likewise and at least the formative Faculty also should proceed And by consequence off-springs should not only alwayes be made of the femal Sex and alwayes like unto their Mother but also a Mola or Lump of Flesh should never be made where the Faculty or Virtue of the Seed of the Male flows down as barren As neither should the imagination of a Woman great with Child transchange the Young being already formed in its Mothers Womb into a monstrous strange yea and bruital Figure because the Seed now having a Soul borrowed from the Parent could not be any longer subject unto the foolish imagination of the Mother especially while as the Young is now nourished in its own Orbe and Kitchin The same Argument also prevaileth in supposing that the Soul was begotten from the Soul of both Parents for whatsoever is denyed disjunctively may truly be denyed copulatively Whither also this conclusion hath regard to wit that that being granted the Seed should now be actually soulified from its Beginning And likewise that of two Souls a certain composed and mixt soulified and Spiritual Light should be made which resisteth a formal simplicity by reason of a composed duality Therefore the single homogeniety of the Soul is averse unto duality and to a heterogeneal composition of Souls Whence I conclude That the Soul is not so much as in Bruits derived from the Parents and by so much the less in Man Wherefore all Souls are immediately created by the very Life it self and Father of Lights who will give his own honour of Creator unto no Creature Wherefore from hence it is easie to be seen that Man is not able to produce an immortal Mind nor the divine Image And so also from hence it is manifest that the first intention of the Creator was not that Man had in any respect immingled himself in generating but that the alone hand of the Creator had perfected every Young which alone createth all Souls but especially and singularly that Soul which should thenceforth be eternal the which he by an essential ordination had directed unto his own Image Lastly it must needs be that a true Image or Likenesse can never naturally be made but by a proper Engraver But he is no proper Engraver who hath not perfectly known him whose Image he intends to Engrave But Man was created after the Image and Likeness of God yet he cannot know God as neither express any Image of him in Mind or Word the which ignorance every one ought to confess Therefore he cannot be a proper Engraver of the divine Image And therefore whatsoever Image of him he should frame it should be plainly Monstrous and of a finite Duration And by consequence Man in the intention of the Creator was not made that he should generate a man In Nature indeed every Spirit of generating Seed doth comprehend because it doth contain the Idea of the thing to be generated But Man seeing he is the immediate and true Image of God cannot by any means transfuse the divine Image into his own Seed the which in himself and out of himself he is plainly ignorant of But seeing that in Nature a like thing generates its like Man may imprint on his Seed the Image of a humane Body made also after the Image of God Therefore a Man which generates may imprint on his Seed the seal or shadow of himself but not the Image of God and substance of the immortal Mind And moreover I have demonstrated elsewhere that all other Souls are only formal Lights but not substances Therefore if the Mind ought or could be able to produce the Image of God now the Mind should either dease to be the very Image of God it self or God should not be the Creator of the Mind Wherefore the pure Essence of the Image of God did by all manner of means require in its conception of creating or generating God himself the immediate Creator and one only Father of it who is in the Heavens and besides whom there is no Paternity in the Heavens Otherwise there is a carnal Paternity or Fatherliness in Man and Bruits and therefore the Text saith Honour thy Father And another Text That there is no Paternity but in the heavenly Father Therefore it is denoted that there is
this be not to be attributed unto the Image but unto other Causes issuing from elsewhere Furthermore how much is to be granted unto the rational Faculty for the denominating of the Image of God I have taught in its own tract concerning Reason Yet the more learned Part of Christians hold that the Soul doth most nearly express the Image of one and a trine God by a single simplicity of its Substance and a ternary of its Powers to wit of Understanding Will and Memory which Similitude hath alwayes seemed unto me Improper that the Mind should be the Image of God from an excelling nigh and singular Ability For truly an Image involveth a Likeness of Figure but not an equality of Numbers And moreover if the Soul doth in its Substance represent the holy sacred Trinity but understanding Will and Memory a Ternary of Persons it must needs be that the three Powers of the Soul are not Properties or Accidents of the Soul Yea that those Powers are the one only Substance of the Mind or such an Image doth badly square with the Type whose Image it is believed to be I therefore consider that not indeed the Mind of Man alone but that the whole Man was framed into the Image of God Wherefore although the Soul in this sense doth express a certain Ternary in its Powers yet in no wise Personalities And then because no Person of the holy sacred Trinity doth represent the Will alone or the Will a Person no Person doth resemble Memory as neither any one being separated from the other two the Understanding in Property Then also because the three Powers of the Mind are considered for the most part as it were Accidents of the Soul surely these cannot in any wise express an Image or any nearer supposed thing besides a naked Ternary of Accidents collected into the Substance of the Soul In which sense the Soul doth less denote the Image of God than any piece of Wood The which sheweth by its Analysis only Salt Sulphur and Mercury but not three Powers only like the Mind in the aforesaid similitude of the Vulgar Three Substances I say being concluded under the Unity of a composed Body and diverse the which notwithstanding in their connexion made one only Substance of Wood. Furthermore Taulerus divides the Soul into two Parts to wit the Inferiour or more outward Part which he calls the Soul and the other the Superiour and Bottom which he calls the Spirit In which Part he saith it doth specially represent and contain the Image of God Because the Devil hath not access thereunto the Kingdom of God being there But unto both Parts he assigneth far different Acts and Properties whereby he distinguisheth both But at least-wise that good Man blots out Homogeniety or Simplicity of kinde from the Soul wherein notwithstanding it ought chiefly to express the Image or Similitude of God Yea in this respect he not only denies the Image of God to be propagated in the whole Man but also in the whole Soul Surely I shall not easily believe a duality in the Soul nor admit of the interchange of a Binary if in its Essence it ought to express the Image of the most Simple Divine Nature But rather it behoves that it stand in a most simple Unity and an undivideable Homogeneity of Immortality and mark of indissolution out of all Connexion or Interchange I say therefore that the glorious Image of God is not only in the Soul but the very Mind it self is essentially the glorious Image of God And therefore the Image of God is as intimate to the Soul as the Soul it self is to it self For I consider the mind as a Homogeneal Simple Immortal Undivideable Spirit to wit one only Being whereunto Death adds nothing or takes nothing from it which is natural unto it in its Essence of Simplicity But next as a Partaker of Blessedness because Damnation is unto it by accident besides it appointment and by reason of a future Defect Such a Soul therefore being separated from the Body makes no more use of Memory nor of Remembrance through a beholding of the Place where it was or of Duration But the one only Now doth there contain all things Therefore if any Memory should remain unto it it should be in vain yea burdensome for ever The same thing is to be judged of Remembrance or calling to Mind Because it is that which breaks forth into Act only through a Discourse of Reason and therefore in Eternity it hath no longer Place where the Soul through the beholding of naked Truth without declining Wearisomeness and Defect stands out of necessities of remembring The blessed Soul therefore should stand out of the aforesaid Ternary of Powers and therefore neither should it any longer represent the Image of God for which Cause alone it was created Yea by a more full looking into the Matter I do not find Memory to be a singular and separated Power of the Soul but a naked manner of Remembring For therefore forgetful Persons do by the help of Imagination which is the Vicaress of the