subdivision is many times re-shaken sub-divided by the colds through which it hath passed This Gas at least should never of its own accord return into its auntient water nor should descend unto the most cold places through which it escaped by climbing upward unless the uppermost Blas of the Stars should force its descent And so the Region of the still air is not void of successive changes but that the Rain doth not there moysten the ground nor the rage of windes serve for the commotion of the waters For since the Gas which it keepes in it self is now reduced to so great a fineness of it self and all its Atomes being as it were roasted with heats in the outward superficies of the Sulphur surely they cannot return into rain unless by a sweet winde they descend to the middle Region where they do re-take the beginnings of coagulating under the luke-warm blowing of the air For a certain alteration opposite to that place from which the Gas departed ought to reduce the Gas into water For a sweet luke-warmth in the still air maketh the Atomes of Gas being covered in their own Sulphur to divide which Sulphur a skin being as it were broken thorow or like a Glasse that is brought suddenly from luke-warmth into the cold is broken and so the Mercury of the water doth dissolve its Salt at the dissolution whereof the Sulphur it self may be melted into its former water And that kinde of inversion or turning in and out of the body of the water and that torture through the exact searching of the cold is necessary that all the power of the Ferment may be wholly taken away out of the Clouds For else much corruption and the much stink of mists would soon destroy mortalls As in Silver being melted the exceeding small atomes of Gold do slide to the bottom So do the atomes of the Gas settle and by sliding they do increase or wax bigger which otherwise being infirm by reason of the coldness of the Air are again lifted up unless a gentle or favourable luke-warmth in the coldest place did now and then hinder it For so indeed rains shoures storms so Hail Snow mist and Frost are through an alteration by accident having arisen as well from a motive as an alterative Blas in the most cold places And so Gas and Blas have divided the whole Common-wealth of a Meteor into Colonies In like manner I have learned by the examples cited that the Sun doth not heat by accident but by it self and immediately And that heat is as intimate and proper to it as its light is to it The Air hath therefore its grounds or soils no lesse than the Earth which the Adeptists do call Peroledes Therefore the invisible Gas is entertained in the various Beds or Pavements of the Air if the Water hath its depths of its Gulfs it s own Gates are in the Peroledes which skilfull men have called the Floud-gates and folding doores of Heaven For neither is Gas falling down into the place of Clouds carried out of the depth of Heaven without its directer Blas Yea it falls not down but thorow ordained Pavements and folding-doores For all the folding-doores do not promiscuously lay open to the Planets but all the Planets in particular are by their own Blas the Key-keepers of their own Perolede Which thing I submit to be examined by Astrologers that are the shewers or disclosers of Meteors and I promise that they shall finde out a rich substance For so windes do sometimes hasten perpendicularly downwards and smite the Earth but otherwise they go side-wayes out of their folding-doores they beat down Houses and Trees as also bring miserable destruction on all sorts of Shipping But the more luke-warm Air doth foreshew the Winde to come out of the depth of the Air and the Gas to bring with it the Blas of Heaven downwards Whence Gas is straight-way again resolved into a Vapour and afterwards into rain Indeed Clouds do then appear which not long before were not beheld at any corner of the World Because the invisible Gas slides downward out of the depth of the upper Air the which growes together into vapours and from thence into drops For that is the appointment of the Air that it may continually seperate the waters from the waters But seeing that one part of water is extended at least to a hundred fold of its dimension while it is made a vapour and so much the finer by how much the Gas thereof is sub-divided into the more lesse parts and since there is that order and that law of universe that all things may be carried on for the necessity of man and the preserving of the World Indeed in this respect do heavy things tend upward light things are drawn downward Hence it hath seemed to me that the Blas of the Stars is disturbed into rain and is carried into clearnesses and other seasons as oft as the pluralities of Gas it self in the still Perolede of the air do seem to threaten almost choakings and the too-much com-pressions in the air Yet I am not so carefull concerning the occasionall causes of a Meteor it is sufficient that I have known an exhalation arising from beneath to wit a vapour and Gas to be the materiall cause of every Meteor It sufficeth to have known Blas to be the effective cause by the authority of the holy Scriptures The Stars shall be to you for times or seasons dayes and years This therefore is the unrestable appointment of the water that by proceeding continually upwards and downwards it should answer no otherwise than as the windes by an inordinate and irregular motion do answer to their Blas of the Stars And so the water which existed from the beginning of the Universe is the same and not diminished and shall be so unto the end thereof But I meditate of the Peroledes or Soils of the Air to be as it were the Bottles of the Stars by which they do unfold their Blas even through their determined or limited places for the uses and interchangeable courses of times or seasons And chiefly because the upper and almost still Perolede doth contain the cause why there are windes fruits dewes and especially things pertaining to Provinces For seeing that the winde is a flowing Air and so hath an unstableness in it we must needes finde the locall cause of stability in the more quiet Perolede Therefore the folding-doores are shut or laying open in the Perolede according to the Blas of the Stars which they obey Nor is it a wonder that there are limits or invisible bounds in the air of so great power and capable to restrain a heap for the visible World doth scarce contain another Common-wealth of things and the least one of powers For who will deny that under a Rock or great Stone of Scotland scarce 12 foot broad and deep 30 there is not some division of a Perolede that in the mean time I may be silent concerning the Equinoctial Line and
Commissioner of Thunder and Lightning yet under covenanted Conditions For his Bolts being shaken off unless his Power were bridled by Divine goodness he would shake the Earth with one onely stroak and would destroy mortall men The cracking noyse therefore or Voyce of Thunder is a spirituall Blas of the evill Spirit surely an effect of great strength But Thunder is not conjoyned with a Miracle but it contains a monstrous thing in Nature So moreover although the fire of Lightning be naturall yet the manner and mean are divelish Powers For God as a most loving Father will be loved in the first place but by himself immediately he doth not willingly cause or inforce feares because it belongs not to his goodness to be loved from the fear and fearfullness of pain or punishment Therefore the terrours of his power and angry feares of his Majesty he causeth or enforceth not but by appropriated spirituall Sergeants his Ministers that is by a terrible Spirit And that thing all Antiquity hath alwayes judged with me which hath declared Jove or Jova as much as to say with the Hebrews Jehova to be the God of Thunder Seeing the Lord and Father of things doth unfold his Thunder by the bound hand of a tormenter the evill Spirit thereupon would not indeed be contented with the Title of Prince of the World but would have the name Jehova to belong unto himself Therefore Thunder and Lightning although they may have concurting naturall Causes yet the moover of them is an incorporeall Spirit Atheists may laugh at my Philosophy who believe that there is no Power or God and no abstracted Spirit But at leastwise they cannot but admire at the effects of Thunder and accuse themselves of the ignorance of its causes One History at least I will tell among a thousand In the year 1554 in the Coast of Leydon the Tower of Curingia being taken away by Thunder no where appeared after fifteen dayes a Grave is opened in a Herbie Plot of Grasse of the Burying place wherein a Shooe-maker was buried and behold under an unmooved and green Turf first the Brass Cock with the Iron Crosse appeareth and then a Pinacle of the Tower and at length the whole Tower is digged out I have seen my self being present by one onely Thunder-clap some thousand of Oaks and Hazels to be burnt up in their first bud and leaves to wit the whole Wood being named from a place neer Vilvord where the Birch the Beech and Alder-Tree being frequently co-mixed with other Trees in a thick confusion had the mean while remained unhurt by the Thunder But elsewhere by one onely stroak he strikes many things at once that were far distant asunder For who can sufficiently unfold the thousand various crafts and wiles of the cunning Workman It sufficeth that many spirituall actions do concur being divers from the ordinary course of Nature they being also alike powerfull at a distance as nigh at hand Therefore that terrible Voice of Thunder striketh the Earth kills Silk-worms shakes Ale or Beer and constrains it to wax dead causeth the flesh of a slain Oxe hung up to be flaggie it curdles Milk by the sudden Leaven of its sourness c. But Salt applied without to the brim of the Hogs-head or Earthen-pot doth turn away such kinde of effects Surely a weak resister for such an agent if in nature the thing resisting ought to prevail over the agent But why the evill Spirit hateth Salt and therefore Salt is alwayes said to fail or be wanting in his Sabbaths of his Imps he being sufficiently expert that Salt is adjured for holy water as oft as the Baptizer useth Salt Also Salt that is not blessed may trample upon his commands If therefore the Tree is to be known by his fruits therefore the Authour by his Works and so much the rather because so weak remedies do resist so great strength Nor surely doth that make to the contrary that God appearing to Moses in the Mount in continuall Lightning and Thunder environed the Mountain before Israel Yea rather it is thereby confirmed that the cracking Thunder and Lightnings do belong to Spirits his Ministers to Spirits I say his tormenters and executioners For truly Israel was driven away from ascending the Mountain under pain of death For neither therefore were the Thunders in the top of the Mountain but beneath round about the Mountain neither also appeared the Almighty to Eliah in the Whirle-winde or in the strong Winde but in the sweet Air. As an addition I will hitherto referre the Decree of the Church which in the blessing of a Bell doth prescribe certain forms wherein it confirms the same Presidentship in Thunder which I have prescribed in this Chapter For in the words of their adjurations they have it Let all layings in wait or treacheries of the enemy be driven far away the crashing of Hails the storm of Whirle-windes the violence of Tempests let troublesome or cruel Thunders Blasts of Windes c. beallayed Let the right hand of thy power prostrate Alery powers and let them tremble and flee at this little Bell of the hearer Before the sound thereof let the fiery darts of the enemy the stroak of Lightnings the violence of Stones the hurt of Tempests c. be chased far away Whence indeed all adjurations do conspire against Tempests For Hail Winde Rains Clouds c. are Meteors of Nature but a tempestuous darting exceeding the fall of a Body in grains and the flowing of the Winde are understood to be done by malignant powers These things indeed concerning Tempests of the Air Hail and the Sea are thus confirmed but in Thunder not onely the very casting of the Thunder-bolt or Stones but moreover the cracking noyse of Thunder doth depend on the powers and enemies of the air because that no renting of the Clouds or Air can naturally utter such noyses and the effects of these unless monstrous and hostile Powers do immingle themselves and play together CHAP. XVII The trembling of the Earth or Earth-quake 1. The name of the Moving of the Earth is improper 2. The opinion of Copernicus 3. A shew of the Deed. 4. All Schooles do agree with Aristotle in Causes for 21 Ages hitherto 5. The Opinion of the Schooles is demonstrated to be unpossible from a defect of the place 6. The same thing may after a certain manner be drawn from the force of exhalations 7. Likewise by the Rules of proportion and motion 8. The rise or birth of exhalations their quantity power progress manner of being made entertainment and swiftness are all ridiculous things 9. All these are demonstrated to be impossible things 10. The cause of their Birth is wanting 11. It is proved by the Rules of falshood and absurdities 12. That those trifles being supposed according to the pleasure of the Schooles the manner is as yet impossible 13. That an exhalation being granted according to their wish yet an Earth-quake from thence is unpossible 14.
and appropriating the same to our defensive faculties in which hitherto there hath been an universal wandring But the finding out of the Remedy doth presuppose the aforesaid knowledges and moreover of the faculties and powers I say the manner and the meanes of acting but the application of those Remedies their preparation and deriving or extracting to be according to the safeguards and scopes or iâ—â—ents of the parts It also necessarily contains the knowledge of simples their powers or vertues their actions changes defects alterations interchangeable courses and connexions or dependances as well amongst each other as in respect of the vitall powers But every one of these do require the gift of God in a peculiar thing to wit understanding and experience of selection or chusing out of Seâ—uestration or separation of preparation and graduation or subliming of which I will shew it hath not as yet been treated of by the Schooles The Summary of the second Columne 1. An unwonted kinde of Doctrine is to be required 2. That Art hath stood by Conjectures hitherto 3. The Authour excuseth his roundnesses 4. He had no light from Predecessors 5. Why all things are new and unheard of 6. The Prerogative of Physitians before other Artists and Professions 7. The signes of a true Physitian 8. The Prerogatives of Physicians out of the holy Scriptures 9. The resigned liberty of the Authour COLUM II. I Ought from the beginning wholly to set upon Philosophy A matter I say never theoretically or speculatively searched into and lesse proved and known by exercise that is I have determined to lay open an unheard of truth For unless we shall deal with Diseases even like as other Arts do with their objects and unless we shall be able to promise and foreknow an undoubted end of Diseases by answering for the most part the wished desire of the sick after the manner of other Artificers it is a sign that the meanes and end do stand committed to a conjectural and uncertain Art where ignorance being the leader and the way a path of uncertainty darkness doth at length lay hold of him that goeth and leadeth thorow unknown paths I know many will be angry with me especially those who ascribe my roughness and severity in reproving to intolerable boasting And then as well those whom all things displease that are not brought forth by their own will or judgement do scoffe and abhorr all new things as those who thinking that they know all things do refuse to learn Notwithstanding I could not because of haters bury my Talent in the Earth and not make manifest my Zeal to my Neighbour Therefore the free gifts and knowledge given me I will discover to my Neighbour without envy deceit hope of gain or the vain glory of ambition and will willingly shew as much as my experiences have made sufficient hoping that the truth being once shâ—wen those that are endowed with a richer Talent will be hereafter more profitable to the Common-wealth than my selfe for so it becometh that Disciplines by proceeding by additions should be daily enriched and therefore thus far shall those that come after be obliged to those that have gone before Indeed it is believed to be of great help to have rowled over the Books of many that were before me because it is easie to add ones own to the inventions of others But in the business which I have taken on me all kinde of help from Scholars hath been feeble and therefore the Counsel and aid of my Auncestors loose unto me Because where I declare that the very quill of all Writers hath been ignorant and diseased it is very easie to discern that no mans judgement hath at all profited me but greatly hurt me Therefore that the Writings of my Auncestors have fought with me for some years for the glory of truth I do sincerely and candidly protest and profess But since I draw out all things new and unheard of I will not interpret others inventions as neither will I contend with their Authorities and I have seemed to my self to be a new Authour of Medicine hitherto known onely by way of name And therefore have I put the gifts to usury for which God the Creditor hath ingraven me his poor Debtor in his Book All things are Paradoxes or against the common opinion I confess for if they should otherwise appear I should think my self to be an unprofitable brawler one prodigal of my dayes and an unprofitable presumptuous repeater Wherefore if it hath well pleased the Father of Lights in the dayes of our Auncestors to increase the number and tartness of Diseases I likewise may believe that I do not suppose it an unsuitable thing that goodness have opened its Treasures that at length she may quickly safely and gloriously anoint the marks and wounds which the Father of mercies hath inflicted to wit he who appointed a Physitian or a Mediator between God and man from the beginning yea he made it his delight that he would be overcome by a Physitian indeed he testifieth that he created and chose him to this end for a peculiar Testimony of his praise It is so in truth for no sooner doth he punish weaken and threaten to kill man but he desireth a Physitian opposing himself that he may conquer himself being omnipotent also in sending deserved punishments by the proper gifts of his Clemency This is the Charity of the most high upon all frail Creatures to be esteemed which he hath bestowed on Physitians chosen by himself from Age to Age. He he is incomprehensible sweetly disposing all things But of this sort are Physitians which are fitted from their Mothers womb for this the word The most High hath created him importeth exercising his gift with respect to no gain and they are nakedly cast upon his good pleasure yea the Command of him who alone being truly merciful commands us that under pain of infernal punishment we be like to his Father Obey those that are set over you is a Precept indeed but Honour thy Parents honour the Physitian is more strict than to obey seeing we are constrained even to obey our youngers For the Physician is a Mediator between the Prince of life and death I desist timely enough considering the benefits undeservedly bestowed on me Moreover I neither require the Reader to be courteous nor do I fear the scoffer For it may be lawful to displease either to whom it is lawful to dispraise all pains and knowledge For God hath so appointed that new things do for the most part procure their hard censurers and ungrateful ones For I have renounced with great endeavour to please Courts and Nobles also to hang on the opinions of others alwayes esteeming this to be a servile thing even as on the contrary it is plainly a free thing not to submit with that Being which is subject to none but God For although it was hard in the beginning yet it being accustomed to me I have chosen that
of things Lastly the Fluxes of ripenesles slownesses and swiftnesses And likewise they have not known the composures and resolvings of Bodies made as well by Nature as Art Likewise the necessities ends or bounds dispositions defects restorings deaths consequences of Seeds also of Ferments also their nearnesses and dependencies for that they diligently taught the natural Agent to be a forreiner and a stranger to things Also by way of consequence they have been ignorant of the births of forms as also of the properties proceeding from thence In whose place they have exposed fortune chance time a vacuum or emptiness that which is infinite although they are all strangers to Nature and those things which did contain ridiculous Disciplines Yea they have followed the Authour who believed the World to be extended from Eternity unto Eternity by its own proper forces or virtue and he contradicteth himself by denying an infinite Since the first moreover being to abide for ever to make all things in his eternal power doth necessarily include an infinite CHAP. V. The Chief or Master-Workman 1. The Archeus or chief Workman is the efficient cause 2. How it is in Seeds 3. The properties and differences of the same 4. The Composition of the natural Air. 5. The Birth of seminal Idea's or shapes 6. The seminal Garment of the chief Workman 7. The places of Hospitality with Curers appointed for the Seed 8. The Conjunction of the Stars imitated in Seeds 9. The first mover hath not the Vicarship in a man I Have touched at the birth and Causes of Natural things and least I may seem to have placed the efficient Cause undeservedly within I will the more fitly explain the Workman the Vulcan or Smith of generations Whatsoever therefore cometh into the World by Nature it must needs have the Beginning of its motions the stirrer up and inward directer of generation Therefore all things however hard and thick they are yet before that their soundness they inclose in themselves an Air which before generation representeth the inward future generation to the Seed in this respect fruitful and accompanies the thing generated even to the end of the Stage Which air although in some things it be more plentiful yet in Vegetables it is pressed together in the shew of a juyce as also in Mettals it is thickned with a most thick homogeniety or sameliness of kinde notwithstanding this gift hath happened to all things which is called the Archeus or chief Workman containing the fruitfulness of generations and Seeds as it were the internal efficient cause I say that Workman hath the likeness of the thing generated unto the beginning whereof he composeth the appointments of things to be done But the chief Workman consists of the conjoyning of the vitall air as of the matter with the seminal likeness which is the more inward spiritual kernel containing the fruitfulness of the Seed but the visible Seed is onely the husk of this This Image of the Master-Workman issuing out of the first shape or Idea of its predecessour or snatching the same to it self out of the cup or bosom of outward things is not a certain dead Image but made famous by a full knowledge and adorned with necessary powers of things to be done in its appointment and so it is the first or chief Instrument of life and feeling For example For a Woman with Child fashioneth a Cherry in her Young by her desire in that part in which she moveth her hand in desiring A Cherry I say in the flesh true green pale yellow and red according to the stations in which the Trees do promote their Cherries And the same Cherry sooner waxeth red in the same Young in Spain than in the Low-Countries Therefore a Cherry is made by Imagination So through the Imagination of lust a vitall Image of living Creatures is brought over into the Spirit of the Seed being about to unfold it self by the course of generation But since every corporeal act is limited into a Body hence it comes to passe that the Archeus the Workman and Governour of generation doth cloath himself presently with a bodily cloathing For in things soulified he walketh thorow all the Dens and retiring places of his Seed and begins to transform the matter according to the perfect act of his own Image For here he placeth the heart but there he appoints the brain and he every where limiteth an unmoveable chief dweller out of his whole Monarchy according to the bounds of requirance of the parts and of appointments At length that President remains the overseer and inward ruler of his bounds even until death But the other floating about being assigned to no member keeps the oversight over the particular Pilots of the members being clear and never at rest or keeping holyday Moreover as sublunary things do express in themselves an Analogy or proportion of things above So every thing by how much the more lively it is by so much the more perfectly it imitates the Stars so that sick persons do seem to carry in themselves sensible Ephemeries or daily Registers being skilful of future seasons Indeed in the bowels the planetary Spirits do most shine forth even as also in the whole influous Archeus the courses and forces of the Firmament do appear But the first mover hath no where had a member in men but onely under the Archeus of the wombe it meets by meditating by way of similitude as it were in the last finishing of created things For happily a Woman is therefore more stirred or troubled in her first Conceptions as she drawes with her other Orbs by her first motions As often as the wombe being swollen with the ascending Rule of Imagination doth suffer an animosity or angry heat it snatcheth the particular Archeusses of the bowels into the obedience of it self by striving to excel manly weaknesses and for the most part wretchedly deludes Physitians with a feigned Image The Archeusses of bruit Beasts are almost like unto mans Neither shall we draw an unprofitable knowledge of the shop of simples from the difference of Plants and their Sexes Because neither is it without a Mystery that in creeping things and insects being born in corruption alone Nature invariously sporting her self intends nothing so seriously as the proportionable differences of Sexes on both sides Wherefore neither must we think the same things to have been neglected in Plants although they may make one onely Seed blessed with a promiscuous Sex and a most fruitful of-spring But the most able effectress of the greater forces is discerned under the Signatures or Impressions of Venus she being very bright there is a care of the Sexes and now and then a hermaphroditical confused mixture For whatsoever Plants are femalls they do allure or procure the violent motion of the first mover Therefore the Natural Astrologie of the humane Seed frames its directions according to the general motion of the Heaven but it doth not beg it abroad for if
