the great and new Paradox which I have undertaken to demonstrate in this Treatise Wherefore in the entrance obstacles that are obvious and devious are to be removed And first of all they object the Text The Earth shall bring forth unto Thee Thistles and Thornes In the sweat of thy Face thou shalt eat thy Bread I will multiply thy Miseries and thy Conceptions In pain thou shalt bring forth thy Sons thy Husband shall rule over Thee Thou shalt die the Death And by consequence ye shall be afflicted with the Calamities of Diseases and old Age. All which things issued forth on Posterity from the curse of the Sin of Disobedience even unto the destruction of the World upon no account to be redeemed and by no act of sanctity to be expiated Because God had appointed a Law to Adam that he should not eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil the transgression whereof hath defluxed as into original Sin So also it stirred it up into the perpetuity of a Curse from our first Parents equally on all their Posterity These things have been thus diligently taught hitherto Whereunto under the peace and censure of the Church I will humbly sub joyn my own Conceptions First therefore I negatively affirme the contrary because the Words of the Text do not precisely containe any Curses except on the Serpent and Earth but not at all on Man Whom if he with whom there is no successive alteration or change had cursed he had truly and alwayes cursed like the Evil Spirit For it is a foolish thing to believe that God should now curse Man whom presently after Sin and without the intervening of contrition or act of repentance he forthwith blessed with much Fruitfulness gave him the whole Earth and placed all living Creatures under his Feet Yea in the midst of the Curse uttered or brought upon the Serpent he replenished the femal Sex with his blessing saying The Woman shall bruise thy Head I will put Enmities between Tree and the Woman and between thy Seed and her Seed The which seeing it is not understood of the Seed of Man it promiseth the Messias the Saviour of the World to come of the Seed of the Woman So far is it that he had there cursed Man In the second place I deny that a Law was given and by consequence also a contradiction or opposing of a Law For it follows wheresoever there is not a Law Transgression nor Disobedience doth not interpose and by consequence a Curse doth not there befall But I prove that there was not a Law by the very Words of the Text And he commanded him saying Of every Tree of the Garden eat Thou but of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil Thou mayest not eat The Word he commanded Seemes to include a Precept and so also a Law Yet that one only Word obtains no more the force of a Law or Precept for the affirmative of every Tree of Paradise eat Thou than for the negative Thou mayest not eat For it included not a Sin although he had not eat of every Tree of Paradise And therefore it did no more contain a Law for the forbidding of one Tree than for a Liberty of all the other Trees Therefore the Text contained a fatherly Liberty for the affirmative and likewise for the Grant as also a fatherly Admonition of Caution for the Negative no otherwise than as if a Country-man being expert of the way shall say to a Traveller If thou shalt go that way thou wilt Perish and die the Death So the Admonition of the Creator thou mayest not eat and in whatsoever day thou shalt eat thou shalt die the Death do shew not a Law but a Persuasion and Wish But the transgression and Act of the despised Admonition doth indeed contain a Sin but not of Disobedience and Disobedience as much differs from a despised Admonition as a Law doth from an Admonishment it self The Prohibition therefore thou mayest not eat sounds as an Admonition to wit least he should eat his own and posterities Death by an unextinguishable Guilt because that Death was placed in the Apple but not in the opposition of eating And therefore that Death from the eating of the Apple was natural being admonished of but not a Curse threatned by a Law For the threatnings of Death which was unknown to Adam could not terrifie the same Adam And therefore threatnings had been void but not an admonition For Adam had not as yet seen a dead Carcase and the which before he saw living Creatures was ignorant of their Names And much less could he know what Death should be And least of all by far could Eve know what it should be to die in Paradise Therefore with our first Parents Death was as yet a non-Being and unknown but of a non-Being and of that which is unknown no Conception answereth and there is no fear at all Therefore neither hath God foretold Death for the threats of Terrour or a Law but from his meer goodness That when they had eaten of the disswaded Apple they might know that God had not made Death but themselves for themselves Neither doth the Text in Chap. 3. hinder these things Because thou hast eaten of the Tree whereof I had commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat c For the Words do manifestly declare the goodness of the foregoing Admonition but not a Law For the Word I had commanded is the same which before in the second Chapter and he commanded him saying signifies an Admonition only and not a Law Otherwise under an equal original Sin they had been obliged from eating of every Tree of Paradise which none of a sound mind will ever affirme For the great Sin was in a suspition of deciet falshood and fallacy of God and that they gave more credit to the Serpent than unto God and that they despised a fatherly and kinde Admonition But there was not Disobedience because a Law was not given It was indeed an Act against Gratitude Love towards God and a due and rational Obligation Therefore God cursed them not because they by eating had contracted the Penalties of Diseases Death and Miseries on themselves for a Punishment But God speaketh not of Diseases after the Fall Because it was sufficient once to have foretold Death to come while he admonished them that they should not eat In the next place the crafty Serpent assaulted not the Woman as being the weaker but because the Admonition was given unto Adam from the Mouth of God but signified unto the Woman onely from the relation of the Man And therefore God first requires an account of Adam First of all it doth not containe a cursing of the Man that the Earth should be cursed in its Work and should bring forth Cockle and that he should in the sweat of his face eat his Bread all his Life But they containe a remembrance of the loving Admonition that went before the
Fall Again neither do these Words sound of a Curse that the Woman should be thenceforth obedient and subject to her Husband although therein the intent of the Creator doth clearly appear to wit that he had appointed the Woman to be the head top and ultimate Creature above the Man But now by reason of a double Sin that she ought to be subject to her Husband But that signifies rather a deserved Punishment than a Curse Even as a Superiour is not cursed who is laid aside for an Errour committed But whereas it is said In Pain shalt thou bring forth thy Sons the Text expresly confirmeth the mistery of the Paradoxal Position For from thence it manifestly appears 1. That Eve was not created nor appointed as that she had brought forth in Pain Wherefore this Message is not decleared unto her for a Curse But there is set before her eies how much Calamity she had caused unto her self that she should hereafter conceive and bring forth after the manner of Bruits in Pain For it is not to be doubted but that Bruit-beasts are not guilty of Sin yet do they bring forth in Pain Not indeed that they have sinned in Adam as their Father or that they are partakers of his Sin because they had brought forth in Pain whether Adam had sinned or not Neither also is it agreeable with divine goodness that Bruit-beasts should bear an undeserved Punishment while as they from a Faculty of Nature and from an appointment of Creation do bring forth in pain 2. If Bruits bring forth in Pain a likenesse of Conception and bringing forth in Bruits and in Woman after the Fall is denoted which Likeness seeing it was not before the Fall therefore this Text strengthens the Position 3. If Eve had not eaten the Apple and consequently from the Apple the concupiscence of the Flesh from the tickling of a corrupt Seed verily she had brought forth without Pain Where the Text promiseth a Virginity in conceiving and bringing forth and so a perpetual Virginity appointed in propagating To wit that she had conceived and brought forth her Womb being shut For what other thing is this than that which others think to be the Curse of Eve is in very deed only a commemoration of the good lost through the copulation of Man of Seed and of the concupiscence of the Flesh in the Flesh of Sin after the manner of Bruits henceforeward The hope I say was lost of conceiving by the holy Spirit after that she had conceived by the will of Man as every Mother in Sins doth For otherwise if Death had been of the punishment of a broken Law and not from the concupiscence of the Flesh there should be every day as many new Deaths as there are Transgressions or God should not make so much account of his Commands of the Decalogue as of the Admonition of the caution or avoiding from the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil For he would not have those Laws to be alike seriously observed which he would not have to be chastised with an equal Punishment Therefore it being as yet supposed that there had been a Law concerning the denyed eating of the Apple even as there is a Law of forbidden Worshipping of Idols Adultery c. But these Laws are not punished with a continued unpurgeable Impurity on Posterity in such a manner as the opposition of that eating is From hence therefore it most easily appeareth that original Sin was not so much from the force of disobeying a command as from the effect of a defiled divine Generation being changed into a beast-like one For else there is not an equality of distributive Justice nor therefore a conformity in the goodness of God whether we have respect unto the ingratitude of our first Parents or next unto the disobedience against a Law Because the first disobedience should pay a punishment derived on all even on the innocent Posterity rather than any tenths or hundreths afterwards and than innumerable and far more great or haynous Sins Indeed I think that there is the same rule of Justice with the same Lawgiver of every command preceptively and defensively given and pronounced that the breaking thereof ought alwayes to draw after it an equal Fault neither therefore to be punished in all the Posterity and those that are innocent and then that none of Mortals nor any one of them had been sufficient for the original punishments of their Ancestours and a hundred-fold of Deaths to wit if Death had taken its original effectively and immediately from the opposing of a Law or the unchangeable God had not appointed his future Commands to be alike observed as at first if Death should not have its root in Nature the application of which root had been onely from man Therefore If Death should be immediately from God alone from the curse of Sin Now God had made Death and so by Faith we should believe a Falshood In the next place if Death had proceeded from a Curse and had been from a supernatural Root So also neither should our Death find natural Causes in us or our Death should not be of the same kinde with the Death of Adam Yea which is far more absurd our Death should not proceed from the same primitive Beginning from which the Death of our first Parents began And by consequence our Death should not be the effect of original Sin And so unless Death do happen from elsewhere than from the punishment of a Law and the curse of Sin that is unless the Adamical or Beast-like Generation of the Flesh from the Concupiscence of the Flesh and its Copulation doth naturally containe Death in it like unto Beasts in very deed Innocent Children should pay an undeserved Punishment Again if Death should be immediately caused from a Curse or from Sin should not the Text unfitly say On the same Day thou shalt die the Death while as it should not say Presently in the same Moment thou shalt die For a Curse doth not want twenty four hours that it may operate as neither likewise doth Sin require an interval for the Guilt and deserved Punishment of the same which was expresly seen while an impure Man endeavouring to vindicate the reeling Cart wherein the Arke of the Covenant was carried from a fall payed the Punishment of his boldness by sudden Death But seeing Death consisted in the procreation of forbidden Seeds and of the Concupiscence of the Flesh it presupposeth the eating of the Apple and its Digestion And therefore those Words On the same Day thou shalt die the Death or shalt be made Mortal also thou shalt suffer punishment by Death doubled in thee and thy Posterity do strengthen the proposed Truth of our Position But there is no original Sin accounted of from the first afterwards or unremissibly derived on all Posterity but that which from the eating of the Apple thenceforth defiled the whole Nature because it tranferred the Propagation of mankinde on the Flesh
of eternal Life that is a Superiority over the necessities of Death At length if death had happened from a Law from the Punishment and Curse of Sin it should be false that God had not made Death because in very deed and immediately Death had proceeded from God and not from a natural Cause or that of Nature corrupted And by so much a stronger right where the same Person the Almighty Creator is the Law-giver like as also the Executer Last of all Sin is a mental Being or a Non-Being which cannot produce a real and actual Being And therefore Death at its Beginning had not proceeded from natural Causes even as at this Day Death doth arise in bruit Beasts equally as in us and therefore Death in its Beginning had been different in the whole kind from that at this day And therefore the Text should speak that which is ridiculous God made not Death if by reason of disobedience he had cursed Nature that it should die It is therefore of necessity that the Death of Man in its Beginning began and was made from second Causes altogether natural whereby we die at this day Also at this day Death hath reciprocally invaded through the natural Causes of defiled Nature even as in times past in its Beginning Indeed although Adam became Mortal from eating of the Apple yet his Death happened not but naturally some Ages after and from Old Age as from second Causes Far therefore be a Law an opposing thereof Sin a Curse in the original of Death appearing so many Ages after from second Causes speaking as it were in our presence Therefore every and the total Cause whereby Man hath immediately framed Death for himself is to be seen in the Position For although we are now Mortal yet we die not when we will and when we desire Because Death proceeded not from the Will or from Sin but from the Apple Neither indeed because Death it self was in the Apple as in a mortal Poyson but there was in the Apple the Concupiscence of the Flesh an incentive of Lust a be-drunkening of Luxury for a Beast-like Generation in the Flesh of Sin which Flesh carried with it the natural Causes of Defects and necessities of Death Wherefore it is likely to be true if the Serpent had not been able to obtain of Man that by Sinning he should eat of the Apple that he had cast an Apple cropped from thence unto the Root of some lawful Tree that by this means the Enemy of our Life might rejoyce to have introduced Death And that thing is sufficiently gathered from the Text which doth not say If thou shalt eat of that Tree but he saith In whatsoever day thou shalt eat thou shalt die the Death As if he should denounce that that danger of Death to come was fore-ordained For for this purpose the World was created and the Instruments of Generation were given unto Man because the Corruption of Nature the necessity of regeneration in a Saviour and the virgin Purity thereof was foreseen Let therefore those brawlings cease whether Eve ate an Apple or indeed a Fig. For the Text calls an Apple That which is pleasing to the Eye but a Fig doth not so allure by the sight of it And that one only Tree was of that Property whereof then there was not the like nor at this day is there another read to exist among created Things Finally the Words of the Text I will multiply thy Miseries and thy Conceptions so far off is it that they do signifie the Indignation of God and much less his Curse Yea rather they denote his love toward the devoted Sex For truly there is none which knows not that by how much the Life of the devoted Sex shall be the more miserable by so much also that it is nearer to the Son of Man for otherwise tribulations which God sendeth on his Saints and Martyrdom it self should by an equal right be Curses I will add last of all that as the Works of the Flesh are devillish So the Text I will put Enmities between the Seed of the Woman and thy Seed doth fully or plainly confirm this Position For first of all the Woman of whose Seed God there speaketh is the God-bearing Virgin which as a Virgin hath left no other Seed an Enemy to the Serpent but the Sons of Light the Sons of God and those who are renewed by the holy Spirit who have no Enmities with the Eggs of any creeping thing but only with the Sons of the Devil and Darkness forasmuch as they keep the Seeds of Sin Therefore the Text there promiseth a future Regeneration in the God-bearing Virgin calling those that are not renewed the Seed of the Devil because they are Adamical Flesh Therefore those things being heeded which I have already above demonstrated original Sin doth not properly expect a quickning or the moment of hecceity For although the Soul cannot be guilty of Sin before it be Yet seeing original Sin is in the Contagion of the Flesh it self is presently in the supposition of the concrete or composed Body after the manner of its receiver and assoon as there is a sexual mixture of the Seeds according to that saying For behold I was conceived in Iniquities before the coming of the Soul because in Sins my Mother hath conceived me For Sin is in the same point wherein Death consisteth the which indeed is in the very mixture of the Seeds For Death is immediately in the Archeus but not in the Soul which thing the sometimes mortal indisposition it self of the Archeus proveth from whence the conception is made voide which before now was in its whole hope vital And although the impurity of the material thing supposed be before the Flesh thereby generated and therefore also before the Soul yet there is not properly Sin unless the Soul â—all put that on There is therefore a far different infection of original Sin than of any other Sins whatsoever which require a consent of the Soul For other Sins the Soul it self committeth but original Sin defiles the Soul not consenting because the Thingliness or Essence of that original Sin is the very Flesh of Sin For neither therefore is it called the Soul of Sin but the Flesh of Sin because the Soul is defiled by the Flesh But the Devil not from elsewhere than from himself Therefore Man admires mercy but not the Devil Therefore from the good pleasure of the Creator the Apple did carry in it not only the Concupiscence of the Flesh but consequently also the generation of Seed but there was not therefore a Faculty in the Apple of propagating the sensitive Soul The Arbitrator of the World in creating would oblige himself to create every living Soul in every soulified Body when corporeal Dispositions had come unto the bound of enlivening For therefore the Apple presently after it was eaten disposed the Arterial Blood unto a Seed and from thence into a sensitive Soul And that thing was
