the more hard meats is felt as it were to re-suffer and to undergo a re-acting of digestible things because also that speech of Physitians is too rustical because unlesse that which is to be digested be perfectly cocted and at a set term of time the digestion of the same is in vain expected for it tarrying longer in the stomach is corrupted and so then a new Agent ariseth neither is the former any longer digestible when it is corrupted neither also doth that new Agent re-act in manner of bright burning Iron because there are in that digestible matter parts uncapable of digestion in respect of that stomach Neither also doth the leaven or ferment of bread leaven the powder of glasse or the sand of a flint because it is a strange and uncapable object and not to be subdued by it For so the digesting ferment of the stomach doth ferment the flour of meal but not the brans In the mean time the ferment of the meal suffers nothing by the powder of glass as neither doth that powder re-act resist or truly repel For truly altering ferments do never act but on things that have a co-resemblance but they are quiet do cease and sleep if they have not an object proper for themselves Therefore the hinderances of Agents by an alterative Blas are uncapacities hardnesses impurities unequalities and the requisite movers of space Therefore the action of these is terminated on a proper object and disposeth that object unto periods or ends and manners decreed for it But interposing hinderances are not the re-actions of the patient but the incapacities of the same For neither doth silver re-act while it is solved by Aqua fortis with so great a heat although this in the mean time decayeth in acting and loseth its own force and virtue but there is an in-bred property of Spirits and a natural endowment which do operate in acting that by reaching unto their appointed mark they may perfect themselves and bring down their own objects unto bounds naturally enjoyned them which thing distilled Vinegar doth sufficiently teach while it dissolves the stone of Crabs Snails Corals c for the sharp spirit of the Vinegar doth coagulate it self in acting and that which else was volatile and liquid is not onely strained together but also changeth its savour for it collects and constrains it self in a tangible form as if it did more rejoyce to remain in the shape of a more solid body than of a liquor But that such a coagulation and change of savour doth happen by the proper motion of the spirit of Vinegar but not through a re-acting of Bodies standing in the act of dissolution is manifest because there is not made a diminishing of those Bodies even in one grain at least in weight while as in the mean time some measures of stilled Vinegar do undergo the aforesaid change and so it doth not seem consonant to reason for that thing to be done by reason of the bruising or breaking of the stones onely but by reason of a proper natural gift-like unfolding of the Spirits The same thing almost comes to pass while the Spirit of Vitriol waxeth very hot with Mercury For the Mercury remaineth being unchanged in the essence and matter of Mercury onely that it assumes the countenance of snow losing in the mean time nothing of its own substance yet the Spirit of Vitriol passeth over into a true Alume but if the Spirit of Aqua fortis which for the other half of it is also the Spirit of Vitriol be combined with the Mercury that snow of Mercury is not made as neither doth the liquor it self pass over into an Alume And so from hence it appeareth that the action is not proper to the Mercury but to the Spirit of Vitriol diversly disposing it self of its own free accord and according to an in-bred inclination unto divers objects differently changing it self Wherefore the Spirit of Vitriol which is in the Aqua fortis through a strong heat of bubbles stirred up and a tempestuous boiling up dissolveth the Mercury and far otherwise than while it is the naked and simple Spirit of Vitriol which variety indeed in acting doth manifest the various virtues of the acting Spirit rather than those of the Mercury it self because in the one action the Mercury is made invisible which in the other becomes white like snow For the Spirit of Sea-salt although it be most sharp yet it is never changed by the fellowship of Mercury as neither also doth it act into the Mercury And so the effects of actions are seen and not of re-actings So Aqua fortis acts into all metals except gold but with Sal armoniack it acts only into gold but no longer into silver And so there are particular properties of Spirits but not re-actions of a suffering body because it is that which in its own substance and weight sustaineth nothing but a meer and one onely division of it self Therefore Spirits being tossed with divers passions in acting undergo divers transformations but if they remain drowsie and sleeping and do not act on their object they also remain in their antient qualities For that thing appeared at first to happen by reason of the touching of the Mercury because it is that which is also a certain Spirit but afterwards in the silver and gold that was wholly silent But moreover I remember that the Calx or lime of Silver hath drunk into it the liquor of Sulphur which they call a distillation which presently in the Silver laid aside all harshnesse and tartnesse and it changed this liquor into a gauly bitternesse by distilling for the silver remained the same which it was before in substance weight and powder therefore that bitternesse could not be afforded from the silver and for that cause in no wise from a re-acting of the silver but of its own free accord it was made by the property of the Spirit of the Sulphur for neither is there a lesse reason why the same Spirit of Vitriol in diversly acting doth also change it self after a diverse manner than that the same silver should under the boyling up of diverse Spirits wax cruel by a various manner of re-acting on these Especially while that in a Spirit there is made a various transmutation in acting but there is no successive alteration made of the substance of the silver in suffering or diminishing of its weight which things may be far more clearly demonstrated by Adeptists unto whom to wit the one onely and same Liquour Alkahest doth perfectly reduce all tangible Bodies of the whole Universe into the first life of the same without any changing of it self and diminishing of its virtues But it is drawn under the yoak and thorowly changed by its own compeere or co-equal onely For from hence there appeareth a certain sense to be in all particular things the which mediating they do sometimes one way and sometimes another move and unfold themselves about divers objects but not
signes times or seasons dayes and years Moreover I know that in the Sea and deep Lakes there is their motive force whereby they suffer a raging heat without windes whereby I say our Ocean is rowled six houres and else-where six constant months with one onely flowing Lastly I know that the Earth is at rest nor that it hath a motive force actively proper to it self Therefore I believe that the Earth doth quake and fear as oft as the Angel of the Lord doth smite it Behold a great Earth-quake was made for the Angel of the Lord descended from Heaven Mat. 28. The word For among the Hebrewes doth contain a cause as if he should say Because For this is the onely cause of an Earth-quake whereby all things do without resistance equally tremble together as it were a light Reed In the Revelations the third part of Mortalls Trees and Fishes perished at the very time wherein the Angel powred forth his Viall For abstracted spirits do work by the divine Power and nothing can resist them Evill spirits also as oft as it is granted them to act by a free power they act without the resistance of bodies or a re-acting of resistance For matter is the Client of or dependant on another Monarchy and it cannot re-act into a spirit which it by no meanes toucheth and with no object affecteth Even as the Angel useth the powred out liquor of the Viall unto the aforesaid slaughter so for the Earth-quake he for the most part makes use of a note or voice For a wandering note was heard in the Air no otherwise than as the creaking of Wheeles driven thereupon as it were a tempestuous murmuring sound succeeded yet without Winde and at that very time the whole tract of so great Provinces trembled at once with a huge horrour Which same note accompanied the trembling of the Earth at every of the three repeated turns The same thing almost happens in Lightning Truly the Lightning burns and causeth melting but surely it smiteth not According to that saying The voice of Thunder shall strike the Earth because it smiteth For Silk-worms die Milk is curdled Ale or Beer waxeth sowre a slain Oxe hanging up retains flaggie flesh unfit to take Salt and that onely by the Thunder-stroak the Lightning doing no hurt there Therefore let the voice of Thunder and the voice of the Earth-quake be the note or tone of ministring spirits But the Stars do not stir up a motive and alterative force of the Air or Water through a note but do act onely by an Aspect which they call an Influence And it hath its action and direction in a moment even as light sight c. For otherwise there should be need of many years before the audible Species or resemblances that are to be heard should come down from Saturn to the places of a Meteor And then a note or sound although it be great yet it faileth by degrees in the way But that the Earth doth tremble with a Tempest of Windes or that the Tempest doth sometimes run successively thorow Villages Cities and as it were thorow street by street in its wheeling about That is wholly by accident and according to the will of him who shaketh the Earth for a monstrous sign Likewise that else-where it doth oft-times tremble in quick Belgium very seldom that changeth not the moving cause For it stands in the free will of him who encloseth the Universe in his Fist who can shake the Earth at his pleasure and alone do marvellous things At the beholding of whom the Earth shall at sometime smoak and the Mountains being melted shall go to ruine But that in another place gapings chaps after an Earth-quake have sometimes appeared and a filthy poyson and fumes of arsenicall bodies have breathed forth that is joyned onely to its naturall causes Nor are they the effects of an Earth-quake but by accident but not the causes But this blindness of causes of the Earth-quake hath been invented the Devill being the Authour whereby mortall men might set apart all fear of the power and so might prevent if not wholly neglect the ends which God hath appointed to himself for the serious reverencing of the power of his Majesty that they being mind-full of the faults of their fore-led life might repent Deh qual possente man conforzze ignote Il terreno a crollar si spesso riede Non e chiuso vapor como altro crede Ne sognato