the disposing of instruments and the effect or thing produced 6. That heat is not an agent in seminal generation 7. Why Aristotle hath not known the truth of Nature 8. His Books of natural Philosophy contain onely tristes 9. How young men are to be instructed in the place or room of Schoole-Philosophy 10. Into what great Apolloes young men might climbe 11. The Prerogatives of the fire 12. What a young man so instructed might judge 13. Privations do not succeed in the flowing of Seeds to generation 14. There is no form of a dead Carcase 15. That generation and corruption do not receive each other 16. The Vulcan of life vanisheth without the corrupting of it self 17. Death is not the corruption of life 18. The distinction of privation and corruption 19. Of forms there is no corruption 20. The ignorance of Galen 21. His ridiculous Volumes concerning the decrees of Hipocrates and Plato 22. His books of preserving of health are foolish THE Schooles have so sworn constancy and their end to their Aristotle that even to this day they by putting one name for another do call him the Philosopher whom notwithstanding I certainly finde to be altogether ignorant of Nature and it grieveth me not to write down some causes which have enforced me hereunto and that for no other end than that hereafter as well Professors as young beginners may not through an aptness to believe and a custome of assenting be made to wander out of the way nor may suffer themselves hence-forward to be led by a blinde man into the ditch For otherwise I tell no mans tale nor am I more displeased with Aristotle than with a non ens or a non-being Therefore first of all Aristotle defineth Nature It is the Principle or beginning of motion as also of rest in Bodies in whom it is in by it self and not by accident Wherein I finde more errours and ignorances of the definer than words First therefore the word it is in sheweth that he speaketh of a Body really existing but not of his impossible matter 2. He denotes that such Bodies are not of the number or supposed things of Nature For truly it belongeth not to Bodies to be in Bodies by it self and not by accident 3. He takes away any accidents from the Catalogue of Nature as if they were without besides and above Nature because accidents are in by accident 4. He sets down that Bodies which have motion or rest by accident are likewise without Nature 5. That the Being of things is in Nature in Nature it self before the day or motion or rest of the same Because it must needs be that something first be before that it move be moved or doth rest And so the Principle of Being goes before the beginning of moving or resting notwithstanding Nature cannot be before its existence For if the beginning of motion or rest should be latter or an effect as to their Being Nature should be an effect as to its being a natural thing 6. What if God after Creation had enjoyned neither motion nor rest rest indeed according to Aristotle presupposeth the bound of motion there had now been a Creature and not Nature For God in the beginning created the Heaven and the Earth Now Nature was not understood by Aristotle to wit there was sometimes a Creature and it actually existed before or on this side Nature here defined 7. Bodies in which the beginning of motion is external and by accident suppose thou when 〈◊〉 heat of the Sun moves the Seed to increase or a Woman with Childe by accident transforms the imperfect Infant by her own Imagination should not be under Nature as neither that accidental beginning 8. To rest is not not to be moved but to cease from motion and so not to be moved is more general than rest Therefore Nature absolutely taken should be onely after the existence of Nature 9. If the beginning of motion in a moveable thing be Nature and the efficient cause be properly called the beginning of motion as he saith heat not elementary to be therefore it must needs be that the efficient cause is inward which is against Aristotle or that Nature in as much as it is the beginning of motion is not in Bodies most neerly or inwardly by it self 10. Every outward efficient cause is the beginning of motion in a thing by accident But every efficient cause according to Aristotle is external therefore no efficient cause external is natural which is contrary to his second Book of Physicks 11. Whatsoever things are moved by the Mathematicks and also a Mill moved by the Winde or a stream should not be moved by Nature But I believe that Nature is the Command of God whereby a thing is that which it is and doth that which it is commanded to do or act This is a Christian definition taken out of the holy Scriptures 12. But Aristotle contrary to his own Precepts of a definition takes the difference which he thinketh to be constitutive for the general kinde of the thing defined in Nature to wit the formall beginning of motion and rest But for the constitutive difference he takes the matter or Body wherein the said beginning of motion is But Christians are held to believe Nature to be every Creature to wit a Body and accidents no lesse than the beginning of motion it self 13. Death also although it be the beginning by it self of rest in a dead Carcase yet Christians do believe it not to be created by the Lord and so neither to be Nature and although it may light naturally on it yet that happens not by reason of the death but of its natural Causes But Aristotle in another place a like stumblingly touching on Nature saith Every power of the Soul seemeth to be a partaker of some other certain Body for neither dares he positively and simply to affirm it than those which are called Elements For even as Souls do differ so also the Nature of that Body doth differ the Seed contains the cause of fruitfulness to wit heat which is not fiery but a spirit or breath in the froathy body of the Seed and the Nature which is in that Spirit answereth in proportion to the Element of the Stars This Precept praised by the Schooles containeth almost as many Errours as Syllables And at length this Writer of natural instruction being exceeding doubtful knowes not what he may call or ought to call Nature For first he saith it to be a Corporeal power of the Soul and therefore he banisheth the understanding out of the powers of the Soul 2. He saith the power of the Soul which he afterwards calleth heat is a partaker of another Body than those that are called Elements As if it were a partaker onely of a Body above an Elementated one and heavenly 3. It is absolutely false and an ignorant thing that any power of the Soul is a partaker of the body although it be tied to the body For every
power is an accident and no accident or quality can be a partaker of a Body but on the contrary a Body is a partaker of accidents 4. That souls do not differ but in respect of that body which at length he calleth meer heat notwithstanding that all Souls are a power partaking of a heavenly Body therefore Souls do not differ in respect of that Body in which he hath said they all do agree or if there be any difference between Souls let it be in respect of the matter of a Body or of an unnamed Client or retainer being neglected by and plainly unknown to Aristotle And so in so great a dress of words he hath spoken nothing but trifles 5. If Souls do differ onely for that bodies sake the act shall be now limited by the power the Species or particular kinde by the matter not by the form 6. The Seed contains the cause of fruitfulness it is a Childish and triflous thing because the Seed ceaseth to be Seed if it be without the cause of fruitfulness 7. Every power of the Soul is a partaker of some other body than those which are called the Elements Yet he would have the bodies of all soulified or living Creatures to be of necessity mixt of non but actual Elements 8. The Seed is not fruitful but by heat As though Fishes were not more fruitfull than four footed Beasts and as though Fishes were not actually cold 9. He knew not another moderate heat from live Coals which nourisheth Eggs even unto a Chick And he knowes not that all heat is in one onely most special kinde of quality being distinguished onely by degree 10. He is ignorant that heat onely makes hot by it self and that it should make fruitful by accident And therefore although that heat be the principle of motion and the power of the Soul that is Nature by it self yet as it should make the Seeds fruitful by accident it should be the beginning of motion by accident Therefore in respect of the same Nature it should be a beginning by it self and by accident or with relation to the same Nature it should be Nature and not Nature 11. He confoundeth the quality of heats with the spirit and air of the froathy Seed which notwithstanding do differ no lesse than in predicaments 12. Heat is the spirit of the froathy body and the nature which is in that spirit is heat Therefore the spirit shall be in the spirit 13. Nature is in that spirit and that spirit is not nature defined by Aristotle for the subject of natural Philosophy yet that spirit is the Principle of motion in the Seed and of life in living Creatures and he much more strictly denies the froathy body of the Seed to be of the account of nature as though the seed of things were a froath and not the more inward invisible kernel in a corporeal seed but that onely the power of Souls which with him is nothing but heat were nature 14. Because every power of the Soul is encompassed with heat he excludes out of the account of nature any other bodies and accidents 15. That power of Souls for whose sake Souls do differ is onely heat not indeed a fiery one but agreeing in proportion with the Element of the Stars that is it hath not been understood by Aristotle nor is it to be any way to be understood by the Schooles how heat doth agree with a body with an Element what agreement there can be between such various dependants of predicaments 16. He denieth this power of Souls to be of the race of Elements That plural number rejecteth not onely one Element but by reason of the strength of negatives all Elements 17. Every power of the Soul is a meer heat not indeed answering to the heat of the Element of the Stars but altogether to the Element it self 18. For truly he acknowledgeth no other heat than that of fire nor any other Element of fire than that which is of the kitchin because he distinguisheth Elementary heat from the Element of the Stars yet by his own authority he hath inclosed fire that is not of the kitchin between the Heaven and the Air. 19. At length as oft as he was positively to tell what nature was the privy shifter saith sometimes that it is the power of the Soul sometimes the fruitfulness of the Seed and at last he neither perceived nor ever knew what the heat not fiery was and makes a fifth Element of the Firmament of the Stars after he hath cast away the other four by denying them Therefore he runs about in denying by far fetched speeches and least he should be laid hold on he denyeth nature to be of the race of Elements As if it were enough to have said there is a Chymera or certain fabulous Monster not of the Elements but of the fifth Element of the Stars It is not a body not an accident but a heat answering to the Element of the Heavens not to the heat of the same 20. And he would not say that indeed these things are so bur that they seem to him to be so Seeing that according to the same man many things may seem to be which yet are not 21. And if thou wilt not believe it go to see or expect it for ever 22. As though the whole action of nature were made by heat 23. Also that Mettalls which elsewhere he writeth to be co-thickned or condensed by their own cold because they do abound with heat should now be out of nature 24. And as though the seeds of Vegetables because they are not froathy should not be endowed with fruitfulnesses or should not contain nature in themselves 25. Therefore he denieth the heat of living Creatures actually hot to be Elementary the which notwithstanding I shall at sometime in its own place prove to be true being unmindeful of his own maxim that the cause is of the same particular kinde with its thing caused He knowes not I say that our heat doth make any other things to be hot by a naked Elementary heat And likewise that since not onely Elementary heat which he placeth in the sublunary fire distinct from the common or kitchin fire but also the kitchin fire do heat us in a degree fitted to us Therefore they ought to be of one and the same species or particular kinde 26. At length he rashly affirmeth that nature or the power of the Soul or seminal truths are nothing besides that heavenly heat 27. Therefore he acknowledgeth heat actually cold in Fishes to be the cause of fruitfulness seeing it distributes from every power of the Soul For that is to have sold trifles instead of Phylosophy And as oft as he feareth his toyes are not saleable he provokes us to the Element of the Stars after that he had provoked us it seemes by one affirmative and many trifles of denyalls to the proportion of the Element of the Stars Surely it is a shame for Christians
perfectly teach my own opinion not stablished by heathenish Dreams but confirmed by the Doctrine of a higher authority For first of all the Earth is actually distinguished by certain Pavements Soils or grounds for truly the outward Soil of the Earth is plainly Sandy Clayie white else-where clayie-yellow muddy grisely or grayie white yellow black red c. sporting with divers varieties Under which for the most part is a Sand and this very Sand differenced every where with great variety But under this Soil is at length the flinty Mountain which they call Keyberch being the Pavement and Originall of Rocks and first Root of Mineralls And at length every where under this Soil is the living or quick Sand the boyling Sand Drif or Quellem which is extended even into the Center of the World being thorowly washed in its un-interrupted joyning with waters And although all the aforesaid Soils do not every where succeed each other in order yet the Quellem is every where the last Pavement of the World although oftentimes immediately exposed to the Air and plain to be seen As concerning the Originall of Fountains in my Book of the Fountains of the Spaw This therefore being once supposed I say that the place where the exhalation should be which is believed to be the cause of the Earth-quake ought to be placed or appointed in some or amongst some of the said Soils seeing that in the Earth there is not a place out of the aforesaid Pavements But to the overthrowing of that Doctrine a demonstration is required which from a sufficient enumcration of the Pavements may shew that such an impossible exhalation cannot be contained or be raised up in any of the said Soils or if it should be there stirred up yet that it hath not the power of forming an Earth-quake As to the first of the three members to wit that not any exhalation can be contained under the Earth which may actively cause its trembling I prove First of all not under the outmost Clayie or first Soil of the Earth next to the Air and designed for the habitation of Mortalls because so S. Rumolds Tower had not trembled as neither Buildings built immediately upon the Quellem As neither had Ships without the raging of Windes been removed in deep Waters far from the ground of the Sand. For it being granted that the bottom of the Sea did tremble just even as the Earth else-where inhabited yet the Superficies of the Water could not keep the tenour of the same trembligg Sand without winde and storm which thing notwithstanding is discerned to be false for flying Birds also feeling the trembling of the Earth would not fall down they being as it were sore smitten or astonished for a sign that the Air it self doth tremble For the Elements shall at sometime melt in the sight of the Judge Therefore if the water doth tremble no lesse than the quiet Earth it self the cause thereof is signified to be in the Globe or because the Earth and water do at the same stroak of smiting together with the Air feel a fear or hand of the smiter Secondly neither can an exhalation the cause of an Earth-quake dwell in any of the Soils of Sands because then Fens Medows and places wherein the Quellem is immediately prostituted beneath the Clay had not trembled VVhich thing is as equally different from the truth of the deed as the former Next in the third place neither can the same exhalation be hidden under the Keyberch For in the whole Circle a few places excepted wherein the Earth then trembled at the same moment of time the ground Keyberch is not extant At length neither could an exhalation arise or be detained between the Quellem which is sufficient to shake so great an heap with an equall fury Because the Quellem that is oft-times next the Air and conjoyned even into the Center of the Universe by its continuall unity and thorow mixture of waters should easily puffe out such an exhalation before it could equally lift up so great an heap at once For it is of an unexcusable necessity because such an exhalalation should break forth out of the more weak lesse heavy and lesse resisting part that is in the place that is least ponderous And so under the position of the granted exhalation there could not be an alike trembling of all places which resisteth the thing done For before that the exhalation should lift up so great weights through so vast and various spaces of ground and waters at once and at one moment it had sought and had found out easie following and the more weak places through which it had made a way for it self to break out at For otherwise the exhalations should fight against the rules of nature proportion and motions which should lift up equally and at once all the parts of the Low-Countries and a great part of Germany Especially where there is not an equall capacity of every place wherein the exhalation should be entertained not an equall fardle of the incumbent burden or resistance of weight as neither is there an equall awakening of that exhalation possible to be that at once and almost at one onely moment it should alike act thorow so many Regions Which is to say that it is impossible that the exhalation the Mover of the Earth-quake being granted there should be an equality in the sameliness of time and power of motion through so great a space through so great a difference and resistance of the Soil and of the Heaven and diversity of weight seeing such an acting exhalation meating out its efficacy by the variety of places difference greatness activity swiftness of the Mover being of necessity unlike ought also to obey the unlikenesses of places Therefore let the quantity rise power entertainment and swiftness of exhalations be ridiculous which should at one and the same moment after a like manner and re-iterated course shake so many Cities Mountains Valleys Hills watry places Meadows Rivers Islands and so vast a heap longly and largely displaced and sooner than it should seek finde and make a passage for it self But now I coming to the second Member of proving to wit that in the aforesaid Pavements of the Earth the raising up of an exhalation is impossible which may be the cause of an Earth-quake Let every kinde of naturall vapour be determined and examined by its causes The exhalation which may be supposed to be the Mover of the Earth is not in the first place a vapour or watery exhalation because that most swiftly returns again into water daily by pressing together of its own accord in our Alembicks but an exhalation according to Aristotle that is chiefly necessary for these bounds is a hot and dry flux or Issue out of Bodies for the most part also Oylie lifted up from the dry parts by a sharp heat into the form of Air or a rising smoak But I could wish that the Schooles may answer what therefore at