to be sensitive doth not shew the unseperable Essence of an Animal And seeing otherwise the definition of every thing is from the Essence of the thing as they will have it but man according to his Essence was made in a full possession of Immortality and henceforth of an Eternal Duration according to his Soul the Schools could not believe that man by reason of a sensitive Soul alone was essentially an Animal Especially while they believed his Essence to depend on an Eternal Duration and an uncorruptible Soul or Form All which absurdities I acknowledge to have crept into and to have remained in the Schools by reason of the truth of our Position being unknown Even hitherto I have established the Position out of the holy Scriptures Now again the same by the Authorities of Fathers which matter B. Augustine hath seemed to have understood before others saying After what manner had it shamed Man of the Transgression of a Law when as his very Members had not known shame As if he should say His Members were stirred up unto the Concupiscence of the Flesh and acts of his Privie Parts presently after the Eating of the Apple Their Eyes were opened but for this they were not opened that they might know what might be performed by them through the cloathing of Grace when as their Members knew not how to resist their will And dost thou not blush at that Disease or that thou although shamefac'd dost confess that that Lust entred into Paradise And to impute it unto Husbands and Wives before Sin He who was to be without Sin would be born without the Concupiscence of the Flesh not in that Flesh of Sin but in the likeness of sinful Flesh As if he should say whatsoever is born from Copulation although it had been born in Paradise and before Sin would have been and is the Flesh of Sin Seeing that alone which is not born of Copulation is not the Flesh of Sin Whatsoever off-spring is born from Concupiscence or of the Flesh of Sin is obliged unto Orignal Sin unless it be born again in him whom the Virgin conceived without Concupiscence The Flesh of Christ drew a mortality from the mortality of his Mothers Body because she found not the Concupiscence of a Copulatresse For indeed as Original Sin is not derived on the Posterity any other way than by the Concupiscence of the Flesh So it must needs be that in the Apple was included the Concupiscence from whence the humane stock degenerated and was vitiated in generating For truly if off-springs could have been generated any otherwise than by carnal Copulation the Matrimonial act had been unlawful Whereunto this every-way convincing Argument serveth That act before the Apple was eaten was either unlawful and not thought of or it was lawful If it were unlawful now our Position is proved But if lawful therefore whatsoever I have above described out of Augustine is false Seeing therefore they had now actually felt the effect of the eaten Apple or the Concupiscence of the Flesh in their Members in Paradise presently it shamed them because their Members which before they could rule at their pleasure were afterwards moved by a proper incentive of lust At length how greatly Virginity hath alwayes pleased the Bridegroom of the Soul doth clearly enough appear out of divers Histories of the Saints And indeed in Cana of Galilee the Bridegroom having left his Bride followed the Lord Jesus and it is that Disciple whom Jesus therefore so greatly loved The same thing was familiar unto Alexius Aegidius and to very many others especially with poor Women-Virgins For indeed the infinite goodness from the proper motion of its good pleasure from Eternity created Man and fore-loved him with so great a love that he determined to co-knit his own Divinity unto him and to enlighten him with the Light which enlightneth every man that cometh into this World and to Adopt him for the Son of God giving him Power to become the Son of God by the new Birth which new Birth before Sin was not necessary Seeing therefore he requireth People to be re-born of God therefore before Sin they were all born of God which thing Lucifer with his own Spirits seeing through a long-since Pride of his Beauty and since his fall being wholly become Envious supposed that he was wiser than God who had raised up a vile creature unto that height wherefore he aspired to exceed God whom he had not yet seen and to throw him down from his Seat of Majesty Presently afterwards he after that he had paid the punishment of his Sins being more cruelly wroth saw also that Eve being a Virgin was by the onely Goodness of God without all desert and freely now appointed for the aforesaid Instrument of that Adoption and Mother of Men Therefore he endeavoured to hinder the Love of God through the Eating of the Apple Because as seeing that the Lasciviousness and Concupisence of the Flesh implanted in the same was Diametrically opposite unto Gods intention Therefore the Eating of the Apple was not forbidden unto man by a Law but by a fatherly Admonition neither is Original Sin from the Transgressions of a Law from the Eating of the Apple as being forbidden food but by Reason of the effect arising from the Apple and the properties inserted in the Apple After another manner the Transgression or Eating did offend onely in a Voluntary Act but not for Posterity unless Naturally and by the second Causes of a brutal Copulation following from thence otherwise in our first Parents impossible it had inverted the intention of Divine Generation Yea Original Sin fell not so properly on the guiltless Posterity as the effect of Generation the which indeed hath brought forth an Adulterous Beast-like Devilish Generation and plainly uncapable of the Kingdom of God and of Union with and Enjoyment of God By Reason of the Similitude whereof those that were born in Adultery were excluded from the Participation of Heaven But let us feign the opposite thing to wit that our Parents were conscious that there was a Law declared by God the Creator of the Universe touching the forbidden Apple and that upon such an account Death was foretold unto him and all his Posterity and undoubtedly came unto them but at least-wise an irregular Sin being so bold and so ungodly and cruel a Wickedness on all their Posterity could not be forgiven without a great note of Contrition Neither had God how Merciful and Good soever straightway so suddenly made that man fruitful with so great a Blessing and substituted the other living Creatures under his Feet he not being ignorant that neither of them did Grieve Repent Pray but only it shamed them and that they endeavoured as Fools to hide themselves from God and to cover their privy Parts with Leaves Therefore I collect from thence that on the same day not only Mortality entred through Concupiscence But moreover that it presently
Fishes before the Floud Because then one onely Fountain did water the whole Earth and the Sea stood on the other part of the Globe whose other half was calfed dry Land And so Fishes were onely of the Sea while the whole World was an undivided Continent in the middle or heart whereof one onely Fountain being divided into four Rivers did water the whole Earth Therefore Cock-boats or Skiffs had not as yet been made known so fishing in the Sea was unaccustomed Neither also did the Habitation of men occupie the shoares For one onely and vast Continent of the Earth gave pleasures enough to the Husband-men that they detested the barren Sea made frightfull by a thousand Tempests Gen. chap. 1. v. 28. It is read that first of all the Dominion of the Sea was given to man and then over the Fowls of Heaven and thirdly over all living Creatures which move upon the Earth yet when as the speech is of meats Chap. 1. v. 29. Every Herb and Tree is given for meat And Chap. 1. v. 30. All living Creatures of the Earth and Birds of Heaven and whatsoever is moved upon the Earth having a living Soul is given to men that they might have that which they might eat Yet the Fishes are no where read to have been granted as neither the Fishes of the Sea to have been brought over to Adam that they might obtain their names From which particulars it is presently plain to be seen that no Herbs Trees or any creeping things were contrary to man or for a Medicine of destruction unto him Likewise the restriction for Birds and what things do move themselves upon the Earth doth exclude the Fishes Wherefore as soon as after the Floud by the dividing of the one Continent the Springs and Floud-gates diffused themselves from the lowest bottom Fishes being allured by the sweetness of the down-sliding waters some remained in Rivers and Fens others in the mean time through a new thorow-mingling and liberty of the Floud ascending out of the Sea Therefore let Fishes be fleshes although before not used by man Fleshes I say which after the Floud should be like unto Pot-herbs otherwise the flesh of flying Fouls did nor repay or supply the Rooms of Pot-herbs but Corns as four-footed Beasts had now long since from the beginning supplied the place of pulses Therefore our first Parent being banished into the Earth and being full of miseries weariness and repentance through the leasure of most ample Ages perceived his nature now to be defiled with corruption and wanting preservation Lastly as necessity is the Mother of Wits and Inventions he began to meditate by what reason or meanes he might prevent the inward Calamities of life and especially the injuries of a Meteor In which labour the eldest of his Sons began thorowly to weigh the Nativities of fruits their prosperous and unfortunate increases whence Agriculture or Tillage was the first Philosophy The other Son also noted the properties and Societies of living Creatures whence by the undoubted hope of a Flock a quiet life is led This indeed was Zoosophie or the wisdom of keeping living Creatures together But their successors making afterwards a more plentifull progress joyning the decrees of the Stars with the observations of their Predecessors observed the denounced successive changes of things with a profitable and pleasant observation Therefore Astrologie the Chambermaid of Tillage thus arose Notwithstanding the dispensations of naturall things have remained altogether obscure even as also among all men the knowledge of ones self is the last and hardest of all things But the generations or births of Diseases their Remedies and Curings which as yet then were most rare or seldom were far more obscure For at first every one brought the Remedies which had profited him into open view without envy But Hypocrates first laid up his Observations into a written style or method in which labour he felt the divine assistance which he had not known But Galen as it were the North winde having seemed to himself to have dispersed the vain Clouds of desires having filched many things from every place boasted that he had raised up the Speculations of the Elements first qualities Complexions and humours And dedicated all the works and fortunes as well of found as invalid nature to these which things afterwards the Greek Nation plentifully increased By which suppositions the Moores striving for the Victory built loose experiments upon them This therefore was the Originall and condition of bringing forth Medicine and these were its inventers At length in these it was at a stand neither afterwards made it a progress Galen being instructed by his Elders observing that fire was quenched by water and that water being heated by fire did vanish away supposing that he held the Hare by the Eares boldly constituted almost all Diseases and their Remedies in those first Bodies and their qualities For he said The fire was at enmity with the water and this with it whence he established it by a generall decree that there is in us the combate of four Elements fighting in us by a continuall Warre And that there doth skirmish in us a continuall and unexcusable strife of contraries Wherefore although nothing should weary us from without yet it would come to passe that sometimes a distemper or Disease and ruine should happen of their own accord That death I say should break out of the composition of the Elements This indeed was to be winked at in Galen But not in Christians if they do not teach that in Adam there was a like necessity of composition before as there was after sin To wit if the composition of Adam stood connexed unto four encountring Elements Therefore all the Schooles do determine that onely contraries should be the remedies of contraries To wit whereby every excess being notably marked with the name of a Disease might be reduced into a mediocrity or mean That plausible and stupid Doctrine easily pleased all that were inclined to a sluggishness of subscribing Because it was that which might easily be conceived by a rusticall sense a great compendium and in all places by any one and hence therefore it was most greedily drunk in Galen the while although he knew that cutting off or resection was privately opposite to a Being that is born yet he doubted not to reduce the withdrawing of parts or humours in respect of the members unto the order of contraries And he neglected the Family of privations as born by an adulterous congress Hence all things universally which should disagree in number scituation magnitude proportion afflux or eflux he took from their due order as though they were contraries that he might make an establishment of his own foolish Rule As if Medicine did not work naturally but stood by learning by demonstration alone Hence at length by a most generall absurdity he dictated the naturall indications or betokenings of Diseases to be made onely by the oppositions of contraries For
doth Grasse contain Cowes Milk Therefore he bewraies his own Idiotisme because he will have every coagulable Body of what sort soever to be Tartar That is whole Nature to be Tartar for the introducing of the cause of Diseases also out of the most refined Liquors For even as if he had been to have said that the matter of a Disease is taken from created Bodies but what then had he made himself besides ridiculous doth he not the same thing now while he tieth up every Body as well that which is coagulated as that ever congulable under Tartar to finde out the cause of a Disease For what new thing doth he bring which before was not known besides the name of Tartar Hath not Galen known that the material cause of Diseases is coagulated or coagulable Therefore by the name of Tartar he hath at least dazled the eyes Seeing coagulable Bodies do not assume a hardness elsewhere than from the appointment of their own seed but not after the manner wherein vvine and Lee do strain themselves together in acting First of all these things do resist the holy Scriptures and his very own position which teach that Diseases have come into man from sin and the position that Tartar was sprinkled on the Virgin Nature And by consequence that before transgression Bodies had their Creams in them and not from Tartar For he had found in the History of Nature if not an Idiot that no Liquor doth undergoe a coagulation by virtue of Tartar but from the intention of the Creator shining forth in the seeds And therefore whatsoever is condensed is a new Generation but not the ripening of a fore-existing Tartar For else there had been Tartar not onely in meats before sin but whole nature had been nothing but a Disease and the cause of death a punishment before an offence and death had arisen from the Creator For Paracelsus elsewhere thorowly weighing that favours do remain in the thing transchanged wandering as yet farther off thought that Essences do not die that they are not corrupted lastly that they are not transchanged but that they remain safe in the dungs of living Creatures and he perswaded himself that where no or perhaps the slender footsteps of favours did remain that their antient Essences also remained safe being badly instructed by the Schools that the same accident did not wander from subject into subject And so if he had been pressed he had denied also the the transmutations of things For he would have fruitful fields dunged because that the Essences of Vegetables being safe in the mud as knowing no death should sub-enter into the Roots of things sowed Being no more mindful of his own Doctrine wherein the dung of living Creatures is deprived of every property of the composed Body and is onely the last matter of Salts But elsewhere he will have the dung to contain the most especial matter of the Tartar and that in this respect the undunged fields of Bohemia do yield lesse tartarous fruits than those which were fattened with a stony or earthy juyce or food or at length with the dung of living Creatures wherein indeed abroad in the Air in a long race of years this earthy Sumen or fattening juyce doth voluntarily melt Because this Sumen-soil should produce a Tartar in Herbs more wild and Rockie than dung so often reâ—cocted and refined into the matter of Salts In which respect some filths do wash out of Towels like Soap And Paracelsus hath grown to that insolency with his Tartar that as oft as any thing did gnaw the Bladder or bring on the Strangury or pissing by drops he presently nameth that thing a Chalk or Lime a frosty Tartar or any such like thing As if Lime and Tartar were now Sunonymalls as though any thing could be calcined in the middle of the Urine without burning as if Lime did not presuppose the matter whereof the Stones consist Seeing there is not ashes which was not before a Coal Finally he acknowledgeth also the Tartar of Marrow not to be coagulable But how knew he this Tartar which he could never see For he will have himself believed in all things who knew most perfectly the Beings and all the properties of the Microcosme But why doth he now call Tartar a Being not coagulable but that all Diseases will they nill they may obey his fiction of Tartars For I being a Christian could not admit of Microcosmical Dreams as they have been delivered by Paracelsus That is by literally and not metaphorically understanding them which sense or meaning doth alwayes banish it self from the History of natural things Neither do I suffer his Tartarers but according to the same Paracelsus I will say we must believe no man in that which he cannot prove by the fire And therefore I may not consent that Lime is burnt in us as neither that Tartar is bred in us because Tartar is not to be acknowledged but in Winy Liquors but that the matter of Tartar doth remain from Generation to Generation through the Shops of the digestions I reject it as a Fable CHAP. XXXII Nourishments are guiltless or innocent of Tartar 1. Physitians at this day do by little and little accustom themselves to the Doctrine of Tartar 2. An Argument against Tartar 3. The Tartar of a Disease should not be a Creature 4. The Thistles and Thorns not to signifie Tartar 5. Two womb Sisters in nature 6. By what means the transmutations of solid things may be 7. An unbelieving invention 8. An impossibility some impertinences 9. The unconstancy of Paracelsus 10. A frivolous thing 11. Absurd Consequences upon the Position of Tartar 12. The Archeus prepares matter for himself while he doth not finde the same 13. The Errour of Paracelsus about the Idea of the Microcosme in Bread about Anatomies declared in meats and Medicines 14. Other absurdities 15. Some notable things against the Tartar of meat 16. Manly Age is lesse subject to Worms 17. A stone growing to a Tooth hath deceived Paracelsus 18. Hence another fiction hath sprung 19. The aforesaid assertion and some absurdities are discovered 20. Some absurdities concerning the Stone of a Tooth 21. A frivolous thing of Paracelsus 22. What a dental or Tooth-stone is 23. It s Birth and manner of making 24. The Family Government of the Teeth 25. Teeth have their Age. 26. Why Cold is an enemy to a Tooth 27. An Errour about the hardness of Stones in us 28. Why the Stone of the Reins doth at length arise pale 29. The unconstancy of Paracelsus 30. The neglect of the same man 31. An instance brought on a Maxim THE more refined Physitians do so by degrees go back from the Humorists the Schools that with Paracelsus they now ascribe almost all Diseases unto the one thing Tartar wherefore it hath behoved me to decypher the beginnings of my repentance and how far youthful and inconsiderate credulity hath in times past seduced me In the mean time seeing the counsel