stridente il suol percuote Certo la terra si rissente scuote Perche del peâ—cator sa aggrava il piede Et i nostri corpi impatiente chiede Per riemper se sue spelonche â—uote E linquaggio del ciel che l'huom riprende Il turbo il tuono il fulmine il baleno Hor parla anco la terra in note horrende Perche l'huom ch' esser vuol tutto terreno Ne del cielo il parlar straniero intende I l parlar della terra intenda al meno Behold with what a mighty yet unknown A force the Earthy Body makes a noyse And with so thick a rushing gives a groan 'T is not a vapour hot shut up they 'r toyes Even as some believe which beats the ground Or thumps its entrails with a whistling sound Truly the Earth it selfe doth feele and quake Because the sinners foot doth load its back And our impatient mortall bodies fall In to fill up its own deep Vaults withall The Language of the Heaven which reproves Man is the Whirle-winde Thunder Lightning flash And sp'ritous howling in the Air Ecchoes Now speaks the earth more-o're with horride lash Of signall tokens ' cause since man which would Be wholly earthly doth not understand The Linguo strange of Heaven yet may or should At least the Earth it 's Language apprehend These things nothing hindering there hath not been one wanting who said that from a most deep well of the Castle of Lovaine he by a sure presage foretold an Earth-quake was shortly to be because the water of the same Well three dayes before sent forth the stinking savour of Brimstone and that its contagion yellowness together with the turbulency of the water did bewray it But let that good man know that that Well is one hundred and fifteen foot in depth because they go up to the Castle from the Street that is next unto it by ninety three steps And so that Well in one part is not deeper than its Neighbouring Wells although in the other part where it is co-touching with the Hill of the Castle it is deep as I have said But seeing that a vein of Sulphur is not hidden in the Hill the water could not breath Sulphur which was not there But if it cast the smell of Sulphur a sign might precede God admonishing but it had not Sulphur which neither is in that place nor was enflamed therefore neither could it cause an Earthquake unto all Belgium or the Low Countries Therefore there is no naturall reason why the water
that the period of motions and of those unfoldings and the variety of Agents is therefore to be attributed to a re-acting of the Patients To wit even as while an external luke-warmth bringing up Eggs unto a Chick for neither of them doth re-suffer reciprocally For neither doth the vital Spirit in an Egg any way re-suffer any thing by the luke-warmth as neither that luke-warmth by the vital Spirit of the Egg. Hitherto tendeth that which I have proved before To wit that altering things do not act by contrariety Therefore their Patients do not fight in defending themselves nor re-re-act by contrariety That maxim also is false That every Agent doth of necessity act in an instant and that its action is retarded or fore-slowed onely by a resistance and re-acting of the Patient Because in all particular seeds their own and certain period of continuances and dispositions is essentially included For the falshood of that maxim hath flowed from hence that the Schools being deluded by Aristotle have thought that the fire is to be compared unto other Agents the which when they saw to be any where almost in a moment they believed that the same thing was likewise to be wrested unto other Agents Through occasion whereof I must now speak of irregular and differently inclined Agents In the first place it is manifest that the fire doth suffer or undergoe nothing at all by the re-acting of a combustible object For otherwise a small quantity of fire should be sufficient for the burning of the whole Universe if it were capable of burning which could not be done if the combustible matter should re-act even but never so little Truly a River suffers nothing if a staffe shall swim on the same and as yet lesse doth the fire suffer if it burn Saguntum or if Gun-powder be fired In Nature also no seminal Beginning suffereth by the matter into which it works Because it disposeth of the same without re-acting even as it hath begun plainly to appear in denied contraries Moreover that the falshood of the aforesaid maxim may be the more beheld take notice that all particular seeds have their own periods and moments appointed by the Creator wherein they do promote their course unto a ripeness For Conies Dogs Birds Men Horses Elephants do nourish within perfect and bring forth their own Young at their appointed termes of time Not indeed that the seminal matter in a man is rawer colder and more rebellious than the seed of a Cat But God hath set the bounds of every one of them according to his own good pleasure the reason whereof to enquire into belongs not unto mans judgement For if the disposition of a seminal matter be of a longer labour that proceeds not by reason of its resistance or strugling strength as neither from the weakness wearisomness idleness or disturbance of passions of the Agent For truly every Being in Nature operates without labour and passion and therefore without cessation rest intermittency and trouble Seeing indeed all particular things are made by reason of the communicating of a Ferment and limitation of appointment For all particular things do purely operate by a reflexion of their own appointment according to the ordaining will of their Creator For so Christians were to philosophize But in local motion motive virtues and so also in the exercise of Science Mathematical the maxims of Aristotle are indeed serviceable the which by a violent Command and unfitly the Schools have introduced into nature For if moyst or wet Wood be not so obediently burnt up as dry that doth not therefore come to passe through a re-acting of the wood or with a suffering of the fire For although the wood should cease from all combustion the fire should not therefore suffer more by the wood than by Gold which is not to be burnt yea if in wet wood as such there should be a certain operative resistance to wit a re-acting surely water should also longer and more strongly resist fire than the Rosin of Wood or of a coal But the consequence is false For the water doth most swiftly and first of all fly away out of wet Wood before the fire enflames the Rosin of the Wood Therefore the slowness in wet Wood doth not argue a re-action of the matter or strength of the suffering Wood But the fire follows its own laws of appointments whereby it separates first the more volatile things and next in order things lesse swift of flight For so although the fire be subdued by wet Rosin which by it self otherwise had presently been in a flame with the same fire yet by reason of the aforesaid lawes it patiently expects the torture of the fire and a departure of that water Iron also being placed between stubble and fire hinders indeed the enflaming or burning up of the stubble but there is not therefore any re-action of the Iron on the fire or suffering of the fire by the Iron which thing surely hath not been narrowly enough searched into by the Schools For although these their maxims have place in corporeal actions wherein the Agent of necessity cherisheth and toucheth its own object and thus far inspireth its own virtue into the same yet that is altogether impertinent in Agents which do act on things placed under them which are far separated in place For truly besides the actions of the Heavens which are carried by influence in-beaming and motion without the touching of an Agent but by a Blas onely do disperse the Seminaries of their own virtues Sublunary things are not properly deprived of a Blas Because fermental Odours do produce most active and seminal effects and do transchange in nature their object by their own perfume and do draw it after them into their protection Likewise also a radial or beaming action doth concur into nature For the Elks hoof is thus said by its touching to preserve the heart and head from danger yet the Seat of the evil is not in the finger as neither is there a passing from bound to bound Neither is the Hoof therefore diminished of its strength by acting but rather is confirmed as also the Load-stone is comforted by the communication of Iron For a clear sign that an Agent suffers not a whit by reaction in seminal or beaming actions and by consequence that neither doth the Patient therefore re-act Therefore Medicines against the pain of the Head or Amulets or preserving Pomanders have a Blas whereby they do constrain objects to obey them like the Heavens and they act onely by their own and not on a strange and nearer object And they draw out their deserts or worthy virtues without all corporal eflux motion passion or weakening I know indeed that the Schools do not bear these things but that they refer these effects into vapours lifted up from the womb or the least toe because they are such who have sunk themselves in the Clay of a dreggy Minerva or wit But if a Maid which hath the
is a lightsome Being it acts not but by its instrument of the vital aire or by the Archeus as a mean between the light of Life flowing from the father of lights and the body But this aire or Archeus doth not act but after the manner wherein every seminal spirit acteth on the mass subjected under it that is not but by an imprinted mark or sealie Idea which hath known what and which way it must act Therefore all and every disease hath a sealie mark and as it were a seminal act which is expert of things to be acted by it self This Declaration therefore doth far recede or differ from an elementary distemperature from humours and the disproportionable mixture of those from the fight and contrariety of the elements of our composition because every disease is nothing but a Sword to the Life wounding or totally cutting it off For as a Sword doth exhaust the Life together with the arterial blood and vital aire wherein according to the holy Scriptures the Soul it self sitteth So a disease consumeth the same air of Life on which it afresh sealeth an hostile character drawn as well from occasional Causes as gotten through the errour of its own indignation This exact account of a disease being granted lo I come unto the explaining of a disease And first I will demonstrate from the very Theoremes of the Schools that the thingliness or essence of a disease hath been hitherto unknown Whence in the next place any one shall easily judge what hath even hitherto been done in the remedies and vanquishing of diseases I have oft-times promised that I will demonstrate that the Schools have hitherto neglected that is that they have not known the essence root or nature of a disease in its own universal quiddity or thingliness And seeing I have already from the Elements prosecuted that thing even unto a conclusion thorow all their privy shifts now at length by an Anatomy of