Vessel putrified by continuance it conceiveth Worms it brings sorth Gnats yea is covered with a skin Fens putrifie from the bottom through continuance hence arise Frogs Shell-fishes Snails Horse-leeches Herbs c. And moreover swimming-herbs do cover the water being contented onely with the drinking of water putrified through continuance And even as stones are from Fountains wherein there is a stony seed and ferment existing So the Earth stinking with metally ferments doth make out of water a metally or Mineral Bur. But the water being elsewhere shut up in the Earth if it be nigh the Air and stirred by a little heat it putrifieth by continuance which is no more water but the juyce Leffas or of Plants by the force of which hoary ferment a power is conferred on the Earth of budding forth Herbs for that putrified juyce by the prick of a little heat doth ascend into a smoak is made spongie and encompassed with a skin by reason of the requirance of the ferments therein laying hid Therefore that putrefaction by continuance hath the office of a ferment and the virtues of a seed hastening by degrees into the Archeusses through its seminall virtues into a quantity of life Therefore the juyce of the Earth putrified through continuance is Leffas From whence ariseth every kinde of Plant wanting a visible seed and from whence seeds that are sown are promoted into their appointments therefore there are as many rank or stinking smells of putrefactions by continuance as there are proper savours of things for that odours are not onely the messengers of savours but also their promiscuous parents The smoak Leffas being now gathered together doth at first wax pale afterwards wax yellowish straightway it waxeth a little whitishly green And at length it is fully green And the power of the Species or particular kinde being unfolded it assumeth divers Colours and Signates In which flowing it imitatets the leading of the water under the equinoctial-Equinoctial-line yet in this it differs that these waters have borrowed too Spiritual a ferment from the Star and place without a corporeal hoary putrefaction and therefore through their too frail seed they straightway return into themselves but Leffas is constrained to perfect the Tragedy of the conceived seed Therefore Rain conceiving a hoary ferment and being made Leffas is drawn into the lustfull roots by a certain sucking And it is experienced that within this Kitchin there is a new hoary putrefaction of the Ferment the Tenant by and by it is brought from thence to the Bark or Liver where it is enriched with a new ferment of that bowel and is made an Herby or woody juyce and at length a ripeness being conceived it becommeth Wood becometh an Herb or departs into fruit but the Trunk or Stem if it sooner putrifies under the Earth than the Bark or Rhine becomes dry it cleaves asunder by its own ferment sends forth a smoak thorow the Bark which in its beginning is spongie and at length hardens into a true root and so planted branches become Trees by the abridgement of art Therefore it is now evident that there is no mixture of the Elements that all bodies primitively and materially are made onely of water through a seed being attained by a ferment and that the seeds being exhausted or overcome with pains Bodies do at length return into their antient Inne of water yea that ferments do sometimes work more strongly than fire because great Stones are turned into Lime and Woods indeed into ashes and there the fire makes a stop the which notwithstanding a ferment in the Earth being assumed do of their own accord return into the juyce of Leffas and so also at length into simple water For otherwise Stones and Bricks do of their own accord decline into Salt-peter Lastly Glasse which is unconquered by the fire uncorrupted by the Air in a few years putrifieth by continuance rots under the Earth and undergoes the lawes of water for whatsoever things may be melted in water do forthwith return into water but other things are made volatile by the ferments and what things soever were compacted and not to be thorowly mingled being brought by the ferments of putrefactions by continuance into a necessity of transmutation are opened and do hastily consult of seperating But the most clear Fountains although they climbe thorow the Rocks and Sand out of the un-savoury soil of nature or the Quellem are purified far from the contagion of Clay a ferment and corruption neither do they also fall down by chance but are appointed for great uses yet seeing they contract at least the hidden Odours of the Rockie Stone unperceivable by us they hasten into other bounds Therefore Streams Springs Rivers Fens Pooles Seas and whatsoever things are contained in the belly of the water do likewise even from the very birth of the Fountains conceive their seeds and in wantonizing do ripen them by their course Also great storms of Rain being struck down through the putrefaction of Thunder are fruitfull but sober rains are great with young of dew or a conceived exhalation For I have perfectly learned by the fire that the dew is rich in a sweet Sugar They deliver that in Snow Northern worms are bred therefore the Mountains to be covered over with a long Snow and although their Grass be sparing yet that it is most apt for the fatting of lesser Cattel so that unless they are driven away in time they will be choaked with fat But the waters which contain a melting Paracelsus doth call corporeall ones and he ignorantly denieth that they contain an Element in them Therefore Ferments do by seeds play their universall part in the World under the one Element of water CHAP. XV. The Stars do necessitate not incline nor signifie of the life the body or fortunes of him that is born 1. Naturall Philosophy without Medicine wants its end 2. The objects of the Stars 3. By what Argument the admittings of Ephemerides or Dayes-books may be supported 4. The errour in admitting them 5. However influences may be taken they do alwayes include a necessity 6. What the Works of the Lord in Psal 14. are 7. The fore-knowledge of God is infallible as well in things freely happening as in those of necessity 8. Death is foretold to Hannibal 9. How the Devil foreknoweth things to come 10. The Confession of the Authour 11. How much and from whence an evill Spirit hath a foreknowledge of things to come 12. Which way foreshewing Signes may be made which scarce any one understands 13. The foreshewings of the Stars determined out of the holy Scriptures 14. In what manner or what thing the Stars may act 15. The action of government 16. A diversity of government is shewen from their motion and from their light 17. Sick persons foreshew things to come 18. Why Insects have better known things to come than men 19. VVhy diseased persons do fore-perceive Tempests 20. Foreshewing doth not take away a liberty of
judging or willing 21. The figures of the windes are described in the Heaven 22. The knowledge of the signification of the Stars is unknown to man 23. The Magitians or wise men of the East 24. From new Wine Sooth-sayers or Diviners of God 25. The Prophesie of Feasters was from new Wine 26. That the drunken or besotted gift of Paracelsus was made known to the Hebrews 27. Three histories of predictions 28. The Stars onely to incline resisteth the Scriptures 29. The inclining of the Stars how far it reacheth 30. The Stars the solemn prayses of God do not necessitate as causes but as signes bewraying the will of the Lord. 31. A solving of an objection 32. The common explaining of the Proverb derogates from the Grace of God 33. That the Heaven doth not incline 34. The seed of man doth of its own accord deflux into a living animall and dispersing soul 35. VVhat the seminall properties of inclinations are 36. A fourfold inclination 37. The inclination of calling is onely from God but not from the Stars 38. The morall inclination is from the seed and from education 39. The inclination vitall or of the life is from the seed and education 40. The vain and proud presumption of Astrologers 41. The inclination of fortunes is immediately from the hand of the Lord. 42. The Schooles seduced by the evill spirit of Paganisme 43. The sloathfull or careless negligence of Astrologers 44. How the sensitive soul of man differs from the soul of a bruit beast 45. How custome brings forth inclination 46. How a wise man shall have dominion over the Stars 47. Why predictions from the Stars are fundamentally vain 48. The error of the Authour 49. Astrologers confess their deceipts 50. They suppose astrall or Starry effects from causes not in being HItherto concerning the Elements their qualities Complexions and contrarieties in order to the Science of Medicine without which indeed I have thought the Study of naturall Philosophy to have lost as it were its end no otherwise than if a Clergy-man shall treat of the State politique or of War-like affaires For why S. Paul drives every Sacrificer from the like things No man he saith going a warfare intangleth himself with the affaires of this life Therefore the Studies of naturall Philosophy have I directed to a farther end to wit to the profit of men but not to the delighting of the Readers For this cause also I declame concerning the Stars because they are thought to be the causers of any kinde of Diseases Inclinations and Fortunes And indeed Paracelsus at length consented in this thing although he be refractory in all other things to the Study of the Antients First of all I will take the Text The Heavens declare the glory of God and the Firmament sheweth his handy works For that soundeth that the Heavens were chiefly created that they might declare the large Majesty Power Goodness and Wisdom of God to wit on which four Pillars the whole Globe of the Universe stands and is supported but the Star-bearing Heaven doth as it were a Preacher shew the wonderfull works of the Lords hands to intellectuall Creatures For thus far the Church admitteth of Meteorical Predictions the barrennesses of years and their fruitfulnesses the stations of sowings the dangers of sailings the deaths of chief men Plagues inundations yea whatsoever things do not depend on the direction of our will or judgement to wit as all those things are believed to be connexed with the first qualities of the Elements by a contingent or accidentall consequence even so that although it doth admit of the deaths of great men the tumults of Wars and fires to be prognosticated of in Ephemerides yet it will have those things to be beheld not as free contingencies or arbitrall and much lesse as necessary ones but nakedly as it were the effects of the first Qualities and Complexions Wherein how much they have erred I have already demonstrated in the premises And moreover how far they have in this thing gone back from the holy Scriptures I will here shew If the Heavenly influences do obtain the reason of a cause surely their effects shall of necessity be connexed to their causes and so also thus far at least necessary after the manner of other second causes whose effects the causes being placed do necessarily succeed unless they are supernaturally hindered or changed Which thing is alike proper to all causes neither doth it include a singularity for the Heaven but if the Influences of Heaven are onely after the manner of a sign and fore-shewing surely neither shall they import a lesse necessity but a far more strict one if we believe the certain foreknowledge of Divine Providence and do believe the Handy works of the Lord to be fore-signified by the Stars Therefore after what manner soever it may be taken the Stars do necessitate The Stars shall be unto you for Signes Times or Seasons dayes and years But these Works of the Lord shewed from a necessity by the Stars and by the Firmament are not the works of the first six dayes For neither could the Stars shew forth either themselves or what things were created straightway after them without an absurdity of speech In the next place the Stars ought not to foreshew Winter and Summer which they actually cause by their Blas and which we do ordinarily know and perceive to invade us by degrees but they ought indefinitely to foreshew the Handy works of the Lord and rather those which are called contingent ones than otherwise necessary and ordinary Revolutions Which contingences do not therefore respect the fruitfulnesses of Victuall which they do cause but for the Majesty Wisdom and goodness of the Creator the Stars ought to foreshew those future Handy works of the Lord whence he hath taken to himself the name the God of Armies by whom Kings reign a zealous God a revenger translating Kingdoms from Nation to Nation by reason of injustice which kinde of works are contained in the life birth vertue or power continuance change interchange motions and interchangeable courses of successive things And so the preachings of the Stars must needes have place in the removing of Scepters and by consequence in the foreshewing of the meanes by which those things are done framed do depend and subsequently follow as it were by second causes For such kinde of effects are not to be taken away from the Handy works of the Lord without blasphemy Therefore of this sort are also Tempests Earth-quakes wonted and unwonted flouds of waters For the Lord of Hosts giveth Scepters to the Shepherd which he taketh away and translates from the King by reason of the injustice of Kings of Clergy and Judges Therefore by consequence the Stars do foreshew this injustice also If the translations of Crowns are the works of the Lord if the lots of all men do stand in the hands of the Lord For neither doth Faith permit fortune or misfortune to be else-where or to
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
with us that we being diligently taught by the Schooles do even still believe that the whole governance and successive change of sublunary things do depend on a certain that is an unnamed unknown conjectural and uncertain motion of the Heavens on the scituation light and aspect of the Stars Not considering on the contrary that the gift of multiplying or generation was powred forth before the Stars were born and therefore that the blessing of generation and of successive changes following thereupon would be after a sort frustrate if the whole government of the inferiour things were from the Heaven and that also should be true That a man and the Sun doth generate a man For the first man that was formed was made of the mud or dust and was endowed with a Soul by the in-breathing of the divine Blast But I have already sufficiently proved above that the Heavens are neither to confer manners nor knowledge nor fortunes Now I will prove moreover that indeed they can neither give Life nor Form For truly these opinions of the Schooles have in times past so infatuated or befooled them that it hath stood believed that the immortall minde it self is naturally produced by the seed of man and the influence of the Stars and although the Church hath forbidden that thing yet the Schooles being even till now seasoned with the errours of the Heathen do teach that besides the minde of man all forms essences beginnings of all things and consequently that our life inclinations perfection of properties properties and fortunes do proceed from the motion and light of the Stars and perhaps moreover from their influence But I believe far otherwise for I profess that he who by the onely word of his good pleasure made the Universe of nothing is All in All and at this day also the way originall life and perfection of all things So that although second causes are and do operate as it were partiall causes directions of motions and all dispositions necessary to generation Insomuch that therefore the Almighty will in nothing more give his honour to any Creature yet he alwayes remaineth as the totall cause continuing the perpetuall parent of things the framer of nature and its governour by creating therefore I profess that as in the beginning nothing was made without him so also that at this day the creation of every form is a thing made of nothing by the very same Creator which thing I not onely speak in behalf of the matter once formerly created but also of any kinde of forms because as the form is as it were a certain light of the thing and the top of that light So none can cause or beget the forms of things but the Father of Lights who giveth all things to all nor is not far off from every created thing Neither may I believe that the Heavens do frame naturall forms of nothing or that they give the seeds or souls of things which they in no way have because Faith and also Religion do teach me that God is also at this day the immediate principle of things every where present working all the perfection of all things And therefore whatsoever is any where essentially that that thing doth owe to God its whole as much as it is can do knoweth or hath For Creation hath respect and sheweth a disposition unto a thing existing in perfection but the perfection of a thing is the proper internall essentiall form of every thing therefore its immediate beginning cannot be from any other than Creation And therefore is immediately from the one onely unutterable Creator of things The Schooles therefore thinking the contrary were deceived when they saw the light by it self to make fire thorow a Glasse I say they thought the light to be an accident but the fire to be a substance and in their thoughts of both they stumbled And therefore they waxing blinde at the natural light of the Sun flee together unto it as it were the Creator of the substance of fire doubting in retiring whether the Heaven should as yet frame the form of the fire or whether there were any other artificial light equivalent in this work For such a sluggishness of the Schooles doth alwayes remain that having gotten an example erroneous and supposionall they straightway slide to a generality least by diligently searching through particular kindes or Species they should be wearied and finde something which should constrain them to depart from the possession of a supposed knowledge I say they could not understand but that they should believe the light of the Sun to be a Creator and also of all essential forms But they stumble and fall in the place of exercise and being unconstant do run away For when they thought that one essential form of the fire was generated immediately by heat putrefaction and rubbing and now to be taken from another light without respect to the Heaven and its co-working they sand a recantation they fought against the Heavens and their own former opinion and will have the Creation of forms to be fetched back from these the which notwithstanding they do sometimes freely and credulously yield unto them as being uncertain to what Authour the birth of forms may be due wherefore when they saw fire to be taken or drawn from fire and so that in a combustible object there was fire potentially Straightway also by the same right that all seeds did contain a potential form and so far indeed that at length an actual form is brought and procreated out of a potential disposition which they call the power of the matter but surely ridiculous For at first they thought that the same thing did happen to the generations of all seeds which they had already experienced in the light and fire Therefore they afterwards began toughly to maintain that every substantial form but I do grant an essential form to any things whatsoever yet a substantiall one to none but to man by reason of his immortal minde or act was produced without a mean out of the power of the matter That is that it was created by the onely dispositions of the matter which is to say by accidents And as this knowledge of those forms was brought forth from the brain as it were Minerva the Daughter of Jupiter it was also doubtfull unconstant without sense as to the subject of its inherency and soon rent a sunder into divers Sects And indeed first of all S. Thomas reacheth that accidents do in truth indeed generate a substance but that is onely in respect of the substantial form whose Instruments they are In the first place here S. Thomas hath forsaken his Aristotle and will have the efficient cause to be internall sliding out of the bosom of the form and dependent on it in this respect the generating efficient cause thereof 2. He declareth these intricacies one substantial form doth not cause another of it self but its accidents do in truth do that Likewise Accidents do
substance and so an act whereby the matter is this something or particular subfisting thing truly the form ought most principally to subsist and endure or that maxime is false That by which every thing is such that thing it self is more such But the consequence together with the maxim is false For all the souls of Beasts and all their forms are frail or mortall for therefore I reckoned with my self the antecedent also to be false Indeed all created things were made of nothing and so they keep the disposition of that principle and therefore the Forms and Being of things do in the first place return of their own accord into their former nothing Notwithstanding God created not man immediately of nothing but of the mud or dust of the Earth and therefore his Creation was far otherwise than that of other things For the Almighty took dust from the Earth not indeed that which was equall in weight to a man like an Image-maker for of one onely Rib he formed the whole Body of the Woman that he might manifest the Mystery of this irregular Creation not to be after the manner of other things but substantial as to the Form I say the whole Mystery directed to its ends or to the Soul manifesting that the Soul of man was not onely an out-law and one onely substance among other Forms but also that from the unequalness of mud or the Rib to a whole Person we might see that our Soul is a formall substance not of quantity but meerly spiritual And that which being at sometime abstracted by way of a truly sub-standing or remaining Being should afterwards by the gift of Creation endure for ever Therefore every Form is created by the Father of Lights into a proper particular kinde and is a certain Light of its own Body But Forms are distinguished among themselves not onely by the degree of Light but in the whole Species And therefore there are as many Species of lights in nature as there are of things And seeing that also Angels are numbered among things it followes that there are far more Species of lights than of material things But we must deservedly call to minde that there is a brightness or Splendor in the Archeus of Seeds and so something like to a formall light which brings the matter to the suitable bounds of its particular kinde yet that that Splendor doth far differ from a formall light for truly that is forthwith and immediately created by the Father of Lights but the Splendor proceedeth out of the lap of nature And the largeness of the difference and unlikeness is placed in this that amongst it or at the most the Splendor of the seeds is the effect of the Master-Workman but the formall light is a cause and vitall act Again the Splendor differs from the Archeus as light doth from matter and therefore the whole Being of the Splendor is terminated in shining but the light of the form is so annexed to the thingliness or essence of it that they are formally one and the same being distinguished onely by a relation And so although the formall light doth shine yet its act is not terminated in shining but in an essentificall thingliness And therefore brightness and shining are indeed the beginnings of degrees to a fireable light and the heats thereof whereas the formall light differs in the whole general kinde from a fireable light and therefore it knowes no degrees but hath distinct and distinctive Species or shapes in its formality as well in the specificall essence as in the individual essence And therefore nature ought to receive its specifical distinctions from the formall light it not being otherwise able to distinguish it self from it self unless by some former thing which may contain an act of distinction As neither to perfect it self by it self unless it doth receive that from some former thing efficiently perfecting And seeing that Forms do actively distinguish things themselves and perfect them a Power of infinite wisdom foreknowing from end even to end is considered in them I have already taught before that the light of the Sun falling on the Earth meeting with the light of the Moon they do mutually pierce each other So the light of our Soul may touch and immediately pierce all the forms of all things so it hath but once lost the contagions of its Body But as long as it is the companion of the Body it pierceth forms subordinate to it self which thing is signified in the Word He hath put under his feet the Birds of the Heaven the Cattel of the field and the Fishes of the Sea For whatsoever the immortall Soul I speak not of the sensitive doth issuingly think of it also reacheth to that very thing even as in the Treatise of the hunting or searching out of Sciences and in the Squaldron of Diseases So likewise the minde pierceth also its sensitive Soul and so they do derive the thoughts of the Soul into the Body On the other hand the conceipts of the sensitive Soul to wit while a man being asleep thirsteth is hungry c. do ascend into the heart and oft-times do strike the immortal minde Hence therefore it followes that all the properties of things as well hidden as manifest are imprinted on Bodies by reason of a formall co-touching so that at length they do also defile even the deliberations of the formall substance As when a mad man doth but even lightly wound the skin with his tooth presently thereupon the resembling mark of madness is propagated or increased in the light whereby the sensitive Soul and minde do touch each other But God although he hath an immediate co-touching of all Forms yet he is not likewise touched or reached by any form but by the Soul actually mediating or intreating in the Symbole or resembling mark of good and that as being his Image reflecteth it self upon God But other forms as they are frail or mortall so they have no right of acting on the infinite substantial and thrice glorious light Therefore from what hath been said before it is certain that what things are innocency in Aristotle are the blasphemies of the Schooles in saying That if God should act any thing immediately he ought also to suffer are-acting And that the immaterial God doth make use of immaterial instruments that he may work or do any thing Moreover seeing the minde of man doth most nearly shew forth the Image of God is immortall and therefore is not capable of suffering I could not perswade my self that it is so restrained to the lawes of the Body that it can suffer by this Body I know that this is true that while health remains the chief powers of the minde are often troubled Therefore I acknowledge one health in the Being and another in the Mind yet I cannot comprehend that an immortall spirituall substance can suffer by an infamous excrement which in no wise reacheth it For whatsoever suffers that is made by a stronger