Understanding frame an artificial Memory unto themselves and they learn a far more strong one than otherwise their natural Memory would be And moreover Will departs from the Soul together with the Life because it came accidentally to the Soul Seeing that God after the Creation placed Man in the hand of his own free Will which thing surely denotes that the Will is not after a proper manner essential to the Mind but from a grant that it may be instead of a Talent and that he may follow the way which he had rather chuse Otherwise seeing nothing is more pernicious than Free Will beause it is that alone which breedeth all discord between God and Man surely such a Faâ—â—lty cannot have place in the blessedness of Eternity Because the freedom of willing being taken away the very Will it self perisheth For otherwise what shall a power of willing avail where there is no longer a liberty of being able to will But say they in Heaven the Will is confirmed That is the heavenly Wights cannot will but what God willeth For they that are in Charity cannot but will those things which belong to Charity Which is as much as to say The heavenly Wights can no longer will but God alone doth there will and nill Therefore the Will ceaseth while as a liberty of willing is dissolved For truly the Will cannot be serviceable or profitable unto a blessed Soul to Eternity while as neither is it able to be brought forth into Act And such a Will should be onely a wishing The which surely is not in Heaven where there is a full satiety of all desirable things with all abundance The Will therefore should be rather a burdensome Appendency of a blessed Soul Let it be sufficient therefore that in this Life men by a Power of Willing have well deserved and have treasured up their Talents for advantage Indeed I
denyers should seem greater than that of the Affirmers Dost thou perhaps maintain it to be diabolical because it cannot be understood by thee that a natural Reason thereof doth subsist I will not believe that thou couldst utter so idle a Sentence from thine own Infirmity of its Virtue For thou knowest that the weaknesse of Understanding is our Vice not that of things Make hast therefore From whence knowest thou that God hath not directed such a magnetical Virtue unto the use or benefit of the Wounded Shew thy Evidences hath God chosen thee to be the Secretary of his Counsel Surely however thou mayest variously wander or waver at length thou shalt find that the Cure is accounted diabolical among you Divines for no other Reason but because your Slenderness and Calling doth not comprehend it What wonder is it if no Divine hath smelt out these things For after that the Priest and the Levite had passed on to Jericho a Samaritan being a Lay Man succeeded who took away all right from the Priests of enquiring into the Causes of Things Therefore Nature from thenceforth called not Divines for to be her Interpreters but desired Physitians only for her Sons and indeed such only who being instructed by the Art of the Fire doe examine the Properties of things by separating the impediments of their lurking Powers to wit their Crudity Poysonousnesses and Dregs that is the Thistles and Thorns every where implanted into Virgin-Nature from the Curse For seeing Nature doth dayly Distil Sublime Calcine Ferment Dissolve Coagulate Fix c. Certainly we also who are the only faithful Interpreters of Nature do by the same helps draw forth the Properties of things from Darkness into Light But that the Divine may judge of that which is a Juggle from that which is Natural he must needs first borrow the Definition from us to wit least the Cobler shamefully slip beyond his Last Let the Divine enquire concerning God but the Naturalist concerning Nature Certainly much was the Goodness of the Creator every where extended who made all created things for the use of ungrateful Man Neither hath he admited any of the Theologists or Divines as an Assistant in Counsel how many and how great Virtues he should endow things withal I know not surely in the mean time how he can be excused from the Sin of Pride who because he perceiveth not the Natural Cause as it were measuring all the Works of God by the sharpness of his own Wit doth therefore boldly deny God to have given such Virtue to Things as though Man a Worm were a full Partaker of God and his Counsel He esteems of the Minds of all Men by his own who thinks that cannot be done which he cannot Understand Truly unto me it seems no way a Wonder if God had given unto things besides a Body a Virtue co-like to the Load-stone and that to be unfolded by the name of Magnetism or Attraction alone Ought it not to be sufficient for the affirming of Magnetism that one only single natural Example be alleaged I shall anon declare it by more and that such as fit the purpose of that Stone according to the square whereof other Endowments also variously distributed in the Creatures may be understood Because therefore the thing is a new Paradox and unknown to thee shall it for that Cause ought also to be Satanical Far be it from thee to think so unworthily of the divine Majesty of the Creator Neither certainly ought we to flatter the Devil by conferring that Honour upon him For what doth at any time more sweetly affect him than if the Glory of Gods Work be so ascribed to him as though himself had been the Author of the same Ye grant that material Nature doth dayly draw down Forms by its Magnetism from the Superior Orbs and much desire the favour of the celestial Bodies and that the Heavens do in exchange invisibly allure something from the inferiour Bodies that there may be a free and mutual passage and an harmonious concord of the Members with the whole Universe Magnetism therefore because it is every where vigorous contains nothing of Novelty in it but the Name neither is it Paradoxical but to those who deride all things and banish into the Dominion of Satan whatsoever they do not understand Truly that knowledge doth never spring up to him that seeks Wisdom as a Derider But I pray what hath the Weapon Salve of Superstition in it Whether because it is composed of the Moss Blood Mummie and Fat of Man but the Physitian useth these safely and to this end the Apothecary sells them without a Penalty Or perhaps because the manner of using it is new to thee unaccustomed to the Vulgar but to be admired of both shall the effect therefore be Satanical Subdue thy self and rage not thou shalt anon have better satisfaction For the manner of using it contains nothing of Evil therein First of all the Intent is good and holy and tends only unto a good End to wit to cure our languishing or woful Neighbour without Pain Danger and the Consumption of Charges Dost thou call this diabolical In the next place the Remedies themselves also are natural things whereunto that that Faculty was granted by God we shall by and by prove by Arguments I wish that thou also hadst thus confirmed to us thy negative to wit that God the chiefest Good hath not given unto the sympathetical Ungent that natural Faculty and Mumial Magnetism This magnetical Remedy can no way be rendred suspected seeing it hath no Superstitious Rites it requires no Words no Characters or Impresses no admixed Ceremonies or vain Observances it presupposeth no Houres it profanes not holy Things yea which is more it doth not so much as fore-require the Imagination Confidence or Belief nor leave to be required from the wounded Party all which Things are annexed to Superstitious Cures For that is called Superstition as oft as Men relie upon Faith or Imagination or both above any kinde of Virtue which is not such or which is not directed by the Creator to that end Therefore the magnetical Cure hath nothing of Superstition Wherefore do thou O censuring Divine that art ful of Taunting make tryal of the Oyntment at least-wise with a designe to deride Satan whereby thou mayest overthrow that implicite compact Nevertheless will thou nill thou thou shalt find plainly the same Effect as there is with us the which doth never happen to superstitious Causes Whosoever he be that thinks the magnetical Cure of Wounds is diabolical not because it consists from an unlawful End and of unlawful Means but because it proceeds after a manner unknown to him He also as convinced by the same Argument shall render the essential Causes of all the Operations of the Load-stone of which we are about to speak or shall confess that those Operations are the Juggles of Satan or at least-wise which will be more safe for him to do shall be