particulars I shall also stand to my promises if I shall detect the same in the general and especially if I shall shew that thing no longer by the fictions of Elements temperaments and humours but by the very words of Authors whereby they corrupt their Young beginners as it were with a mortal contagion In the premises it hath already been demonstrated by me that the Ages before me being deluded by the trifles of the Peripateticks have been ignorant of the Causes to wit the Matter and Efficient of natural things Then also that a thing it self is nothing besides a connexion of both Causes and that this same thing is in diseases especially seeing a disease although happening unto us by sin is now admitted for a prodigal Son of Nature Truly the univocal or simple homogeneity of Causes in natural Beings hath compelled me hereunto whereby the efficient Cause is denominated from effecting but not from the Effect which is after the Efficiency Therefore the Schools do first of all define a disease to be an affect or disposition which doth primarily hurt the actions of our faculties wherein they do as yet very much stumble For truly first they name this Affect a distemperature of one or two qualities of the first Elements For so they rehearse the same thing because they consess a disease to be an elementary quality it self as it exceedeth a just temperature Therefore a disease shall no longer be that disposition resulting from the first qualities which they suppose immediately to hurt the functions themselves And so they feign the whole disease hereafter to consist in nothing but in a degree or excess of an elementary quality Again now and then they call the very distemperature of qualities not indeed a Disease but well the antecedent cause of the same They will I say have those four solitary qualities to be diseases whether they shall proceed from external qualities co-like unto themselves or whether they owe their beginning in the body to be from a strange disproportion of mixture Furthermore they afterwards combine those qualities in a bride-bed from the congress whereof they then derive their off-spring a Disease to wit they believe that the Elements are so subservient to their own dreams As that also qualities being joyned at their pleasure they have commanded them to answer to as many elements So that those naked qualities being even balaced with feigned elements and dreamed humours they have feigned to be Diseases themselves For in this place I declare the unseasonable yea sporting varieties of the Schools and their poverty greatly fighting otherwise surely I have sufficiently proved elsewhere by a Demonstration chiefly true That in the nature of things there are not four elements and therefore neither are they mixed that bodies which they have called mixt may be thereby constituted and by consequence that neither can distemperatures be accused for diseases As neither that ever there were four constitutive humours of us in the nature of things whereby it is sufficiently and over-manifest that the causes of diseases yea and diseases and the predicament of diseases have been hitherto unknown in the Schools Notwithstanding I will now dissemblingly treat with them by the supposed Positions of the same Schools Therefore the Schools sometimes repenting them of their sayings will have the elementary qualities and not unfrequently the humours equal to these not indeed to be diseases but onely the containing causes of almost all diseases Otherwise again that of those qualities being more intense than is meet a third or neutral one doth arise which they have called the Diathesis or Disposition or Disease it self And so however they toss the business they have hitherto commanded a disease to inhabite among qualities but humours although intemperate ones they for the most part driven out of the rank of diseases Indeed a Cataract in the eye although as a substance it doth immediately intercept the sight yet it cannot be a disease Therefore they have feigned a certain Being of reason and an imaginary relation or obstruction which might contain every property of a disease and might be truly a disease the Cataract being rejected And so by degrees a disease comes down unto non-beings and privations And now and then they for the essence of a disease do ridiculously distinguish a simple distemperature from a conjoyned one and again both of them from a humourous one when as a humour should be a substance void of degrees Indeed they have distinguished the societies of proportionable and disproportionable mixtures of the first qualities into pedigrees and then they have thereby erected specious Schemes and at length they have filled whole Volumes with those fables But at leastwise they have never admitted an evil or vitiated humour to be bred in us which may not presuppose some elementary distemperature to be mother unto it Wherefore a distemperature in the Schools shall be onely the cause of the cause and of the thing caused but it shall not be the thing caused it self or the disease nor in
detestable yet are supported by the same root namely a Magical power without difference as unto good and also unto evil For neither doth it blemish the Majesty of free Will or the Treatise of the same although we now and then discourse of a Thief Robber or Murtherer a Whoremonger an Apostate and Witch Grant therefore that a Witch kills a Horse in an absent Stable there is a certain natural virtue derived from the Spirit of the Witch and not from Satan which can oppress or strangle the vital Spirit of the Horse Suppose thou that there are two subjects of Diseases and Death namely one of these the Body wherein a Disease inhabits And because all Beings act on this Body as that which is the most passive subject the other spiritual Dominion hath been thought to have been from Satan But the other subject is the unperceivable and invisible Spirit which of its own self is able to suffer all Diseases The Spirit suffering the Body also suffers because its action is limited within the Body for the Mind after that it is fast tied to the Body flowes alwayes downwards even as when the palate is pained the tongue continually tends thither but not on the contrary For there are some material Diseases which are tinged onely materially For so manifold is the occasion of Death that there is no other ground from whence we may receive an ability for pride The act therefore of the foregoing touch of the Witch is plainly natural although the stirring up of the virtue or power be made by the help of Satan No less than if a Witch should slay a Horse with a Sword reach'd unto her by Satan that act of the Witch is natural and corporeal even as the other fore-going act is Natural and Spiritual For truly Man naturally consists no lesse of a Spirit than of a Body neither therefore is there any reason why one act may be called the more natural one or why the Body only may be said to act but the Spirit to be idle and to be made altogether destitute at least of such action that is proper to it self as it is the Image of God Yea the vital Spirits in speaking most properly are those which perceive move remember c. but in no wise the Body and dead Carcass it self Every act therefore doth more properly respect its agent than the Body the Inn of the Agent Therefore some certain Spiritual Ray departs from the Witch into the Man or bruit Beast which she determineth to kill According to that Maxim That there is no Action made unless there be a due approximation or most near approach of the Agent to the Patient and a mutual coupâ—ing of their Virtues whether the same approximation be made Corporally or also spiritually Which thing is proved to our hand by a visible testimony For if the fresh Heart of a Horse for that is the seat of the vital Spirits slain by a Witch be empaled upon a stick and be roasted on a Broach or broyled on a Gridiron Presently the vital Spirit of the Witch without the interposing of any other mean and from thence the whole Witch her self for truly not the Body but the Spirit alone is sensible suffers cruel torments and pains of the fire The which surely could by no means happen unless there had been made a coupling of the Spirit of the Witch with the Spirit of the Horse For the Horse that was strangled retains a certain Mumial Faculty so I call it whensoever the virtue of the vital Liquor is as yet co-fermented with the Flesh that is the implanted Spirit such as is not found in Bodies dying of their own accord by reason of any sicknesse and any other renting asunder of an inferiour order whereunto the Spirit of the Witch being coupled unto it is a companion Therefore there is made in the fresh Heart a binding up of the Spirit of the Witch before that by a dissolution the Witch her own Spirit return back to her again which Spirit is retained by the Stick or Arrow being thrust into the Heart and through a roasting of both Spirits together from whence by Magnetism it happens that the Witch in the utmost limit or gradual heat of the Fire is sorely tossed or disturbed in her sensitive Spirit That effect is changed from the intention for if Reveng stir up the experimenter then the effect is reprobate But if tryal be made that the Witch may thereby be constrained to bewray her self to be subjected to Judges or the Justice of the Magistrate and that a benefit may be hereby procured to his Neighbour and himself and as by the taking away of so impious blasphemous and hurtful a Vassal of Satan glory to God and the greater peace and rest may arise amongst all Neighbours then certainly the effect cannot be rejected as reprobate We must not think that the whole Spirit of the Witch departeth into the Heart of the Horse for so the Witch her self had departed from the living but that there was a certain univocal or single participation of the vital Spirit and Light even as indeed a Spirit which is the Architect or Master-workman of the whole Man is propagated in the Seed at every turn or act of Generation being sufficient even for many off-springs the Spirit of the Father remaining entire notwithstanding Indeed that Spiritual participation of Light is Magical and a wealthy communication by Virtue of that Word Let Animals and Herbs bring forth Seed and one Seed produceth ten times ten thousand of Seeds of equal Valour or Virtue and as many entire seminal Spirits as Light is kindled or inflamed by Light But what a Magnetical Spirit may properly be and the Entity or Beingness begotten by its Parent the Phantasie I will hereafter more largely write I am now returned unto our Ends proposed Neither is there any ground for any one to think that this rebounding of the Heart into the Witch is a meer Supposition or plainly a superstitious and damnable Juggle and Mockery of Satan seeing she is infallibly discovered by this Sign and is constrained will she nill she to bewray her self openly which is a thing opposite to the intent of Satan as in the second of our suppositions is above sufficiently shewn for the Effect is perpetual never deceiving having its Foundation in reason and the spiritual Nature but not in the least supported by Superstitions Hath not likewise a dead Carcass also that was murdered be-bloodied it self before the Judges or Coroner and his Inquest when the Murderer was present and hath oft-times procured a certain Judgment of his Offence Although before the Blood had already stood restrained Indeed in the Man dying by reason of his Wound the Inferiour Virtues which are Mumial for those are unbridled ones and are not in our Power have imprinted on themselves a Footstep of taking revenge Hence it is that the Murderer being present the Blood of the Veins boiles up and flowes