pulse may portend 51. That the use of the pulse differs from the use of breathing 52. While Pus is made the labour is greater 53. The quality of a vulnerary or wound-potion 54. It is false that the bowels are by nature hotter in VVinter 55. A contradiction of the Schooles 56. A begging of the principle 57. An eightfold scope or aim of the pulses 58. As there is not a Livery Spirit in the venal bloud so neither is there an Animal or sensitive pulse of a proper name in the shop of the Brain THe Elements Complexions Compositions and Causes of natural things for natural Phylosophie being already dispatched to wit After the birth of forms the ignorance which circumvents mortal men about the Beginnings of healing being unfolded also the necessity of Ferments and of Magnum Oportet being perfectly taught Now therefore I will examine the Beginnings of life The Schools have raught That in every locall motion a first unmoveable Mover is of necessity to be appointed Which thing I neither find true by Art nor Nature For the demonstrating whereof A drunken man of an unstable mind and foot in a floating ship goes and hangs a weight on a Clock Therefore in voluntary motions there is not required a first stable or unmoveable Mover Likewise the Sun doth with his beam enflame Gun-powder through a Glasse This first Mover hath not any thing in his possession that may be unmoveable That thing is also already manifest in the fire an irregular Being Thirdly In nature every seed being once conceived in a due place doth not cease afterwards by its own motion to stir the lump subjected to it Therefore the true and first Mover of seeds in nature and work-man of all things moves himself first doth not require a motion beyond his own motion And whatsoever doth stir up any natural Mover to move is its very own proper and internal Beginning of motion and it falling into improper places dyes and its motion ceaseth Therefore the Aristotelicks who call Nature the Principle of Motion or the first Mover do by an absurd forgetfulnesse require an unmoveableness in the first Mover And although seeds have need of an external fewel or nourishing warmth or Stirrer up yet the stirring up is not an inward motion nor a mover of the same motion But is only an alteration accidentally hastening or ripening the power of its own motions or the activity of the first mover otherwise weaker than that which may be for the moving of its own matter Which activity seeing it is a certain accidental successive alteration which in very deed is not in it self at rest so far is it from being unmoveable neither also doth it remain in its antient and one state Surely it confirms the Archeus that he may the more strongly unfold his inbred strength of moving and may direct it unto his own ends But if indeed the Schools would have their Aristotle although unfitly a Naturalist yet in this place to have had respect in natural things unto the one and first supernatural Mover of all things who is the independent Beginning of all motion Truly I respect that as impertinent it being without natural Phylosophy For that most glorious Mover hath given powers to things whereby they of themselves and by an absolute force may move themselves or other things Indeed it is impertinent to run back to God the Mover to demonstrate the natural motion of Bodyes But neither also is the blasphemy to be endured in a Christian which requireth God of necessity to be unmoveable that he may be able to move other things For truly God doth not move by a touching of extreams and by an attraction or expelling of things Lastly Neither doth a thing that is moved attain vertues from the unmoveableness of the first Mover as it fore-requires this But the Divine beck or pleasure strongly reacheth all things from end to end but not being constrained by a necessity of co-touching of extreams pressed with consequence led by manner or subjected to a Law But being altogether free as well in his beck and motion as in rest he indifferently and alike powerfully moveth all things Therefore his own unmoveable essence doth not import a necessity required of the Schools but the meer good pleasure of his glory For his own word Fait or Let it be done hath departed into nature which afterwards is for the moving of it self So B. Gregory saith That there is a power conferred on the earth whereby it may thrust forth Plants from it self Therefore it is a Paganish Doctrine drawn from Science Mathematical which necessitates the first Mover to a perpetual unmoveablenesse of himself that without ceasing he may move all things The errour is to be indulged in Aristotle not in Christian Schools defiling young Beginners for otherwise there is no motion naturally made but from a motive Principle which moveth not other things unlesse it be by it self and in it self moved And moreover also in artificial and natural things if any thing be moved by an external Mover and in that motion if the mover himself be supported by some unmoveable foundation as suppose when a Marriner thrusts back a ship from an unmoveable bank by a staff the shoar or bank doth not move the ship neither doth it naturally contain a motive power in it but it is onely a means by which the mover measureth his motion to wit on which the mover himself stablishing himself as it were on a bottom doth by weight and the acting forces of Science Mathematical frame his own motion which otherwise is wholly moveable and is actively moved For so a Gun doth the more strongly cast out a Bullet if it hath a resisting unmoveable body behind it But surely as that body is not motive so it doth not but by an absurdity require an unmoveable mover and is unfitly compared to the first Mover Yea in natural bounds the first and totall Mover is Gun-powder enflamed which that it may be moved it requireth no unmoveablenesse but that it may measuringly move it hath need of a measured instrument Therefore it is impertinent to think that all motions are made by God the first Mover as if he did move all things moved with a certain staffe It is also an impertinent thing while it is searched into whether the Mover as he is such ought of necessity to be unmoveable it is answered That the first mover shall measure his motion and more strongly move if he be unmoveable or it is strove against an unmoveable foundation Is that to have taught Christian Phylosophy For indeed it is not to be doubted but that the Stars by their various aspect which they beg from motions do infuse a Blas motive of the water and aire that they might be to us for seasons dayes and yeers Again in that the earth hath received an internall Beginning of propagating Plants before the Stars were born therefore bruit beasts although they were more latter
or boyling to be concoction therefore they translated digestions to boyling and on both sides where they thought heat to be the natural total and one only cause of them For they saw that by seething and roasting very many things waxed tender and were altered Therefore a liberty being taken from artificial things they translated a Kitchin into the amazed transmutations of the bowels and meats not indeed by way of similitude but altogether properly and immediately and by thinking the matter passed over into a belief and then into a true opinion and all the offices and benefits of our nature they translated into heats and temperaments as it were into totall causes Especially indeed because they perceived the bellies of men and four-footed beasts to be actually hot even so that afterwards they laboured more for increasing of heat than for strengthening of digestion For neither have they diligently searched further into it although the event did for the most part deceive their hope Thinking it sufficient that heat might be found as well in boyling as in the natural digestion of the belly from which they slumbered as expecting abundant help to themselves In the mean time they were in doubt when they took notice that meats were not by seethings wholly transchanged into juice by a total metamorphizing For fleshes the vessel being shut they resolved into a consummated Bâ—oth a true portage being pressed out and melted but indeed they observed their errour because fleshy tough and hard remaining threds did abide and never melt by a true transmutation into juice yet through an aptnesse of belief and antiquity of errour they suffered their eyes to be vailed seeking privy shifts and biding places they presently thought themselves safe while that they had implored the divers degrees of heat if not also its particular kinds and general kinds as is a fiery elementary radical correspondent to the element of the stars c. yea and the moments of heats for a help of their excuses So that every degree should almost in every moment have its own constitutive temperature in digesting In which stupidity Paracelsus also involved himself who will have one only bread in so many particular kinds of living creatures to receive a specifical diversity of venal bloud and dungs by reason of the moment of degree alone in heat As if the Latitude of heat could frame a species or vary in the substance But while the Schools did presume to have taken away every knot in the Bulrush they afterwards fell into the spongy differences of digestive heat natural and likewise into that of besides and against nature And at length they ought now and then against their will to fly back unto the sacred Anchor of hidden secrets or properties in digestions So indeed that there should be some certain heat the Authour of digestion as well in diseases as in health Having forgotten in the mean time that as they had feigned one only kind of contraries and both to be said or declared after like manners that there should be one only and a uniform condition of both Wherefore they forgot to devise the like particular kindes and properties of colds to wit of what so it that natural digestive cold besides and against nature should be And likewise they ought to have taught some radical and primogeniall cold So that if radical heat doth answer in proportion to the Element of the Stars and doth differ in the whole general kind from any other luke-warmth also radicall cold ought to differ in as many numbers and faculties from any other cold unlesse through the great want of truth they forsake their own wisdom as barren So indeed although heat not natural should proceed into natural and this into it by an unheard of license of seeds yet they have banished native and feverish heat into distinct species yea also into generall kinds that they might save the effects attributed to digestive heat So that while they would believe that some Birds do digest those things which otherwise do defend them against the fury of the fire they have acknowledged some fire to be more powerfull than fire For a Dog doth digest swallowed bones which fire never dares to convert into Chyle Therefore The diversities of which effects have constrained the Schools to erect heat into the Latitude of a predicament opposite colds being in the mean time neglected When as in the mean time there is only a specifical diversity of heat which is not able to with-draw it from the number of other things For truly whatsoever is cast into the stomack digestion being at length finished is transchanged and far separated from boyling and other coctures after whatsoever degree prepared Because the one only ignorance of ferments hath caused digestions and the remedies of unconcoction to be unknown and a faulty argument to be promoted of not the cause as of the cause where it is not an idle brawling as it were about a name while fermentall effects are ascribed to heat Because the resolving of this question doth change the intentions of healing Therefore I willingly accustome my self to enquire into the proper causes to wit at the meditation whereof profit follows diseases tremble or the strength or faculties are made vigorous Therefore ferments are worthily wrath because they are against their will believed to war under a Relolleum or quality not having a seminal Being For it never belonged to heat to withdraw a thing into a formal transmutation Seeing heat by it self and primarily doth nothing but make hot but by accident it separates watery things from stiff or tough things Which univocal or single action of heat is no wise a digestion being wholly included in transchanging For although digestion doth happen in us heat accompanying it yet that is not heat although it be by accident connexed with heat For therefore in a Fish there is no actual heat neither therefore notwithstanding doth he digest more unprosperously than hot Animals Neither is he after the manner of men badly affected by things cast into him Therefore it is a frivolous thing to flee to potential heat for a fish For in sensible things known by sense the touching only is witnesse and judge but not to flee to dreams For if digestion be to be attributed to heat not actually hot but to a virtual power I now enjoy my wish For otherwise what is that I pray but ignorantly to brawl about heat as such And in the mean time to confesse that there is something besides a sensible heat which is the containing cause of digestion For what can more foolishly be spoken than that potential heat doth actually make hot and that digestion is made for this heatings sake Can a thing in power now act actually But at least in a Dog-like hunger there is a most swift digestion and implacable hunger Therefore a troublesome and offensive heat even then ought to be felt in us hot creatures if digestion be made in us by actual
wheresoever the beginning of conceptions is felt But those are called forces which are not in our power because they are the first conceits of the sensitive soul as yet out of order and not yet diligently examined by the command of the minde But that which I write touching the seat of the sensitive soul I understand also for the immortal minde For truly the minde hath not a subject more near and like to it self wherein it may be entertained than that vital light which is called the sensitive soul wherein indeed the minde is involved and tied by the bond of life by the Command of God But the sensitive soul perishing through the annihilating of it self the minde cannot any longer subsist in the Body and therefore it hastens to the Being of Beings that it may passe unto places appointed for it Therefore the radical Bride-bed of the sensitive soul is in the vital Archeus of the stomach and it stands and remains there for the whole life-time Not indeed that the sensitive soul is entertained in the stomach as it were in a Sack Skin membrane pot prison little Cell or bark neither is it comprehended in that seat in manner of Bodies enclosed within a purse but after an irregular manner it is centrally in a point and as it were in the very undividable middle of one membranous thickness And it is in a place nevertheless not plainly locally But because every Soul is a light given by the Father of Lights and Creator of things but I have proved elsewhere that lights are immediately in place and mediately in a placed Air So also the sensitive Soul is in a place or seat whereof I write at this present But the minde seeing it is a lightsome substance it pierceth a created light which is the sensitive soul and this likewise pierceth the minde and blunts it with its contagion of the corruption of Adam of which in the Book of long life concerning the entrance of death into man Therefore the frail mortal sensitive soul is a meer vital light given by the Father of Lights neither is it declarable after another manner or word seeing that in the whole World it hath not its like besides the light of a Candle the which because it burns may be compared to a spark yet onely by an analogical and much unlike similitude and as it were by the more outward husk Therefore indeed that sensitive soul although it be locally present and be entertained in a place yet it is not comprehended in a place otherwise than as the flame of a Candle is kindled in an exhalation and the light in that flame is as it were life in the aforesaid soul yet vital lights are never parching but are separated by as many diversities as there are differences of souls And from thence is God called by S. James the Father of Lights Therefore the heat of things soulified is not of the Fountain-light of the soul but a heating light of the vital life and so it is the product of life but not the life it self And therefore also it is emulous of a Sunny light even as in a Fish the vital light is actually cold because it is of the nature of the Moon And for that cause God made onely two and sufficient lights for the life of sublunary things yet the light of which light or the souls themselves are the subjects of inherency And they are altogether neither Creatures between a substance and an accident because of the Country of the intelligible world Therefore in the sensitive soul for neither ever elsewhere in frail things as it were a spiritual light made by the Father of Lights is the Immortal minde conjoyned and the which also by the hand of the Almighty every where present or by an Angel is co-knit unto the sensitive soul by the bond of life that is of a vital light which is an unseparable property of the aforesaid light But the immortal minde it self is a clear or lightsome incorporeal substance immediately shewing forth the Image or likeness of its God because it hath received the same engraven on it in creating or in the very instant of enlivening or quickning For both souls are created at once and conjoyned by God who will never attribute his own Honour of Creator unto any Creature But before the fall of Adam there was not a sensitive soul in man but by what meanes or after what manner that together with death hath descended at once into humane nature that shall be shewed in its own place At least by the coming of the sensitive soul death hath entred and the corruption of our whole nature and the Majesty and Integrity of our former nature was obliterated or blotted out For truly while the minde did immediately perform the offices of life neither was the sensitive soul as yet present immortality was also present neither had beast-like darkness occupied the understanding And so man indeed suffered Ship-wrack in his own nature and that an unrestorable one but by the new birth under the calamities of tribulations maâ—â—s exalted in a far more excellent manner while from the image of God he is taken as adopted for his Son Furthermore it is altogether necessary that every motion of the first force and of the first conception of the soul doth happen in the chamber of the soul which thing although it be chiefly felt about the Orifice of the stomach and God be admirable in his works because indeed it hath well pleased him to dispose such admirable powers in the membranes of the stomach womb and skins that cover the Brain because they do bear before them as it were a certain image of a Common-wealth yet I have found the Spleen readily to serve for the ferment of the stomach and for the Sun Cocter and Directer thereof Therefore I have decreed to call the conspiracy of both Bowels the Duumvirate or Sheriff-dome For although the digestive ferment and the like aids may seem to shew forth a Family-service of servants yet the service of houshold-servants in vitals as it contains a power and strength so also it promiseth dignity and authority So that as in the stomach there are feelings faintings of the whole body and most sensible manifest and open priviledges of coctions neverthelesse the vital breathing-hole causing the digestions of so manifold arteries and so mightily of the stomach hath commanded that without a duality disagreement or powerful preferrence there ought to be made one Family-administration of both Bowels indeed by divers offices into one conspiring scope although both do singularly attend on their own work therefore also separated in place Truly there is one onely endeavour of the Duumvirate and agreeing and set harmony of intention Therefore the neighbouring Spleen doth lay on the stomack without as if it would nourish the same by a lively co-weaving of arteries Not indeed that the arteries do give all force or virtue to the Spleen but they have themselves as