to wit by reason of an Impression communicated to the Glass without corporeal remainders Steel also after the touch of the Load-stone though well washed and cleansed doth nevertheless point at the Pole which two Bodies seeing they have neither a like co-temperament or form between themselves nor with the Load-stone do demonstrate that the Pole doth not attract Load-stones for either of those two ends Thou wilt say that by rubbing on them there is a participation of the Load-stone made in the Pores of the Steel or Spondils of the Glass A miserable excuse For the Rosin of the Firr-Tree is of it self coagulated into the hardness of the Stone the which then allures Iron unto it no otherwise than the Load-stone doth Here at least-wise thy feigned participation of the Load-stone sinks to the Ground The Load-stone only by the affriction or rubbing of Garlick thereon neglects the Pole its Form Matter and Properties being the while preserved indeed because that spiritual sensation or feeling in the Load-stone is by the Garlick laid asleep which sensation we have already before avouched to be the one only Cause of the Act of formal Properties Verily that would be a weak attraction in the Pole which could pass through so many Orbs of Heaven and the vast Region of the Air through Houses and Walls but should not know how to pierce the Juice of Garlick alone or the fumousness of Mercury the same material Root and one only Form of the Stone remaining stedfast A swimming Load-stone is carried in one certain part thereof to the North in its other part to the South Therefore if that positional conversion should be made by the drawing Pole the whole Northern side of the Stone would be alwayes drawn by the North Pole which is false For if it shall touch a piece of Iron with its North side it shall not incline that Iron according to its own Property to the North but to the South although the dust of the Stone shall adhere to the Iron but if it shall touch the Iron with its Southern side it shall turn that Iron to the North. Likewise the Load-stone in what part it hath alwayes inclined it self to the North beyond the Aequinoctial line it tends to the South As yet a little longer let us prosecute this Argument A Load-stone swimming in a Skiff of Cork on a quiet Poole if in its Northern Part it shall be violently turned to the South presently that that North side as it were by a forcible conduct re-addresseth it self to the North Therefore if the Load-stone should by the Pole it self be pull'd towards the Pole and that direction of the Stone were not voluntary the whole Skiff should of necessity by the same drawing float and be drawn or towed to the Northern Bank of the Poole which is false for the direction of the North side being attained both the Load-stones and Skiffe stand unmovable upon the water There is therefore in the Load-stone an influential Virtue which without respect had unto the nearness of its Object is after the manner of Celestial Bodies freely carried as far as the Pole it self seeing there is a voluntary eradiation or darting forth of the Rayes of the Load-stone unto the Pole or North Star therefore if there be now found one only natural Virtue in Sublunaries to wit in the Load-stone beaming forth it self unto an Object at a most remote distance which is never or in no wise to be ascribed to Satan It shall be also sufficiently proved that there may be also many the like Virtues or Properties wholly Natural as in the Examples alleaged and the Weapon Salve The Load-stone therefore or Iron touched by the Load-stone seeing they voluntarily convert themselves to the Pole a certain Quality is of necessity extended from the Load-stone to the Pole the which seeing we have known to be done without any corporeal Efflux therefore we denominate the same to be a spiritual Quality herein disagreeing from our Divine who distinguisheth a Spirit in opposition to every corporeal Nature as it were something besides Nature But Physitians only in opposition to the more gross compact of a Body and in this respect we say that the Light of the Sun and Influx of the Heavens the ejaculation or stupefactive darting forth of the Cramp-Fish the sight of the Basilisk c. are Qualities plainly Spiritual to wit because they are not dispersed on an Object at a distance by the Communion of a substantial Evaporation but as by the Medium of an unperceivable Light they are beamed forth from their Subject into a fit Object Which things being thus supposed and proved it is sufficiently manifest that our Divine not having as yet understood Goclenius hath nevertheless many times undeservedly carped at him First because Goclenius would establish a Spiritual Quality in a Corporeal Unguent Secondly because He affirmed that it being drawn or conveighed as through a Medium or Vehicle is carried unto its appropriated Object like as a radial or darting Light Thirdly inasmuch as such Qualities are derived unto a remote and appointed Object by a certain feeling of the Spirit of the World the causative Faculty of all Sympathy This Spirit the Divine interprets to be a Cacodaemon or evil Spirit but by his own and I know not what Authority seeing it is the more pure and vital An of Heaven which Spirit nourisheth the Sun and the sunny Stars within and being a mind or intelligence diffused through the Limbs of the Universe acts the whole help thereof and so governs the World by a certain Communion Conspiracy of Parts and Faculties according to the consent of all that have rightly Phylosophized For Examples sake the Sun-following Flowers do feel the travall or journey of the Sun the Sea takes notice of both Lunestices or the full and change of the Moon In Summ every Creature doth by its self Let us worship the King to whom all things live Essence Existence and Sensation or Perceivance bear witness to the Majesty Liberality or Bounty and Presence of the Creator Wherefore our Censurer is deservedly to be reproved in that before he understood the Physitian Writing in a Phylosophical Style he hath plainly carped at him with an unsufferable boldness For so hard a thing hath it been to have kept a Mean in all things Thou askest us what can be attracted out of the wounded Party and after what manner an attraction can be made by the absent Unguent But surely I should not answer injuriously when thou thy self shall shew us for what Cause the Load-stone shall attract Iron and convert it self to the Pole Then shall I also shew thee after what manner Mummy can cure another Mummy being touched on by a third mediating Mummy but because we have determined to repaire the insufficiency of Goclenius in this respect we are also presently to shew by a doctrinal Argument from the Cause to the Effect how a Magnetical attraction of the Unguent happens yet provided
less may be washed off So also the Infant growes and waxeth of ripe Years without Diseases and is made capable of a Remedy for a Life of long continuance Therefore also according to the Letter it is not badly read concerning the thrice glorious Messias being incarnated That he shall eat Butter and Honey For truly the one contains the Glory of a Dew together with the extraction of Flowers But the other is the Magistery almost of all Herbs Therefore he shall eat Butter but not Milk From whence the discerning of the Good from the Evil and the sharpness of Judgment is promised But the strength of dayes increasing let our Child accustom himself to the more vigorous and hard Meats yet I fitly praise a Mean or Moderation But let him take twice every day four Drops of the Tree of Life CHAP. CXV The Arcanums or Secrets of Paracelsus BUt moreover we believe by Faith that the Life of men was by the divine Will shortned but that the Sins of mortal Men gave an occasion hereunto The Will or Command of the Lord hath entred into Nature and the Reasons of Death which it found not it made before the Floud as it were in a successive order the Life was continually changed by Off-springs at length it was extended unto the hundred and twentieth Year And last of all the Dayes of a Man were seventy Years which moreover is a Misery except in the Powers which he would should attain unto eighty Years This therefore is a short Life an ordinary Life unto which Man necessary supplies being brought unto him doth by the free will of Nature flow and come the which was by a divine Testimony out of the holy Scriptures appointed The Roots therefore of short Life have henceforward a place in Nature First of all the Mind which knowes not how to die waxeth not old But the sensitive Soul although it be at length extinguished like Light yet the Light it self doth not wax old because it cometh not unto it by Parts or Degrees For if the sensitive Soul or the vital Light it self should wax old seeing nothing can be added unto this perishing which may be of the Disposition thereof I should meditate of long Life in vain Therefore the vital Powers only wax old which are implanted in every Organ under the Beginnings of Generation The which I do not contemplate of as naked Qualities but I behold them as Governours failing by degrees in an aiery Body and therefore also that the Powers of the Spirits do follow the Nature of that Body which is worn out by little and little For Sorrow gnawes the Life no otherwise than as the Moath doth a Garment So also the Inordinacies