that have wholly banished salt out of the use of men But the common people deride the Schooles and the use of Salt hath grown frequent in despight of their Rules So that the Authority of the Schooles being despised Food is not onely unpleasant but also unwholsome without salt But if the seasoning of salt smile on the Palate that is not any otherwise favoured than as salt resolves the Excrements which burden the stomach with their muckinesse For if salt be put into the mouth of those that are Catechised or instructed in the Principles of Religion in the first houres of their Nativity as a resembling token of Wisdome But the Schooles have with much endeavour forbidden all eating of salt Truly what other thing is to be presaged from thence but that the Heathenish Schooles do not admit of Wisdome to wit the resembling Mark whereof they advise to be excluded And that the Church doth from the Beginning intend the destruction of Infants For salt is sequestred out of Jakes's by the Boylers of Salt-peter such as was once received into the Body together with the meats Therefore it ought likewise to remain in Duelech it self But there is not so much as the least of Sea-salt found to proceed from Duelech by Art And that thing the Schooles might have learned with no charge if any earnest desire of learning and Charity towards their Neighbour had acted them At leastwise the Boylers of Salt-peter have been more curious or carefull than so many ten thousands of Phisitians The reproach therefore re-bounds on themselves as every one of the vulgar sort doth now know how unpolished the Decrees of the Schooles are Since they know not in the Dietary part of Medicine to what end they forbid salted things Nor indeed had it been to be feared if not salt it self but onely the spirit thereof should hurt the Diseased with the stone 1. Because salt is forbidden by the Schooles Ages and the Schooles being hitherto ignorant whether there be any spirit to be found in salt or of what condition it might be 2. That power in acting is in vain which is never brought forth into act For it is sufficiently manifest that out of Sea-salt received into the Body there is never any possible drawing forth of its spirit in us For it is most sharp neither hath it a Remedy like unto it self for extinguishing of the burning heats of the urine even while the stone is present in the Bladder also in the Stranguries of old people it hinders putrefactions dissolveth mucky filths and expelleth sands Therefore salt is profitable for those that have the stone as well in its body as in its spirit For indeed Fountain-salt was given by the providence of divine Bounty for the necessities of mortal men That where the Continent departs from the Sea by a long Tract of Land saltish Springs or Fountaines might supply that defect of the Sea But the Schooles are so far from repaying thanks to God for his Benefit that they accuse God to have given salt not onely in vain but also for the destruction of men It is to be noted in the mean time that salt flowes down into the Sea from many and plentifull Fountaines yet that the saltnesse of the Sea is not increased thereby because something of salt ascends by degrees from the Sea in manner of a vapour and however it may be converted into its first matter of water at leastwise in the Clouds it hath some kind of constancy or perseverance in it From whence it is no wonder that Rain-water by it self is not to be corrupted in any Ages But in the more hot Zone that salt doth exhale even out of the Sea is manifest for there is none but smells out whether fleshes are boyled in a pot with salt or without it But the Sea-salt seeing it makes for the preservation of the Element doth difficultly exhale Therefore the Spanish Sea well nigh wants a vapoury salt is stronger and the more expels putrefaction and Duelech On the contrary the Seas of Lorraine abound with a vapoury salt and it in part waxeth sower in the stomach Also that vapoury spirit of salt which is sublimed being as it were the flowre of salt differs from the distilled spirit of salt just even as Oyl of Olives doth from Oyl of Bricks For the spirit of Oyl of Olives which departs in its first moity with me doth at length dissolve a silver thred in a Bottle But Oyl of Olives preserves Iron from rust And far more powerfully doth that remaind of Oyl from whence the aforesaid half or moity was withdrawn preserve 〈…〉 rustinesse Therefore it is to be noted that there is not a more pure and 〈…〉 than that which is re-cocted or re-boyled from the brine of Swines-flesh For 〈…〉 seasoning or operating on the Swines-flesh its object it lost its more vapoury spirit by coagulation And so the residing salt being almost fixed and freed from its earthlinesse is found to be clear and most fit for Sawces It being also cast into an Hogshead of sowring Ale or Beer preserves the same which other salt doth not so do Wherefore it drinks up into its self and transchangeth the superfluous sharp spirits in us which are the Authours of all Corruption if they shall be out of the shops of the first digestion It being thus re-boyled with Spanish-salt it is almost equal in goodnesse with that which was at first dissolved in the bright burning-pot Since therefore Sea-salt is not of the composition of urine but is wholly a forreigner unto it and so remaines yea since Sea-salt being detained in the urine keeps its nature unmixed and unchanged even until the last extraction of things and separation of the Salt-peter it is certain that it hath not any businesse with Duelech And therefore that neither is the least of Sea-salt ever found in the composition hereof seeing it more destroyes the native birth of Duelech than it doth promote it Therefore Sea-salt is forbidden by the Schooles unto those that have the stone without a foundation Thus much of Salts But I had hitherto learned that Duelech was an irregular coagulated matter bred from the salt of Urine which had not its peere in the whole Universe for that Mans urine is never found out of man For therefore it irked me not many times to distill Urine Therefore I decreed to putrifie my own urine for full 40 days in a Horses belly that by a foregoing ferment of putrefaction the unlike parts thereof might dis-unite Then I distilled abovt a half part thereof But being called away from the work by reason of business of my Family and afterwards being letted through the Feasts of Pentecost I ceased from it for fifteen dayes But the Vessel receiving it was exceeding great clear Crystalline and precious the which I had now sequestred from the long snout of an Alembick all that interval of time when as therefore I returned to the Work first I powred forth
Soul God spake unto himself as the first Chapter of Genesis witnesseth And God created Man according to his own Image which Image is God the Son After the Image of God created he him Male and Female created he them And God blessed them and said Increase and multiply Which command was enjoyned to Adam in respect of his Spirit and Humanity but not as to his Soul for this is Eternal and Immutable So also all his Parts are like unto him whereof I also possess the whole Now even as man was made of the Mud or Clay of the Ground so also it behoves him to increase as other terrestrial living Creatures by a growing and uniting and eating of living Creatures which Foods are required to die in the Stomack and to be changed from their Substance if they ought to be converted from a more vile Substance into a more excellent one or to be promoted by the Spirit of Man unto a united Life from which co-nourishing and increasing my Vessel or Body and Substance I hold as Adam did because I proceeded from him after that he was made into a living Soul as it is found in the second Chapter of Genesis but for Adam there was not found an helper like unto him Therefore the Lord God sent a deep Sleep into Adam and when he had slept he took one of his Ribs and filled up the Flesh in the room of it And the Lord God framed the Rib which he had taken from Adam into a Woman and he brought her unto Adam And Adam said This now is Bone of my Bones and Flesh of my Flesh this shall be called Virago or Wo-man because she was taken from Man Wherefore a Man shall leave his Father and his Mother and shall adhere to his Wife and they twain shall be in one Flesh Wise Men Thou hast explained unto us what thou hast been wholly in Adam according to thy Spirit and Soul and in Eve according to thy Body likewise that the Vessel hath received the Spirit and the Spirit the Soul Now we could desire to hear in what respect Eve was produced by God out of Adam and what the sleep sent by God into Adam before he framed her doth denote Mercurius Adam from the Beginning was perfect in his Essence as being the first Man created by God so his Spirit did shine thorow his Flesh and Vessel and did illustrate it even as now the Light did illuminate his Darkness and was able to subdue it so it ought to excel and overcome the Darkness because it was Internal Stable Eternal and good in its own Essence the which Spirit existing Adam could not of his own accord produce his Like without Sleep sent into him for he persisting in his Essence was without sleep and because he had divided himself from himself all his Parts had remained proper unto him and again had returned unto the whole into one assoon as he had listed because by his Spirit predominating he had divided the Body subjected unto it self which Parts were inwardly and outwardly enlightned from his own Light which gave an Essence unto all his Members But some may ask how in the next place had it gone with Adam if he had not eaten the Poyson from Eve It is answered there had alwayes been in him a combating with his Spirit or Light against his Darkness the which on the first Day God divided of which two also Man was composed even as the said Chapter sheweth which is further explained at the end of the same Chapter on the sixth Day in these Words And replenish ye the Earth and subdue it And when they had fought to the utmost they had filled the Earth and the Darkness with their Spirit or with their Light and had so subdued it that the former Darkness had been supped