a Liquor is to be extracted which contains the Power of the Seed which Liquor although it be not fit for sowings because the Seed included in it not being able to draw a More in the Earth doth exhale yet it blesseth with a wonderful fruitfulnesse a Plant of its own likenesse being poured on its Root For the seminal Liquor contains a Crasis for propagation and therefore it is also truly Essential yet not commonly known yea not indeed to every of the most expert men Therefore I pity the progresses of extracting Quint or Fifth Essences as vain No wonder indeed if all the virtues of the thing generated do shine in the Crasis Likewise the Oyles of Spices as Oyles struggling with and being unconquered by our digestion do bring little help to wit when as they being taken within onely for the smels sake do refresh us for a little space But when the Oyle of Cynamon c. is mixed with its own fixed Salt by an Artificial and hidden Circulation of three Moneths without all water it is wholly changed into a volatile Salt doth truly expresse the Essence of its own Simple in us and doth dart it self even into the first constitutives of us But otherwise where the medicinal virtue is hid in Odours indeed strong and stubborn Odours do overcome our strength and are scarce overcome and digested by our Archeus and so they do importunately or unseasonably act in us For the Archeus Labours much that he may destroy them and imprint their Odours into the Substance wherein they are and especially if they shall be fermenting ones however they shall promise ease or refreshment yet because they do not abide that they may pierce into our first constitutives they do not afford a constant ease in healing Chiefly because they do easily decay in themselves and degenerate of their own accord therefore the rather if they are subdued by our faculties For so Mosch and sweet smelling things do die if their Crasis shall depart although their Body shall remain in it self safe and so the Crasis or constitutive temperature or mixture of a thing doth nothing touch at the dreamed Beginnings of things CHAP. LVI Of Flatus's or Windie Blasts in the Body 1 A fourfold Blas or Windie Blast 2. The Gas of Life and Wind of the World do differ in the whole Element 3. The Opinion of Galen concerning Flatus's 4. They have been ignorant of a fivefold Gas 5. The Art of the Fire what it can teach 6. The Schools are deceived 7. They contradict themselves 8. The Error of Paracelsus concerning the Limbus or Zodiack of the little World 9. His ridiculous Doctrine of a fourfold Colick and a microcosmical Identity or sameliness 10. That there is not a windie Gas in us unless it be inspired 11. Why Paracelsus hath neglected in the Womb the Cardinal Winds of the Universe 12. Paracelsus is reproved 13. His Error concerning a contracture from the Colick 14. The Causes of the aforesaid Convulsion and Palsie 15. The Life of the Muscles is concluded from the Blas of them 16 Why it is not the last that dieth 17. Unsound or mad Remedies in windie Blasts 18. Of what sort that should be which drives away or discusseth or scattereth Winds 19. They are as yet ignorant of the properties of wringings of the Bowels 20. The Woâ—â— wants its proper windie Blasts 21. Windie Blasts are not stirred up without their Bounds 22. A Flatulent or Windie Plurisie owes its rise unto a Fiction 23. We must be ashamed to have accused conceived Winds 24. Wind is accused by many to be the beginning of all Diseases whatsoever 25. How cold doth occurre hereunto 26. What is to be known in this respect 27. What is afterwards to be done 28. By whom usual Remedies profitable in Windinesses were invented 29. The Ileos or Iliack passion is an averse co-writhing of the intestine 30. That Affect hath in its Causes and manner been even hitherto unknown 31. A History hath discovered the deceit of the Schools 32. A new Doctrine concerning Flatus's or windie Blasts 33. A sixfold Flatus in us 34. No Flatus in us can be a Vapour 35. What is a wild Gas 36. Flatus's are distinguished 37. A certain windinesse is necessary for a Bowel whereof none hath hitherto taken notice 38. It is proved by a Monster 39. Some sequels flowing from thence 40. A consideration about the mean and aâ—ounding of this Flatus 41. From meats vitiated or excrements seasoned with a vitious ferment are paines of wringings in the Gutts 42. The Convulsions of a Bowel 43. Galen was Ignorant of the use of parts 44. The Schools neglecting other Flatus's have had respect onely to Farting whence a Fartisme 45. The windie blasts of a Tympany 46. The Effects of a dungie-ferment in respect to Flatus's 47. The cure of a most stinking windiness by loosening things 48. Dungs are not the voluntary putrefactions of things 49. A difference between the windy Blast of the Stomack Ileon and Colon. 50. A Scheme or Figure of the Flatus's in us 51. The Tympany is more mortal than the Dropsie Ascites 52. Two considerations touching windie Blasts 53. A consideration of Flatus's 54 A Flatus is the vice of us not of things 55. What the interchangeable course of Flatus's may respect 56. That Flatus's are made in us by a causing Agent but not by a separating one 57. Galen is withstood concerning Flatus's 58. Divers times again 59. An Error about lustful Meats 60. Venus or carnal lust hath respect unto the Spleen 61. The ingendring of Flatus's whence and how it is 62. An example of windy Blasts 63. A windie Blast doth not fore-exist in the Food 64. A notable thing concerning the Grape 65. A notable thing touching the Ferment 66. Respects of Flatus's and of the Stomack 67. The handy-craft-operation of Flatus's in a threefold Monarchy 68. The notable Gas of Tartar 69. The windinesses of meats 70. Sulphur teacheth a flatulent or Windie matter and the supposing of a Dungie Ferment 71. Whence wringings of the Guts are 72. Why poysons do for the most part make the habit of the Body to swell 73. Why Leavened or Fermented things were forbidden to the Jews 74. A dead Carcase that is drowned when it issues up out of the Water 75. A remarkable Remedy concerning the lesser hot Seeds 76. The Judgement upon the beholding of the dead Carcase of a gentile Matron 77. The vanity of a Name and Remedie driving away Windes 78. A destinction of the Volvulus or pain of the Ileos from the wringings of the Bowels AFter that the more judicious of Physitians had vainly implored aid from the Elements Humours and Stars and in the next place had in vain invoked Tartar and also the supposed beginnings of the Chymists for their helps they afterwards mediâ—ated against the will of the Galenical Schools that the Head-ach pain of the Megrim and that pain which was left of yesterdaies drunkennesse or gluttony and likewise
history of a Disease manifest by one Example For in the Stone a Disease it is most material and manifest but the Stone is not the Disease but the primary Lithiasis or Stony affect and the true Disease Duelech is the Idea it self radically implanted in the powers of the Archeus of the Kidneys or Bladder The which indeed is wanting in healthy Persons and therefore neither doth it in healthy folkes regularly frame actuate or separate out of the Urine the which Urine notwithstanding doth contain materially in it all things actually necessary unto a Stone a Stone or sand existing therein by an immediate possibility But Ferments being once introduced into the Archeus of the Reins and subordinate parts an actuating and fashoning Idea of that is there established which lurked by a near power in the matter And thus is a Stone or Sand made which are the product of a true Lithiasis That Idea I say inhabiting in the implanted Archeus of those parts is the Diseasie Separater and Work-man commanding the implanted faculty of that Organ and which leads it bound at its own erroneous pleasure There is also a more eminent power of a seminal and fermental Idea brought on the implanted and vital faculty of the Reines But the product proceeding from this primary Disease in the way of generation is the monster Duelech it self The same thing is equally manifest in other Diseases at least by two suppositions To wit one that every Disease is in a live Being and so in the Archeus the Mover but not in a Being by it self dead and unmoved The other is that a Disease is a substantial Being by it self subsisting in us Whence I conclude that a Disease after the manner of other natural Beings proceeds from a Non-being unto a Being and is seminally bred The which I thus prove mechanically A Bean as it is the most notable of seeds is a subject of demonstration For herein shadowy Idea's do concurre being co-created with it presently after the beginning of the World and by propagation seminally co-bred there-with Because between the two Plates which constitute the Body of the Bean the flourish or beginning of a bud is found having two leaves with a root wherein the seminal Idea doth shadowily sleep And it is fast tyed unto both the Plates of the Bean as it were to both sexual Beginnings No otherwise than as the more thick white doth adhere unto the yolk of an Egge which containeth the perfect act of a seed The Bean therefore being committed to the Earth doth presently drink up either the actual or vaporous Liquor of the Earth and swells up there-with But the Earth hath in it its own putrefaction by continuance or a faculty of imprinting a fermental odour in respect whereof a power motive is conferred on it of a voluntary budding without a visible seed being committed unto it By consequence the juice of the Earth being imbibed the same fermental virtue is delivered unto this Bean which is otherwise unto the Earth Which juice having in it self a fermental putrefaction through continuance determined or limited by the specifical odour of the Bean doth stirr up the Idea of the seed laying hid in the Bean which afterwards proceedeth to act of its own free accord Wherefore the bud is not bred the which else the Earth of that place had produced of its self but from the intrinsecal and invisible seminal Idea of the Bean the bud is bred or born which is the Herb Bean Yet so as that the specifical faculty of the Herb is inclined according to the disposition of the ferment of the hoary putrifaction of the Earth Hence indeed wine varies in divers places although the vine be planted of the same branch For so seeds do flow into their appointed Offices fruits and ends which thing I will explain in a Cancer First of all a true Cancer doth never arise but in the Dug and Womb of the Women but the Idea's of a Cancer are not in and do not sleep in the Womb Even as otherwise the Idea's of a Bean in the bud of a Bean because Diseases indeed are naturally made but are not naturally in unless perhaps from the seed of the generater Idea's are co-bred as in hereditary Diseases and that is the difference of the Beings of creation from the Beings of Diseases I suppose therefore for the occasion of a Cancer that the Dugs of a Woman do suffer a co-pressing and confusion or bruising and the Glandules the effectresses of milk are co-shaken or dashed And then the sensitive Archeus implanted in that Organ conceives pain as it were a pricking thorne Therefore the shaking and pain do mutually co-touch in the act of feeling And an unnamed furious passion riseth up in stead of a ferment as it were fire out of a flint and steel Hence a fiery seminal Idea mad or raging and therefore poysonsome is struck out is imbibed and co-fermented with the juice of the place Whence then at length there is a painful pricking beating tumour because it is also poysonous from fury The Archeus therefore is stirred up and made wrothful according to the disposition of the conceived indignation for neither do all things grow generally every where but here grasses do spring up without bidding there more succesfully grapes else where treeie sprouts so neither doth the Archeus see in the finger even as he doth in the eye The Archeus therefore winds up the poyson gotten by his own indignation in that bunch of the thorny pain as the Archeus hath there so married himself unto the Paps that no part of these doth want him But that swelling is the product of the Cancer seminated or sown in the indignation as well of the Cancer essentially as being that Cancer which afterwards flows abroad stinking with sanies or thin corrupt matter For neither are Ulcers or Apostems in the Dugs ever Cancerous unless that fury of the Archeus shall be present Therefore a seminal Image rising up from the turbulent tempest of the Archeus and decyphered in the Archeus of the place is a true Cancer whether there shall as yet be an Aposteme or in the next place an Ulcer For the Archeus of the Paps being their vital mover acting to wit in that part the Sergeantship of the furious Womb being tossed with furies doth locally stamp his poysonous Idea's and imprints them on himself by the same right whereby the imaginative faculty doth frame likenesses agreeable unto its own passions No otherwise I say than as the Womb Heart Brain Stomach than the propagative seminal faculty of Vegetables it self yea nor otherwise than as it clearly appear in the very excrements of Simples to wit in the Spittle of a mad Dog So I say a Cancer is bred and doth propagate its own Idea's on the immediate similar nourishment For the primary or first Cancer in the Archeus of the place through a dependent connexion of contagion is further extended into the co-bordering part
own Glass and with a plausible delightfulness the which hath even brought a self-love and a certain arrogancy in the first cradles of Nature yet diverse in it self by reason of the variety of Pleasures For while the Archeus doth with-draw and abstract himself as I have said yet he cannot but be in a Body as in a Place Therefore I call him abstracted not indeed from the Body but from his Court or ordinary Throne But an abstracted contemplation of the Archeus is not made in the Heart as if he did floate in the continual motion of agitation and pulses as neither are the bosoms of the Heart the Court of Counsel of the Archeus being abstracted yea neither in the very substance of the Heart but his Pallace it self is more inward To wit in the stable Spirit it self implanted in the spleen Indeed that same Image of his own self conceived in time of lust doth put on a particle of the Spirit whereby it is begotten which particle according to a Chymical account is the 8200 part of its whole And the which least particle therefore being thus decyphered passeth afterwards into the in-flowing Spirit domestique to the Heart together with the Idea of lust and desire But the Idea's of desire are only motive directresses even as else where concerning Sympathetical things and therefore the conceived Image of Mans Archeus is implanted through that direction in the material seed Wherefore as Death began from Venus or carnal lust So it is dayly hastened even as also the death of a Plant beginneth from a conceived seed as the vital faculty is thereby mightily diminished In the next place surely that is truly made and not by a phantastical deceit wherein such an Idea doth not only represent a total or entire humane Being but also individual inclinations properties and defects For from hence a trunk in one Arm doth not therefore generate an imperfect Arm because the formative Idea is a branch derived into generation not from else where than from the implanted Archeus of the Bowels Therefore hereditary Diseases do increase on the young from a Diseasie Being To wit the Idea being imprinted on the seminal Spirit seeing it is the very Disease as yet lurking and sealed in the first Life of the seed doth as yet sleep and expect its maturity until it being awakened and breaking forth from the disturbance of the Archeus be apt to bring forth its own products So indeed furies are bred in and propagated on off-springs together with the whole race of seminal inclinations Moreover also from thence it is evident that not all Diseases of the Parents are transferred on their off-spring but those only whose Idea's have defiled the Archeus of the Bowels in the Parents for neither is any occasional matter of the Gout or fury socially transferred with the integrity of a proper or natural seed For besides that that strange-born duality doth contain a barrenness of the seed also that supposed matter of the translated Disease should putrify it being vanquished by the importunities of the place and ferments and repetitions of digestions should stink putrify or vanish away in the successive multiplicity of dayes but it should not accompany unto the period of Life and stir up its own relapses But as to what belongs unto silent Diseases although acquired ones surely that thing they have proper unto them that they do rise again at the set periods of importunity For so the Falling-evil doth sometimes sleep for Months and Years yea and is never stirred up but by Venus Anger Grief Child-birth c. For neither is any matter in any place detained the fewell of the Falling-sickness Because it should either putrify wither be consumed or loose the Antient blemish of poyson The which seeing it doth not come to pass but remains for Life it hath therefore chosen another Beginning and immediate Inne than superfluities because it is sealed in the Idea of an active Being and that constant throughout the whole Life Therefore the Spirit of Life concluded in the Organs doth suffer its storms from its own Diseasie Idea's the which as oft as the inflowing Spirit receiveth from thence so often it presently brings the contagions of the same into act For as the poyson of the Falling-sickness is that which makes drunk is sleepifying and after some sort furious its original cleerly appears about the Stomach and afterwards is chiefly perceived in the Head and doth singularly affect the clients thereof So the Archeus of the Head stamps poysonous Images which are hateful to the very implanted Archeus and suspected of a poysonous Contagion and he is thereby easily made wholly Apogeal or most remote from his center Thirdly some Diseases are con-centrical in their matter and efficient Cause yet seeing they are Youngs conceived in the irregularity of the Archeus being become exorbitant hence they are ex-centrical in respect of health but con-centred in the more inward soyl of the Archeus For hitherto have the stars respect and they especially are moved at the conjunction of the Moon They do also fore-shew the hinges of winds to come For neither doth the Archeus shew himself to be obliged to the Stars unless through the importunities of Diseases Wherefore those Diseases are commonly called the Ephemerides or dayes-books of the Sick Therefore in those that are in good health the Archeus is not ruled by the Stars But because they do singularly follow the Moon which is the night Star therefore they do most rage in the night Therefore I call them the torture of the Night because it seems to be carried by a co-like Blas and to talk with its Stars and that thing surely doth not belong but to the Archeus seeing a more gross compaction of Body is not fit for this purpose they are therefore sealed in the vital Spirit implanted in the principal Organs but nothing is there sealed besides Ideal Characters The Archeus is a fountainous Being which by his own Blas doth stir up every assault or violation in us according to Hippocrates but he remains a fountainous Being how neatly soever Diseasie products are taken away For although he may sometimes vitiate as well things contained as things containing yet the Archeus reserves an imprinted vice peculiar to himself whereby he stirreth up every storm at pleasure Lastly Diseases which in the fourth place I call those under an unequal strength are inbred or obtained And because they bespeak strength they have manifestly enrouled themselves under the powers or faculties But it hath alwayes been a difficult thing in nature for a desired strength to be bestowed on all particular Organs without the complaint of some but that one doth alwayes prevaile over or is weaker than another Unto which indeed Humours or snivelly superfluities do not flow or run down from the guiltless Head even as it hath been otherwise attributed to feigned Humours and Catarrhs in the Schooles But rather the Archeus implanted in the more weak part observing the
penury of distribulation and perceiving the unequality of injustice becomes a complainer and seditious as it were against a step-mother The Idea's of which passion or impatience seeing it is not meet to send else where he being crabbish retorts on himself and brings forth the effects of sorrow in his own Digestions Therefore the very seminal Beginnings themselves of Diseases are drawn out for diverse ends although they glisten in one only immediate subject of inherency because they are received after the manner of the reciever That is they do sustain a dis-formity or disagreement in their mansions through the diversity of the humane Body and parts And moreover the Archeus himself according to the diversity of his motions doth stir up a various houshold-stuff of Symptoms The Spirit saith Hippocrates hath made three motions in us within without and into a circuit and he moveth and transchangeth all things with himself even while he is orderly But in his irregularity whatsoever he shall perform he shall also utter memorable effects of his disorder CHAP. LXXI The birth or original of a Diseasie Image 1. A description of a Disease by a numbring up of things denied 2. What a Disease is 3. The vain thought of Physitians concerning a Disease 4. The Inne of Life belongs to a Disease 5. The force of a Diseasie Idea is proved by Vegetables 6. By the Blas of meteours 7. The Blas of an Archeal Idea in us is proved from the Premises 8. The ordinary seat of Diseases 9. The Images of perturbations are cited 10. From a mental Non-being is made this something 11. A twofold Diseasifying Archeal Idea 12. Idea's brought unto the venal Blood 13. The rule of right in healing 14. Why the Author keeps the names of the Antients 15. A probative or proofe-ful Idea is framed in the Archeus alone I Have already at large described an unheard of Doctrine of a Diseasie Being premised by me That Physitians may learn to look into a Disease from the fountain and may desist from being seduced by Paganish Opinions Wherefore a Disease is not a certain distemperature of elementary qualities or a victorie proceeding from the continual strife of these even as hitherto the Galenists have dreamed neither likewise is a Disease one of the four feigned Humours exceeding its natural temperature or mixture and matched to the four Elements Neither at length is a Disease a certain degenerate matter awakened by an impression of the Elements But every excrementitious matter is either a naked matter preceding a Disease and therefore an occasional Cause of a Disease or it is the product of a Disease resulting from the errour of the parts and so a certain latter effect of a Disease although afterwards it may occasionally stir up another Disease or may nourish or increase another antecedent Cause Nor lastly is a Disease a hurtful quality budding from the poyson or contagion of another and that a hurtful matter Notwithstanding such offences as those do only accuse its presence but not the effect depending only occasionally thereupon A Disease therefore is a certain Being bred after that a certain hurtful strange power hath violated the vital Beginning and hath pierced the faculty hereof and by piercing hath stirred up the Archeus unto Indignation Fury Fear c. To wit the anguish and troubles of which perturbations do by imagining stir up an Idea co-like unto themselves and a due Image Indeed that Image is readily stamped expressed and sealed in the Archeus and being cloathed with him a Disease doth presently enter on the stage being indeed composed of an Archeal Body and an efficient Idea For the Archeus produceth a dammage unto himself the which when he hath once admitted he straightway also afterwards yields flees or is alienated or dethroned or defiled through the importunity thereof and is constrained to undergo a strange government and domestically to sustain a civil War raised up on himself indeed such a strange Image is materially imprinted and arising out of the Archeus A true Diseasie Being I say which is called a Disease For although Physitians are only busied about the dissolution cleansing away and expulsion of the hurtful occasional matter yet our thought is not able to vary the Essence of a Disease To wit that because a Physitian labours in the banishment of the occasional hurtful matter therefore also that a Disease ought to be that which that deceived Physitian doth in a rash order intend to expel For a Disease is effentially that which it is whether the Physitian be absent or present For neither doth a Physitian in the begining more determine or limit a Disease than the Disease doth terminate it self because it is that which doth not accommodate it self unto the thought or esteem of others but doth dayly deride the same Wherefore as health consisteth in a sound Life so doth a Disease in the very Life it self being hurt but Life doth only and immediately subsist in the seat of the Soul but the Soul doth not operate out of it self unless by virtue of its official Organ which is the vital air of the Archeus And therefore it is a wonder that it hath hitherto been unknown that a Disease sits immediately in the same vital inne where the Life enjoys it self of which more largely hereafter for hateful persons will scarce believe that every power of sublunary things is stirred up and contained in Idea's But that thing I have already before sharply touched at by the way yet it shall profit to have it more strongly bound or confirmed For we have known and believe by Faith that a power is given to Herbs of propagating their like But that proprietary faculty is a real Being actually existing which is alwayes and successively manifested in the seed neither is that faculty a certain accidental power or naked quality but it is a seminal virtue whereby the Plant which is the Parent decyphers an Idea in his own seed the container of figure and properties according to which it will stir up delineate the seed it self and make the Plant its Daughter to grow For in seeds a manifest Image is known skilful of things to be acted for a new propagation In like manner the Sea doth not cause but suffer horrid tempests which the Wind doth efficiently stir up and truly the Wind is not moved by it self and of its own free accord But by an invisible influence of the Stars according to that saying The Stars shall be unto you for signs times or seasons dayes and years for so great a storm of the primary Elements or Air and Water breaks forth from a Being which is like unto Light But the Blas of the Elements is not stirred up from the meer Light of the Stars For although the Light of the Stars be incorporeal and immaterial yet it is not a certain simple Light but that which besides the property of a solitary Light which is only of enlightning hath a motive Blas in it self