of judgement doth spring forth from the understanding through the Grace of God with a free choyce of the assenting will I will not compel any one Every one may uncompelledly choose as much as the free gifts received of the truth shall shew themselves in the understanding I likewise being also greedy of the truth of Nature although a dull searcher began to meditate if there be any Tartar in us with a property of subsisting to wit all or every digestion being neglected and finished in us by the retentive faculty of re-assuming a Cream against our will that shall be either miraculous or supernatural or plainly natural or deceitful or divelish which although it be not above Nature yet by reason of its unaccustomed order in Nature it is sequestred into a peculiar rank But whatsoever doth subsist onely by art seeing essential Forms are secluded from the power of Artificers the artificial Being thence arising doth not fall under a Medicinal Consideration Therefore from a sufficient numbring up of parts the aforesaid division of Tartar is commended Again although Tartar were diseasie and thus far besides the intent of humane Nature yet it should not be in its own entity besides nature seeing every material Being is enclosed in the bosom of Nature therefore whether Tartar be supernatural or meerly natural at least it should be a Creature therefore Tartar should be created from the beginning seeing none is read to be created forthwith after sin neither any matter to be formally transchanged by the curse Therefore the Creator had made the punishment before the fault and death in the matter which resisteth the truth and Text. After what manner soever therefore Tartar be taken it was not created by God And therefore it is not any wise created Indeed the seeds of Thistles and Thorns were promised to the first Husbandmen not that thenceforth through the curse a new Creature in all nourishments should be transchanged or immingled into or with Tartar which it had not been before the fall for the curse had gone before the sin and the punishment had been brought in before the guilt For Paracelsus ought to have known that there are in nature two Sisters of the same womb or Mother among tangible things To wit resolving and coagulating which do mutually receive each other by course For a Liquor waxeth solid and solid things do likewise melt Because that successive change is a Law written in the Stamp of Bodies For truly a solid Body is never transchanged into another Body but it is first reduced by resolving into its first matter which is the Liquor to wit which it had before it was coagulated neither must we believe that there is any Body at this day whose matter was not created from the beginning neither was there after the first six dayes any void thing in the Body which by a new Creation of Tartar following after sin was supplyed And much lesse that God had created Tartar in us for Thistles and Thorns which our first Parent and capital transgressor had not much more principally originally and capitally felt and by consequence likewise all Diseases which Paracelsus deviseth to arise from thence Seeing God is not an excepter of persons but a just and severe revenger for every one their deserts Lastly very many things do hinder me to believe that any Tartar doth traiterously enter into us and that although it be rightly subdued and transchanged by our digestion yet that being afterwards mindful of its malignity it severeth it self from the company of the good nourishment doth retain its antient inclination of hurting and its antient Hostilities of coagulating For indeed although Adam had not sinned yet Wine had not therefore been without Tartar Milk without Cheese Rivers without Stones and Meats without excrements Surely the emunctories of dungs were before sin neither appointed that onely after the fall they should serve for their uses Surely the Tartar of Wine it self hath deluded this first inventer of Tartars being ignorant that that Tartar had proceeded from its Creation as a profitable and good Creature having proper ends according to the intention of God By how much the more that the inventer of the Tartar of a Disease doth confess Tartar to be more excellent than Wine but excrements are not more excellent than the Bodies whose superfluities they are At leastwise it is not reasonable that a Being should possess a great virtue which it had drowned in Nature from the curse of sin But if a Body in as much as it is coagulable is Tartar now the whole Universe shall not be free from this guilt but it is the Son of cursing and not of Creation In the next place Tartar of Wine is resolved by the boyling of water and the water being evaporated it again groweth together into a Powder which is now called a Cream But it being once subdued by our digestion it is no more afterwards coagulated into a Powder For even as there is need of boyling water to dissolve so there is need of the digestive faculty to transchange Therefore he should be a Physitian of wicked Counsel who should give Tartar to drink if it might again be coagulated within and should traiterously adhere to the Vessels For if after absolute digestion any thing should retain its antient force of coagulating and thereby should bring forth some Centuries of Diseases that thing by all prerogative should be the very Tartar of Wine it self under whose Banner the others have given their names in the power of Paracelsus But besides the Tartar of Wine is not any more coagulated into its antient state but it layes aside all hope of hardening so that it cleanseth the stomach of muckinesses or filths therefore much lesse could the Tartars of meats do that Furthermore if any Tartar having entred out of the Earth into meats should again retake the drawn Counsels of a Cream in us surely that Tartar first undergoing in Herbs and lesser Cattel and so in meats themselves the same Lawes of transmutation it being banished and separated from the same had either been like Tartar or otherwise it had lost in them the wild nature of coagulating But seeing it shall not exercise in meats that treason of hardening neither shall it retain or hath it the properties of Tartar after what sort I pray shall it resume that in us which at first when it was made an Herb or afterwards when the flesh of Cattel For how shall it forget its treachery in its first transmutation into an Herb and afterwards in its second into a Beast and should at first repeat it in us by its third transmutation with Pot-herbs with Milk But if it had been formally transchanged and had lost the essence and property of Tartar while it did put on the vital Spirit and substance of a Cabbage Grasse Milk and flesh and was truly made vital in these the bruitishness of Tartar being laid aside how I say and whence shall it finde
in it unless in a corporeal manner of Adamical propagation that is in manner of a figure Wherefore it also afterwards understandeth willeth loveth all things by a blinde apprehension alwayes addicted unto it For it hath known its own immortality as it feels or perceives its damnation and it complains that that is done to it as an injustice Because the love of it self is onely to excuse its excuses in sins as it were committed in the dayes of ignorance and innocency with much frailty layings in wait of enemies and a want of sufficient grace neither that an eternal punishment is deservedly due for a momentary transgression Therefore it is mad and hateth God especially because it knoweth the Arrest of the losse to be unchangeable and a liberty of escaping to be prevented for ever Therefore its hope being cut off it passeth into a finall and enduring desperation from the very beginning of its entrance unto place where there is no piety compassion consolation or revoking And because the understanding doth naturally transform it self into the Idea of the thing understood which was known to the Heathens and deciphered by the figure of Protheus that is into the similitude of evil Spirits its objects From hence there is alwayes within a present hatred of God and of the Blessed desperation cursing damnation and the raging torments of infernal Spirits The Almighty vouchsafe out of his own goodness to break the Snares extended in the way for us by hellish hatred Amen Let these things suffice concerning the Soul for the natural knowledge of its own self Now therefore I enter unto Nature that I may make manifest the Seat of the Soul in the Body CHAP. XXXVI A mad or foolish Idea 1. A doubt of the Authour about mortal poysons 2. The ignorance of the Authour from the Idea unknown 3. A very powerful force of those Idea's 4. Ignorance is the guide of Physitians 5. Another Ignorance 6. The doubting of the Authour 7. The confession and acknowledgement of the same 8. A Prayer of the Authour 9. The existence of the minde in us 10. The floating of the Authour 11. A History of the Authour about the examination of poysons 12. What hath incited the Authour hereunto 13. What he hath learned from thence 14. That the understanding is of the Essence of the Soul 15. That our will and memory dwells in the frail life and why love is required from the whole 16. How the understanding shakes its Beams into the Head 17. A distinction of some Lights 18. A certain act of feeling of the Powers of the Duumvirate and the proper manner of the Soul in its own state of Lights 19. A difference of Knowledges in respect of place 20. A clearing up of Remedies for the Head 21. What the Schools do well teach concerning these Remedies and what defectively 22. There is a diversity of understanding in the state of innocency and now 23. The difficulties of the Authour 24. The knowledge of the faculties of the minde is far different from that of any other whatsoever 25. The difficulty of searching for madness and the manner proposed by the Authour 26. A co-knitting of the minde with the sensitive Soul 27. Why the minde is not in the heart as neither in the Head 28. A convincing Argument proveth that it is in the Duumvirate 29. The glory of divine compassion doth shine forth in our griefs or weaknesses 30. The first degree of madness 31. The second is in a drowsie sickness 32. The inward obstacles of the sensitive Soul 33. The memory doth first fail 34. The following arrivals or commings of defects 35. The conceits as well of a sound man as of a mad man are made with Idea's 36. Some mad Idea's are alwayes and every where equal others not 37. The implanted Spirit of the Midriffs being hurt madnesses do remain for life 38. Things worthy to be noted 39. The Confessions of mad men being cured 40. What conceptual Idea's may do for a mad man 41. Excentrical and poysonous Idea's wherein they may co-agree 42. The power in a mad man which overcometh Colds 43. The immortality of the minde is proved from hence 44. Whence the Treatise concerning madness may be derived 45. An extinguishing of a mad Idea is intended 46. The manner of extinguishing the allied blot and a double manner against madness 47. Some Histories of the thing done 48. The Remedy of a Hydrophobia or a Disease causing a fear of water and of the biting of a mad Dog before a Hydrophobia 49. A repeated History of a mad man 50. Considerations of plungings under water 51. A ridiculous thing in an added Remedy of Galen 52. A miraculous curing of madness COncerning the action of Government and likewise concerning the Duumvirate or Sheriff-dom in office even as becometh a natural Philosopher I have written that I might discover the Seat of the phansie or imagination and might describe the strife about the 〈◊〉 or Seat of the faculties of the minde Notwithstanding I being long since in doubt knew not after what manner an understanding man might degenerate into a mad man I knew indeed that in sordid and poysonous things there were certain natural endowed powers not indeed understanding ones but those which might answer in affinity to those So as that they might seduce our understanding against our wills into their own obediences as the biting of a mad Dog the stroke of the Tarantula the eating of Night-shade c. For I thought that in Feverish filths their own co-like faculties did inhabit wherein the dance presently troubled me To wit because in the same Fever cruel raging madnesses had succeeded ridiculous ones I from thence perswading my self that in the agreement of madness there were not disagreeing effects For neither at the first view did I sufficiently heed that poysons do wax mild or are exasperated by ripening And then I looked back on a Lunacisme because it did invade and go back together with its own conjunction of a Star without all Society of poyson Also that madness did return and was silent without any vice of the life running between I wholly doubted being ignorant as yet that besides corporal poysons there were also poysonous images impressions the most absolute and most efficacious Mistresses of the vital Spirits the which our intellectual Powers do as willingly as readily obey as long as we are enclosed in the prison of our Body In the mean time I have known by Faith that the minde is immortal and that by the same right it s own understanding doth remain unpolluted by the contagious of the Body because it was not meet that that which was immortal and infinite or without end should be diminished or hurt by frail or mortal things On the one side therefore I did willingly confess humbly my own ignorance but on the otherside I did contemplate on the miserable and never narrowly searched into condition of a mad man and the so scanty Remedies in the
greatest evils and those mostly to be pitied Because Physitians deceiving the World by a vain Doctorship did perswade it that they had thorowly viewed all things neither that there was a Medicine for so great an evil because the Brain had equally put on an unequal distemper as it were a Garment yet they being asked which was the primary distemper of the qualities could not hitherto express it by a suitable Etymology Wherefore the barren whisperings of the Schools being despised after that I had taken notice that hypochondrial madnesses were without controversie belonging to the Midriffe I at first began to doubt whether that cursed poyson should be brought unto the Brain through certain singular or particular Arteries But at least that suspition presently displeased me because every one should labour with an unexcusable madness unless perhapt in wise men those Channels should remain perpetually stopped and so they should be diseasie persons that they might not become such Likewise I have noted a difference between feverish doatages and madness because this indeed might very often remain safe for a long time without a lavishment of the health also in late Nephews without the discommodities of the seed and life Indeed I often left off the matter then to me unsearchable and I oftentimes from compassion took it up again And at length I saw clearly that I was supported by false principles that I was led aside by the credulity and authorities of the Heathens and deluded by the unknown qualities of Diseases And that thing I thus at first conceived and by degrees being more and more confirmed I stript my self of the Doctrine which I had supped up in the Schools concerning the Soul and concerning Diseases And then from the search of the functions of the understanding I committed my minde in rest and poverty unto the Lord that he might perform what should be his good pleasure concerning me yet I was not so indifferent but that I alwayes had a desire to profit my neighbour Therefore I begged of the Lord that I might become known to my self not onely in acknowledging my own deep nothingness morally but that as a natural Phylosopher I might behold or clearly view the very powers of the minde For truly I did suppose nothing was alike pleasing or profitable after the wisdom of Divine things as once to behold my Soul as the Image of God Wherefore I revolved the question concerning the Seat or Marriage-Bed of the immortal Soul and therefore I diligently enquired with my self whether it were so wholly in the whole Body that without a dependance on the Bride-Bed or Central Seat it should wander as a banished person not being tied unto certain Cottages or mansions and it being wholly so in the finger that this being cut off the whole should depart from the whole or through a hastening or speedy chance of fear it should return inwards Therefore I found the soul to be homogeneal or one and the same in kind simple and not to be divided else neither could it be immortal And then I knew that its whole did shine only radially on the ignoble parts after the manner of the light of the Sun which should in the mean time as it were lurk in its Throne or Seat and from thence should shine throughout the whole body being altogether unknown to the sensitive soul whose life neverthelesse the mind it self should be Verily even as the God of all is intimately present with every one of us yet is he naturally unknown nor felt or perceived by us And then a debate arose in my mind whether there were many centers and those divided according to the vital necessities of the radicall bowels But at length I knew that the mind was more tied up to one bowel than to another as well in respect of the offices of seeing as of understanding And at length therefore I was reduced unto the individual bride-bed of one bowel And while I enquired into the head and heart and weighed the doubtfulnesses of Authours I presently for certainty found that I which I formerly until now detested should depart into the precepts of the Heathens who as they were denied the knowledge of the true God so also the knowledge of the divine image which neverthelesse is the object of healing Therefore I being destitute of authorities and companions knew not whence I might begin the judgment of so great an heap untill at length God permitting it I being destitute of humane help and endeavour under many years diligent search and hope of knowing the bride-bed of the soul an unwonted chance befel me the history whereof I will declare For I was diligently heedful about the poysons of Vegetables believing that the poysons of so great moment were not hurtful to Adam before sin Seeing the Almighty created neither death nor a medicine of destruction and so to have sent forth such cruel things not indeed that they might kill man but because he was constrained in the sweat of his face to eat his bread to which diseases he was made subject also in sweats that he should extract Medicines for Diseases And therefore I did promise to my self that that poyson after the manner of a Keeper and a huske did cover some notable and Virgin-Power created for great uses and the which might by Art and Sweats allay poysons and cause them to vanish Wherefore I began divers wayes to stir or work upon Wolfs-bane And once when I had rudely prepared the Root thereof I tasted it in the top of my tongue For although I had swallowed down nothing and had spit out much spittle yet I presently after felt my skull to be as it were tied without side with a girdle Then at length some businesses of my Family unadvisedly befell me I cast up a certain account wandred about the house and finished all things according to what was requisite At length this besel me which never at another time that I felt that I did understand conceive savour or imagine nothing in the head according to my accustomed manner at other times but I percieved with admiration manifestly cleerly discursively and constantly that that whole office was executed in the Midriffs and displayed about the mouth of the Stomach and I felt that thing so sensibly and cleerly yea I attentively noted that although I also felt sense and motion to be safely dispensed from the head into the whole body yet that the whole faculty of discourses was remarkably and sensibly in the Midriffs with an excluding of the head as if the mind did at that time in the same place meditate of its own counsels Therefore I being full of the admiration and amazement of that unwonted percievance I noted with my self my own notions and began the examination of the same and of my own self after a more precise manner And I plentifully found and sifted out that I did far more cleerly understand and meditate all that space of time And so that