up and co-nourished which was his proper and one only Work alwayes to be done and perfected But some one may further query seeing in Adam the said Light being separated from the Darkness had overcome the Darkness as it was shewed to be by the very same Light whether or no according to a spiritual returned or restored United Body he had been entire and eternal in all his particular Parts and Members This being so by that reason he might have been divided into Innumerable Eternal and Infinite men without the aforesaid sleep preceding I answer it is certain that this Deified man would have been entire in all his Infinite Parts likewise that all those Parts would again as one have constituted one Entire Body He having himself in such a manner had been likewise to be one Deified Man he being reduced hitherto by his necessary strife would by Grace in his Life have enjoyed or rejoyced in the same with Christ our Saviour after his Resurrection Whereby many such men might now have been begotten or brought forth and whereby all also of them might have enjoyed that very same Grace for which Adam was procreated and whereby they might have attained it by that very same strife It pleased the Lord God to send the aforesaid sleep into Adam to shew that he soundly sleeping had not contributed any thing to the structure of Eve but she was now founded in this sleep by God Moreover the curious might busily enquire why Eve was framed of the Rib of Adam but not of his Flesh I return an answer the former Man was Adam the second Eve made for his help and conjoyned Procreation Now Propagation consisteth partly in Man as in other living Creatures by conjunction or nourishing as was said and it is further to be observed in all increase of created things in this World before they are able to grow because they consist of two things that the one ought first to die to wit the Body and Form which consist of Water and Earth and do arise from the Light of the Moon and Stars as of the Lights of the Night every thing according to their different Nature none excepted and that this might be perfected in Adam the Lord God took a Rib out of Adam which is a Bone according to its being made in Adam a Progeny of Veins the which with the Dutch sounds also a Progeny of Vipers which Bone is governed by the Moon as shall be found that when the Moon increaseth the Marrow likewise of the Bones doth increase like the Waters and together with it doth decrease It will further be found that when Flesh is burnt in the Fire it looseth that form A Bone not so yea that is so stable that the Examiners of the goodness of Coyn do make their Crucibles thereof wherein they melt and search Gold and Silver So that a Bone or Rib is and doth retain nothing besides the humane Earth as it is a second Production in Man like that of the Earth out of the Waters so far it differs from the first and one thing Wherefore Eve as she was procreated from hence she is likewise of a second and
dry Jurisdictions yet are they less durable than others which are less hot because their Light which is in them is more divided and that as well in-Bruits as in Men Men of moist Coasts or Climates are homely and big neither can they undergo so much heat as Men which live in high dry and hot Countries as also the thing it self doth moreover testifie Yea thou shalt find that even dead Carcases which are slain by a violent Death even as Histories do declare and we are able besides dayly to experience when a slaughter hath been made or shall be made of men who had gone out of cold and watery Coasts to wage War against those of the more hot Provinces that the Slain on both sides might be discerned a long time after because they of the more cold Regions did sooner putrifie these waxed dry and remained surviving these did longer endure entire in the Heat because their Balsam is more durable than that of the other even as they contain more or less of a moist Matter or do partake more or less of a Night Light and they which are the more destitute of that those do more rejoyce in a day Light Now even as the Sun is a perfect and the greater day Light so the Moon being the nearest Planet unto us is a perfect Night Light which are perpetual in their Essence and likewise do render those Bodies perpetual and durable which are born and renewed by their help Furthermore as there is one only Sun and one only Moon their created Bodies no otherwise than those like unto them may be compared thereunto they being one only and also perfect as Gold which the Phylosophers have called Sol and Silver Lune and the other five Metals likewise according to the thing brought forth after the rest of the Planets wherein they have rightly done and have delivered the Truth because those one only Bodies are perfect the Fire cannot hurt them they remain stable therein Gold lives in the Fire therefore the Phylosoyhers have marked that with the name of Salamander the which now is falsly accounted for a living Creature A temporary and fraile Fire possesseth its Fire only in part as was said but the Sun is a perpetual Fire and Life and can live only in that which is like it self the which also must needs be a stable Body And as there is a temporary body in all things except in these two aforesaid which are like them and do wholly participate of them in what respect bodies ought to be returned into their first Essence by the same reason likewise the Light ought to be returned unto its Original for a frail or mortal thing cannot reach unto a perpetual thing Furthermore the stable Darkness must needs be present before the Light wherein the Light is raised up but if this Darkness be perpetual the Light also may perpetually dwell in it first according to the Spirit and then according to the Soul which Spirit seeing it is Eternal doth illuminate Eternal Darkness and the Darkness grows together or increaseth into Light and is made Silver which is twofold constituting a Body in the Flesh and Bones of Gold which is threefold Now as the Sun is a great day Light so it overcomes the Moon and silver is altogether converted into Gold by that the other five Earthly Planets may be transchanged and brought thorow unto a perfection like unto that of them because they also are Nocturnal Lights Further we must know that there are many innumerable Minerals mutually differing like as do the Stars from each other all which do expect their Perfection and some of these can more easily and swiftly attain unto their last Perfection than others Gold and Silver how smally soever they may be divided they may be re-united without loss because all their least Parts are entire and perpetual Notwithstanding they may be rendred Mortal because they have not as yet co-met or con-joyned into one but this Death cannot begin of and from themselves neither by reason of the Gold nor of the Silver because they are stable Bodies Now some Lovers might ask after what sort or by what means that might happen I reply After the same manner or means whereby it happeneth in all created things whereby also it happened in Eve through an increasing of the Darkness which draws its Original out of the principles of their Bodies as was shewn yea the Darkness may so grow up that it may convert the whole Spirit into Darkness but it that Lune or the Spirit of Sol doth call the Soul or Heat unto its aid before it be subjected and overcome the Spirit shall be strengthened not as it was before its Corruption but by this strife and victory it shall be so strong and the Spirit thereof shall be so greatly multiplyed that it is able to render ten of the imperfect Brethren stable but this Spirit hath not by this contention attained unto a liberty even entire and an Eternal Union but it ought so often to repeat this conflict which shall always more and more increase according to the increase of the Spirit and Darkness until it shall come unto the utmost and can suffer no more and the watery Body or Darkness shall be plainly consumed and then it is a pure everlasting united and double Light which will illustrate all things without dammage and diminishment and will be able to perfect all its Brethren into the likeness of it self it s own Virtue being retained and when this thing doth happen in Sol the Light of Lune is changed and supped up into Sol so that it is equally made an Eternal United and Trine Sol that which is the last in Eternity out of Man And hence it may be demonstrated that the Evangelist John in the third Chapter of his Revelation doth use the same Similitude saying I exhort thee to buy of me Gold tried in the Fire that thou mayest be made rich and to be cloathed with white Garments and that the confusion or shame of thy nakedness may not appear and anoint thou thine eyes with a Collyrium or Eye-Salve that thou mayest see I whom I love do reprove and chastize Be ye therefore zealous and repent Behold I stand at the door and knock If any one shall hear my voice and shall open unto me the Gate I will enter in unto him and will sup with him and he with me He that shall overcome I will give unto him to sit with me in my Throne as also I have overcome and have sit with my Father in his Throne He that hath an eare let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches Wise Men We rejoyce that we understand from thee and do know the shining and quickning Light likewise the effluxing acting fermental contagious and mortal Darkness whereby we understand how Eve hath touched and eaten of the Fruits of Darkness and that she became darksom and contagious from thence through her effluxing Darkness she