Life abundance of Fat c. For the Gout and those Diseases which are thought to be the bastard births of Catarrhs do withdraw themselves from this order Because that they have a Seed of their own and therefore also do oft-times rage under the penury of venal Blood But in this case an unequal strength flourisheth seeing that the more weak Organs are quickly filled loaded nor do desire to be abundantly nourished according as the more stronger Organs do For from hence the Archeus of the more weak Organs is sadned doth through delay and impatience wax wroth and stamps on himself diverse Diseases Wherein while Issues weep a plentiful Pus and Liquor the Ancles do swell in the evening a more plentiful Snivel is dashed out of the Head and unthought of Phlegms out of the Lungs under a consent of the wandring Keeper To wit a total deluge of the Archeus and prone Excrements do grow or spring up according to the weaknesse of every part For the term of the Moon as a Law doth prescribe to the quantity of the Blood that it may be wasted in both Sexes nor may make a longer delay For from hence it is that because there is little transpiration under cold there are the more frequent Spittings Also under cold more of meat is Injected yet there is not therefore more of Blood composed In brief in Diseases of strength a Vice of the Distributive Faculty is alwayes present At least-wise it is manifest from what had been said before that the force of Appetite is not to be measured from sanguification as neither from a consuming of the Blood But things of the sixth Digestion that are transchanged have been neglected by the Schooles and dedicated to their own Humours and Catarrhs As if all Diseases should arise from the Vice of the Liver and a defluxing Phlegm of the Head They have moreover neglected the primary Offences of the Members containing which are to be attributed unto the inordinate enforcements of the Archeus but not unto things retained For I have seen the Liver in a temperate Duke of Catafractum to have weighed 16 Brabant Pounds For he complained of the swelling of his Belly he had drunk of sharpish Fountains and at length of Wine steelified who when he was variously disturbed or handled by his Physitians as for an Hydropical Man and but the day before had walked thorow the Streets suddenly died I have seen a Woman who lived a single Life alwayes thirsty and pressed with a diseasie thirst for she was thought to be Hydropical and being tormented with many solutive Medicines died But when after Death her broached Belly did not afford Water she being unbowelled appeared sound within but that her Liver harmless to the sight did weigh 21 pounds and a little more I have seen a Man who after a long torment of his Belly voided many Membranes the which being dryed and affixed to a Board with Nailes did dissemble Parchment We have seen a little Pouch grown to the Stomack of a certain Governour filled with small Stones Likewise a new Sack to have grown to the Abdomen of a Woman wherein were fourteen Pounds or Pints of Water and more So very often another of the Kidneys being stopped up with Stones to have monstrously voyded them forth Which primary Diseases are to be attributed unto the local Spirit of the parts containing I sometimes believed that growth ceasing the growing Power was extinguished because all things did stop from increasing But after that I saw many things to increase through Errour which were of the first Constitution I thought that the growing Faculty was detained from its progress only through the disobedience of the bony Matter But Pores are bred in Broken-bones and the Ribs do become longer through an enlarging of the Breast long after the cessation of growth A swollen burstness of the Veins is bred anew and becomes by degrees like a Sinew A Lobe growing every year unto the Liver of an Wolf bewrayes his age Wherefore I refer the Excrescences of Flesh of a remarkable bigness troublesome through Pain and endowed with a beating Motion among the Diseases of the patrs containing which have been neglected by the Schooles As also new Fibers having arisen on the Muscles I have observed to have brought the Palsey and those being taken away this to have been Cured For in the Grease not only fatness alone is bred but also Fibers or the Honey-combs thereof which are of the condition of solid things So there are notable Super-crescences of the Gristles and Ligaments which are subject to the Chyrurgion not as the occasional Causes of Diseases but as erroneous Products which are to be taken away they being sometimes annexed unto their primary Diseases For from an injured Bone a nourishable Liquor doth oftentimes distil which dissembles the hardness of a Bone Yet with rottenness as being a partaker of a bony curd Therefore if I shall reckon up the Diseases of the part containing among Retents think thou that that is done because they are nourished by a Root of their own nor are taken away but by Mortification Unto these Diseases voluntary Excrescences Bunchinesses Strainings and Disjoyntings have also regard The which because they follow an inbred unequality of Strength they for the most part shew a receit from the seed of the Parents or from the Defects of Nurses For from hence whole Families are inclined unto an Hectick Fever Asthma Gout affect of the Stone Jaundise Dropsie and Madnesses For if they are not drawn from the Parents they are drawn from Nurses For the Young doth easily drink some Defects with the Milk and derives them into the similar Parts For seeing our Powers do uncessantly operate hence Retents cannot make a long stay in their former state and place but that the term of their motion being finished they do revolt from their fomer Disposition and being estranged do decline into a worse For so things retained do degenerate into things transmitted as well because they offend through an inordinacy of their own vitiated matter as through an exorbitancy of distribution caused from the Archeus being provoked For among things transmitted the Carrier Latex first offers it self which by floating up and down doth manifoldly erre For seeing that is ordained to wash off the filths of the parts it first offends by a strange Vice which it hath contracted on it self From whence are some Vices of the Skin which at length a Ferment being called to it do frequently persevere But if the attractive Faculty labours Oedema's are made and the Latex overflowes into the Liver and Veins Whence are Disuries or Difficulties of Pissing Pissing-evils and a various houshold-stuff of Diseases As also in Squinances the Toothach and elsewhere is oftentimes easie to be seen especially if by a singular adulterous Allurement the Latex be derived 〈…〉 certain part So also Poses Cataracts and Pins and Webs in the Eyes Defects 〈…〉 Eares and Teeth do arise if the Latex finds
are also nourished by it Yet I have discerned that the nourishable Moisture as long as it is homogeneally admitted for Increase within the Root of the Mixture is wholly the same with that which is radical But if afterwards by accident it be no longer admitted into an unseperable Fellowship because growth ceaseth Yet that this doth not in the least change vitiate alter or alienate the Nature of the former Moisture Because that abundance of it is in every part eminently cast forth by Dreams it being of the same kind with the original and radical Moisture which two names are distinguished only in this that of the original Moisture the Young is formed But the radical Moisture is that same and moreover that from whence we grow and are nourished For as long as we are increased there is made not only a solid Application of the moisture but a solid Application and Assimilation of that which is applied for that thing happens daylie under every Nourishment but moreover there is made a radical Union of the thing nourished with the Nourishment which is presently afterwards sealed by the Spirit of Life and vitally illustrated by the Form Therefore the sealing contains a Character which fixeth and confirmeth that Moisture into the homogeneal Substance of the similar Part to wit from whose Archeus the Nourishment it self is converted and assimilated and so that by transchanging it departs into the Family of the Part containing which before was only contained under which Flux a true Information of the Soul happens From its lot only there and happy success the radical Moisture is distinguished from the Dew of the secondary Humours but not in Nature To wit because the Dew being as it were a new and young Humour is consumed as to a great part of it in time of growth and as to its whole after-growth neither is it ever united into the Root of Mixture that it may be made a partaker of the aforesaid sealing and attain the Dignity of a part containing For example Calx-vive or Quick-lime when it is quenched or appeased becomes a Pluss which most intimately couples the Water to the Calx But if more Water than is meet be poured on it the same Water abounding is straightway rejected and swims a top In the mean time notwithstanding in fulness of time that Calx is dried and stonifies even under the middle of the Waters But that hardness being once attained although it be afterwards most exactly beaten into the most fine Powder or Dust yet for the future it keeps the Shape of a Powder and despiseth the intimate Wedlocks of Water it assumeth not the Disposition of the former Pulss neither is the Water thenceforth radically co-mixed with it Notwithstanding the Moisture of the Water it self is individually the same whether it be secluded from the co-mixture of the Calx or be admitted unto it And that because it is contingently contingent to the Water by accident not so much through Defect of the Water as of the Calx or root But yet the aforesaid Pulss of the Lime is plainly more slowly dryed than the Powder of the Moisture is from without on every side watered with the Waters I therefore considered that however the Schools do resound many things concerning the radical Moisture yet that the nourishable Humour doth not any way differ from the radical Humour it self as long as it pulsifies and is solidated within the Root of Mixture being conjoyned unto the first constituting parts by a radical Union Because that both the Liquors are the same in Matter Virtue Substance Purity formal Identity and Participation of Life the which when our solid Parts do no longer pulsifie and admit of they at least-wise for the future hinder an intimate Connexion of the Root so much as they can and fore-slow the dryness of the solid containing Parts by reason of their continual bedewing For when that Pulss of the sound Parts hath obtained a just Solidity to wit because the power of Increasing defluxing from the Brain is exhausted then the Moisture is only made nourishable which before was made radical For however Old Age cause dryness yet Death is not from a more dry Habit or State of Body For truly we may rather conjecture Dryness to be from a Defect of the vital Powers than the aforesaid Defect from dryness For the Moisture of the solid Parts however in an Atrophia and Diseases of long continuance it be equally and throughout the whole entire Body consumed yet it is easily restored by a due Nourishment and the more bountifully by taking the milkie Element of Pearls So also the Ulcers of the Lungs are solidated or made whole by the sweet Corollate of Mercurius Diaphoreticus to wit by Virtue whereof the Epitaph of Paracelsus publisheth that the Tabes was often restored For I remembered that I in the great Heat of the 5th Month called July bored the Head of a Toad with a sharpe Stick or Staffe and that I fastened the Staffe at the other end into the Ground that the Toad being hung up might be dryed But it happened that full four dayes after I returned to the same place found the Toad alive contracting his Thighs as if he had been there only the day before because the hole was not with a straight Line in the middle of his Head but inclined a little the more unto the left side Wherefore I drave the Staffe into the middle of his Head and returning about the evening I found the Toad not only Dead but to have been wholly dryed up From whence I the more firmly perswaded my self that a Defect or Failing of the Vital Powers was not from the Dryness of the solid Parts but rather that Dryness was and did Increase in us according to the proportion of a Piece-meale extinguishment of the Vital Powers Let therefore the Radical Ignorance of the Schools depart whereby by an unrepaitable Penury as they will have it of the Radical Moisture they cover their Fault under the Ground of the Place of Burial For the Diminishment of the Gifts and Vital Powers alone sealed in the Family Administration of the implanted Spirit bringeth on Old Age as also the Extinguishment of Death intestine Calamities which is to say My Spirit shall be Diminished and my Dayes shall be Shortned Therefore let the Consideration of the Radical Moysture for the Study of Long Life depart For truly Hippocrates cals Natures themselves or the Vital Powers the Physitianesses of Diseases and the which therefore Languishing dayly Miseries of Infirmities wax strong and these departing do proclaim with lofty Shoulders a Despaire of Life as oft as the Faculties or Powers fail whether in the mean time plenty of Radical Moisture or a scantiuess of the same be present For they cease not to extend a Crow and a Stage which are dryer than any toothless Old-man unto some Ages and to be Incumbent on the laboursome gain of Reverence For because dryness begins from the Bones
than was meet For neither otherwise can I believe that the fundamental Part of Venus being hurt tickling lust is able to subsist Because that this is the necessity of the Parts that a proper Organ being hurt the Function thereof is of necessity intercepted I have sometimes spoken of the Venus of the Spleen At least-wise here it is sufficient that the Femal kind is by a divine Testimony of praise exceeding necessary and most profitable for the subsistance of a Common-wealth But at length seeing every Land doth not bring forth all things in this respect for a good and commodious way of Living the custom of Mortals hath introduced co-bound Provinces and Conspiracies of Merchandise Therefore Profit hath made the Lungs to be its Mercury and agreeable unto Merchandise with the forreign Parts that after that the Young should be now increased it should have the vital Vigour of breathing and voice A participative and distribvtive Life I say throughout the whole to be blown abroad in an equable Air To wit without which all the Blood should be thickned through nourishing into a Tophus or sandy Stone and the Body should soon increase either into a huge Monster or presently from the Beginning should be choaked Even as elsewhere concerning the Blas of Man But notwithstanding I will not that the Architect of the Seed shoud beg this Common-wealth and Harmony thus compared unto the wandring Stars for himself from far to wit from the Stars of Heaven elsewhere For the Archeus intimates the Stars through a proportionable Conjunction because he hath a heaven-like Being in himself For he who by a small Word made the Stars of nothing hath constituted a co-like Power of the Word Increase and Multiply within the innermost Parts of Seeds which is to endure throughout Ages Therefore the Seed hath drawn that unto it self from a free gift that it is able to stir up and imitate the proportionable Respects of the Stars in its own Blas wherefore it happens that more succesful Emulations of the Stars than those that are inbred do follow at set Periods because they are the more powerful and famous Sealings Neither in the mean time is there that Power in the Stars that they should be chief in the forming of the manners health calling or vocation and fortunes of Mortals For he who is all in all and created all things for his own Glory from an immediate end would not that his own Image should be subjected to the Stars least they should excuse themselves of their Fault by the importunate revolutions of the Stars But it is well that there is a seminal Being a proportionable thing which may after some sort answer to the Stars and to the whole Universe Wherefore in Man the Seed at first cloathes it self with the Secundines straightway after it earnestly labours about its own family-administration in the next place it meditates on the aforesaid Common-wealth it variously disposeth of all particular Parts and constrains them by the Laws of free Denizons then indeed also it thinks of a Kingdome and Empires At length of the whole Earth and last of all of the Heavens And so by virtue of the Word he delineates the whole Universe in himself as he is the Image of God For he hath put under his Feet the flying Fowls of Heaven the Fishes of the Sea Sheep Oxen and Beasts of the Field Because he hath set him over the works of his Hands But the Heavens are the Works of the Hands of God Which dignity of appointment surely seeing otherwise it contains a command it doth not indeed contain a certain feigned or remote and allegorical Power Therefore it must needs be that we do after some sort resemble the Heavens in the Image of the Arch-type But the command seeing it is already planted into Nature Man shall have that his proper nobleness in him from his original but not from the Stars that are placed under him But seeing that by the Schools and rustical Persons the defects which shall be in deformities and a vitiated forming are more considered than those which were to rise from erroneous Faculties Hence they have given an occasion that Astrologers should at their pleasure draw all things unto their own dances of the Stars But after that a diversity of Offices was by the more refined Men known to imply a diversity of kind of Faculties and Organs those Men therefore began to fetch interchange number and deformity from the Stars and to refer them unto the Directions of the Seeds For neither under Nature now once radically corrupted could Seeds be long kept fruitful under Unity neither by this Unity could so many distinct Offices of the Organs be compleated but that almost from the Beginning an unlikeness of strength in the Bowels yea and an unequality of strength in all particular Parts should under-creep and be sealed in those places From whence there should at length be a breaking asunder of the Thred a dissolution an off-spring of Infirmities and much Destruction All which things the Soothsayers of Heaven the Schools not resisting it but being astonished thereat have without punishment transferred unto their trippings of the Stars Wherefore a standard-defending Goat being as it were taken by the Beard the whole following troop of Posterity have admired them For there is so great a diversity of kind in the bosome of the Matter that there is scarce a Golden thred made which in some part of it is not the more infirm and doth not the sooner burst asunder Therefore neither is it a wonder that in so great a distraction of Members and Functions an unequal strength increaseth in the Members Wherefore whole Families do perish with a Tabes or Consumption or Dropsie In some Persons their Going fails after the fiftieth Year of the Age whose Sight persisteth unto their eightieth Year But in others their Sight is dull after their fourtieth Year whose Going promiseth a Long Life Because from a simple and universal Spirit of the Seed the Rulers of all particular Organs do increase Which Rulers surely being there alienated either through a Vice of the Organs receiving or through an errour of Dispensation do oft-times depart from their aim For the Spirit which hath distinguished the Parts from each other and formed them hath presently also received all its Limitations in those very Parts For the optick Spirit seeth in the Eye and tasteth in the Tongue because the inflowing Spirit is there limited by the implanted Spirit As besides there is a certain principiating Life in the Spleen another in the Muscles and lastly another in the Womb of a Woman even as I have often demonstrated elsewhere All which are by so much divided from the common Life by how much they are those things which have diverse existences Seeing therefore Plurality includes a certain Duality it 's no wonder that the Life being tossed by many diverse Governours did easily rush into Dissolution after that the immortal Mind suffered the Rains