not Spiritual substances of a proper Name but only the living vital lights of Soulified Creatures The which notwithstanding are Created by God the Father only and are dispensed according to the requirance of Seminal dispositions I knew thirdly that every frail and Sensitive Soul did issue from the seeds occasionally and dispositively only and therefore that it did partake of nothing of likeness or unity with the Mind of man For although both were Created by God yet that they were both divided a sunder no otherwise than as a frail or Mortal Being from a future Immortal one or as Light that is to perish by blowing out from a substance which should be the shining Image or likeness of the God-head I knew in the fourth place that in the seed of Man dispositions and hopes lay hid unto such a frail or Mortal Soul no less than in the seed of a Dog unto a living Whelp Fiftly I knew that the Sensitive Soul even as I have proved concerning long Life in the Treatise of the entrance of Death into humane nature arose in us from sin and that it doth naturally remain afterwards through a successive coupling of the Sexes neither that the Mortal mind could be made by nature Man or any natural means 1. Because it was a Substance 2. Because that it was permanent or durable and therefore 3. That it could never be made from a perishing Being 4. That the mind therefore ought to be made of nothing after the manner of all Substances without the aid of Co-operating nature 5. And that therefore the Sensitive Soul before sin was not in us as neither necessary Next I knew in the sixth place that forthwith after transgression the mind was fast tied to the Sensitive Soul Because that in a Body subject to Death there was nothing more near or more a-kin to the mind wherein it might sit and that therefore the mind had sunk it self into that cleer and Vital beginning as in an Inn and had been annexed to it by God even unto the Period of Life For I have therefore beheld so many foolish madnesses fallacies defects errors and Treacheries of men yea and all madnesses which might utterly deny all the use of the Mind and might make its totall absence rather than its presence to be Suspected Seventhly I knew that the Mortal Soul forthwith after the fall did so over-darken the Mind in its Inn and over-spread it being idle and as it were detain it Sleeping that it did Govern not only corporal actions but it did for the most part so dim or blacken the very presence of the mind it self that it is able to do nothing at all readily in this Life as though it were no longe belonging to its own right For there is a Law in our Members resisting the Law of our Mind Lastly I felt or perceived a contrary or contentions disquietness sprung up which endeavoured to excuse the liberty and burden of sinning For howsoever the mind doth continually breath forth a vital beam into its vicaress the sensitive Soul because it is that which never keeps holiday is wearied or sleepeth nevertheless it seemed to be so servile to the mortal Soul in its faculties that it is unable to enjoy its own understanding freely but to yield to the mad will or pleasure of the sensitive Soul Wherefore I being easily seduced through the deformities of Diseases readily descended because I saw that Serpents and some Simples yea even our hous-hold excrements did every way alter the use of the mind indeed the powers and functions of these to become wholly oppressed and mad and that we who were constituted in so great a majesty under the image of the Divinity did become far more miserable than Beasts For I was incited hereunto because it did not seem agreeable to 〈◊〉 or possibility that any Poysonous frail Being and that which is unlike to the immortality of the Mind could Spurn against the Image of God that it should loose all right and Prerogotive at the will of a mad Dog and that the Power of the meanest thing should be enlarged beyond the excellency of a Being which is infinite in duration hereafter For it seemed that that ought not to be capable of suffering by a frail or Mortal thing whatsoever should by it self be immortal But moreover the mind of a prudent man is be-set for the most part by foolishness because almost every one doth labour in his own point of giddiness For whosoever loveth that which is not to beloved is ennared and who so keeps not a proportion of suitableness between things that are to be loved now he herein beholds plausible things as pleasing with an affection of madness For so Eve beheld the apple as beautiful and therefore as pleasing she presently took that apple and ate And that thing is so usual that the holy Scriptures say that the number of fools is infinite For I have gone head-long into these-fallacies of errors because I as yet knew not what the necessity and bond of the combination of the mind and of the Sensitive Soul was For indeed because the mind was now connexed unto the mortal Soul it stood bound to this by the right of an Inn so that although the mind were of it self not capable of suffering yet because they were both combined by a conjugal bond and bride-bed of unity so as that the mortal Soul did enjoy the sole Life of the immortal mind it was altogether necessary that as oft as the mortal Soul did suffer any thing by frail or mortal hurtful things or things hostile unto it it should consequently also suffer that very thing through an equality or likeness of wed-lock a conjugal unity and social right of hospitality Not indeed that therefore frail things should obtain a power over an immortal Being which is supereminently above it and of a diverse station but God would have the mind thus to suffer as it being hindered by the discommodities of its Inn it should be deprived of its own liberty of ampleness and should hearken to the straights and anguishes of its mansion For the immortal life of the mind is communicated to a mortal Soul Seat and Inn which life notwithstanding as otherwise every thing received is received after the manner and capacity of the receiver is made mortal in that which is connexed with it or in a mortal light And the which may therefore also be oppressed by mortal things that the Life may be wholly blown out and then the mind being deprived of its Inn is not indeed extinguished or annihilated but is compelled to depart by reason of an untying and annihilating of the bond Whatsoever therefore the mind seemeth to suffer under Life it self indeed remaineth safe but it doth not freely exercise its Offices because feeling or perceivance is in the middle of the Bond. For truly I have constantly considered the light of the Sun married as a husband to the Splendour of the Glo-worm so
Predicaments through the ignorance of which or one only point heathenisme hath overwhelmed the Schooles of Medicine with the contagion of blindness And all curing hath been believed to be subject unto naked qualities excesses of degrees relative respects and actions For from hence they have feigned Contraries to be Remedies of Contraries and no Disease to be mitigated by the goodness of Nature the mildness of Medicines and by the appeasing and repentance of the Archeus that was first disturbed but only by fighting skirmishing and war to be reduced into a mean or temperature of the first qualities So that seeing they think every Disease to be a Disposition likewise that all Remedies ought to be a naked Disposition or they are deceived in their position whence it follows that the taking away of the stone out of the Bladder shall never be able of it self to import a cure of the sick For truly seeing it is a Remedy onely privative whereunto an appeasing of the Archeus belongs but it is not a Disposition contrary to the Stone And much lesse a prohibitive of the foregoing matter which they suppose of necessity to be supplied from elsewhere uncessantly to flow thither nor to cease the Stone being taken away by the knife to wit if the Disposition generating the matter whereof shall not first cease Therefore according to the Schooles He that is cut for the Stone should be cured onely for a little space to wit as the Impediments of Functions are taken away otherwise produced and cherished by the Stone being present and also as the disposition mentally interposing is secondarily casually and by accident obliterated But the mattter is far otherwise For truly a seminal Disease is a creature which made and found out its own matters and its own Idea's in us after sin by an hereditary right of the Archeus neither had he it originally in Nature And therefore the root of Diseases ought totally to be unknown to all Heathenisme And seeing an essential definition is not to be fetched from the Genus of the thing defined and its constitutive difference even as I have taught in the Book of Feavers by reason of the manifold perplexities of Errors and ridiculous positions but altogether from a connexion of both Causes which are Beings in Nature and therefore that the primitive and Ideal cause of Diseases hath stood neglected hitherto It follows also that the definition knowledge essence and roots of a Disease have remained unknown And finally that curings have been instituted by accident with an ignorance of the universal disposition of internal properties their efficacie and interchangable course Truly I know as a Christian that a Disease is not a Creature of the first Constitution because it is that which hath taken its rootes from sin in the impurity of Nature which afterwards in their own spring have at length budded in Individuals For neither were created poysons Diseases as long as they were without us but then when the Archeus of the same was made domestical unto us through the forreign disposition of its middle life it raised up seminal Idea's in our Archeus even as Fire is struck out of a Flint Then I say Diseases are made unto us the fore-runners of Death from an occasional poyson Diseases therefore do continue with us when they have their provoking occasions subsisting in our Nature until neither their occasional matter be wasted away or at least until the Archeus be rid of his own perturbations or of his office For Diseases indeed came on us by Sin and afterwards in Nature now corrupted by Sin the ferments and ready obediences of matter waxed strong and so they pierced into the number and catalogue of Nature and even unto this day do most inwardly persevere with us after a singular manner Yet alwayes distinct from other created things in this that the created things of the first constitution have a proper existence in themselves but diseases neither are nor are able to subsist without us Because they proceed as it were from a formal light and the vital constitutive Beginning of us And therefore the natural Archeus and a Disease do pierce each other because they have a material co-resemblance But the Schooles when they heeded that Diseases do never exist without us supposed that our Body was the subject of Inhaesion of Diseases and consequently that Diseases were only accidents and therefore to be stirred up from an elementary distemperature because they apprehended them in a most prompt and rustical sence also for that cause they hoped that they should sufficiently and over vanquish Diseases by Heats and Colds And therefore they likewise decreed that every refreshment aid and help which nature being informed did require of the Physitian was not to be administred in shew of a refreshment in peace and tranquility but herein onely to prevail and that wars strifes contraries and discords were to be appointed whereby the hostile elementary qualities being cobroken in us they might by constraint return into a mediocrity of temperature that so they may restrain the injuries of Nature now corrupted by contrary injuries and subdue them by revenging Which thing surely they have thus judged nor have otherwise understood because that they knew no other action than that which from a superiority of the agent rules over the patient But surely those things do not savour of an help neither is the Law of Christ by whom all things were made conformable to those Lawes of the Schooles And so as elsewhere more largely either Christ is not the parent of Nature or an adversary to himself in Nature or such Heathenish speculations of healing are rotten The Schooles therefore have not considered that the matters of many Beings do not consist but in a strange Inne whereunto they were appointed Wherefore by reason of their different kind of manner of existing they thought a Disease to be a meer accident but predicamentally seperating the matter which a Disease might carry before it from a Disease As if an Embryo should be an accident because it is no where but in the womb Indeed it pleased the revenger of sin that Diseases with their matters as well that occasional as that equal and inward unto them should not subsist but in those whose the Diseases and offence should be and that without respect of the Being of one unto another For neither have the Heathenish Schooles ever considered as neither the Moderns who have been established on Paganish Beginnings that this relation of existence came unto them from the condition of sin and the procreation thereof from the Archeus sore shaken with perturbations Because such thoughts never entred into Heathenisme neither is it a wonder that the Gentiles knew not the force of Transgression although they do deliver by the Fable of Promotheus and Pandora that they learned something from the Hebrews Yet it is a wonder that they were ignorant that a Disease before it should be made ours ought to proceed from the
proper unto no nourishment which was unto that Apple so that it not only begat Seed in our first Parents a few hours after but also Dispositions to obtain by request a sensitive Soul from the Creator And that which otherwise happens in the Young in set Terms of Dayes and is perfected by certain degrees of Digestions that was presently compleated in the very vital Archeus of our first Parents And the Text doth insinuate that peculiar thing to be in the Apple because In the same day wherein he should eate of the Apple he should die the Death Because the Apple although it should anticipate or forestal the term of Dayes yet it should require a certaine term of Motion that after it should be turned into vital Blood it should also be endowed with a sensitive Soul For they who in the very point of Creation were formed into a Man and a Woman and not into Children in a short space also grew old or decayed on the same day into the maturity of Seeds and every necessity of Death and properties of second Causes For in a straight way all this falls perpendicularly or point blank on the post of the foundation of my Position on which the giddy or unconstant businesse of our Mortality is whirled about even unto this Day But at least-wise seeing Eve was made of the Rib of the Man that very thing doth insinuate a mark of Chastity and forbidden Copulation of the Flesh Because it is that which besides Whoredom contained Incest which thing was not hid from Adam Of which notwithstanding the Almighty after the fall of sin seemed to dispense withal granting Matrimony Therefore through occasion hereof it remaines diligently to search into whether the Act of Lust were compleated in Paradise Many will have Paradise to be free from filthiness because the Text saith Chap. 4. But Adam knew Eve his Wife who conceived and brought forth Cain saying I have possessed a Man by God But let these men pardon me For the contrary appeareth from the very Text. First of all The Text cited doth convince of nothing but that the ravishment of true Virginity because it is bloody doth not admit of Conception as a Companion And therefore Cain was not Conceived at the first turn but out of Paradise For otherwise 1. On the same day ye shall dye the death according to the truth of the Position denoteth that in the same place the filthiness was committed 2. The Woman is not called the Wife of Adam before the Fall as she is immediately after But the name of a Wife is not given not indeed unto Matrimony confirmed but onely unto it being finished 3. It was said onely to the Man Thou mayest not eat of this Tree Therefore it is read concerning the banishment of the Man to be made in the singular number Not indeed but that both Sexes sinned but because the Man had singularly deserved to be banished for his Whoredom 4. Therefore it is said Lest he stretch forth his hand unto the Tree of Life do eat of it and live for ever But it is not said least the Husband and Wife do eat 5. Adam at the first sight of the Beasts knew their Essences and Properties and also put right Names upon them But the Woman being seen he at first called her Wo-man because she was taken from Man But after the Fall he called her Hevah or The Mother of all living Because he at the first sight of her as yet knew not neither as yet had she that property from the Man and she learned it because she put it not on and stirred it not up but by sin For why had he changed the Essential Name of the Woman if she had not also changed her whole Nature 6. And next He with-drew her unto the Shrubs rather to commit his filthiness than for a cover of his shame For truly he might have covered his shame with Fig-leaves and have neglected his hiding through the Shrubs if he had not also had the signes of chastity corrupted 7. For truly if my Position be true That Death was caused onely through the Luxury of the Flesh His banishment followed not but after the act of filthiness 8. For he who but presently before knew not that he was naked After what manner did he presently know his Wife to be the Mother of all living unless he had committed something And Lastly The Text which saith unto the Serpent I will put enmities between the Seed of the Woman and thy Seed doth clearly denote that the Woman that before wanted Seed and altogether all the tickling thereof had now Seed However it is at least-wise I cannot but remarkeably admire the excellency of the Text which hath no where made even any deaf mention of the Concupiscence of the flesh but it every where covers the fowlness of the Flesh with the greatest silence by the obtained knowledge of the shame and involves an induced necessity of Death and a necessary requirance of Regeneration in the highest Mystery Determining that at length the fullness of dayes being compleated evil shall be spread out of the North over all the Inhabitants of the Earth The which I will by and by manifest Finally Nature being now degenerate it hath pleased the Almighty to raise up the Fall of Adam by Regeneration or a being born again And although he hath not restored unto us the antient clearness of Understanding and exquisite speculative knowledge of the Mind yet hath he raised up our dignity far higher For truly the Understanding being reduced by Grace into the obedience of Faith proceedeth in a humble resignation unto the victorious reward of Love whereby we are supported and constrained And the least abiding of that Love is far more glorious than the whole unoccupied life of Adam in Paradise For before the Fall Faith was unknown the race of Virtues especially also the superexcellency of Divine Love and they lived onely in the happiness of the purity of Innocency And therefore God by the permission of his fore-knowledge and ordination hath bound the unequality of blessednesse issuing or springing up from the new Birth with a certain excellency of Riches Because the Tribulations of his Life are not worthy to be compared unto the great or vast things which the goodness of God hath prepared for us that are renewed For I had rather know those things which God hath revealed by his onely begotten Son the Saviour of the World than to have known the faculties of Living Creatures and Herbs with a clear Understanding It being abundantly sufficient for me to have an Humanity in God whereby he hath adopted us for the Sons of God and made us far more like himself than Adam was in his greatest felicity CHAP. XCIII The Position is Demonstrated 1. A first Prooof of the Position 2. A second 3. The Divine manner of generating cannot be conceived by man 4. A conjecture from a like thing 5. A Repetition of Demonstrations 6.