of Living do violently overthrow the Life In the next place Man is a Wolfe to Man Which things surely do mow down the Life in many being as yet in its flourishing estate Neverthelese these are not the natural Reasons of a short Life as neither the necessities of a connexed Species or of an inbred shortness Surely besides accidentary Contingences we do bear about with us the Cause of short Life in the middle of our delights For first of all the memory decays and then the sight taste hearing and walking wax dull For to savour doth not undeservedly signifie as well tasting as a judgment of the Mind without distinction because they oftentimes die together but the Taste first fails in the Stomack by reason of the Spleen Wherefore I have elsewhere sufficiently distinguished the tasting of the Tongue and the tasting of the Stomack Presently by reason of the unequal strength of the Parts the inbred Ferments of the Shops do here and there by degrees fail but the Ferment of the Spleen being astonied the Power of the first Conceptions goes to decay And old Men are said to become Children For the Schools grant a lively Memory to be in Children by reason of the tenderness of their Brain easily receiving any kinde of Seales but that the Brain being the harder through dryness the Impressions of the Seals should be by so much the harder by how much the more stubborn they are from dryness to retain the marks of Conceptions But the Comparison of the Schools is frivolous that the Brain should have it self after the manner of Wax as neither do the cogitations express the interchanges of a Seal For first of all there should scarce be a fit place for ten Seals For if those kind of Seals should be so corporeal as that they ought to follow the disposition and alterations of the Brain they shall of necessity square themselves unto the extension of the place because Place is more difficulty sequestred from a Body than to be hard or moist And therefore let the Schools shew how great an extension all particular Seals of Conceptions in the Brain may require Doth the Memory for the seal of a Conception require a bigger place in the Brain of an Horse than that which is of a Mouse or Flie Therefore also consequently the extension of place in the Brain for a Horse should be also ten thousand times bigger than for a Mouse and so the whole Brain should scarce suffice for the remembring of two Horses That since place should fail I should rather remember the good things of the middle half than of the whole Yea I should far better remember things past for one Year agoe than those things which at sometimes happened unto me in my Childhood For I have seen a Boy who at the second time had learned the Aeneides of Virgil by way of Memory who scarce understood the hundredth Verse And so every particular Word did require as many Seales and Places of these But if the Seals of Conceptions should require no place nor do occupy an Extension of themselves in the Brain Therefore nothing is sealed and there is no Seal and also the Comparison of the Schools is dull For the Schools are too muddy who ascribe the Offices of the vital and principal Powers unto the first or second Qualities But what will the miserable Schools do if they scarce dare to withdraw their Finger from these accidents of Bodies Therefore Scholastical Respects of hardness dryness and tenderness being neglected I descend unto the Cause of short Life I have said indeed that from a decaying Vigour of the vital Powers the Life is of necessity and proportionably diminished From whence I will truly repeat that the Powers themselves wax old as it were with a covered Rustiness and do by little and little cease because the Arterial and Venal blood are at length successively transchanged into the nourishment of the Parts to be nourished and the growth of youth being finished truly the Juice that is prepared from thence is bedewed or besprinkled on all the solid Parts and a certain muscilaginous and spermatick or seedy Liquor is glewed unto them but it doth no more long remain with them but being consumed and concocted by the Ferment of the parts
kind especially being that which is by so easie a Contagion brought into the Beginnings of Things CHAP. V. The History of Duelech is Continued 1. From whence there is hope for those that have the stone 2. Who is a Physitian given of God 3. What kind of honour is due to the Physitian 4. A fourfold ignorance of Physitians 5. A phylosophical history of the stone 6. The errour of Paracelsus and the Galenists concerning the foregoing matter of Tartar and of the Stone 7. An errour of Paracelsus 8. An earth in the urine and venal blood 9. What may be found in Duelech being distilled 10. The simplicity of Physitians 11. The miserable simplicity of Galen 12. An Argument for the first matter of the Stone 13. An examination of Diureticks or urine provoking Medicines 14. Some most wretched Histories 15. A resolving of a question of Diureticks 16. From whence there is danger in Diureticks and a happy fore-caution or prevention hereof 17. A numerical account of Diureticks 18. That a distemperature being converted into Nature is to be corrected 19. Whether a laying along on the sides doth promote the affect of the Stone 20. A various action of the spirit of Vrine 22. Vain are the fore-cautions of the Schooles 22. A faulty Argument of the Schooles 23. The inconsiderate rashnesse of the Schooles 24. Why the touching may deceive him that hath the Stone in the Reines GOd made not Death neither is there Medicine of Destruction nor a Kingdome of the Infernals in the Earth Wherefore I have believed that no defect that is obvious in healing hath issued out of the Treasures of Him who made not Death but Remedies as neither was it from the errour of his foreknowledge that him whom he had chosen and Created for a Physitian he had every where left scanty in many degrees or particulars He is not a Physitian therefore that as an Impostour he should thrust onely a Cloakative and vain Remedy on the diseased with the stone For the sick hath stood in need of a Physitian who might testifie by his good works that he was so created of God But after that Medicine was erected into a profession through the itching desire of Gain any wicked kind of men intruded themselves for Physitians for the withstanding of which Errour the Magistrate ought of right to be severely fierce against these men The Schooles therefore drew the choyce of Physitians to themselves and accounted them worthy ones as many as would subscribe to the Ignorances of the Heathen that the Chaires and Life of man might be committed unto themselves This hath now passed over through their hands for a possession amongst the Europeans for some Ages past Charity hath grown cold and sloath being introduced under a safer Zeal long use hath also confirmed their obtained Ignorance pretending a right of prescription Wherefore God hath withdrawn his Gifts and hath continued those which he had bestowed elsewhere Truly Saint Paul will have Widowes to be honoured which should be truly Widowes in good works As for imitation of that Command which hath appointed the Physitian to be honoured who should be truly a Physitian in good works and should testifie that he was so created and chosen of God And whom indeed the worthy Works Commissions Signes of his Calling and deserts of his Honour do follow Of which place I meditating with my self do find Honour to be denounced to the Physitian by reason of necessity which necessity presupposeth a proceeding Fruit otherwise in vain Not indeed that the force of the Precept hath such an influence on necessity as that when a healthy person stands in no need of a Physitian this Physitian is not then to be honoured For a Judge Major Lawyer Souldier Serjeant Executioner Potter Weaver c. should by the same right of necessity be appointed to be honoured Notwithstanding in things mental or pertaining to the mind the whole contexture of Words is alwayes nothing else but as it were the conception of one word But they will bear testimony to that thing who have at sometime perhaps intellectually and after an abstracted manner tasted down something And that thing also may after some sort be demonstrated For in the same Conception whereby I consider a Sword I conceive first of all a long plain cleansed sharp figure also a hard metallick matter not flexible in the thred of straightnesse lastly its end which is not to cut bread or woods c. but to wound For all those things are in one onely mental Conception of a Sword at once represented unto me But in mental Abstractions not onely accompanying conditions But moreover whatsoever may be spoken in many houres yea nor can be expressed is in one onely Conception as it were of one word infused in an intellectual Rapture But Honour is prescribed for the Physitian created by the Goodnesse of the most High by reason of the necessity of the sick for the healing of