But that contradicts this because the place is not scorched either beyond or on this side of the Circle and because those Carbuncles which begin to bud being not touched also by the Saphire do settle down and perish For truly if the expulsive Faculty were only strengthened it would expel the Venom every way round and not be tied up unto a certain and elect place Fourthly Nature before the touching of the Saphire had already denoted its own strong Ability in expelling of the Carbuncle Whence also it is false that Nature being once provoked to expulsion doth afterwards continue it of her self seeing otherwise the Saphire came too slow for the Beginning of Expulsion Therefore whatever thou shalt say the Poyson must needs be magnetically attracted by the absent Gem. Wilt thou therefore that the natural Magnetism of the weapon Salve be more clearly manifested unto thee Or wilt thou reprorch the attraction of the Gem and also write to the reproacher Thou wilt judge I suppose that it is better and far better to be of Opinion with us that as Death Wounds a Disease Slaughters crept in by the Devil from whom there is nought but Mischief So that every good Gift descends down from the Father of Lights all Men judging that to be good which neither the Subject nor the Object nor the Means nor the intended End dare to accuse of wickedness For this Cause the Prelates of the Church were wont heretofore to wear Rings enricht with a Saphire the use of that Gem being almost unknown amongst them For unto whomsoever the charge of Souls is committed it is also incumbent on the same from equity and Office or Duty to be assistant to those that are infected with the Plague For the darkness of Ignorace at this day over-shadowing the most famous Knowledge of natural Things instead whereof a polished Grace or fineness of speaking and a glistering of the windy and dead Letter and a presumptuous Prattle have succeeded which is greatly to be bawailed and more to be admired that mechanical Arts do dayly thrive but that the study of natural things alone is affrighted and goes backward through unjust Censures I have been the more tedious about the Saphire because it contains a Case or Condition wholly like and equal to the Armary Unguent or weapon Salve In this respect therefore Man also hath his Load-stone or attractive Power whereby in time of the Plague he draws the Venom from abroad out of the Infected by an unsensible transpiration For Nature which at other times is wont to admit only of a kind or wholesome Juice and diligently to separate it from the Excrements now yielding to its Magnet or attractive Virtue allures unto it a hurtful Air and invites Death into the Body Against which Magnet there is its contrary Magnet this is inserted to wit least our Dispute should become barren in any part of it namely the Saphire it self or also a clear piece of Amber being first rub'd upon the seven planetary Pulses but those are in the Throat the Wrists of the Hands nigh the Insteps and on the Seat or Region of the Heart and being hung about the Neck instead of an Amulet or Pomander excel the Magnet of Man hinder it and so are the most certain Amulets or counter Poysons against the cruel Contagion otherwise plainly un-efficacious if a co-rubbing of the Pulses hath not preceded For those things which before were a Saphire and Amber have from the rubbing on those Pulses changed their Family do first loose their name and afterwards are called a Zenexton or preservatory Amulet against the Plague Will any one account these Effects also to be diabolical and attribute them to a Covenant struck with Satan It is sufficient that we have brought a few yet satisfactory Examples and such as contain the like condition of the Armary Uguent we shall now seasonably turn our selves unto thy Arguments Thou reprovest Goclenius of Ignorance of the Doctrine of Aristotle for that he insinuates the same accident to pass from Subject into Subject I wish thou hadst been as ready in proving as thou art in refuting for as much as this also is a Mother of great Stubbornness to think that a scar in a dead Carcass is not the same which it was in the Man that was yesterday alive For in vain do we reverence the Reliques of Saints if only the impossible matter of the Aristotelicks remaineth and there shall not remain certain accidents in the corrupted Body whih were heretofore in the live one Behold whither whither a Paganish errour doth hurle those that unadvisedly carpe at others To imagine I say that to be impossible which is altogether necessary is the part of the grossest Ignorance Indeed the Light from the Sun even unto the Earth doth even more swiftly than the twinckling of an Eye also through the smallest Atomes of the Air produce new Species and Species of Species of Light truly this is to wax blind in Sun-shine for if we should not have the Light and Virtue of the Sun amongst us but only the thousandth of thousands of Millions Species of its Light and Virtue not any thing could grow and Fire should never be produced by the re-bounding or union of its Beams For the Species of Species of Light seeing they are no more Light than the Species of Colours are Colours they should never cause Fire Certainly I rejoyce in the behalfe of the Ignorance of such a Doctrine whereof Goclenius is accused as ignorant Doth not the Needle of the Compass through a Glass that is sealed with scalding Sodder wherein no Pore is found incline it self to the northern Pole And is it not drawn unto a neighbouring piece of Iron the Pole being the while neglected Therefore the same accident passeth thorow the Glass from the Load-stone into the Air and perhaps reacheth to the Pole it self And Magnetism also is a celestial Quality very like to the Influences of the Stars neither is it restrained unto distances of Place even as neither the magnetical Ungent of which I dispute is Thou smilest because Goclenius chooseth that hereby Mosse which is gathered from the Scul of a Man of three Letters Nor is there here truly any ground for thee to think there lurks a Snake in the Bush or the Vanity of Superstition for although a Jesuite being put to Death by Hanging or any other kinde of Martrydom be left to be dryed according to the Influence and Obedience of the Stars his Head will afford a springing Mosse every way alike useful and also alike in time for shaving it off co-agreeable to the Skull of a Thief for truly the Seed of the Mosse falls from Heaven on Mount Calvary For sometimes there rains a Froath which is called Aurora and now and then a more tough Muscilage descends which is called the Sperm or Seed of the Stars Sometimes the Heavens showrs down Frogs Spiders c. the which in falling are made a tangible and
no longer coagulating even as otherwise under growth was wont to be done it wholly exhales without a residence lee or dreg or remainder of Reliques That therefore is the conclusion of the Venal blood that for the end of its Tragedy it is at length wholly expelled by way of an Exhalation through an unsensible transpiration after that it hath undergone the Offices of moystening Therefore while as that Liquor being now co-mixed through the innermost Parts and the Dgestion having thorowly performed its Office doth by way of effluxing exhale it cannot but have assumed the disposition of an Excrement From whence it alike unavoydably follows That the vital Spirit inhering in and conjoyned to the Bowels and also the implanted Powers of the same are by a continual and necessitated Fumigation blunted alienated and at length extinguished This therefore is the containing and natural Cause of short Life Therefore the whole consideration of long Life is conversant about the conserving of the vital Powers For it is not sufficient that venal Blood be present with all the Members to be delightfully nourished with their desired venal Blood Neither again doth it suffice that the implanted Spirit be thus far sufficiently refreshed from the inflowing Spirit by a continued substituting of Nourishment For nothing is done in the Stage of Life unless the seminal Powers the vital Characters I say be preserved from the destruction already mentioned For otherwise the Spirits are reduced unto nakedness and are lessened from whence our dayes are of necessity abbreviated For truly it by degrees looseth the Character of the Powers or Gifts of the Seed and is made a Spirit like unto that which is not soulified or like unto a Gas For although in Figures and Engines a perpetual Motion doth not fail because there is not required in the Powers moving a subsequential proportion of a greater unto a less that it may move some other thing Yet surely this hath not place in things which shall not move themselves nor are of ability to grow or be strengthed by moving And therefore they are things unworthy to be considered in seminal things For truly natural Generations which are constant even unto the Worlds End shall be sufficient to wit that the Species and Strengths of these do continue entire and that they do beget a Seed from them which is never diminished By consequence also if a Man of forty Years old doth generate one in times past like unto himself his Life of forty Years shall be able to be continued being co-equalized in Vigour unto himself being a young Man if the vice of a broken Thred doth not from elsewhere rush on it as I have said Therefore we must diligently search into whether the Reliques of the Tree of Life or its surrogated Substitutions are to be hoped for in Nature to wit by which whatsoever doth at length vanish out of us may be unto those Powers instead of a nourishing warmth nor may any longer through its sorrowful Fumigation bear before it the condition of an Excrement But it listeth us to acknowledge the quality of our aforesaid Fumigation not only in the Odours of some Sweats but especially because Wall-Lice Lice Gnats and the like Insects proceed from thence indeed the meer off-springs of filthiness and stink First of all it hath seemed to me an unprofitable Question Whether the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life thereof have ceased or indeed whether they do remain even unto this Day and in what place Whether Enoch Elias and John do there even till now live happy under the fellowship of Angels without the Discommodities of old Age and Infirmities It is sufficient for me that the Tree of Life began from the Creation that it was in Nature but not fabulous or parabolical It sufficeth that that Tree was and should be unknown to Mortals and so also that the impossible obtainment thereof deprives us of hope In the mean time I search into a succeeding Plant although inferiour by many numbers Yea there is no doubt but that if there be any Plant in this Vale of Miseries which resembles the Faculties of that primitive Tree a Place may contribute its Parts unto long Life as well in respect of the Plant as of the Man using it For that the same Plant is ennobled through the Variety of its native Soile and that our Life is prolonged by places of the better nourishable Juice and through the Drink of the more sweet Air Climates themselves do afford me Credit For neither is it to be believed that that thing happens altogether from the favour of the Heaven for that in the same degree of distance from the Aequator and altogether in the same Circuit of Heaven the Parts subjacent to the East do bring forth more noble Fruits than those which decline more toward the West And moreover much Variety is oftentimes planted nigh under the same Circle both which Parts notwithstanding the same aspect of Heaven doth sometimes dayly affect with the same Motion For Paracelsus promoting it a hope is raised up in some Physitians for long Life For every one promiseth himself to have been an obtainer of long Life by his Writings if he had not described his Medicines in so great darkness of Words Wherefore most do diligently search to have his obscure Novelties of Names signified unto them Also others deservedly suspecting his every where simple and curtail'd Description heartily wish for a more manifest method of operating But none the Vaile being uncovered hath attempted to dig unto the bottom of the Matter and Basis of the Truth promised For every one either derides or despairs or being too credulous admires all things with a bending Nose Yet if these are better than those because they have not cut off the way of the hope from themselves None notwithstanding hath chosen a middle way to wit of doubting and diligently searching how much of truth the things promised may contain For indeed Paracelsus promiseth that he could attain extream Old Age by his Elixir of Propriety and boasts that it was granted him from heaven to designe or chuse the Condition and Hour of his Death but vain are his boastings of long Life his knowledge and choice of Death who the while dies in the 47th Year of his Age. In the mean time his own followers are astonished and wonder by what Disease or chance the true partaker or obtainer of that Stone which maketh Gold was snatched away being as yet in his flourishing Age and who with Hercules Club slew thousands of the more grievous Diseases up and down as it were by mowing them down with a Sithe Truly I make no Apology for any I willingly confess that I have profited much by his Writings and that he was able by Remedies ascending unto a resembling mark of Unity to heale the Leprosie Astâ—hma Consumption of the Lungs Palsey Falling-sicknesse Stone Dropsie Gowt Cancer and such like commonly uncurable Diseases Yet I have gathered
Life For neither hath Renovation long Life as a necessary Adjunct nor on the other hâ—â—d is Renovation annexed to long Life As is manifest in the Stag Goose c. Be it therefore that every of the Arcanums of Paracelsus do take away almost all Sicknesses renew the Nailes Haires and Teeth yet they cannot first of all make equal the unequal Strength of any failing part much less vindicate the failing Powers from Death and least of all restore the same into a youthful Vigour Therefore those Arcanums or Secrets do not respect the Powers of the Organs as neither long Life depending thereupon but only the greatest cleansing or refining of all the Members and Health sprung from thence All Diseases indeed which either issue from Filths which lurk in the Filâ—â— themselves or lastly which do further propagate Filths by their Contagion are cured by the aforesaid Arcanums but not those which do primarily concern the vital Powers Not those I say which contain a weakness inbred or attained from a Disease or Old Age together with a diminishment of the Powers For those of this sort return not into their antient State but by the Remedies of long Life neither yet into their antient â—tate with a perfect and full restoration For otherwise this thing should conclude an absolute Immortality For the Weaknesses which invade Men from Gluttony or Drunkenness Leachery c. are very little restored by the Secrets of Paracelsus but not unless an infirm Nature doth accompany them For Madnesses which arise from an evil framing or composure are not any thing restored but those which have arisen from a remarkable Animosity of Pride stand alwayes in fear of a relapse But otherwise the Phtensie Doatage Falling-evil Raging Madnesses of the Womb of the Hypochondrials and whatsoever Weaknesses are made from some off-springs of Impurity are perfectly and compleatly healed by the Remedies of Paracelsus Madnesses therefore which proceed from a notable Arrogancy are indeed presently cured but with the fear of some less relapse because those do argue a meer Defect of the imaginative Power and therefore they so defile the Seed that they being thenceforth translated into some Generations do oft-times shine forth So also the Sons of Drunkards do oftentimes retain the Tokens of vitiated Powers as though the Sons being Heires of their Fathers Crime ought to pay the Punishments thereof That is strong or valiant Men are generated by strong or valiant and good Men. And on the other Hand a bad Egg of an Evil Crow For the Sons of Drunkards are for the most part drowsie in searching into things stubborn or stedfast in their Conceits Cup-shot or giddy in things to be done and easily to be drawn aside into Vices At least-wise I doubt not but that Paracelsus made use of his Arcanums because he was he who saw not only prosperous Cures to succeed but also that some who the longer used them were renewed in their Haires Nailes and Teeth Notwithstanding seeing he had not a long Life his aforesaid Arcanums shall be for a Testimony unto us concerning my Judgment delivered For indeed a Will or Testament of Paracelsus is born about the which because it contradicts the publick Authority drawn out of his Epitaph which is seen in the Hospital of Saltzburge in a Wall near the Altar of St. Sebastian and the which mentions That he appointed his Goods to be distributed to the Poor and to be honoured thereby Therefore that Testament I believe was feigned by the Haters of Paracelsus Others therefore of that leaven affirm that Paracelsus a limited term being compacted with Satan died in full Health The which contradicteth the aforesaid Testament from the published Language of his Enemies To wit wherein it is said that himself was some dayes before his death Diseasie And that Act of so great Guilt contradicteth that he was so bountiful to the Poor There are also others who say that he was taken away by Poyson For which seeing Remedies were no less known unto him and in readiness than for other Diseases they supposed him to have been slain by the Powder of the Adamant eating out his Bowels But I no way admire at the untimely Death of the Man who was solicitous or carefully diligent from his Youth about Chymical Secrets Most especially if a too much Curiosity of searching into Science day and night hath vexed those who were careless of their Life For which of Mortal Men may not the Fumigations of live Coales infect those of Aquae Forte's graduating or exalting and Arsenical things And likewise a new dayly examination of Antimonials The which we through the long tediousness of experiencing being not yet experienced draw in from the malignity of those things as being not admonished but by late experience For what can the somewhat curious and undaunted Young Beginner in an Art so abstruse otherwise do and he refusing any other Master besides the torture of the Fire Where indeed the Speculations of Art are obscured from his desire not indeed that they may be abruptly known but rather that they may not be known For Understanding is given only unto those that are chosen through a long preparation of Dayes and Works to those that are furnished with sufficient Health and Money nor those that have deserved Indignity through the load of Crimes I grant that there are some Universal Medicines which under a most exceeding grateful Unifon of Nature do unsensibly lead forth the bound Enemy after them together with a famous clarifying or refining of the Organs I grant likewise that there are some appropriated ones whereby they imitate the largeness of a Universal Medicine in the Specifical directions of Diseases take away the forreign Society of Impurities and plainly lord it over the already contracted Vice no otherwise than as an Axe plucks up a Tree with authority An Index or Table of the Secrets of Paracelsus is First of all the Tincture of Lile reduced into the Wine of Life from an untimely mineral Electrum or general composure of Mettals one part whereof is the first Metallus but the other the Essence of the Members And then follows Mercurius Vitae the off-spring of entire Stibium which wholly sups up every Sinew of a Disease In the third place is the Tincture of Lile even that of Antimony almost of the same efficacy with that going before although of less efficacy In the fourth place is Mercurius Diaphoreticus being sweeter than Honey and being fixed at the Fire hath all the Properties of the Horizon of Sol for it perfects whatsoever a Physitian and Chyrurgion can wish for in healing yet it doth not so powerfully renew as those Arcanums aforegoing His Liquor Alkahest is more eminent being an immortal unchangeable and loosening or solving Water and his circulated Salt which reduceth every tangible Body into the Liquor of its concrete or composed Body The Element of Fire of Copper succeedeth and the Element or Milk of Pearls But the Essences of Gems
words in the confession of Physitians 9. An argument against black Choler in the Spleen and the privy shifts of Physitians 10. The true reason whence the Spleen waxeth hard about the end of a Quartane Ague and the errour of the Schooles is discovered 11. Some remarkable things in a Quartane 12. The manner of be-drunkenning and the Organs thereof 13. A notable thing concerning a Vegetable Spirit of VVine out of Juniper-berries 14. VVhy VVines are ordinarily gratefull to Mortals 15. After what manner the Arteries draw their Remedles 16. An impediment in abstracted Oyles which is not in the Salts of the same 17. The manner of making of the Cardiack or Heart-passion which they also call the Royal Passion 18. Divers Chronical Diseases are from the Stomach 19. The ignorance and sincerity of the age of Hippocrates 20. There is no Seat for a Quartane left in the Schooles 21. A few remarkable things concerning Madnesses are declared 22. The Seat of foolish Madnesses SUrely I have demonstrated in an entire Treatise that there never were Humours in Nature which the Schooles of Medicine presuppose for the Foundation of their Art and that Treatise should profesly have respect hitherto unless it had been erelong to be repeated in a work of other Diseases Because they have every where named all Diseases by those Humours But it shall be sufficient in this place to have demonstrated by the way That Fevers do in no wise owe their original unto those Humours whether they are entire or putrified ones Now I will speak something concerning a Quartane Ague but not that it differs from its Cousin-German Fevers in its matter and efficient cause or is cured otherwise than after one and the same manner and by the same meanes whereby other Fevers are overcome but because a Quartane hath never been vanquished by the broken forces of the Schooles and so it hath made mocks at the Commentaries of Physitians and their vain Speeches concerning black Choler concerning the Spleen as the sink of black and burnt Choler and of loosening Medicines bringing forth black Choler by a Choyce A Quartane Ague therefore hath long since exposed the Doctrine of the Universities and the promises of these unto Laughter as being vain Trifles and wan Fables without strength For truly a desperate curing by Arts hath made manifest the feeble help of Medicines the vain promises of Dispensatories and the undoubted ignorance of the causes of Fevers Good God! it is now manifest that Physitians cannot onely not cure the Leprosie Gout Palsey Asthma Stone Falling-sicknesse and other Diseases conteined under the large Catalogue of uncurable ones which are never cured of their own accord but they have not known how to take away so much as a Quartane Ague which patiently expects and deludes every endeavour of Physitians The which notwithstanding Nature cures by her own power to the disgrace of the Schooles For they who attempt their Cures onely by the cuttings of a vein Sarrifyings Leeches Vesicatories and purgings of the Belly and so by diminishments of the Body and Strength and stick wholly in Heathenish Doctrines are even excluded by Nature from the true knowledge of Causes and Remedies Because first of all None of their Medicines reacheth unto the Seat of a Quartane but it first paying Tribute through the Toles or Customes of every Digestion is stript of every Faculty requisite unto so great a malady For neither ought I to draw out that thing from elsewhere or to prove it by many Arguments Be it sufficient That the Succours of Physitians have been hitherto unprosperous For they purge and cut a vein and then they leave the rest to be boren by Nature And in the mean time they certainly know that they shall profit nothing by Remedies of that sort nor that they ever have profited thereby I wish at least that they had not done hurt They ought therefore to confess that Remedies and also all the suppositions of Art faileth them in this Disease Yea neither that the wonted privy evasion of uncurableness in other Diseases is of value unto them For all the powers of the Universities being conjoyned cannot perform so much as Nature can and doth do without them of her own free accord But moreover The same shamefulnesse of ignorance and every way impotency which a Quartane hath discovered in the Schooles They should be compelled to confesse in the other curings of Fevers also if those did not hasten to an end of their own accord Wherefore I now conjecture That the out-law a Quartane in the Age that is forthwith to come shall distinguish false Physitians from true ones whom the Almighty hath Chosen Created and Commanded to be Honoured The Schools therefore define a Quartane according to the account of other Fevers by a heat kindled besides nature first in the heart from the humour of black Choler being putrified and diffused by the utmost small brances of the veins into the habit of the body The seat of which putrified Choler they nevertheless acknowledge to be in the Spleen I importunately crave at your hands I beseech you let the profession of Medicine tell me what harmony they can ever utter from so great dumness And whether it be not to have blinded the minds as well of the sick as of young beginners with prattle Let them explain why that heat is not first kindled in the Spleen where the cause or humour sitteth which by its putrefaction as they say is the cause of an unnatural heat even as while a Thorn being thrust into the finger sticking fast therein the finger it self first rageth with heat and that long before the putrefaction of inflammation Why is a Quartane so stubborn if at every fit nature opens a passage for it self whereby it may disperse the putrified black Choler thorow the veins into the habit of the body even in the very rigour of cold and straightness of the veins After what manner shall the same black Choler in number be as yet putrified after a year and an halfs space and afford an hard Spleen if at every fit it be dispersed into the habit of the body How if it was from the beginning in the Spleen with so daily a fornication of putrified matter hath it not long since putrified the Spleen The which especially is accounted by the Schools to be nothing but a sink of the worst excrement After what manner doth a Quartane after so many moneths retire as better of its own accord to the disgrace of Physitians while as notwithstanding it shall of necessity be more dry gross and shall more putrifie than at its first fits Again What humour which from its rise is evil and putrified can be at length digested Doth nature become foolish that she at length after a divorce and a year an a halfs time begins to digest the humour which in the beginning she had refused to digest it being already before of necessity plainly putrified What reason is there of the