Life and Soul of soulâ—fied Creatures For in that those Words did differ to say Let it be made and to make For in the sixth or last day Adam was formed But on the seventh day God rested At length he afterwards translated Adam from the Earth into Paradise and deliberated to make Woman of the Rib of the Man but not of his Reins Thigh or Belly Therefore on the eighth day that it might be the Beginning of a new week for a new and super-natural Generation of an off-spring to come Wherefore it may be collected that Woman being wholly an Out-law ascended into a new heap of Choiceness as being a Vessel of Choiceness or Election But we may after some sort conjecture of the quality of humane generation in Eve a Virgin before the Fall by the most glorious Incarnation of our Lord For indeed the Father unto whom every name of Paternity is singularly and solely due and whom his Son as a Father doth alwayes adore hath indeed alwayes generated his Son from Eternity who yet is not read to be the Father of his Incarnation The which thing I even reverence for a vast mystery and the rather after that I understood the insinite goodness of the same as well from the first virginal conception of Creation as in the restoration by the regeneration of Man Indeed the Father Almighty would that the glorious incarnation of Christ should be conceived of the Person of the holy Spirit the which it self to wit therefore was not generated but proceeded from eternity from the Father and the Son For the Spirit of God had caused a humane conception of off-springs in the Arterial Blood of the Heart of the Virgin Eve it being the Image of the Divinity with all its free Gifts without the pleasure of the Flesh But the Mind being thus in the garment of Arterial Blood conceived in the Womb of the Virgin in a humane Shape had took an increase and full maturity from thence For he who the Womb being shut and the Gates being closed came into the World and unto his own also out of the Case of the Heart wherein he was conceived was by a foregoing consent brought unto the Womb of the Virgin and kept even unto the maturity of his Body For he piercing all Members was brought into the Womb For therefore our Lord's Incarnation happened altogether besides the order of Nature now accustomed For 1. The Incarnation of the Lord happened not first in the Womb but in the very Sheath of the Heart of the Virgin 2. Of the most pure and most lively Blood of the Heart but not of the Seed of the Virgin For truly the God-bearing Virgin in that singular respect was not only cleansed from Original Sin but was conceived altogether free from Sins to wit that she might be so much the more void of all Seed than a Child that is newly born For Seed is composed of a mixture of Venal and Arterial Blood or from a co-mixture of Bloods which mixture was no manner of way not so much as materially in the conception of the Son of God who was conceived not of Bloods nor of the Will of the Flesh or of Man but of God alone and born of a Virgin 3. He had not a Man to his Father nor a masculine Matter from whence he should be made which thing surely confirms that a feminine Matter was the more excellent governess or deputy and alone fore-elected from the Beginning 4. He fore-elected the most chast and unspotted Virginity of a Mother which he formed with a divine Hand 5. He was materially conceived onely and of most pure Arterial Blood To wit whereinto the seal of the holy Spirit inspired an humane Mind and a most pure Image of it self made or framed by his Father God 6. That conception was brought from the Heart into the Womb of the Virgin with a piercing of Dimensions 7. Lastly He exspected an increase and just maturity of Nativity as it were in the celebration of a Sabbath Furthermore that the knowledge of Good and Evil signifies nothing but the Concupiscence of the Flesh the Apostle doth manifestly testifie calling it the Law and Desire of Sin From whence to wit the first Bruital and Original Sin the fewel of the other Sins hath immediately issued and is hereafter to endure for a continued Seed of Mortals In the 8th to the Romans God sending his Son into the likeness of the Flesh of Sin hath also concerning Sin condemned Sin in the Flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us Original I say because it is the Beginning of the original of a humane Generation whereby all contagion of Impurity is derived on Posterity and Death became natural unto Man even as unto Beasts So that although the eating of the Apple did contain a note of distrust and ingratitude and the which also is a Companion unto every Sin Yet therefore even every Sin afterwards ought with the same Punishment of necessity also to descend unto Posterity unless the unwonted transgression of a loving Admonition should not so much consist in the disobedience of eating or abstaining as in the horrid Distrust of doubting and confidence of Faith given unto the Devil And so that the generation of the Flesh of Sin which is an effect of the Concupiscence of the Flesh hath of necessity defluxed into Death even unto all Posterity For it pleased the Lord of things to insert in the Apple an incentive of the Concupiscence of the Flesh to wit from which he was able safely to abstain by not eating the Apple therefore diswaded from For otherwise he had never at any moment been tempted by the Flesh or his genital Members the which I will hereafter shew to be therefore called the North in the holy Scriptures Therefore the Apple being eaten Man presently from a natural property of the Apple conceived the lust of being luxurious and from thence was made an Animal Seed which hastening into the previous or foregoing Dispositions of a sensitive Soul and undergoing the Law of other Causes reflexed it self into the vital Spirit of Adam which therefore like an ignis fatuus or foolish fire presently receiving an Archeus or ruling Spirit and animal Air I say a houshold Thief it conceived a Power of propagating an Animal and mortal Seed ending into Life At the arrival whereof at length the immortal Mind putting off the Rains of the Life and government of the Body substituted the sensitive Soul as its Chamber-maid From hence therefore we are conceived born and do die after the manner of Beasts For the day before the immortal Mind acted all in all and was the very immortal Life it self in the whole Body because it was solely and wholly immortal in the whole Body But that very so great Beauty of Nature was presently vitiated in our first Parent after that he was cloathed with the similitude of a bruital generation For then the immortal Mind being moved
from its place descends that it may imprint a seal on the forbidden Seed for a common destruction Then although the sensitive Soul was not yet born yet every natural Disposition requisite for the obtaining that sensitive Soul from the Creator was forthwith present And seeing two Souls at once cannot perfectly preside in one only Plain or Region of the Body without discord no more than it is lawful to serve two Masters at once Therefore the immortal Mind hath departed into the innermost Parts whether that was by the Command of the Creator or grieving at the wearisomness of a bodily Impurity at leastwise it afterwards delegated the government of its Body on the sensitive Soul in which it is now bound because it is involued in it as long as we live For from hence we do afterwards for the most part wax of ripe years and live after a bruital manner But the Mind hath betaken it self into the Inn of a frail Soul and doth thereby inspire hereinto its free gifts although for the most part otherwise it sleepeth perhaps even as Coral doth now and then loose its Colour and again recover the same from whence the Body hath undergone every disorder of Impurity But the Wedlock of the mortal Soul being a forreign thing unto the ordination of the Mind is for an occasion why the Mind hath placed it self into the hidden Parts so as that the Matter or Controversie is as yet before the Judge or in dispute whether of the two hath chosen the principal Bride-bed and a Mind is not believed to be among Atheists because it by piercing hath so sunk it self into the depth of the mortal Soul because the Notions of the Mind do appear as yet to this day to be subject to the imagination do also so obey the Poysons of some Simples that the principality of the Mind seems to be sore shaken at the Pleasure and Command of Diseases which thing the Dotages of Fevers Madness in affects of the Spleen the Biting of a Mad-dog and Pricking or Stinging of a Tarantula have the more strongly perswaded in the behalf of Atheism for in the former immortal Life the Mind did by it self and immediately frame immortality and gave also a perfect knowledge of living Creatures and Herbs But afterwards in the brutal Filthinesse of generation the Image of God remained indeed safe in the Mind and its external Figure in the Body But so great a Corruption of it hath constrained the Mind to retire unto the innermost Chamber of the mortal Soul Therefore the Immortality thereof lived under the happy government of the Mind And therefore Diseases were banished with the declinings of Ages and the threatnings of Death And therefore before the Fall Man was dinstinguished from Blessedness in that he could Sin Fall and Die But in Glorification the Mind shall again immediately quicken the Body and transsume it into it self The Mind indeed before the Fall which did only shine upon the Body by its immediate Splendour shall forthwith after the Resurrection through a transchanging of it clarifie it by way of supping it up For therefore the state of the Faithful although throughout their whole Life also in Death it self be far more miserable than the primitive State yet it is more happy than that by how much it is a thing fuller of Majesty to be more like the Son of God Incarnate dead and glorified than to have lived with Adam free from Diseases and at length to be taken away without Battle because the retributions or repayings of Life are no way worthy of the Glory or Expectation of the Age to come Furthermore the sacred Text hath in many Places compelled me unto a perfect Position it making Eve an Helper like unto Adam not indeed that she should supply the name and room of a Wife even as she is call straightway after Sin For she was a Virgin in the intention of the Creator and afterwards filled with Miseries But not yet as long as the state of Purity presided over innocency did the will of Man overcome her For the translation of Man into Paradise did foreslew another Condition of living than that of a Beast And therefore the eating of the Apple doth by a most chaste name cover the Concupiscence of the Flesh while it contains The knowledge of Good and Evil in this name and cals the ignorance thereof alone the State of Innocency For truly the obtainment of that aforesaid knowledge did nourish a most hurtful Death and an irrevocable depriving of eternal Life For if Man had not tasted down the Apple he had lived void of Concupiscence and off-springs had appeared out of Eve a Virgin from the holy Spirit But the Apple being eaten Presently their Eyes were opened and Adam began lustfully to cover after the naked Virgin and defiled her the which God had appointed for a naked help for him no otherwise than as a Prince is for a help unto his Servants For so the Man prevented the Intention of God by a strange generation in the Flesh of Sin whereupon therefore followed the Corruption of the former Nature or the Flesh of Sin accompanied Concupiscence Neither indeed doth the Text insinuate any other mark of the knowledge of Good and Evil than that They knew themselves to be naked and that it shamed them of that their nakedness or in speaking properly of their Virginity being Corrupted Indeed their whole knowledge of Good and Evil is included about their Shame and within their privy Parts alone And therefore in the 8th of Leviticus and many Places elsewhere the Privy Parts themselves are called by no other Etymologie than that of Shame For from the Copulation of the Flesh their Eyes were presently opened because they had known that the Good being lost had brought on them a degenerate Nature Shamefulness Fowlness and an Intestine and unevitable obligation of Death sent also far away into their Posterity Alass too late indeed they understood by the unwonted Novelty and Shamefulness of that Concupiscence why God had so lovingly forbidden the eating of the Apple To wit it shamed them more of their Chastity being Corrupted and of the Warning transgressed than of their nakedness For Adam who had Judged of the Natures of the Beasts by their beholdance alone neither is read to have lost the same Knowledge could not be ignorant of the fowlness of his own corrupt Nature also And so that through the Shame hereof they had rather hide themselves than for their Nakedness sake Indeed so great was the confusion of so manifold a Shame that it wanted but little but that he should rush into madness the which is clearly enough to be known by the unfit answers of Adam For God called him and asked him where he was and he answereth by accusing his Companion and Help like unto him that he might excuse himself being not yet accused And by altogether a foolish Endeavour they offered their Nakedness which was known to their
Creator in Leaves hoping that the Corruption of their Chastity might be covered with Leaves so they could but hide themselves He accuseth his Nakedness not daring to make mention of his lost Chastity For it is the Part of the more gross stupidity to believe that they could hide themselves from the Face of the Lord than not to have known that they were naked Especially with him who had created them Naked Therefore he being willing to lay hid he accuseth the guilts and effect of Concupiscence by declining the thing committed Otherwise meer Nakedness is not Shameful before God if he had not corrupted his Chastity which he knew to be stained and forbidden under the Apple For in the last Judgment there shall not be a Shame of Nakedness And therefore the shame of Nakedness did involve rather the unrestorable Errour of Chastity committed which was vailed in the Apple the Effect whereof unless they should perfectly now feel and acknowledge they had rather convert themselves unto a Repentance of the eating than unto a hiding and covering of their privy Parts The Shame therefore of Nakedness involveth a chaste manner of speaking of the Text before the People of Israel For otherwise it is sufficiently manifest from the Text That that knowledge of Good and Evil is Carnal Earthly and Devilish a carnal and certain meer folly of the Concupiscence alone of corrupted Nature in respect of the Knowledge whereby but a little before he had put proper Names on the Beasts in the second Chapter of Genesis v. 17. The Fruit of that Tree is forbidden unto the Man alone and in the second Chap. of Gen. v. 25. They were both Naked and without Shame In the third of Gen. v. 7. The Apple being eaten Their Eyes were opened For although Eve had first tasted of the Apple and had provoked the Man to eat Yet the Almighty speaks to the Man not yet the Head of the Woman and this Man endeavours to excuse himself because he had first stirred her up unto Copulation and felt the Disobedience of his Members which is manifest For he alone is accused being not yet the Head of the Woman the which Fruit he signified to the Woman was disswaded unto them both For Eve saith unto the Serpent that the abstinence of that Tree was equally enjoyned unto them both This place in the Text signifying that although the same Chance did respect both Sexes yet God had foreknown a chastive Provocation to Lechery and Itching of the Man and because the will of the Flesh was not properly in the Virgin the which the Almighty had adorned with the Grace or Comliness of Chastity for himself Therefore that Concupiscence is by an Antonomasia or taking one name for another called by John The Will of Man which is that of Flesh and Blood Whence I have learned that Eve was of the more firm Chastity yea and created more perfect in her Body and deflowred by the Man because the Apple seeing it was the Mean unto the aforesaid end and first tasted down by Eve yet it was able to operate the more slowly on Eve But that Adam was the first which offended but that Eve as repenting of her Fact the longer resisted and a long while struggled being deflowred by Adam by force the which from thence sufficiently appeareth For truly the will of the Man and not of the Woman is reputed for the occasion of an eternal loss and that thing was not unknown unto the Heathens who in the Silver Age ascribed Shamefacedness unto Women as a native Endowment by Men being then long neglected Levit. 3. and 4. The Lord commands a Beast to be offered with his Tail that its Filthiness may be covered or least any thing be offered not being covered in its Shame And therefore there was alwayes and every where so great an Esteem of an offered Lamb. For Adam was created Young without a Beard flourishing after which sort Raphael is read to have Stood before the Doors of Tobiah Wherefore that the first Infringer of Modesty and deflowrer of a Virgin might be made known God would that Hairs should grow on the Chin Cheeks and Lips of Adam that he might be a Compeere Companion and like unto many four-footed Beasts might bear before him the Signature of the same after the manner of whom as he was leacherous so also that he might shew a rough countenance by his Hairs For God at first signed a Murderer in the Forehead that the Sign being beheld he might presently become a horrid and infamous Fratricide or Brother-Killer So also the Lover of Chastity would at first sign the first Infringer of Chastity and the first Workman of Original Sin about the Mouth Throat Cheeks c. To wit whereby he had spoke the first Words of Allurements and afterwards Threatnings But Eve who was the more constant in Bashfulness and Chastity he retained as graced with a polished Countenance So also the Beard groweth on an in-humed dead Carcass if he were lustful in his Life and ceased to live through a sudden Death that is the virtues or forces of his Chiâ— being as yet retained the sign of Mortality groweth even after Death So also a hoarse Voice ariseth in Adam about his Youth who immediately before his Chastity was lost sang most sweetly For among Signs wherein Angels are dinstinguished in Apparitions one is Capital If an Angel shall appear Bearded let him be an evil one For a good Angel hath never appeared Bearded he being mindful of the Chance for which a Beard hath grown on a Man Therefore a Beard which the Angels abhor Men believe was given unto them for an Ornament the which notwithstanding they know not to be common unto them with the most stinking Goats Neither therefore is a Beard bred on Man but about the Years of incontinency that it may be certainly manifest that it was brought on him not but by reason of the Concupiscence of the Flesh like as a Mask of Filthiness So that he denotes nothing but his privy Parts and broken Bashfulness in his Countenance For therefore indeed Eunuchs also are distitute of a Beard as also Children and Youths although Bruit-beasts into whom a copulation of the Sexes was but by Nature are presently Bearded in their first Dayes In the next place Bruit-beasts do bring forth at this day no otherwise than as if Adam had not sinned For they send forth their Young in Pain because they conceive them with the Concupiscence of the Flesh except Fishes the which are therefore designed for Foods for Monks who love Chastity And Eve after Conception brought forth the Flesh of Sin in Pain My Spirit shall not remaine with Man because he is Flesh That is Man is now the Flesh of Sin but not any longer the Flesh of his first Creation For a Woman 〈…〉 the most part a good while after Conception loath and is hurried about with divers Mâ—â—â—ries which Bruits do want which thing surely argueth that