them The which surely in mental Conceptions hath a simple signification But the necessities of the Souldier Judge Executioner Weaver c. are not perfectly considered as chosen by the most High but as being promoted by men for the performing of Offices required from the malice of men Therefore I have elsewhere considered that a fourfold darknesse of Ignorance hath under a covetous desire of possessing entred together therewith into the profession of Medicine and that they have left it without honour To wit the ignorance of Causes manner of making of the Remedy and suitable application thereof Truly as the art of the fire unlocks Bodyes before our eyes so it opens the Gate unto Natural Philosophy The true Medicine therefore hath layen hid as depressed under the Ignorance and sluggishnesse of the Schooles and that preparation of Medicine which ought to bring Light unto a Physitian is wholly accounted mechanical and conferred on the Apoâ—hecary and his Wife Indulge my liberty Reader as oft as I dispute concerning God of the Life of Diseases of the Common-weale of my Neighbour of my own Calling of that which is True Good of that which is hurtfull and of things that are so serious and of so great moment in favour of mortal men For I propose the allurement of no mans favour unto my self I have hitherto shewn that blind descriptions have arisen from an ignorance of the Causes and Remedies or from the sloath of diligent searches and from the facility of assenting to false principles Wherefore also we consequently divine of the unprosperous Cures deceitfull Healings and desperate succours of the Stone as also of the miserable obediences of the sick I will now proceed For indeed whatsoever ariseth anew in Nature that is made of something and so of another thing or Being To wit as their immediate matters being changed it must needs be that the essences of those things are changed And therefore this something hath ceased to be that this new something may co-arise from thence And that is
impossibility and had rather accuse God as having forgotten Mercy and Goodnesse than that he had afforded Remedies in Nature against the stone being as they say confirmed and against most Diseases Yea they do more willingly accuse God of forgetfulnesse than they themselves can admit of the mark of any ignorance in their own Paganish Doctrine But Princes being circumvented by the Schooles have subscribed to the juggling deceits of these and they being seduced by the Impostures of the Schooles the liberality of their Piety hath erected Hospitals of uncurable sick which Impostures have reproved that Text of Wisdome of a Lye God hath made all Nations of the earth curable neither is there a Medicine of destruction For the Schooles have made their own and too gross ignorance reciprocal and convertible with the impotency of Nature as if they knew every thing that is possible and were ignorant onely of that which were impossible and that not onely Negatively but altogether privatively As though their ignorance did not depend on the deâ—ect of Universities but rather on the scantinesse of Divine Goodnesse or Providence Wherefore since a denial of possibility in healing seemed to me to contain a hidden wickednesse I alwayes hoping well even from my youth did argue on the contrary after this manner If it be of Faith that every Disease began from the Fall or departing out of the Right way but that every sin may be wholly remitted we must by all meanes hope that every Disease may in its own kind be taken away if the punishment be equalized with the sin in Remission Especially because the same God who forgiveth sins doth also heal Diseases hath afforded Remedies and hath created the Physitian through the abundance of his Goodnesse which exceedeth all his Actions and is infinitely greater in his Indulgence than all the sins of men For could he not perhaps create a suitable and victorious Remedy for every Disease Or knew he nor how to do it Or was he unwilling so to do Who hath afforded the Remedy of Eternal Death For he rejoyceth not in the destruction of the living who hath made all Nations of the Earth curable But as to the authorities of Writers For Cardanus writeth that in his Age there wandred a man about among the Lombards who in a few dayes by a certain Cup cured in many places safely certainly and briefly as many as had the stone in their Bladder and he adds his Judgement that he doubted not but that this man was in Hell because dying he envied his Art unto mortals In so great a Paradox one onely witnesse is not sufficient against the Clamours of the Schooles The Epiaph of Theophrastus Paracelsus which is seen in a wall in an Hospitall nigh Saint Sebastians Temple being erected by the Prelate of Saltzburge doth represent the same wonder to have many times happened however the Guts of the scoffing Momus may crack His words run thus Here layes Entombed Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus a famous Doctor of Medicine who by his Wonder-working Art took away those cruel wounds the Leprosie Gout Dropsie and other uncurable contagions of the Body and honoured his Goods so as to be distributed and disposed of to the Poor In the Year of our Lord 1541 on the 24th day of September he changed Life for Death But that under uncurable Diseases the Tabes or Consumption of the Lungs Asthma Stone and all such like Diseases were understood by the Prince of Salizburge the Schooles themselves do teach Because they are those who do alwayes Thunder out That such Diseases are every where chiefly uncurable And then the indefinite phrase of the Epitaph hath respect unto the Books published by Paracelsus concerning the Stone and that with a far more acurate Quil than concerning other Diseases At leastwise therefore whatsoever is once and the oftner done in Nature it is not impossible that this should be done again And by Consequence whosoever affirmeth that to be impossible which by divine Goodnesse was at sometime done in Nature according to the desire of the Physitian he lyes before God the Workman of Nature For in the Right which is of the deed done those very Witnesses do disclose it and those are reckoned unprofitable brawlings which are brought in against Witnesses The Schooles therefore which call us Deceivers do mock mankind with an Elenchus or faulty Argument saying The stone that is far remote from the mouth is far harder than the membrane of the stomach whatsoever therefore should corrode or lessen the stone being at a far distance had now a good while before consumed the stomach it self whereinto it had newly fallen Therefore the stone is of necessity an uncurable evil But if the holy Scriptures write otherwise a way is to be sought whereby with moderation they may be excused of falshood But surely the Keyes of Wisdome are by a certain force so detained in the Schooles that seeing themselves enter not in they also endeavour to drive away others that are willing to enter For it is not in the intent of the Chymist to take away Duelech by Corrosives but by proper and specifical Dissolvers For neither doth the stomach of a Pigeon dissolve Pearls or that of an Oestrich Iron or Flints by Corrosives but by an appropriated Ferment of Digestion Or if thou shalt grant Corrosives unto the stomach of Animals at leastwise they are such which bring not any dammage to the stomach And moreover if thou hast regard unto the highest Corrosives Aqua fortis dissolves indeed Iron Brass and Silver but Wax it doth not so much as pierce Through the inconsiderateness of which thing the Schooles have affrighted their young Beginners the unlearned vulgar yea and great men from diligent searching into things their own ignorance the drowsiness of diligent searching and hope of Gain perswading them hereunto Therefore for the stone and diseases in the Bladder as if Physitians did intend a Derivation or drawing them another way they being ridiculously converted unto the Fundament have attempted the matter by Clysters as if to have unloaded the Fundament were to have purged out the stone For they saw that the juyce of Citron did diminish a humane Duelech in a glass and they hoped that the same thing ought to be done in us But if not that they could boast that by administring the juyce of Citron they had performed as much as was possible for nature to do As being ignorant in the first place that the sharpness of the Citron doth wax sweet under heat like an unripe apple which in it self is at first sharp and afterwards being ripened by heat becomes sweet In the next place if one only drop of the more tart wine be sent inwardly unto the bladder it brings more pain thereunto than a great stone They therefore imagine a ridiculous thing who boast that by administring the sharp juyce of Citron at the mouth they have done some profitable thing for the diminishment of the stone They