the foundation of nature by which all waters are strained thorow that all of them may keep a Communion among each other from the beginning of the Creation unto the end and from the Superficies or upper part of the Earth even to its Center And moreover the water detained in this Soil of Sand is perhaps actually greater by a thousand fold than the whole heap of Seas and Rivers floating on the Superficies of the Earth And that is easily verified by supposing the whole superficies of the Earth also to be covered with waters to the depth of 600 paces Therefore it followes respect being had to the Diameter of the Earth that there is easily a thousand times more water under than upon the Earth For truly dry Sand drinks up at least about a fourfold quantity of water in the same extension of place yet I will not have it that although the Quellem be the last ground or Soil to the Digger that all subjected grounds are every where to be found by order For the aforesaid Sand which sometimes overwhelms it self perhaps to a thousand paces beneath the Horizon elsewhere boils up with speed under the open Air yea and oft-times in the top of Mountains Of which thing the Schooles with their Aristotle being ignorant do toughly hold that all true springs do owe the cause of their continuance from the Air co-thickned into water when as notwithstanding they cannot maintain that thing because in the tops of the highest Mountains springs do oft-times leap forth where another Mountain of the like height is not neer nor a water-Channel extended on either side to this Therefore they hold their peace with a lofty look and are silent at the unwonted miracle of the thing Surely as long as waters do wander in the living and vitall Soil of the Earth and are detained in the Sand Quellem so long I say they are not constrained to bring forth by the water drawing lawes of Scituations No otherwise than as the bloud while it is nourished with life in the veins so long also it knowes not above and beneath and it is as well in the fore-head as in the feet But at the very moment wherein it once falls out of the veins or the waters do disgorge themselves out of the Quellem they cease not to flow down by obeying the lawes of Scituations Therefore the Sea in its own ground doth sup up the received waters in the sieve of the Virgin-Sand For so according to the wise man however all waters do flow into the Sea yet it never re-gorgeth them again Because by one onely thread there is a continuall passage out of the Virgin-Sand into Springs Streams Rivers and the Sea to moysten the Earth and appointed to enrich it with Mineralls Whither again the waters being driven they are supt up partly by the Quellem and partly do snatch the Air. So indeed doth the Universe distribute its waters and lay them aside for divers fruits And therefore I have meditated with admiration that the Almighty hath set before him the necessities of ungrateful immortal men as the aims of things I return to the Earth I have found for certain that the original Earth doth no where of its own accord concur to the mixtures of fruits slide thereto by chance nor that it is assumed by nature nor is found to have assumed the works of nature or art And therefore the reason of mixtures waxeth lean the number of Elements Qualities and Temperaments ceaseth and so they are lying fopperies which have been hitherto stifly and ignorantly garnished out by the Schooles For of a man Wood c. be it dust or ashes that is left by the fire yet Earth is never drawn out for else our burying places would soon swell Therefore the Earth is at least the remaining wombe but not the Mother Which if it should sometimes have a conflux unto fruits or mixt bodies it would either abide in the same and so by the solution of art or nature would sometimes be found or should return from thence which is false or plainly should be taken to the mixt Body and in it should cease to be Earth being already changed into another thing and so should be elsewhere diminished which I will straightway shew to be alike false or by the death or dissolution of the thing should return again into earth and there should be a daily and repeated returning of one and the same Element from a privation to a habit Or if this should not return into earth it should remain changed into fruits and so the whole Earth had long since gone into fruits and nature had lost her constancy and had mocked the first aims of the Creator or the earth had returned from the dissolved mixt body into another Element the impertinency whereof ceaseth For truly it is not natural to water or air to turn another Element into its own substance From hence I will straightway demonstrate that never one drop of water is turned into air or likewise air changed into water Which changes notwithstanding do appear lesse labour some than of the earth into water or into air And therefore if nature hath not as yet attempted the more easie transmutations after what sort shall it presume on the more difficult ones For otherwise the earth should be â—upt up and brought to nothing by Elements that are so much more large co-touching with it and more active But the Father of the Universe being a lover of Concord hateth discord and brawlings and chiefly in the Elements which that they might be the stable props of nature he hath not created the same fighting ones For he hath also directed the Elements to their appointed ends and lawes of continuance to wit that he may bring forth and nourish his own fruits for his own honour and the use of man Notwithstanding neither the honour of God nor mans necessity did any where or any way require the battels devourings strifes of the Elements their trampling on each other as neither the exchanging or nourishing of one by the other Nor lastly that at the end of an Element to increase it self by covetousness hunger luxury or necessity with the destruction of anomer For neither are they guilty of the fault of coverousness or hatred as neither do they desire to be nourished Last of all neither have the Elements obtained an Archeus a kitchin or properties for that transchanging Therefore the whole Doctrine of the Schooles concerning the elementary War is an old Wives fable Therefore the earth is never taken or of its own accord doth materially run out of it self into the constitution of bodies And there is by right made no mixture in nature which can firmly grow together under the unity of the natural composed form unless it be between juyces and spirits On the contrary no pulverous or powder all co-mixture doth tend to generation but there is onely an apposition or applying presently of its own accord and again
that last sub-division of their finenesses and Atomes all Seeds Odours and Ferments which they lifted upward with themselves do dye together and do return into their first Element of water whence they were materially formed Hence Clowdes as long as they are Clowdes do stink in Mountains but not after they are by the greatest colds there extenuated into the last division of fineness And this necessity hath been in nature that the middle Region of the air should not far of from us be most cold For therefore the water alwayes remains whole as it is or without any dividing of the three beginnings it is transformed and goes into fruits whither the Seedes do call and withdraw it Because an artificial diligent search hath shewen me indeed after what sort the three first beginnings and that in a proportionable sense are in the water yet by no art or corruption of dayes are they to be divided from each other For an Element should cease to be a simple body if it be to be seperated into any thing before or more simple than it self But nothing in corporeall things is granted to be before or more simple than an Element The water therefore is most like to the internall Mercurie of Mettalls the which seeing it is now stript of all manner of spot of Mettalick Sulfur it as well cleaves to it self on every side by an undissolvable joyning as it doth radically refuse all possible division by art or nature Hence Geber had occasion given him to say that there is no moysture in the order or course of things like to Mercury by reason of the Homogeneall or samely kinde of simplicity continually remaining with it in the torment of the fire For truly either it being wholly changed in its own nature flees away from the fire or it wholly perseveres in the fire through the transchanging of its seedes I confess indeed that I learned the nature of the Element of water no otherwise than under the Ferule or Staffe made of the white wand of Mercury But since I have from hence with great pains and cost thorowly searched for thirty whole years and I have found out the adequate or suitable Mercurie of the water I will therefore endeavour to explain its nature so far as the present speech requireth and the slenderness of my judgement suffereth First of all the Alchymists do confess that the substance of Mercurie is not at all capable to endure any intrinsecall or inward division and they shew the cause because by a homogeneall and sweet proportion its watery parts are by an equall tempering conjoyned to its earthly parts the aiery and fiery ones being suppressed in silence for that these should flee away if they were in it neither do they contain the cause of constancy here required and therefore that both these cannot forsake each other by reason of their just temperature they embracing each other though against the fires will In the first place the errour of the auntients hath deluded them concerning the necessary confluence of four Elements into the mixture of mixt bodies But surely that errour was not to be indulged by Alchymists because they are those who durst not enforce or comprise the air and fire of Mercurie when as they treated of its constancy And then because it was very easie for them to experience that the water after what manner soever either by art or natural proportion it was married to the Earth yet that it never obtains a constancy in the fire as neither to be at any time truly radically joyned to the Earth Because water after what manner soever it be co-mixed with Earth ceaseth not to be water For neither shall manner or proportion ever make water to degenerate from its own essence as neither shall any conjoyning of it with Earth be able to procure that thing But water remaining water is born alwayes to flee away from the fire Surely it is a ridiculous thing that the water should rather love a proportioned weight of Earth than an unequall one and that for that loves sake it should against its will the rather forsake that temperament of Earth For truly when the speech is concerning the co-mingling of four Elements it is understood of pure Elements and those plainly unmixed together and so not defiled with any spot of mixture or otherwise prevented by any disposition For neither doth the water carry a ballance with it nor beares a respect as to weigh the Earth that is to be co-mixed with it that it may be the more toughly conjoyned to the same I greatly admire that the wan errour of the co-mixing of Elements being received hath brought forth such soâ—tish absurdities among all the Schooles and that they by that absurdity alone have locked the gate of finding out of Sciences and Cauâ— Mercurie doth not indeed admit into it or contain so mâ—ch as the least of earth 〈◊〉 is alwayes the Son of water alone Yea earth and water can never be compelled into any naturall body or be subdued into an identity or sameliness of forme by whatever skill that thing be attempted For Tâ—les or Bricks if from moyst Earth they are boiled into a shelly stone they do not receive water but for the guidance of the Clay but earth hath a seed in its own Salt whence the Clay becomes stony through the coction of Glasse-making Therefore of the water and earth there is onely a powring on and applying of parts but not an admixture of growing together For whatsoever is meet to depart into a compounded Body and of divers things to be converted into this something this must needes be done by the endeavour of the working Spirits and so far of those things that do contain them as they do promote the matter by transchanging it into a new generation But the Elements are Bodies but not spirits and much lesse do they also act into each other The Earth therefore ought first to loose its Being and be reduced into a juyce before it should marry the water that by embracing this water gotten with childe by the seed it might bring it over into the fruit ordained for the conceived seed But what agent should that be which should transport the earth into a juyce and not rather into water since the earth being a simple body should be changed into nothing but into a simple body its neighbour Surely another co-like Element should not cause that seeing nothing of like sort hath been hitherto seen to agree with the water or air Nor at length should the earth intend the corruption of it self since this resisteth the constancy of Creation Therefore although part of the earth may be homogeneally or by way of simplicity of kinde reduced into water by art yet by nature onely I deny that thing to be done seeing that in nature an agent is wanting by which agent alone onely mediating the Virgin-earth or true earth is reduced into Salt and from thence into water Let it be for