receive moneys but of the richer sort So that a Confessour constrained me to admit of the mony of a certain man that offered it least by doing otherwise I should bar up the dores against those who being fore-stalled with shame would not dare to aske further succours from my hands For he said The gifts which thou refusest give to him that is in need and the which if thou shalt not receive thou by thy pride withdrawest from the poor that which was to be his own I also gave willingly the medicines prepared by me but because I felt the greater joy while I was called by a Primate or rich man I being angry with my self and confounded refisted long and bestowed very much pains that I might pluck up the growing branch of covetousnesse bred in me Therefore I every where searcht out more of arrogancy and haughtinesse in my self than of a Godly affection Finally God cut of the means from me as well in the Church as among civil Potentates and so also ample fortunes seemed to be promised me by Radolph the Emperour but I had incurred the danger of my foul In exchange whereof he gave me a godly and Noble wife with whom I withdrew my self to Vilvord for seven years space I offerd up my self to the art of the fire and succoured the calamities of the poor I found and indeed I sound for certainty that none should be forsaken of God who with a pious affection and fitme faith performes the office of Physitian For although I was the silliest of all I seeingly discerned that God is Charity it self towards the miserable and therefore that from his own effluxing goodnesse of charity he alwayes bore a care over me For the inheritances of my wise were increased and ample partimonies of my family befel me for although I was subdued in suites of law by the malice of men yet I became a conquerer by some revisals so as that the mercies of God openly appeared toward an unworthy person And moreover he pressed down those that excelled in might who persecuted me unto disgrace and hidden death under the cloak of piety And the darts were reflected on their own strikers so that now it more shameth than repenteth them of their manifested crimes In the mean time I desist not to cure some ten thousands of sick persons every year by my remedies neither are my medicines therefore diminished I have learned therefore that the treasure of wisdome is not to be exhausted and I daily experience my yesterdays ignorance to be to day illustrated But in returning from whence I have digressed I find that they have not yet been able to discerne what defects respect a Physitian and what a Chyrurgion Which things if I may determine of I declare that onely things suscepted or undergone do touch at Chyrurgery The which in a section concerning a new rise of healing I have sufficiently explained But things suscepted are a wound made by piercing a cut or incision made by a fall biting bruise burning or scorching or congealing Likewise every swelling proceeding from a fall stroak c. Also a rent pulling asunder burstnesse breaking of a bone and displacing thereof As also contagions externally drawn being those of scabbednesse the kind of Anthonies fire called Herpes c. and no more But unto Physitians besides the internal defects of things retained it belongs to cure any Ulcers Apostemes and whatsoever external affects do proceed from an internal Beginning such as are the Cancer Wolf Leprousy Gout the disease Paneritium the Sciatica c. But at this day there is the more mild brawling between both Professions because most Physitians are ignorant of a method medicine and succours no otherwise than as Chyrurgions are And therefore although they joyn hands and so exhaust the purses of the sick party yet at length they hasten to the bound of despair And in the proposed question concerning the Plague they are unanimous enough For the Physitian refuseth the Plague to be of the diseases placed under him because it beares before it a Carbuncle Kernelly Glandules Sores about the groyne called Bubo's an Escharre bubbly Tumours and Tokens And at leastwise he condescendeth with the Chyrurgion because he promiseth that he will scrape together out of renowned and standard-defending Authours any the best Antidotes if not the curative medicines of external affects at least preservatives against the cruel poyson Yea if the Triacle of Galen doth not suffice which according to Andromachus conteineth only 66. Simples that is the last part of the name of Antichrist he promiseth to his herbarists that he will super-add very many more which are sufficient for the putting of the Plague to flight and that if they are not prevalent in a sufficient power of faculty they may at leastwise be able to strive with the Plague in multitude by their number But if the Doctour shall be hired from the City with a stipend least he should hurt or be wanting to his other sick patients by causing a fear thus he over-covers his own fear with anothers dread he ingeniously promiseth that he will shew by his pen that the affairs of the sick are cordial unto him So that he will also frame a book out of the most Famous Authors on every side which he promiseth to dedicate to community indeed under the hope of repaying a reward of his vain-spent labour unto the writer For in that treatise he promiseth that he will so distinguish of diet exercises to be performed avoyded and of meanes to be curiously examined besides remedies and preservatives out of all Authours that the very Plague it self shall upon the sight of that book of necessity become diseasy In the next place the Chyrurgion saith that the Plague as it is joyned with a Fever stands not to be ruled by his will or judgment But however successfully the matter shall sometimes prove unto him at least wise that for six weekes after he should be profitable to none with his sissers file knife or rasour or launcet What therefore shall he that is suddenly taken with the Plague do being left destitute by both forsakers Or what will the Magistrate do being deluded by his own stipendiaties Because they are they which respect nothing but gain the one only scope of their whole life The Physitian therefore will dismisse the sick unto the non-feared Pest-houses wherein there is as unlawfull a pleasure for a Physitian to kill as for a tormentor and souldier The Chyrurgion answers That there is a Mate known unto him who is without fear after that he hath notably drunk who although he hath not known how to open a vein for this is estemed the top among them neither is worthy of his family-service yet he hath oftentimes brought Simples out of a wood or mountaines and therefore that he is skillfull in some Simple which whether it be an Herb Shrub or tree or living Creature he hath hitherto refused to declare Yet he undoubtedly
but in the making of its increase but not in its product being made because of that which is corrupted there are no longer preservatives but onely healing remedies by extirpation We must not therefore believe that bad Antidotes although they were the most potent poysons could drive away the terrour as neither the pestilent effect of the terrour For truly the poyson of the pestilence is irregular and different from other poysons in this that it issues from the terrour of the Archeus as it were fire out of a flint For if the Archeus being terrified yield up the field verily the body which being considered in it self is a meer dead Carcasse cannot receive comfort Furthermore if the Archeus be so considered to retire that a poyson enters in his place and in this respect shall supplant the Archeus himself how shall sweet odours and incenses prevent the poyson especially if the very excellentest of sweet smels are also capable of receiving a pestilent contagion Therefore let it be a part of Christian piety and compassion studiously to contemplate with me how blockishly and unexactly so many Simples have been heaped up together for preserving and curing and how much their unfaithful succours have deluded ten thousands of men and their expectations because they have every where mocked mankind in a true remedy by reason of the grosse ignorance of causes For indeed a curative remedy of the plague being present presupposeth that which a preservative remedy prevents for the future Therefore a proper curative remedy is convenient onely as by slaying of the product which is the pestilent poyson it self it annihilates it in the matter wherein it resides In the next place also another curative remedy being conjoyned with it is employed in expelling the subject of the poyson it self which is to be attempted by-sweat Moreover a third is that which takes away and lessens the co-suiting of causes unto their products the which also hath in it the nature of a preservative The Pest therefore which is drawn in from without from an infected body garment or place hath indeed in it an absolute and formal pestilent poyson which presupposeth not a fore-existing fermental putrefaction and therefore it suddenly invadeth with no fore-going complaints and it utters future signes but onely it hath need of an appropriation which kind of preserving in making of the Pest a rectifying of the air familiar to Hipocrates conteineth of which in its own place no otherwise than as in a popular plague To wit that the poyson it self in the air may be killed and the air also originally so disposed that it suffers not the nourishable humour to be mumially corrupted or to snatch unto it a fermental putrefaction These things of a remedy for the future Otherwise when as the pestilent poyson is now received within it lurketh and is unknown and also is fitted and sealed in the Archeus and that by reason of the singular swiftnesse of its poyson But then defensive remedies alone do come too late unlesse they are also healing ones First therefore every cure of preserving is busied that the body may be always actually hot and kept in transpiration and that the mind may be disposed unto a cheerfulnesse opposite to terrour even as I have already before cited concerning wine out of the holy Scriptures But what thou readest concerning the rectifying of the infected air it hath respect not so much unto the air as to the points thereof to wit in whose vacuities or hollow empty spaces the vapour of contagion sits or floats Furthermore those remedies which take away a putrefaction through continuance and poyson out of the air but terrour out of the mind and lastly mumial co-fittings or suitable coniunctions out of the body these are preservatives For the perfumes or suffumigations of Hipocrates freeth not onely the encompassing air but also the air that is attracted inwards yea and the co-agulated vapour from the poyson and together also from a fermental putrefaction no lesse then as it hinders the mumiâ—l ferment from being applyed to which ends also Antidotes Zenextons or external preservative Pomanders do conduce which are able to kill the image of terrour and pestilent poyson in the proper subject of the vapour or Tartar of the bloud and in this respect also to divert and hinder the terrour of the Archeus But if indeed the Pest be conceived by a proper errour within other preservatives are required than when as we must live about infected places or persons But the plague being formed moves the same to go with a speedy course in a retrograde order from a poyson formed unto a corruptive vapour Therefore also neither are amulets or preservative pomanders occupied about an inferiour and remote preparation of the pestilent matter that is to be averted but for the overcoming of the formal and ultimate poyson and suiting of the Archeus with the Tartar of the bloud in the one extream and in the other with the poyson drawn in And so an amulet keeps a curative betokening in preserving yet it is excedeed by a curative remedy in this that healing remedies ought not onely to kill the poyson but also to thrust it out by sweat Indeed both betokenings ought to concut in curative remedies For otheâ—wise in vain doth the body flow down with much moisture of sweat if the Tartar of the bloud be not resolved but is rather continued by the continued terrour of the Archeus Truly the causes as well the constitutive as the occasional one being known afterwards the indication oâ— betokening of things to be done coariseth onely by the conduct of reason For if a fermental putrefaction hath given a beginning unto and caused the first disposition of the matter places putrified through continuance as also nourishments easily putrifying are to be avoided An open air is healthful to healthy persons because it hath the power of an elementary consuming but the air as it is such doth no lesse obey contagion than other bodies and it conteineth in its own Magnal of the air as it hath hollow poâ—es the whole contaâ—ion the which at length by pining away in the same place doth for the most part die not but of its own accord in the space of 40 dayes and by an elementary power is spoyled of the poysonous seed of a ferment For the seeds of things conceived do by little and little decay in the air as they being shut up in the hollow places of the air as it were in wombs do return to the last disposition of corruption and the first generation of watery matters All sorrowful things also are to be removed not onely because they are near unto fear and terrour but especially because they do forthwith produce a sensible fermental putrefaction the mother of sighs about the mouth of the stomach The places therefore and objects of a sorrowful remembrance as also such fellowships are to be avoided no lesse than sorrowful messages and discourses of History
say Plethora or the abounding of humours alone is called the shewer or betokener of bloud-letting which as it hurts for the future so hunger and the withdrawing of meat in the beginning of a sharp Disease do together with a destructive Disease easily empty out all abounding humours in the first dayes Neither that the vain device of revulsion and derivation hath greatly profited at sometimes by their own position I have demonstrated in the Treatise of Feavers But laxative Medicines since they do at leastwise wipe away very new bloud out of the Meseraiok or sucking veins and change it through the disposition of their poyson by divers waves corrupting it truly they have given hitherto none but a weak hope of healing by the event full of confusion sorrowes and uncertainty Therefore we are blinde unless with a stout heart we being at length moved with compassion do go to meet so great a slaughter of mortal men and the sighs of sick persons or phanes and of Widowes and of the dead For besides that the helps of the Schooles for the sick are so uncertain and of so little credit I intreat you let us mutually commiserate mans condition which hath committed his life and fortunes to an art filled with conjectures and uncertainty also that it hath admitted of all sorts of knaves and Harlots whereby it may without punishment exercise cruelty on our Kinsfolks When I exactly consider with my self the so great sluggishness and blindeness of Schooles and Ages I give praise to the thrice glorious God that he hath made manifest to the little ones in himself much truth which he hath hidden from Noble Persons and those in chief Seats and therefore I admiring the depth of the judgements of God do religiously adore him But Galen snatching the glory of his Predecessors into himself extended his own Art contained in a few Rules into huge Volumes It pleased him indeed that all Bodies should be framed of four Elements and from thence to snatch their wholethingliness or Essence and so that to the square of these elements he confirmed or framed four qualities and as many simple Complexions straight-way so many couples of Compound qualities and from thence also foure constitutive humours of us before dreamed of by others And then from their strife and discord joyned as well with a simple as with his own feigned humours he determined to derive almost all Diseases and the scopes or indications of healing even as health from their fit proportion also that every Disease is a meer disposition in quality wherefore that of contraries there are onely contrary Remedies With which necessity he being at length constrained distinguishing the vertues of simples word for word out of Diascorides and the Elementary Degrees he copied out their Seminal and specifical power neglecting on both sides because not knowing either By what facility of Art indeed he allured the chiefdom of healing to himself he obtained it and Posterity being allured with so great a compendium a drowsie sleep crept into the Schooles thorow the Doores of sloath for the awakening whereof I would God might take his honour and mortaâ—â— the experienced fruit which I wish by my labours Many I know well enough will prate grieving that themselves and their â—iresome readings will be diminished if I shall resign the sound truth of Medicinal Science unto the gift of the glorious God alone but shall have very little hope in the sharpness of wits But however they may gun man is a plained and naked Table and ought to get his Learning else-where and from one onely Master of whom it is said that the Scholar shall never excel that Master because there is onely one Father and one onely Master who dwelleth in the Heavens from whom is every good thing all light and clearness of understanding Truly we Christians do profess the Lord Jesus to be the onely wisdom oâ— the Father the beginning and the ending of all Essence Truth and Knowledge â— and so sâ—eing every good gift not onely of vertues but also of knowledges doth descend from the Father of Lights who could learn perfectly the skill of the Science of Medicine from the Schooles of the Heathens for the Lord not Schooles hath created a Physitian The Heathenish Schooles indeed may have an Historical knowledge the observer of things contingent or accidental of things regular and necessary which is a memâ—rative knowledge of the thing done they may also get Learning by demonstration which is the knowledge of applying things unto measure And lastly they may promise rational knowledge which is derived from either of these by the fitting of discourse and I wish they had soundly and sincerely performed what they might have done by those meanes They may I say historically have known the reflux or going back of the Starrs and Sea that the water bends to a levelled roundness and downward draw divers Sequels from thence and stablish them into maxims They have known I say the craft of composing and how to fit the necessity of Causes in some measure conjoyned by discourse But to understand and savour these things from the spring or first cause is granted to none without the special favour of Christ the Lord. Therefore the Science of healing is the last of all Sciences and chiefly hidden so that it is no wonder that its first beginnings are even at this day desired from types or figures The more diligent Heathens have as yet promised the World to continue by its own Law and things to have their Roots in the whole and in the particular kindes or Species whereby by its own proper force it was to be preserved for ever and so an independency or Deity to be in things Alas thereby from the true Phylosophy and truth of Medicine even as drunken men about wan Deities and blindnesses they have stumbled in the dark and therefore they have of necessity been ignorant of created things and the Seeds Roots and knowledge of these Therefore the knowledge of nature hath indeed been attempted by the Heathens through childish conjectures and very little ever obtained Therefore I have grieved with pity that hitherto the beginnings of natural things have not been fetched forth elsewhere the which as I have determined to discover by this my labour So I humbly intreat that God may grant that he hath not yielded me his Talent for a recompence of punishment although in this Work I could not do so much as I would For the whole faculty of natural Phylosophy is committed to man and therefore this ought to respect both his life immediately and all his defects Therefore all natural Phylosophy is limited for the use of life the finding out of causes the Disease and Remedies in which last point I finde that hitherto little pains hath been taken no hing known but much promised and very much neglected long expectations and every where errours For the knowledge of Diseases containeth the knowledge of the Causes the dependance