affirmeth that it privailes against the Plague and he willingly perswadeth him to commit the buisinesse of the infected unto him Master Doctour skipping for joy consenteth and praiseth the subtile invention of the Barber and his care for the Common-wealth And so that companion being called unto them a Lixivial medicine for an Eschare Basilicon oyntment and Diachyson gummed is given unto him and also a magistral preservative confection described by the Physitian Wherewith he being now furnished becomes a stipendiary of the City and the life of the common-people in misery and the fail-yard of the Common-weath is committed unto him yet under this condition that if he suffer himself to be governed by Tenders and under-Sisters as super-intendents who by a long possession rage on the sick he is to receive a yeerly reward Surely miserable are the sick more miserable the Magistrate and most exceeding miserable the Doctour unto whom the Magistrate hath committed his sheep which they deliver to wolves Because in this respect man is truly a wolf to the poor and infected man But the strict judge will at sometime require at their hands the lives souls and forsaken orphans For what would a King do if a cowardly Captaine shall wipe away much money from himself and the people and muster a great band of country-men in his enrowling book but shall betake himself with his Ensign-bearer into a most fenced Tower or Castle but shall write unto the Drummer and some women-sellers of provision that they cheerfully assault the Enemy with those fresh-water Souldiers For will not the King require of his Captains the Souldier that was rashly slain And the town destroyed by the Enemy Have regard therefore ye Senatours and Physitians what cruel thing doth not hang over your heads Because nothing is more certain than death and judgment For I have written these things from a compassion on you and the sick I divine of you let God be favourable unto me At leastwise the Magistrate hath not hitherto known of what kind the Plague should be CHAP. 2. The Pest or Plague an Infant A Rtaxerxes by an Epistle commanded Petus that he should come unto him to cure a disease as yet without a name which killed his Citizens and Souldiers for that by gifts recieved he was obliged hereunto Petus answered him after the manner of Physitians at this day That natural succours do not free from a popular slaughter For those diseases which are made by nature those nature judging of healeth But Hippocrates cureth a malady from a popular destruction Because this man is endowed with a divine nature and hath carried up medicine from a low estate unto great atchievements Hippocrates therefore is a divine man the ninth indeed from King Chrysamides but the eighteenth from Aesculapius but the twentieth from Jupiter Being indeed of his mother Praxithia of the family of the Heraclides Wherefore from both seedes he hath his original from the Gods He was initiated or entered as a young beginner in medicinal affairs by his great grandfathers so far as it is to be believed that these knew But himself hath taught himself having made use of a divine nature the whole art And in the industry of his minde he hath as far exceeded his progenitours as he hath also exceeded them in the excellency of art But he takes away not only the kind of bestial but also of brutishly fierce and wild diseases through a great part of the land and sea dispersing the succours of Aesculapius even as Triptolemus the seeds of Ceres Therefore hath he most justly obtained divine honours in many places of the earth and is made worthy by the Athenians of the same gifts or presents with Hercules and Aesculapius Send thou for this man and command as much Gold as he shall he willing to receive to be given unto him For this man hath not known one only manner of curing this disease This man is the Father the preserver of health and the curer of griefs In summe this man is the Prince of divine knowledge Artaxerxes therefore writes unto Hystanes the Lievtenant of Hellespont Let Hippocrates the Glory of Cods who drew his original from Aesculapius come unto me and give him as much Gold as he will have and other things in abundance sparing no riches For he shall be made equal to the Peers of Persia For it is not an easie thing to find men that excel in counsail Moreover Hystanes writes thus unto Hippocrrtes The great King Artaxerxes hath need of thee Commanding Gold Silver and whatsoever thou wilt have to be given unto thee that thou shouldst be made equall unto the Nobles of Persia Thou therefore come quickâ— Hippocrates the Physitian unto Hystanes the Lievtenant of Hellespont joy SEnd thou back to the King what I say That we enjoy food rayment house and all sufficient wealth for life But that it is not lawfull for me to make use of the riches of the Persians neither to free Barbarians from diseases that are enemies to the Greeks-Farewel Hipocrates unto Demetrius health THe King of the Persians hath sent for me as not knowing that with me there is a greater respect of wisdome than of Gold Farewel To the King of Kings my great Lord Artaxerxes Hystanes Leivtenant joy The Epistle which thou sents't unto Hippocrates of Coos who sprang from Aeculapius I sent a way but I recieved an answer from him which I transmit unto thee with the bearer thereof Gymnasbes Dieutyches Farewel Great Artaxerxes King of Kings saith these words unto the Co-ans Render ye Hippocrates to my messengers who is indued with evil manners wantonizing over me and the Persians But if not ye shall know that ye shall pay the punishment of the offence For I will convert your City being laid wast and drawn into diverse parts of the Island into the sea that for the future none can know whether there were an Island or the City Cos in this place The Answer of the men of Coos IT hath seemed good unto the people to answer the messengers of Artaxerxes The Co-ans will do nothing unworthy of Merops nor of Hercules nor of Aesculapius All the Cities will not yield up Hippocrates although they were to dye the worst of deaths The Earth and Water which Darius and Xerxes required of our Fathers the people gave not since they saw those very Kings themselves to be impotent mortals as other men They now answer the same thing Depart ye from the Co-ans and return this message that the Gods themselves will not be negligent of us Because they deliver not Hippocrates into your hands I have thus described these things at large whereby the truth of the fame of Hippocrates may be manifest and that he had cured the Plague among the people throughout Greece For indeed that disease being as yet an Embryo scarce known scarce named was now perfectly cured but now it being sufficiently and too well known is left unto decievers of the lowest condition
is hitherto unknown by those who have had respect only unto the contingencies of nature I rather believe that so many apparitions to Saints were not in vain and shewn unto them without their scope or purpose I therefore believe that the beginnings of the venereal plague was drawn and planted into nature from a dart of divine anger violently cast and no otherwise than as at the pouring out of the phials the third person of mortals shall at some time perish Not indeed that I will have the plague of lust to be accounted altogether miraculous in its beginning because it began from a hainous offence For I know as in nature it now hath so also that in its beginning it found a ferment and root therein And moreover a certain Layick and holy man being wont at some hard questions to receive dreaming visions and oft-times also through the abstraction of his minde intellectual notions or knowledges perhaps from too much curiosity narrowly searched into these questions 1. Why that venereal plague had broke out in the fore-past age and not before since that in the fore-past daies of Pagans any wicked impudent wantonnesse was never wanting 2. From whence if not from the Indians it came into Europe 3. What may be the cause of its continuation and mitigation and changing if it were come from God For Miracles do seldome pass over by way of contagion and unlesse a command be delivered obtain their cause in nature But neither is God wont to punish the guiltlesse even as the Lues veneris oft-times infecteth the innocent The Layick said that he saw in an intellectual vision an horse which flowed almost all abroad with a stinking ulcer which disease being proper to the horse kinde our countrey-men call Den-worm but the French Le Farein whence horses do by degrees perish with a corrupt mattery rottennesse but he saw this horse as it were designed for meat to dogs having his whole back vitiated also about the vessel of nature neither had he any other answer besides that vision wherefore he said that he supposed that at the siege of Naples where this cursed contagion at first arose some one through an horrible sin had carnal copulation with such a horse-beast At leastwise from thence I conjecture the rarity of a disease not before seen because