Woman doth seminally conceive by Man besides the first intent of Creation Wherefore if Man were created that at least-wise from a foreknowledge of the consequence he might supply the Place of the Evil Spirits in Heaven he ought either to be created in a great Number at once from the Beginning or Successively If therefore They which are to be saved cannot be born by the will of Man of Flesh or of Blood and there was one only Man created therefore all Posterity ought by a successive Continuation to be born in Paradise of Women alone to wit the Birth-place of the Woman and of necessity to be Conceived from God and to be Born of a Woman a Virgin unto whom he afterwards Gave Power to be called the Sons of God and to be made with an exclusion of the Will of Blood Flesh and Man which Chastity alwayes pleased God doth please him at this Day and will please him alwayes And whatsoever hath thus once pleased the fountain of Chastity can never again displease him And so that Onely those that are of a clean Heart shall see God and shall be called his Sons wherefore the Prophet singeth Create in me a clean Heart Oh God! such as Adam had before the Fall And renew a right Spirit of the chaste and antient Innocency by the regeneration of the Spirit and Water in my Bowels Because my Bowels being now impure have contracted a Spirit of Concupiscence of the Flesh of Sin For indeed Man as long as he was Immortal and Pure Saw thy Face oh Lord and thou talkedst with him which Face afterwards Man shall not see and live But after that Man defiled his Bowels through Concupiscence thou casteth him from thy Face out of Paradise I pray thee therefore that thou cast me not from thy Face and that thou take not thy holy Spirit of Chastity from me Restore unto me the Gladness of the Regeneration of thy Salvation and with thy principal Spirit the Comforter do thou confirm me against the inbred Impurity of the Flesh For truly I shall teach the Unrighteous thy wayes of thy Regeneration the which among the hidden things of thy Wisdom thou hast manifested unto me and the Wicked shall be converted unto thee At leastwise free me from Bloods from the Concupiscence of the Sexes Thou who art the God of Chastity the God of Salvation as of new Regeneration and my Tongue shall exalt thy Righteousness and thy just Judgment whereby thou hast condemned Man who was born of Bloods and by the will of Man in the Concupiscente and of the Flesh of Sin as he hath made himself uncapable of thine Inheritance For loe in Iniquities aforesaid I was conceived and in Sins hath my Mother conceived me although under a lawful Marriage Bed Therefore I confess that besides the primitive scope of the Creator an Adamical Generation hath arisen into natural Death and is devolved into original Sin The Woman therefore as she hath conceived after a bruital manner she also began to bring forth in Pain The Male also in the Law was only circumcised as for a mystery of the deflowring of Eve Yet both Sexes ought to expiate the Offence committed in their privy Parts to wit whereby they had offended which thing although it be chastly insinuated in the Text Yet that was covered before Israel who were otherwise most ready for all Perfidiousness to wit that Godmight not seem a contemner of Matrimony instituted after the Fall The Woman therefore was not circumcised and yet she was saved but not the Pain of Child-birth or the Obedience of her Husband had expiated Original Sin in her For both a single young Virgin dying was saved as also a barren Wife Therefore from hence is manifested the mystery to wit that Eve so much as she could resisted the Insolencies of Adam and was by force deflowred in Paradise So that also our first Parents were Murderers of all their Posterity through Concupiscenc So also the eldest Son was a Brother-Killer For the fore-skin being taken away did of necessity cause a Brawniness of the Nut of the Yard whereby indeed he might be made a Partaker of the less Pleasure Concupiscence and Tickling whosoever should desire to be ascribed or registred among the Catalogue of the beloved People of God The Rabbins also confess That Circumcision was instituted by reason of unclean Virtues walking in a circuit The which I interpret that the diabolical and primitive Enticements of Concupiscence unto Mortality were not hid to the Hebrews and that at leastwise in an obscure sense the Sin arisen from thence was insinuated Also illegitimate Persons were in times past driven from the Temple and Heaven and those who should be born of an adulterous Conception because they did wholly shew forth an Adamical Generation but those who were born of a lawfull 〈…〉 Bed were as yet Impure until that the fore-skin being taken away they might seem to renounce the Concupiscence of the Flesh And in this respect they represented in a shadow also those that were to be renewed from far by the Spirit of God and the laver of Regeneration Moreover the very Word of Truth doth profesly confirm the Position 1 John 3. Except any one be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God B. Except any one be born again of Water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God C. That which is born of the Flesh is Flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit D. The Spirit breatheth where it listeth Thou hearest the Voice thereof but knowest not from whence it may come or whither it may go E. So is every Man who is born of the Spirit F. If I shall speak unto you of Earthly Things and ye believe not how shall ye believe if I tell you of Heavenly things G. None hath ascended into Heaven but he who descended from Heaven H. And as Moyses exalted the Serpent in the Wilderness So it behoves the Son of Man to be exaltâ—d Christ Jesus descending from Heaven took not on him the Flesh of Sin by Adamical Generation or by the will of Man but he receiving the form of a Servant was made into the Likeness of the Sons of Adam being found in Habit as a Man Yet being Adamical was a true Man such as Adam was being newly created But he being made into the similitude of an Adamical Man emptied or humbled himself taking on him the form of a Servant But he was not made a Servant or Impure But in this glad tydings he denieth the Vision of God or the sight of the Kingdom of God and in b. an entrance into the Kingdom of God For not that the Glory which makes blessed may be seen without entring into Heaven or the same thing is twice spoken in vain or that a. doth require another new birth than b. but a. contains a denyal of participating of the Heavens for the Souls of the Dead before the Resurrection
Matrimony were in times past dissembled Yet Phinehas being neither a Judge nor a Prince from his very own zeal slew the Fornicator Zimri and the Harlot Cosby and by that famous act not onely diverted the wrath of the Lord from the whole People of Israel But also although he were a Man-slayer and Man-slayers were repulsed from Sacrifices Yet by reason of that simple Death the Priesthood was given unto him persevering in his off-spring In the next place the Potters field Akeldama called Acheldamah or The field of blood as long as it retained the name of a Field confirms the Position because indeed by a supernatural Miracle it so consumeth a dead Carcass inhumed in it in one onely day that besides a Sceleton of Bones nothing remaineth surviving which effect that it was supernatural I prove For otherwise if it should naturally happen that thing without doubt should be done by a corrosive force of the Earth and the which therefore should be wholly a corrosive Salt or at least-wise a certain Mineral vein co-mixed with very much Salt 1. But first of all That corrosion of the flesh happened not onely at Jerusalem as long as it was a Field where there might be a suspition of some Mineral growing but also its Earth being brought from thence the same thing happened in the burying-place at Rome for that cause called The holy Field to wit wherein that Earth scarce equalizeth the depth of one Foot 2. But whether we may suppose a corrosive Salt or next the Earth it self to be Salt yet seeing it is the property of Salt and a thing unseparable from Salt to melt through Water being poured on it Therefore long ago before so many Ages that substance of the corrosive Salt being melted by Raines Snowes and Hailes had wandred even unto the bottom of the sand and the rather at Rome where it found not its native place Wherefore also that faculty of corroding should cease nor should it continue safe until now 3. And so much the rather because the corrosion of Salts is by little and little satisfied and desisteth in gnawing 4. Lastly Such a corrosive of Earth is not any where found in the Earth whether thou shalt respect a Vein of Arsenick Orpiment or any other For all the activity of such Corrosives presently after a good while waxeth mild and is satisfied Therefore the property of that Field remaining after so many Ages doth clearly shew withal against the will of Atheisme that the Field being purchased with the price of the Life Blood and Death of the Saviour presently consumes the flesh of Adamical generation Because that for the consuming and renewing whereof by the body of Christ which was sold for thirty silver pieces paid for the price of that field the coming of the most glorious incarnation is believed to be directed from God as its onely scope The unsufferableness therefore of that Earth with the flesh of sin continually persevering now so many Ages however the Bowels of the Atheists may burst convinceth of an honour to be due to the Saviour or Son of God for ever In the next place a humane dead Carcass was alwayes buried for honour and desert yet in the Law it caused an impurity for a time Because neither did it pollute the Soul but the Body onely for the meritorious fact And that impurity did indifferently affect any one not as the dead Carcass was deputed to the Wormes for the Wormes by their co-touching are not read to have caused an impurity but because Adamical flesh is horrid in the sight of the Lord who indeed promiseth that he will raise them up at the last day as many as shall reverently receive the Eucharist For all indeed shall rise again by the finger of God to wit by a supernatural Virtue Therefore whosoever in rising again shall be changed are reckoned onely to be raised up again by the Lord Jesus to wit in as much as in a Body which they have attained by the Wine which buds forth Virgins they shall rise again partakers of the unspotted Virginity of Jesus I will raise them up again at the last Day What other thing I pray you doth that Promise denote but that the Elect shall rise again changed and raised up by the Lord not indeed in the flesh of sin but in the flesh of the Lord which they have partaked of by Baptisme and the Eucharist Therefore the horrid and damned flesh of sin doth besprinckle its touchers with no undeserved spot of impurity There is therefore a distinct diversity of Virginal purity The First comes to hand before the Fall of Adam and the which therefore did contain a certain Immortality from the suffrage or consent of the Tree of Life But the Second is of them Who were sanctified in their Mothers Womb the which in it self is also twofold For such a sanctification although it dismissed Original Sin and did restore the integrity of withdrawn purity yet because they were conceived by the Will of Man and by Bloods or of the flesh of Sin they were also Mortal But the most holy Virgin Mother presently after the seminal mixture of her Parents was preserved from the knitting and blemish of Original Sin before hec-ceity or the coming of her Soul But Jeremy and John obtained the same but after quickening In these two indeed there was a Remission of sin admitted but in the God-bearing-Virgin there was a prevention before sin could touch her Soul and therefore she was taken up with her body into Heaven but not John or Jeremy Next a Third Purity is in being born again of Water and of the holy Spirit which also happens two manner of wayes To wit Unto Little Children and Unto those of Ripe Years For in these Regeneration doth not onely remit Original Sin but also every grievous Sin But in little ones it remitteth onely Original Sin because it as yet finds no other But on both sides it leaveâ—â— Death and Flesh hastening into a dead Carcass because stirred up by 〈…〉 copulation Fourthly The purity of those is regarded Who have made themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of God its sake and that as yet in a two-way-journey For they have either from a Child devoted their Virginity to the Lamb and have observed it and therefore also they follow the same whithersoever he may go do sing the Hymn c. but all that after Death For otherwise they are of the flesh of sin and therefore are of necessity also guilty of Death and corruption But they who have lost their Purity through a proper Error and afterwards rising up again have vowed or observed chastity These although they are chaste yet are they not to be reckoned among Virgins But moreover after that a Matrimonial generation was constituted by the Lord Regeneration by the holy Spirit and Water doth not fore-require Virginity Fifthly The top of all Purity and Chastity is the Lord Jesus himself who was not conceived by a
proper unto him from a Curse but from his being made creeping and that thing was sufficiently manifest to Adam For herein the Curse seized not so much on the Serpent as on the evil Spirit because the lying Impostor had hid himself in the most vile of creeping things on whose head therefore and not on the head of any creeping thing the Woman trod upon But because all Bruits which do generate by a long continued copulation were in times past reckoned impure and also forbidden from Man's use in Kitchins among which creeping Animals are not in the last place c. It containeth and likewise confirmeth the mystery of our Position To wit That the impurity of our Nature draws its rise from the Concupiscence of the Flesh And therefore the copulation in Beasts seemeth to be taken notice of in Beasts by God which was distinct and defiled with impurity In the next place also in the Law a Menstruous Woman and the person touching her were accounted to bring an impurity on every thing The which otherwise being now turned into a second and natural Cause ought to be plainly guiltless unlesse the Menstrues should by a Natural course derive it self from the same Causes from whence Death happened unto us And therefore also for this Cause it being plainly impure in the Law was reckoned a horrid thing with God But for that Woman alone doth suffer Menstrues before Bruits surely it doth not attest any Prerogative of our kind but rather every way a defect to wit that it is reckoned for a punishment of frustrated Chastity and referred into second Causes plainly from a notable Mystery of our Position neither doth it hinder these things that chast Virgins obey the Menstrues and that she is Monstrous who an opportunity being given is not Menstruous because Adamical Generation its self is constrained to carry no less the importunities of its own Nature than Death it self Yea seeing Chastity doth not excuse a Virgin from the Menstrues it is for a token that the Menstrues is not from a Curse nor from the punishment of Sin but altogether from Natural Causes no otherwise than as Death it self began from second Causes inserted in the disswaded Apple although hitherto unknown nor thorowly weighed The Menstrues therefore onely in Woman alone but not in Bruits doth accuse that the Transgression of the despised fatherly Admonition happened in the very privy parts therefore branded as it were with an unclean bloody Seal for a perpetual sign The which surely should not have place if a Sexual Copulation for the Propagation of man had not inverted the intention of the Creator rather than in Bruit-Beasts In this place a Paradox and impertinent consideration doth occur being interlaced as it were by a Parenthesis that Adam seeing he was created in the possession of Immortality God intended not that Man should be an Animal or Sensitive creature nor should be born conceive or live as an Animal for truly he was created into a living Soul and that he might be the immediate Image of God Therefore he as far differed from the Nature of an Animal as an Immortal being from a Mortal and as a God-like Creature from a Bruit The which is indeed more than in the whole Predicament And it is exceedingly to be admired and deservedly unworthy to be endured that the Schools of Christ do believe and confess these things and yet that even until now they draw the Essence of a Man Essentially from an Animal Nature because although Man afterwards procured Death unto himself and therefore may seem to be made nearer unto the Nature of Animal Creatures yet it stood not in his Power to be able to pervert the Species of the Divine Image Even as neither was the Evil Spirit of a Spirit made an Animal although he became nearer unto an Animal by hatred and brutal vices Therefore Man remained in his own Species wherein he was created For as oft as man is called an Animal or Sensitive living Creature and is in earnest thought to be such so many times the Text is falsified which saith But also the Serpent was more crafty than all the living Creatures of the Earth which the Lord God had made Because he speaks of the Natural craftiness of that Creeping Creature Again if the Position be true Man was not directed into the Propagation of Seed or Flesh neither therefore did he Aspire into a Sensitive Soul And therefore the Sensitive Soul of Adamical Generation is not of a brutal Species because it was raised up by a Seed which wanted the Original Ordination and Limitation of any Species And so that as the Sensitive Soul in Man arose besides the intent of the Creator and Nature So it is of no brutal Species neither can it subsist unless it be continually tyed to the Mind from whence it is supported in its Life Wherefore while Man is of no Brutal Species he cannot be an Animal in respect of his Mind and much less in respect of his Soul which is of no Species For a woman great with Child while by reason of sudden fear she changeth the Humane Young into a certain Bruit the mind indeed doth not wander into a brutal Soul but the mind departs and a Sensitive Soul begged of the Creator is substituted in its stead And seeing that it is promoted onely by the Idea of the Woman great with Child without an Original appointment therefore such kind of generated Creatures do most speedily die And the off-springs of Adam had likewise presently perished unless God had granted Matrimony unto him Wherefore in the Birth of Cain she truly said I possesse a Man from the Lord. Far be it therefore to have placed Man among Sensitive living Creatures Truly we must indulge Pagans who know not that thing but not equally Christians who too much adore Paganish Doctrine At least wise the Schools confesse that there is an ordinary Progress of Nature from not a sensible Creature into a sensible Animal but that the Life and Sense of Men is immediately iufsed by the hand of the Almighty They confesse in the next place that the Conditions of being living and feeling or perceiving in Man differ in their whole Condition from an Animal Nature because it follows the Faculty of the rational Form or Immortal mind But they shamefully believe that a Man aswel of the first Constitution as being now Divinely Regenerated by the Sacraments is an Essential Animal Fie let it shame man not to know that the Evil Spirit and whole Nature also are not able by any means or any way to change the Essence given unto him from the foreknowledge of the Creator but that he should continually remain such as he was created although in the mean time he hath cloathed himself with strange properties as Natural unto him from the vice of his own will For as it wants not an absurdity to reckonman glorified among Animals because he is not without a sense or feeling So