Vessel putrified by continuance it conceiveth Worms it brings sorth Gnats yea is covered with a skin Fens putrifie from the bottom through continuance hence arise Frogs Shell-fishes Snails Horse-leeches Herbs c. And moreover swimming-herbs do cover the water being contented onely with the drinking of water putrified through continuance And even as stones are from Fountains wherein there is a stony seed and ferment existing So the Earth stinking with metally ferments doth make out of water a metally or Mineral Bur. But the water being elsewhere shut up in the Earth if it be nigh the Air and stirred by a little heat it putrifieth by continuance which is no more water but the juyce Leffas or of Plants by the force of which hoary ferment a power is conferred on the Earth of budding forth Herbs for that putrified juyce by the prick of a little heat doth ascend into a smoak is made spongie and encompassed with a skin by reason of the requirance of the ferments therein laying hid Therefore that putrefaction by continuance hath the office of a ferment and the virtues of a seed hastening by degrees into the Archeusses through its seminall virtues into a quantity of life Therefore the juyce of the Earth putrified through continuance is Leffas From whence ariseth every kinde of Plant wanting a visible seed and from whence seeds that are sown are promoted into their appointments therefore there are as many rank or stinking smells of putrefactions by continuance as there are proper savours of things for that odours are not onely the messengers of savours but also their promiscuous parents The smoak Leffas being now gathered together doth at first wax pale afterwards wax yellowish straightway it waxeth a little whitishly green And at length it is fully green And the power of the Species or particular kinde being unfolded it assumeth divers Colours and Signates In which flowing it imitatets the leading of the water under the Equinoctial-line yet in this it differs that these waters have borrowed too Spiritual a ferment from the Star and place without a corporeal hoary putrefaction and therefore through their too frail seed they straightway return into themselves but Leffas is constrained to perfect the Tragedy of the conceived seed Therefore Rain conceiving a hoary ferment and being made Leffas is drawn into the lustfull roots by a certain sucking And it is experienced that within this Kitchin there is a new hoary putrefaction of the Ferment the Tenant by and by it is brought from thence to the Bark or Liver where it is enriched with a new ferment of that bowel and is made an Herby or woody juyce and at length a ripeness being conceived it becommeth Wood becometh an Herb or departs into fruit but the Trunk or Stem if it sooner putrifies under the Earth than the Bark or Rhine becomes dry it cleaves asunder by its own ferment sends forth a smoak thorow the Bark which in its beginning is spongie and at length hardens into a true root and so planted branches become Trees by the abridgement of art Therefore it is now evident that there is no mixture of the Elements that all bodies primitively and materially are made onely of water through a seed being attained by a ferment and that the seeds being exhausted or overcome with pains Bodies do at length return into their antient Inne of water yea that ferments do sometimes work more strongly than fire because great Stones are turned into Lime and Woods indeed into ashes and there the fire makes a stop the which notwithstanding a ferment in the Earth being assumed do of their own accord return into the juyce of Leffas and so also at length into simple water For otherwise Stones and Bricks do of their own accord decline into Salt-peter Lastly Glasse which is unconquered by the fire uncorrupted by the Air in a few years putrifieth by continuance rots under the Earth and undergoes the lawes of water for whatsoever things may be melted in water do forthwith return into water but other things are made volatile by the ferments and what things soever were compacted and not to be thorowly mingled being brought by the ferments of putrefactions by continuance into a necessity of transmutation are opened and do hastily consult of seperating But the most clear Fountains although they climbe thorow the Rocks and Sand out of the un-savoury soil of nature or the Quellem are purified far from the contagion of Clay a ferment and corruption neither do they also fall down by chance but are appointed for great uses yet seeing they contract at least the hidden Odours of the Rockie Stone unperceivable by us they hasten into other bounds Therefore Streams Springs Rivers Fens Pooles Seas and whatsoever things are contained in the belly of the water do likewise even from the very birth of the Fountains conceive their seeds and in wantonizing do ripen them by their course Also great storms of Rain being struck down through the putrefaction of Thunder are fruitfull but sober rains are great with young of dew or a conceived exhalation For I have perfectly learned by the fire that the dew is rich in a sweet Sugar They deliver that in Snow Northern worms are bred therefore the Mountains to be covered over with a long Snow and although their Grass be sparing yet that it is most apt for the fatting of lesser Cattel so that unless they are driven away in time they will be choaked with fat But the waters which contain a melting Paracelsus doth call corporeall ones and he ignorantly denieth that they contain an Element in them Therefore Ferments do by seeds play their universall part in the World under the one Element of water CHAP. XV. The Stars do necessitate not incline nor signifie of the life the body or fortunes of him that is born 1. Naturall Philosophy without Medicine wants its end 2. The objects of the Stars 3. By what Argument the admittings of Ephemerides or Dayes-books may be supported 4. The errour in admitting them 5. However influences may be taken they do alwayes include a necessity 6. What the Works of the Lord in Psal 14. are 7. The fore-knowledge of God is infallible as well in things freely happening as in those of necessity 8. Death is foretold to Hannibal 9. How the Devil foreknoweth things to come 10. The Confession of the Authour 11. How much and from whence an evill Spirit hath a foreknowledge of things to come 12. Which way foreshewing Signes may be made which scarce any one understands 13. The foreshewings of the Stars determined out of the holy Scriptures 14. In what manner or what thing the Stars may act 15. The action of government 16. A diversity of government is shewen from their motion and from their light 17. Sick persons foreshew things to come 18. Why Insects have better known things to come than men 19. VVhy diseased persons do fore-perceive Tempests 20. Foreshewing doth not take away a liberty of
of all things as well in generation as in the transmutations of meats throughout the course of life which office doth properly respect the inbred or implanted spirit But now how and whence the spirit floating in the Arteries may be constituted by occasion of the Blas of man already described consequently I have undertaken to explain in this path their Office and Properties The Schools teach That nourishments are first changed into Chyle and then into digested juice and venal bloud and so that a certain naturall spirit is made in the Liver which afterward by a repeated digestion of the heart is changed into vital and at length is in the Brain made animal or sensitive so as that the natural spirit is ordained for nourishing of the parts but the vital for the preserving of the same and the animal for the functions of sense motion and the soul But I think it hath been far otherwise Phylosophized and farther proceeded For they had known out of Hippocrates That a certain spirit is that thing which causeth violence or maketh the assaults But it was not sufficient to know that there is a certain Spirit to have told by what instruments it should be made or what it might act unlesse they should explain also the disposition substance and properties of the same together with the manner of its making I have elsewhere delivered That of any plant and fruit a ferment being applyed Aqua vitae or a water of life may be made which thing seeing it is commonly known while out of Grains Hydromel or Water and Honey and juices it frameth a water of life The Proposition needs no demonstration But Aqua vitae is a volatile Liquor Oylie as it is wholly enflamed and wholly Salt as being sharp biting as being detained the longer in the mouth it burns the upper skin of the gums and lips and is one and the same simple thing and so it containeth two only and not the three Chymical Beginnings So indeed That according to the will of the Artificer the whole Aqua vitae may be made Salt or Oyl that is That those Beginnings are not Beginnings not constant things but changeable at the will of man But the Wine as to its Winie part contains a spirit answering to Aqua vitae For this is searched through the Arteries of the stomack unto the head without the maturities of other shops So that if more wine be in the stomack than is meet drunkennesse follows as the spirit of the wine doth flow more largely into the head than that by a fit space or interval it can be changed by an individuating humane limitation For from hence the changing and likewise the operation of the ferment is manifest Notwithstanding in Wine that spirit is milder than Aqua vitae which is drawn forth by distillation which thing appears from the like in Oyl of Olives For the Oyl which they call Oyl of Tiles or Bricks or Olem Phylosophorum being distilled doth far differ from the Oylinesse which is drawn out of simple Oyl by digestion only with the circulated Salt of Paracelsus for that circulated Salt is seperated the same in vertue and weight after it hath divided the oyl of Olives into its diversities of