I cannot easily believe that ever such a sin was in the like terms committed from the beginning of the world and it is a disease like unto the Lues Venerea and akin and familiar unto the nature of the horse And therefore it might God the avenger so permitting it have naturally transplanted its own ferment into the family of man although it was before divinely threatned That the Mares contagion I say might have mixed in the act of lust not to be spoken of it then propagating the Gonorrhea or running of the Reines the Cancer and venereous Baboes c. even so as at this day the Pox it self is attracted from a filthy whore even into the testicles of a man But I cease to be the more curious as oft as a thing being known is of no use unlesse happily thou hadst rather meditate from hence that horses thus ulcerous are cured by the remedy of the Pox and on the other hand this by Quicksilver most exactly prepared At least wise the consideration of the Lues serveth for a degenerate and at this day multitiplyed plague and many of which are threatned in the holy Scriptures under the coming of Antichrist I adde That it is infamous and hath infected every corner of the world it hâ—â—h also manifestly shewn by the effect that it is a common satisfactory punishment of the flesh and creeping unto a further and as yet a commonly unknown mark For indeed at its first beginning it not only stood a good while unknown but also its healing was unsuccessefully attâ—mpted and at this day is commonly unknown whence it follows that the life of mortals being enraged by uncertain and cruel medicines â—â— now humbled even before the youth of every one which weaknesse promiseth a certâ—â—â— lasting continuance of perpetuity and in abstinent persons unto the fourth period of generation at least yea although a large company of men have never contracted the Pox Neverthelesse since the Lues is scarce ever well cured and the reliques therof have remained surely there do those survive who having experienced the rashnesse oâ— Physitians are made far more weak then themselves were For there is a radical part oâ— poyson which hath remained in their possession besides the horrid tortures of oyntments perfumes and salivations and it must needs be that in that respect their successors are diminished with a notable weaknesse For the Lues is not indeed a disease consisting of a matter whereof but onely a poysonous ferment is affixed to the solid or liquid parts of our body like an odour And so the which is singular to the Pox it incorporates it self not onely with the constitutive parts but also with the excrements or with the matters of other diseases which it toucheth at because it affecteth them and is co-mixed with them and since it is easier to defile a matter with poyson which is newly appointed for an excrement then a part as yet alive and so also for this cause resisting Hence it comes to passe that whosoever have the manifest or hidden beginnings of any diseases whatsoever they do easily contract the Foul disease and therefore also it transplants it self into various masks of diseases by an association for in many it produceth ulcers and wheals in others it gnaws rottenesses in the bones it stirs up hard swellings also it causeth Buboes about the groyn phlegmones or inflamed apostemes and corrupt mattery apostemes as also wounds stubborne in curing elsewhere also it hath brought forth palsies gowty fits the jaundise or dropsie c. For that thing deceived Paracelsus he thinking that the Pox was not a disease in it self because it adhered to other diseases For a curse now coming upon nature impure from its original doth not proceed by an accustomed generation but it findes its own body pre-disposed in the body of other diseases so that the likenesse of conception nativity subsistence and effects in a strange body to wit that of man do produce a likenesse of the rise of the Pox as of other diseases because they in a like manner issue from the fall Diseases therefore that from the rise of the Pox are become degenerate for the future those do for the most part imitate the right or customary manner of some poyson neither hath any one sufficiently searched into the causes of these wherefore indeed most diseases have become contagious more cruel more frequent and more slow and difficult of flight than in times past For the Pest is undoubtedly more frequent then it was wont to be it catcheth hold on us upon the least occasion it cruelly infects us and is the more readily dispersed because it is
judgments of God The which although it be plainly above nature yet in the mean time the matter thereof is not a creature lately made of nothing because it after some sort enters the borders of nature For the smiting Angel stood not on a mountain which the continual water of the air flowing over it well washeth by licking thereof Neither stood he also on an high Tower and where notwithstanding the sin of David in the lust of concupiscence had took its beginning but he stood on the hoary putrified threshing floor of Araunah So the Angels in the Revelation pour out their Vials from whence the third part of men shall at sometime perish The word yea the beck of the Lord can do all things without a floor a scabbard a sword Vials the effusion of Poyson c. But such is the bounty of his piety that he inflicts not such punishments nakedly by his word perhaps by reason of the perpetual constancy and irrevocable firmnesse of his word nor also by evil spirits doth he send a supernatural plague lest he should deliver the living into the hands of their enemies At length the plague produced by enchantments if there be any follows nature For truly the Devil is not able of himself even to make one gnat unlesse he assume the seminal Beginnings thereof even as his magicians could not make gnats the off-springs of the waters of dust wherefore also they confessing the impotency of the Devil then cryed out truly here is the singer of God! If therefore it shall at sometime be granted to the Devil to form the plague surely he drew that from the principles of nature And the diabolical plague should differ from the natural ordinary one in its application and appropriation For he should more toughly apply the actuation and impression of the poyson no otherwise than as the bellowes doth at leastwise promote and heighten the fire which it made not but he should appropriate it with a fore-going preparation by the image of terrour drawn in and borrowed from his â—ond-slaves And although such plagues should be more cruel yet they should yield unto the same natural remedies But I call them more cruel ones by reason of their swiftness to wit the image of cruel envy had from witches being over added notwithstanding such permissions should as yet be limited unto persons and number yea should be more easily expiated by prayer and alms-deeds than ordinary plagues To wit whereby God taking pity on mankind may the rather hate diabolical arts and make the Devil grieve at divâ—ne mercy soon shewn But that good spirits are the framers of the Pest surely that is from great compassion that we may not be beaten but under the command of obedience by the rod of the Lord and not of Angels For God every where keeps a Decorum He takes Sergeants and Guardians who have a native goodness who keep friendship nor can aslume a divellish disposition for which they know there is no place in Heaven But before he would deliver Sodom to the Devil he first deprived it of a few innocent persons But the plague which ariseth from a curse by reason of the extream anguish of mad poverty by reason of a teeming woman that is forsaken by reason of a wounded person c. is a plague of divine punishment which surely is scarce supported by the Beginnings of nature and is easily discerned because it invadeth onely such places and persons cursed And likewise the rich who sit in Ivory Seats who drink out of guilded plate who eat the Calf from the Herd and the fat Sheep from the Flock and do not remember their imprisoned brother Josâ—ph Because the Lord adjures or earnestly swears the destruction of these that others may as it were in a looking-glass behold what it is to have pleased and displeased God But Plagues which follow Camps and rage for the most part some moneths after a siedge are not to be ascribed to the slovenliness of the Souldiers especially if they shall begin a good while after the City is taken as for the most part it comes to pass For Camps had also in times past their own and the same impurities of Souldiers but the occasion is that of the smell of dead Carcasses putrified through continuance which is infected with a mumial ferment because that at this day the slain are not buried as in times past nor deep enough in the earth In the next place because they are hurt by an invisible bullet from far which moves a greater terrour in the Archeus than while spear to spear and sword to sword were stoutly opposed For