Paracelsus described in his Books of the Faculties of the Members I here do hear Whisperers who are wont to swallow nothing but afore-chewed things accusing the unthought of darkness of Words Those Coale-men they say do expose their Medicines unto us hand to hand and afford unto us ocular Demonstrations But that is a new rule of learning the Phylosophy of Pythagoras Let them first buy Coals and Glasses and let them first learn those things which watching successive Nights and Expences of Moneys have afforded us the Gods do sell Arts to Sweats not to Readings alone Therefore the Example of Acâ—aeon affrighteth me from daring indeed to expose Diana to an open view being spoyled of her Garment He that can apprehend it let him apprehend it Depart thou therefore from thine own self and bid farwell to accustomed things who presumest by an easie Compendium of readings to search into the innermost Chambers of Nature But besides whereby we may give satisfaction unto the former head of a full Cure a searching out of a Medicine for the every way safe and secure Dissolution of the Stone did remain 1. Therefore it is fit that it be changed into Urin to wit that it may touch the Place affected 2. That it have in it a Power of loosing the Bolts of the Stone For it is the Gift of God which Art doth not provide but only sequestreth and extracteth 3. That it possess that thing in a specifical and appropriated Property but not in second Qualities because they are for the most part frail things failing in time of Preparation or Infamous through the Cruelty of Qualities 4. That it be subtile that it pass on every side and be able to demolish its Object at a far distance 5. That it be friendly to Nature least indeed it pervert all things For not every Messenger approacheth unto the Mines of Stones but he alone who being loosed from his Bands hath known the wayes being fited for his Journey being a Friend to the Places and which hath Virtues They erre therefore who ascribe this single Combate only unto Corrosives to wit they too much trusting unto second Qualities as being badly secure do sleep thereupon and through a neglecting of specifical Properties also appropriated ones which are only extended on their proper Object being sleighted they have gone into Obscurity For the Oestrich doth not break or digest Iron or little Birds Flints Unions small Stones through an emulous quality of Corrosion There is a Virtue of loosing the Bars and Bolts of Tartar It is convenient this Virtue to meditate of and this to imitate I have spoken Blessed be ye God of Wonders who at sometime converteth the Waters into Rocks and at sometime the Rocks into Pooles of Waters CHAP. CI. The Understanding of Adam ADam put right Names upon all living Creatures and therefore he had an intimate or intuitive or clear speculative Knowledge of these which is called the Attainment of Nature Perhaps he had likewise a most full knowledge of Herbs Minerals yea and of the Stars For truly an Object not before seen being presented unto him he had known the innermost Properties thereof From hence therefore many do conclude that the same Knowledge is given to us by a natural Property as to the successive Heirs of Adam but to be obscured through Sin But others contend that it is wholly withdrawn through eating of the Fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Of these things I being long since badly perswaded alass I also believed them For I left something untryed that I might reach unto the promised Labour of Wisdom the Paradise of Long Life through the knowledge of Adam But at length I observed many things which might subvert these very principles For First of all I could scarce perswade my self that Adam in the State of Innocency knew those Things and more which afterwards he through eating of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil was ignorant of That indeed was when he had eaten of the Apple of Oblivion Drowsiness or Ignorance But not when he had eaten of the Apple of Knowledge But if in Original Sin the Original Transgressour and Defiler of humane Nature himself as yet knew what he knew before after what manner indeed by a super-attained new Knowledge and that of another Disposition being as it were laid up in the forbidden Fruit had he withdrawn all knowledge from his Posterity And moreover how had not he who from his Creation had all Knowledge except that which by a hidden Paraphrase and Emphatical manner of speaking is called by the holy Spirit The knowledge of Good and Evil traduced this likewise on his Posterity For if through eating of the Apple His Eyes were opened the which was even made known to him before after some sort they were closed and he became a knower of Good and Evil and saw himself to be naked why was there not at least-wise in his Seed as much knowledge as there was in the Apple Why if through his Seed Sin be translated is not also Shame translated that it might naturally Shame the Indians of their Nakedness That likewise a Child of three years old should be ashamed of its Nakedness no otherwise than Adam was presently after the Apple was eaten In the next place if he were endowed from his Creation with the knowledge of the Natures Societies and Properties of Animals and from hence it was pithily essential unto him How had God who is so great a Lover of us withdrawn our essential intellectual and natural Gifts whereby he will be worshipped in the Spirit of Man but hath left natural Gifts unto the evil Spirit the most vile despised and worst of Creatures Had he so greatly impoverished our Spirit and favoured the Devil more than the Sons of Men with whom to be he cals it his Delights I indeed after that I conceived in my Soul the Knowledge of long Life and the Causes of Death knew that as long as Adam was Immortal his Mind did immediately quicken his Body and governed it Yea that for that Cause also he perfectly understood whatsoever things are read to have been put under his Feet But after that the sensitive Soul was seminally introduced as a Mean between the Mind and the Body Adam afterwards lived in the Soul and middle Life that is after a modern or mean manner And his Mind for the support of the sensitive Soul dispersed from it self only a darksom Light through the Mists of the Flesh upon the Life of a new and impure Generation But the former Knowledges which he had before the Fall were in the sensitive Life laid up though remembrance yet over-clouded with the Dim and wretched Discourse of Reason when as he had now generated after the manner of Bruit-beasts and had seminally transferred a middle Life then all his Knowledge as well former as latter of Good and Evil to wit the remembrance of the same were obliterated and Man thereby was
born a vain or empty Table From thence indeed arose a sensitive Power or Faculty in Posterity or the same Faculty of a middle Life which arose in Adam the which when through a just Maturity it had waxed ripe in the Seed it was at length brought through into a true Light and vital Form by the Creator on which afterwards the Mind of Man transferred its Vicarship yet the Mind hath remained being as it were reitired into its own bottom as abhorring the Impurities of Nature nor being any longer able unless by Grace immediately to diffuse it self into the sensitive Soul God so disposing of it by reason of his good Pleasure as shall be shewn hereafter In Man therefore there is actually a certain natural and formal Act which is the Soul or Sensitive Life very much distinct from the mind For as the Seed of a Dog tends into a living Dog obscurely reasoning or discoursing so certainly the Seed of Man doth not aspire into a dead Carcass but at least into a vital Soul and indeed flows into a sensitive and discursive one after a far more perfect manner than in a Dog Fox c. And that I might the more firmly attain this real Distinction of the sensitive Soul from the Mind in us I have feigned a Young-man to be utterly lost for a Maid For this Man wisheth with a full sense and consent of his Soul that he could be freed from that disdainful Love And likewise he would not that he should Love so dearly and would not be freed from his Love Not indeed that he by turns sometimes earnestly wills one thing but sometimes another but at once and in the same Motion and violent aslault he wisheth and not wisheth to be freed from that Love therefore he declares himself to be happy and unhappy in one Love And he suffers many Contradictories of that sort at once The which seeing they are not at once entertained in the same Subject and Respect I long doubted from whence such Contradictories should happen on every side in one only Man until at length the Apostle loosed this K not for me I seeing another Law in our Members opposite to the Law of our Mind which Laws surely he understandeth to be guarded not only with an Inclination and Desire but also with Discourse and Consent Then I clearly beheld the Affections of the sensitive Soul to be one and those of the Mind to be another but these because the Operation of the Mind is well nigh obscured by the perturbations of the sensitive Soul therefore they are weak For in this sense the Apostle calls Anger Envy Grudgings Worshipping of Idols c. the works of the Flesh For although they may seem to be spiritual Conceptions yet because they are the Operations of the sensitive Soul the which it self also is seminally stirred up in Nature by the will of Flesh and Blood therefore they are the meer works of the Flesh We are therefore uncessantly affected through the importunate Allurements of the social Soul because we being forthwith after Sin become degenerate have lost Immortality Wherefore God doth now require only a few things of us that we may enter into Life To wit that he that is Baptized do believe the whole History of the Creed and that he keep the Commandements of God through the Mediation of his Grace But whosoever will aspire unto a higher Degree of Charity let him endeavour so far as according to his Talent he shall be able in all Humility and by continuing in Charity through amorous Acts to run forth unto abstracted Things believed by Faith until that through the Grace of a daily Continuance of Exercise he shall feel his Mind to be overwhelmed by a supernatural Light For the Meditation of natural Forms doth much help in the entrance for the understanding of the Thingliness of the sensitive Soul For all Forms besides the Mind seeing they are vital Lights which are to return into nothing I have certainly learned that the Mind doth by a most long interval differ from the sensitive Soul Seeing that the immortal Mind however it be retracted into it self that it may not be defiled through the Wedlock of the sensitive Soul its Companion Yet it is president in all Acts as it is near at hand and doth totally inhere in the whole sensitive Soul and so operates herewith after a deaf manner But that this order of the Almighty was on this manner forthwith after the Fall of Adam I collected first because he hath created some Men blind and likewise mad noâ— for their own or Parents Sin but according to his good Pleasure for his own Glory for he made all things as he would and most exceeding well And then because he would be worshipped in the Spirit And lastly because in his House there are many Mansions Now they should be in vain if every Man should be equal in Grace in his Soul and Life From whence I collect that there ought to be a diversity of Spirits among Men and the Worshippers of the Divinity to be diverse in the degree of Charity For truly he created the Angels that they might worship him in the Spirit of Intelligency without the Turbulencies of Bodies But Man he deminished a little less than the Angels yet he primarily chose him after the Image of his Divinity for his own Glory and Worship and for his adopted Sons yet subject to an unhappy and calamitous kinde of living because he is he who being 〈◊〉 sunk or drowned within the Body scarce understands that he doth understand having almost forgotten his Immortality as being subjected unto the tyrannical Clientships of Diseases so that the Immortal Understanding in distracted or foolish and mad People appears to be almost extinct For it was the Almighties good Pleasure that those diverse Mansions should be inhabited as it were by the Ladder of Deserts and that Men being raised up by the Character or Impression of Grace should come unto higher Dignities of understanding To wit according to that saying The Learned shall shine as the Sun The first thing therefore is in the Simplicity of an operative Faith to have lived in Abstinency from Evils and to have done good And then that they Worship God in the Spirit of naked Truth and that through an operative Faith they proceed through an attainment of a fatherly Love worthy Deeds or Deserts in Charity although we not intending it helping to be more and more illustrated in their Understanding And so at length the Mind is loosed in that dark Prison of Bloods and intellectually beholds it self and with Humility admires the not before seen Light and being led through unknown Paths doth then without difficulty proceed by steps unto the more abstracted Contemplations of a Kiss where it being as it were raised up again out of a drowâ—â—â— Sleep doth as happy adore God in Truth Righteousness and the Union of Virtues under the Light of an abstracted Spirit For neither although
Desire or Love of which I here speak is not a function of the appetitive power nor the very qualitative power of desiring it self but it is a substantial part of the mind or rather the Mind it self flowing from Understanding and Will Because those three are undividably conjoyned by the Creator under Unity in as great a simplicity as may be Yet in live persons or mortal men it is separated from Understanding and Will in its Functions by reason of the condition of the Organ and Nature of the sensitive Soul For truly now we desire oftentimes those things which the Understanding judgeth not to be desirable and which the Will could wish were not desired But it must needs be that things whose operations are different or dis-joyned that the same things are dis-joyned in their root according to the manner whereby all particular things are separated In the Soul indeed onely by a relative supposionality but in the Body according to a corporeal and qualitative Nature And therefore that substantial Desire or Love is an intimate Essence of the Soul being consubstantial and co-equal in age with the same So that although in Heaven there be a full satiety of desirable things and a perpetual enjoymens thereof yet that desire in the Soul doth not therefore cease the which is a study or â—â—â—eavour of complacency Neither doth it therefore infer a passion of the Soul any more than Charity it self because they are conjoyned in their root as one and the same thing For an amarous desire ceasing of necessity either a fullness or glutting or an unsensibleness of fruition or enjoyment should presently arise which in the heavenly Wights would be a shameful thing That desire therefore of Love is the fewel of an unterminable or endless delight under which consideration the Mind resembles the Spirit the Comforter For the unutterable Creator hath placed Man in the liberty of his own Desire that he might live in the Spirit after the Image of God in a holy Desire and perfect Charity It is manifest therefore that Operations are distinct from the root of Faculties while we understand those things which we do not desire but while we desire those things which we do not plainly know and which we would not desire In the next place we will as while a man goes willingly to Punishment those things which we do not desire and desire those things which we would not as while any one commands his Leg to be cut off And likewise the Desire doth afterward some-sometimes overcome the Will or the Will doth oft-times compell the Desire and they by turns draw each other under mutual Commands but wholly in Mortals because the sensitive Soul draws the Understanding and the Body the sensitive Soul into a manifold disorder of division For so impossible things happen to be desired and things past are wished for as present For unlesse that Desire were from the root of the Mind he should not sin who should see a Woman to lust after her before the consent of a full Will Therefore very many things are desired whose Causes are not willed and many things whose Effects are refused by the Will and Judgement The Desire also doth operate in one manner and the Will in another Also in the motion of the Day or in duration the Desire doth oftentimes go before and sometimes followes the Will and one overcomes the other by course that it may restrain something that is distinct from it self And that wholly in mortal Bodies But in Eternity where Love or Amorous Desire ariseth as the substance of the Soul nothing is Desired which is not Willed and that as well in respect of Act as Substance and Essence Because by reason of the simplicity of Substance they are collected into Unity Although in the Root they have diverse Suppositions which plainly exceed the manner â—f Understanding in mortal Men. In the next place the Kingdom of God in man is unutterable that is God himself by whose perpetual splendour all things are gathered together into Truth Therefore the Primary or chief Image of God is in his immortal Soul because the very Essence whereof it self is also the veriest Image of God which Image can neither be expressed by words as neither thought by the heart in this Life because it resembles a certain similitude of God But in the husk of the Mind or in the sensitive Soul and vital Form there is the same Image re-shining yet received after the manner of an inferior nature and defiled through transgressions or Death from whence at length the Body also borroweth not indeed the Image of God but the Figure of him But the Soul is devolved into utter darkness even as it hath separated it self from the uncreated Light and from the virtue of the Image and therefore it hath by reason of appropriation so lost its native Light as if it were proper unto it as beseeming it that thenceforth it understands wills or loves nothing besides it self and for it self For the damned shall rise not changed because their Body rising again shall receive its limitations from their Soul The which seeing now it is with all depraved affections reflexed onely on it self after a corporeal manner It shall not in rising again delineate the Image of God which is as it were choaked in it in the Body but after a corporeal manner That is by way of figure Lastly It being deprived through the flood-gate of death of the helps of Imagination Memory and Free-Will It afterwards understands wills loves all things from a blind apprehension as being onely addicted to it self For it knows its Immortality but feels Damnation and complaines of it as that Injustice is done unto it Because the love of it self is onely to excuse its excuses in sins as being committed in dayes of ignorance and innocency with much frailty of Nature lyings in wait of Enemies and want of sufficient Grace As neither that an eternal punishment is deservedly due for a momentary transgression For then it begins to be mad and persists in hating of God Chiefly because it knows the unviolable arrest of its loss and an eternal impossibility of escaping It being therefore cut off in its hope passeth even from the very beginning of its entrance into the utmost desperation in a place where no piety compassion refreshment or recantation is entertained It happens also that seeing the Understanding doth naturally transform it self into the Idea of the thing understood and therefore into the similitude of evil Spirits its Objects Therefore there is alwaies a present hatred of God despair cursing damnation and the furious torments of Hell The Almighty of his goodness vouchsafe to break the snares that are extended for us in our passage Amen CHAP. CIII The Property of External Things THe spiritual beginning of Life being now finished before I descend unto corporeal and sensible Organs and other supports of Life I will propose something concerning Places First of all therefore