neither was it in vain commanded in the Law That whosoever should touch a dead Carcasse should be impure and that he was to be clean washed together with his garment And that the Sun was not to go down upon the bodies of hanged persons Which things surely in a literal sence are thus prescribed by God for the good of a Common-wealth least the mumial ferment should putrifie by continuance Therefore it is the part of blindness and rashness to be bewailed for the bodies of those that are hanged to be shewn in a bravery for a spectacle until they fall off of their own accord indeed a small profit accrues from thence for so great evils and it is all one as if the Judge should say God indeed hath so appointed it but the Magistrate hath corrected for the better As if it had been unknown to God that the Spectacle of an hanged person would be more affrightful to evil persons or offenders Therefore if God hath known this and neverthelesse hath given an express command for burial it it no wonder that punishment follows transgression as a Companion But God follows the guilty eternally as a revenger behind and I wish the punishment were turned onely upon the transgressours for to bury is a work of mercy but to shew the guilty hanged in a bravery is not that work according to which it shall at sometime be pronounced Go ye Cursed or Come ye Blessed For truly to bury the dead Carcass of a condemned person is a work of no less mercy than to bury a Prince And this mercy is not so much exercised toward the dead party as toward our neighbours least the following stink should infect them For neither to be buryed doth profit him that is buryed but the living Therefore the Scope of Divine Goodness consisteth not onely in burying but in inhuming deep enough which particulars will be made more cleer by an example For a dead Falcon being cast behind the hedges and half putrified is devoured by a live one but presently he is taken with a most contagious plague of his own kind Because the poyson of terrour being received within smites on his Archeus by reason of a mumial co-resemblance infected with a putrified fermental hoariness And the Pest of the Falcon is so great that the pestilent Falcon being brought through a Street insecteth
supposed to be so regular that they are sometimes described in Ephemeres's for an age But the Pest is of things extraordinarily increasing and those not necessary But a regular mean is not a meetly suitable sign for an effect from a contingency by chance Neither therefore could the Ephemeres's or Planetary daies-books of Brabu foretel the plague in Lumbardy of the year 1632. which was conceived from an unjust war and the fear of horrour Wherefore I attribute extraordinary contingencies or accidents unto extraordinary contingent causes I believe indeed that the fore-shewing signs of the same are decyphered in the Firmament but not in the directions of the courses of the Planets Wherefore I account those signs to be irregular nor to be subject to Astrology because the significations of those signs are granted by an extraordinary priviledge Therefore the signs of such a plague are for the most part declared only to the servants of God as is read concerning Jonas But the signs that went before the destruction of Jerusalem were messages of the Word long before prophesied of and so neither could the fore-told destruction be hindered and they were directed only to the meer glory of God the admonishment of the godly and the flight of these And moreover Israel ought to die and to be renewed by Generation in the Wilderness except Joshuah and Calâ—b neither could that thing be any way prevented for the Word of the Lord stands unchangeable with whom there is no changeableness because he is not like unto man herein Monstrous signs therefore if they do not prescribe a condition in declaring unless Niniveh be converted they by nature promise an unavoidable effect It hath also pleased others to draw the births of Monsters into the fore-shewing signs of the plague even as Cornelius Gemma concerning his Cosmocriticks or Divine Characters doth by trifling patch them together without a foundation But who is he who shall either know or interpret the denoted fore-tokens of Monsters For the plague being present then indeed and too late every one draws significations at his own pleasure And there are some who therefore abhor the coming of unwonted Birds but that sign either ceaseth to be natural or that of the Quails fore-going the plague of Israel in the Wilderness shall cease to be a Miracle And let this be impious and blasphemous but the other impertinent to my purpose Others interpret this sign for flesh-devouring Birds for a future plague as if they were sent to devour the dead carkasses that were to be inhumed according to that saying Where the carkasses are thither are the Eagles gathered together But the Text is not read to be for future dead carkasses neither to have swallowed them down seeing they are wont to be most carefully buried before others For the River Rhoan at sometime carried away the dead carkasses of the plague at Lyons but it infected the Citizens beneath them at leastwise the Clergy of Lyons declared hereby that the burial of the dead was to be observed not so much for the health of the soul as for the purse The coming of Birds therefore living by prey denotes rather a future defect of their prey in their own Native Provinces and they should rather denounce by a monstrous sign a destruction of war than an imminent plague But others divine the plague to be from the meeting with unwonted fishes to wit they suppose the waters to be infected with a corrupt defilement and for this cause that Sea-monsters do ascend into the waves surely a ridiculous thing For if the Sea putrifieth through continuance in its saltness what water at length shall wash away the defilement of the Sea or why shall one only Whale wandring out of his road feel the hurtful poyson of the Sea not all in a Shoal or many together Truly I know that the Sea is not subject to a natural contagion of the Pest and that the monstrous signs of the Heaven and Sea are directed by the same finger of whose unsearchable judgement they are the Preachers being declared unto his servants only For the same Lord is present as well in the center of the earth and in the bottom of the Sea as in the highest top of heaven Indeed all things do alike equally obey him except the most ungrateful sinner But surely I do rather fear the unwonted raines of blood of spots or sparks and likewise Funerals brought down through the Clouds mournful sounds heard in the air as also noises in burying places c. which things seeing they are the admonitions of Divine goodness therefore they are to be referred out of Nature that every one may seasonably look to the Oyl in their own Lamps For neither therefore do I esteem those monstrous signs to be the works of the Evil Spirit but against his will Truly they are freely given and above Nature neither therefore do they belong to my purpose But Paracelsus as he had known a singular remedy of the Plague to be in the Toad and Frogs so also he writes that this is presaged as oft as a great heap of Frogs ariseth into a heap which is to choak some weak or infirm one which being killed it afterwards assaulteth another until the number being thus diminished by degrees every one at length particularly runs away which things if they thus naturally happen as they prepare a remedy for the plague to come so also they denote it For out of a Gaul even as also from an apple drawn out of Oaken leaves they write that for the most part three small living creatures are drawn to wit if it contain a Spider thâ—â— will have it portend the Pest if a Fly War but if a creeping Animal that it fore-sheweth Famine But seeing one of the three at least is found every year enclosed therein if not two or all of them and yet one of those punishments doth not continually follow therefore I refer such predictions among old Wives Fables I therefore judge that these kind of Insects do denounce the difference of the Leffas in the Oak Leffas is the nourishable juice of plants so as that a worm denotes the aforesaid nourishment to be putrified through continuance but a Spider a poyson to be moreover adjoyned to that putrefaction and therefore as it were a connexed and co-touching Spider is every where almost in the whole compass of the earth the which being in the Oak portends not any thing out of the tree especially because in the neighbouring and co-planted trees nor also seldom in the fruits of the same Oak those divers Insects are beheld at once in the same Summer Yet I do not remember that I have found a Spider and also a Fly at once in the same Oak although a Fly indeed and a Worm also a Worm and a Spider But far be it from a Christian to prophesie from Oak and Terpentine for that is read to be forbidden by the Loâ—d with cruel threatnings But as oft as a new