But if it listeth us to enquire into the cause hereof It is certain that Eve after the eating of the forbidden Apple made her self subject to the itch of Lust stirred up and admitted the Man unto copulations and from hence that the conceived humane Nature was corrupted and remaining degenerate thenceforward Through the Cause of which corruption Posterity are deprived of an incomparable purity From whence there is place for conjecture that Eve did by the Member through which she became subject unto many Miseries testifie among posterity a successive fault of her fall and bloody defilement in Nature For the part wherein the Image of God ought to be conceived by the holy Spirit became a sink of filths and testifies the abuse and fault of an unobliterable sin and therefore also suffers Because In sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy Sons in manner of bruit beasts because henceforward thou shalt conceive after the manner of bruits For so that Curse hath entred into Nature and shall there remain And by the same Law also a necessity of Menstrues For before sin the Young going forth the Womb being shut had not caused pain Wherefore it is lawful to argue from the Premises That the incomparable Virgin-Mother of God the Ark of the Covenant never admitted into her any corruption and by consequence was never subject to Menstrues as neither to have suffered womanish discomodities Because she was she who by the good pleasure of God hath the Moon and the Properties of the Moon subjected under her feet Unto Whom next unto God be Honour and Praise CHAP. CIX Life IF I must at length Phylosophize of Long Life I must first look into what Life is and then what the Life of Man what immortal and Adamical Life is afterwards what a Sensitive and Short Life is what a Diseasie what a Healthy Life what the Life of the World and what Eternal Life is To which end it is convenient to repeat some Lessons from my Premises First of all therefore Life is a Light and formal Beginning whereby a thing acts what it is commanded to act But this Light is given by the Creator as being infused at one onely Instant even as Fire is Struck out of a Flint it is enclosed under the Identity and Unity of a Form and is distinguished by general Kindes and Species But it is not a fiery combustive Light a consumer of the radical moisture It is as well Vital in the Fish as in the Lyon and as well in the Poppy as in Pepper Neither also doth heat fail in us by reason of a consumption of the radical moisture Neither on the other hand doth moisture fail through a defect of heat but onely through a diminishment and extinguishment alone of the vital Powers and also of the Light The Fire Light Life Forms Magnal Place c. are neither Creatures not Substances as neither comprehended in the Catalogue of Accidents Neither therefore do I distinguish the Form in vital things from their Life the mind of Man being on both sides excepted To wit there is a certain Life which is mute or dumb and scarce appeareth such as is met with in Minerals The which notwithstanding do declare that they live and perform their Offices by their Marks and remarkable Signs of vital Faculties And then there is another Life which is a little more unfolded or manifest Such as is in the Seeds of things tending to the period of their Species In the next place a Third Life is seen in Plants increasing themselves and bringing forth off-spring by a successive multiplying Next a Fourth Life is manifest in bruit Beasts by Motion Sense and a voluntary Choice with some kind of Discourse of Imagination At length the Last Life is now obscured in the Immortal Mind and Substance and is after some sort unfolded by the sensitive Soul its Vicaresse The Life therefore is not the Balsam not the Mummy not in the next place the Spirit of the Arterial Blood although this Spirit be the Conserver of the Body Because the Life is not a Matter yea nor a Substance but the very expresse Form of the Thing it self Moreover I being about to speak of the Immortal Life of Men I will follow the Text For indeed because the punishment of the broken Precept was Death For Death came not from God but from the condition of a Law I say the Almighty made not Death as neither a Medicine of Destruction in the Earth And that must be understood onely in respect of Men For neither ought the whole Nature and Condition of the Universe to be bespattered for the Sin of Adam so as that Bruits are made subject to Death through the corruption or deviation of our kind For truly even before Sin Bruits ought to dye to wit some whereof the Lord of things had substituted for meat and fodder to others For they ought naturally to dye every annihilable Life and Form whereof were onely one and the same thing Indeed it was of necessity that those Forms should perish whatsoever do obtain their first or chief antecedent and subsequent dispositions from a corporal wedlock of the Seeds The Death therefore of Bruits was not worthy of the word Death which included an extinguishment and annihilating of a Light but not a separation of the same with a preservation of the Light separated Therefore it was the great God his good pleasure that he made Man into the nearest Image of the Divine Majesty as a living Soul nor subject unto death Therefore neither is it said that God made Death It is therefore believed that Adam before transgression was Immortal from the goodness of the Creator Therefore I knew that Adam indeed was Immortal before the transpression of a Law Yet that it was not natural unto him from the root of Life but for the Tree of Life's sake For otherwise the planting of this Tree in Paradise had been vain if Man could not have suffered the successive alterations and calamities of Ages That Tree therefore was created for the powers and necessities of Renovation renewing of Youth yea and prevention of Old Age For although the Body by Creation was not capable of being wounded nor subject unto Diseases yet it had by little and little felt the successive changes of Ages if its vigor had not been continued by the Tree of Life For neither is it to be believed that the Lord of things the Saviour of the World was of a worse constitution than our first Parent But that the Redeemer of the World died and so felt the Calamities of Ages that in his thirty second year he was reckoned fifty years of Age. That happened not from his Nature nor from the root of his Life For Death as also the rottenness of Dayes had no right over him but out of his infinite goodness whereby he had appointed himself a Surety for our Sins he would subject himself to miseries and so also to Death in his most glorious
forth as if also being in wrath it were disturbed or sorely disquieted by the imprinted Image of revenge for indeed there is in the Blood even after Death its Sense of the Murderer that is present and its revenge because it hath also its own phantasie Therefore not Abel himself but his innocent Blood cries notwithstanding unto Heaven for revenge For which Cause in Sieges the Plague for the most part enters as a Companion to wit because the magical Spirit of the more outward Man hath conceived in combates an imprinted Character of revenge but sometimes the Souldiers being through Poverty reduced to desperation and their Wives are almost adjoyned with them in dying and many Misfortunes are by way of Imprecation bequeathed to the more wealthy Souldiers or Officers from whence most strong Impressions are left as Posthumes or Survivers after Death on the Sidereal or Astral Spirit of the dying Man especially of a Woman with Child which Spirit presently after Death wandring about in the Air deviseth meanes or wayes of its own verge rank or order that is spiritual ones of hurting and revenging and then readily commits it self to Execution But such kind of Plagues are outragious sparing none and as it were immediately sent down from Heaven and because they being spiritual do implore help from corporeal Remedies in vain I am silent as to that For neither is it sufficiently safe to express the connexion and agreement of Mummies betwixt each other for from thence hath issued the whole Necromancy of the Antients For that reason also God in the Law forbad the Bodies of those that were hanged even of Heathens to be left on the Gibbet and the Sun should not go down upon them Thou wilt answer that the Plague of Sieges ariseth by reason of the manifold Filths of Excrements But on the contrary Curriers Tanners or Leather-dressers Emptiers of Jakes's and those who spend their time about Glew to be made by the Putrefaction of Skins are at hand for all of them so far are they from being subject to the Plague for the most part are long lived wonderful is God in the Spirit of the Microcosm Dost thou desire to know perhaps why the Blood of a Bull is Poysonous but not that of his Brother the Oxe Indeed the Bull in time of Killing murmurs against his Executioner and imprinteth on his Blood a Mark and potent Character of revenge But if it happen that in slaying of an Oxe through one stroake he hath become furious and hath the longer continued in the same Fury he leaves his Flesh but unwholesom unless first the disturbance being pacified he as idle and shut up by himself be left to return to himself by fasting The Bull therefore dies more excelling in revenge than other Animals and therefore his Fat but not his Blood unless the humane Blood in the Unguent be conquered by the forreign Tincture of the Bulls Blood is altogether necessary for the Weapon Salve if the Weapons the Authors of the Wounds shall not be besprinkled with the Blood of the Wounded And if by the besmearing of the same Weapons a perfect or safe Cure be to be expected truly the Usnea or Moss together with its fellow Ingredients are not sufficient that a Cure should be made without fresh Blood had out of the Wound for a more violent Efficacious or taurine Impression is required and an aereal Communication of the Honey of Flowers From hence therefore it is sufficiently manifest that the Efficacy of the Unguent is not to be imputed to the Concurrence of Satan who also could Cure the Wound without Honey and Bulls Blood but to the communion of natural Qualities with the derived Post-hume revenge left in the concrete or composed Body of Blood and Fat. Our Adversaries will prate rejoycing that the Power of the Magnetical Unguent could scarce have been proved but by a Witch by Satan and the spiritual Magick of the invisible World which is a suppositious or imaginary Science plainly of no weight or worth and a damnable Errour Notwithstanding not any sinister perverting of the matter in handling but the gross Ignorance of others and the miserable Condition of humane Frailty hath required that thing which more promptly inclines to Evil knowes Evil and is more readily taught by Evil than by Good But certainly whatsoever we have here alleaged concerning Satan and Witches it is not that from thence others should hope for a conformity or suitable resemblance of the Oyntment with Witches for neither are the spiritual Virtues of the Unguent and the Phantasie of the Blood stirred up by Satan as a Guider or Enforcer But this is that I aim'd at to wit that there doth inhabit in the Soul a certain Magical Virtue given her of God naturally proper and belonging unto her inasmuch as we are his Image and Engravment that in this respect also she acts after a peculiar manner that is spiritually on an Object at a distance and that much more powerfully than by any corporeal helps because seeing the Soul is the more principal part of the Body therefore the Action belonging unto her is spiritual magcial and of the greatest Validity That the Soul doth by the same Virtue which was rendred as it were drowsie through the knowledge gotten by eating of the Apple govern and stir her own Body but that the same magical Faculty being somewhat awakened is able to act also out of her Prison on another distant Object only by her Beck conveighed thereunto by Mediums for therein indeed is placed the whole Foundation of natural Magick but in no wise in Blessings Ceremonies and vain Superstitions but that all these wicked observances were brought in by him whose endeavour it hath alwayes been every where to defile all good things with his Tares But we do not tremble at the name of Magick but with the Scripture interpret it in a good-sense Yet we have granted that it may be indifferently employed to a good or evil Intent to wit by the use or abuse of that Power And so that under that Word we understand the most profound inbred knowledge of things and the most potent Power for acting being alike natural to us with Adam not exstinguished by Sin not obliterated but as it were become drowsie therefore wanting an Excitement Therefore we shew that Magnetism is exercised not indeed by Satan but by that which belongs not to Satan and therefore that this Power which is co-natural unto us hath stood abusively dedicated to Satan as if he were the Patron thereof that the Magical Power doth as it were sleep in us since Sin and therefore that it hath need of a stirrer up Whether that Exciter be the holy Spirit by Illumination as the Church mentions to have happened in the Eastern Magi or Wise Men of the East and which at this day sometimes happens in others or Satan doth also for some foregoing submissive Engagement stir up the same in Witches And in such as these the
divert himself But that the Archeus being terrified and a run-away and returning as half in a rage is made so hostile unto the parts his Clients over which he alone is president the confirmation thereof is not elsewhere to be fetched than that a thorn is thrust into the finger which by the fat or grease of an Haâ—e is safely expelled without discommodities as that remedy asswageth the fury of the Archeus which thorn doth otherwise stir up a great Tragedy of fury For the Archeus brings forth a poyson in his Clients by his own fury the which otherwise a simple small wound would willingly be ignorant of Conceive thou how unlike is the wound of phlebotomy and the sting of a Bee And likewise the stroak of phlebotomy that is clean how far doth it differ from the prick of unclean phlebotomy It s no wonder therefore that the seat where the image of the conceived terrour and piercing of the combined image of fury shall first happen is hostilely disturbed is furiously scorched yet oftentimes poysonous tempests are transmitted and chased unto the more outward habit of the body by the implanted spirit of life unto places I say whither the Latex or liquor of the veins tendeth of its own free accord in time of health or they are dismissed unto the external habit of the body And therefore whatsoever is to be done in the Pest that is to be cured with speed For sometimes the image of the Pest is cloathed only with the inflowing spirit and then medicines that provoke sweat do readily succour But where the inhering and in-bred Archeus conceiveth the image of his terrour and fury in the solid parts unless he presently resign up and lay aside the conceived image unto and in the spermatick nourishment I have called that corrupt nourishment the Tartar of the blood and produce a tumour there is danger least it presently pass over into the very substance of the solid parts which contains an unexcusable detriment of death And therefore that the plague may not take up for it self a tough Inn within the body we must procure that the pestilent image do not long float within but that the whole houshold-stuff be allured forth and fall out by sweat For the Carline Thistle is said to have been in times past shewn unto an Emperour by an Angel for the plague of his Army perhaps therefore called Angel-Thistle because the first rise of the image of the Pest stirs up drowsie evils loathings a Fever vomiting and head-aches about the stomach but the herb Ixia or Chamilion drives away sleep and much more deep drowsinesses against Nature and therefore they hope that the extraction of fresh Carline Thistle should not be unfruitful for the plague that is newly begun The End A TABLE Of many of the Chief things contained in this Book The rest being referred to the Contents of the CHAPTERS A. WHat Accidents properly are to what serving c. 131 9. c. Acheldamah consumes a dâ—ad carcasse in one day 671. 54. Adam not cursed 654. A demonstration of his fall 659. What he generated after sin 663. 17. Why he and his posterity Bearded 666. Adam's lust arose from a natural property of the apple 668. No motion of lust in Adam before his fall 682. 85. Of Adam's understanding 711. The Praise of Agnus Castus 707. 52. What kind of knowledge in the apple 665. Air not reducible into water 60. 12 76 41. Air the reducer of bodies into water 68. 26. Air the seperater of the waters 71. 4 152 19. Air is exceeding cold and dry Ibid. 76. 40. 1120. Air acts on the water without a reaction 76. 41. A vacuity in the air proved by a manual 82. 4 7 1126. It s magnal or sheath 85. 20 692 12. It is imprinted with the seal of formes c. 133 18. c. What office it bears in minerals Ibid. 20. How it joyns to the vital spirit 183. 37. Air seperates sulphurs 184. 45. It Volaâ—izeth the blood 186. 187 56. Air not capable of a vital light 189. It doth not nourish the vital spirit 190. 9. How the Alkahest of Paracelsus operates on bodies 65 7 105 6 104 27 479 43 787. it is compared to the fire mentioned in Macchabes 108. 28. It s operation on a Coal Ibid. It s Aenigmatical description 115 28. The Revealer of the proportion of light c. 146. 89. The operation of the liquor Alkahest one the Cedar 811. Aloes hurt by washing 463. 39. Alcalies reduced into a meer simple water 106. 12. How alcalies are made 183. 38. The Common-wealth of Alcalies 184. 40. Alcalies why fit for wound drinkes 186. 53 294 21. Amber drawes the virtue from vitriol without touching it 764. 22. Amber becomes a Zenexton against the Plague 767. 37 787 1146. Amulets act by influence 330 19. 481 An Amulet against the Plague 767. 37. Antimony in its form better than in its principles 788. 153 Antimony observes an Influence 773. 63. How a sweet Anodine workes 918. No Animal spirit in nature 187. 58. A good Angel never appears Bearded 661. 37. Anasarcha by what produced 513. It s cure 521. The Apoplexy hitherto unknown 906 998 Its rise 917 Its seat 915 Apple takes away warts 154 Apostemes how made 186. 52 290 6 Aqua Fortis c. 96. 14 Aqua Vitae see spirit of wine  How Arcanum's do operate 473. 15 164 15 Arcanum'â— cure all Diseases 524 Arcanum's never go into nourishment 577 Arcanum's iâ— some sort exceed the powers of nature 753 Arsenick though never so well preparâ—â— is not to be inwardly administred 466. 52. It is fixed by co-melting with salt-peter 105. 10 The Arterial spirit of life is of the nature of a Gas. 110. 40 Arterial blood exhales without a Capâ—t mortuum 182. 34 By what 185. 40 How an Arterie becomes hard 185. 48 The Arteries do not atract air 190 Arteries attract spirit of wine but no juicy things 203. 41 The Archeus its constitutive parts 35. 4  110 41 Its seat 430 287 28 What it is in the beginning of Generation 133  18 142 60 The manner of its operating 142 61 c. Its defects 549 Archeus sensible of death 553 Archeus receiving of evils the cause of our hurt 1127 Archeus hath an imaginâ—tion of its own differing from the mind 1128 Aroph of Paracelsus 709. 53 878 879 Aristotles four constitutive causes of things condemned 18. 3 Astrology natural why preferred before the stellar astrology 26. 9 Its supports or props vain 126. 46 c. Condemned by an experiment 127. 48 By a review of the attributes they give to the Planets Ibid. 50 Astronomy slighted 12. 5 Ascites what 508. 524 Asarum by boyling lays down its vomitive force 172. 45 The difference of Ascarides from worms 221  83 Its cure Ibid. Asthmawhat 260. 40 356 What the Asthma consists of 360. 27 Froâ— whence the Ashma ariseth 261. 42 â— twofold Asthma 357. 9 358. 368. 68 The Asthma is