parts For a sweet and twofold Oyl is seperated out of oyl of Olives even as a most sweet spirit out of wine being far severed from the tartnesse of Aqua vitae Whence I have learned by consequence That whatsoever is distilled only by fire doth far recede from the vertues of the composed body But in us although meat doth putrifie after its own manner to wit if that putrefaction be a mean of transchanging a thing into a thing yet in our digestions by that putrefaction I speak of the action of the ferment of the stomack Aqua vitae is not extracted out of Potherbs Graines Apples or Pulses For truly the intention of nature is not then to procreate an Aqua vitae and there is one ferment in us whereby things are resolved into Chyle and another whereby things do send forth an Aqua vitae or a water of Life out of themselves For while herbs do putrifie in water through a ferment the stalk stumps or stocks and leaves do remain whole in their antient figure and hardness for the extraction of Aqua vitae which being eaten by us are turned into Chyle and loose their first face Wherefore I have comprehended as many varieties of putrefactions and as many dungs of one bread different in the particular kind as there are particular kinds of living creatures nourished by bread Yea further far more ferments of bread because bread doth putrifie as yet by more means as well of its own accord as from an appointment But what is spoken of bread as much is said of other meats The Schools indeed knew That nothing doth profit us which should not contain a Beginning or Essay of life in its root and so therefore they do admit of the air for the increase of spirit being deceiued by the Lessons of Poets who call them Vitall airs to wit they would have in the venal bloud a spirit of the Liver naturally actually to be and to glister like air For they thought it to be a vapour being ignorant that a vapour is never made an uncoagulable Gas an air sky or wild exhalation but that it alwayes remains water Therefore they thought a vapour exhaling from the venal bloud hunted outwards even as out of a certain luke-warm Liquor should be that spirit of the venal bloud whence vital spirit should be materially framed But surely the venal bloud as long as it flowes in the vessels of the Mesenterie and Port vein is void of spirit Wherefore it being also called out by laaxtive Medicines it is voided forth stinking without any notable token of weaknesse which comes not so to passe if it hath once well touched at the hollow vein Because then the venal bloud is Homogeneally or after one and the same kind sealed in its entrance that it may be made the bloud of the Artery and spirit and therefore it is in the Holy Scriptures indifferently with the Arterial blood called a Red spirit in which the Soul inhabits Although that be properly understood of the Arterial bloud Because the Scripture is there speaking of men stabbed or slain whose venal bloud is poured out together with their arterial bloud I shall at sometime teach concerning digestions that whatsoever is made or composed in the stomack that doth wax soure there by a ferment also Sugar it self not indeed with a sournesse or sharpness of Vinegar Oyl of unripe Olives Citron or Vitriol but by its own like ferment and with a specifical sowrenesse although it symbolizeth or coagreeth with other sowre things in that which is sowre Yet the sharpnesse is diverse from them all by an internall power And that sowreness of meats is perfectly volatile Neither doth that hinder that the Chyle in Youths doth assume the
as soon as the bloud is converted into the substance of the thing nourished and afterwards consumed this off-spring of Thorns doth often remain surely inconvenient through a forreign coagulation if not also through acrimonies or sharpnesses For it waxeth more hard daily and bespotteth its own Inn with a 1000 Hostilities But a Tarterer or tartarous humour differs from the humane excrements of meats in that because these do putrifie but that is coagulated Therefore that stomach and Liver is onely happy which have known how to banish the sweepings of Tartar from the stinking excrements in the beginning As these Thorns are procured unto us by our antient Tartarous enemy So the Stone that adhereth to the Joynts or Ribs of the Wine-Hogs-heads giving by reason of its manifest Prerogative a name to the other Ranks of coagulable vices is called Tartar For truly the Wine in the Vessel is on every side incrusted with a Stony bark which is Tartar diverse from the Lees For this falls down to the bottom knowing no coagulation but that being extended round about doth arm the Vessel and preserve it within for ever from corruption But that guest being through nourishments a stranger is called a forreign Tartar to distinguish it from that which groweth together within us with a fatall Spectacle by a Microcosmical Law For whereby any violent thing doth rush into us for that very cause the nourishable humours being destitute of life do appear hostile are coagulated and called the Tartar of the venal bloud whence are Apostemes stoppages and other Calamities according to the delighted property and pleasure of every Tartarer And so Tartar insinuating it self from the mouth even into the ultimate Coasts of the Pipes is also the principal cause of all Diseases These are the things which I could collect out of Paracelsus here and there into one concerning Tartar CHAP. XXX A History of Tartar of Wine 1. A fishing for the Whale 2. The Spirit of Wine is depressed unto the Center of the Vessel by reason of cold 3. How Vinegar differs from Wine 4. Why the Wine in the Superficies of the Vessel is lesse good 5. The manner of making Tartar in Hogs-heads 6. Why it affixeth it self on the Vessels 7. It is coagulated in affixing or cleaving on them 8. The things foregoing are proved 9. The errour of a Chymical Maxim 10. The History of Wine coagulated in Tartar is not a like to that of the excrements coagulated in us 11. The difference of Tartar and Duelech or the Stone in man 12. Tartar is not wholly or truly the superfluity of Wine 13. The first errour of Paracelsus 14. The Tartar of Wine doth wholly differ from a coagulated superfluity in Diseases 15. Another rashness of the same man 16. Why Tartar is not incrusted upon the Lees of the bottom 17. Wines are distinguished by their Tartar 18. Tartar is neither Wine nor the Lee thereof 19. Why an Alcali or lixivial Salt out of Wine or Tartar doth dissolve Tartar 20. The Wine-Lee as to a part of it is matter for Tartar 21. How badly Tartar doth square to our coagulations 22. Tartar is among coagulated Salts not among Stones as neither among excrements BEfore I shall reject the necessity which Paracelsus hath feigned to himself for the constitution of Tartar in every nourishment for the finding out of the Causes of Diseases and that the vanity of that fiction may be made manifest it shall above all things be profitable to expound the manner how Tartar is bred in Wine for truly even as it is begun to be believed all causes of Diseases do stablish their Family and draw their name from thence The Cantabrians whom they call Biscons before they were associated to our Dutch for the catching of the Whale being oft-times under Groynland which is at this day thought to have failed being prevented by cold under the Quick-sands they call them Atalaians had their boyled Wines otherwise generous enough frozen Therefore the hoops being taken from the Hogs-heads they exposed the naked Ice of the Wine in the form of the former Vessel unto the open Air That by one onely night following the remainder might be wholly congealed Which being done they did beat the Ice and about the Center of the Ice a Liquor of the Colour of an Amethyst came to hand the meer Spirit of the Wine and a fiery and vital Liquor not knowing how to be frozen Therefore they drank the Ice of the Wine melted by the fire a small quantity of that vital Liquor being added unto it The History is brought for that end whereby it may be manifest that the Spirit in Wine doth naturally flee from cold and that it doth by degrees betake it self out of its proper Habitation unto the Center of the Wine But on the contrary Wines are laid in the Sun that they may wax sour and the Spirit of the Wine slies away and leaveth behind it Vinegar the Sunned dead Carcase of it self But seeing it is a far more desirable thing for the Spirit to go into the Center of the Wine than to vanish by flying away therefore necessity hath caused cold and deep Cellars to be invented for the preservation of Wines Indeed the Austrian Wines working continually as it were through the heat of the ferment are clammy For from hence the Cellars of Vienna are for the most part no lesse than a hundred steps deep The Spanish Wines would undergo the same thing unless a Caution be administred by admixing a Parget of Lime while they are pressed in the Press which they call Hieso Therefore in cold Cellars the Spirit of Wine by reason of cold runs back unto the inner part of the Wine and hides it self Therefore Wine because cold doth strike the Vessel in the Bark round about hath lesse Spirit than in its more inward parts whence it followes that as through want of the Spirit of the Wine Wines set in the Sun do wax sour so also proportionally that the most outward Bark of the Wine being pierced in cold is more sour than in its Central parts Therefore when new Wines are brought into the Store-house and while they have waxed cold their Spirit doth straightway flee inward avoyding the cold and therefore the Bark of the Wine being now made small and also somewhat sour it begins to act upon the Lee as yet swimming on the troubled Wine For truly it is impossible that there should be any sourness but that its proportionated object being found it should not also presently operate on that Indeed this is the Law and necessity of natural things For example Vinegar how weak soever it be if it finde the Stone of Crabs it cannot contain it self that it should not straightway operate unto its dissolution and exchange it into a transparent Liquor Therefore the sour matter in the Wine being now filled with a small dreg and now stripped of its own activity inclineth it self to coagulate But it cannot be coagulated in
the middle waters but it hath need of a fermenting odour of the side whereby it doth as it were putrifie Therefore coagulation is made on the sides of the Vessel to which it fastneth it self According to the common Chymical Maxim Every Spirit dissolving by the same action whereby it disselveth Bodies is it self coagulated Therefore the more sharp Wine dissolveth the Lee in its Bark because a sharp Salt of the sour dissolving Spirit is presently coagulated together with the dissolved Lee or Dreg and applyeth it self to be neighbour to the side or Concave of the Vessel And that least both to wit the thing dissolving and thing dissolved be hindered from coagulating but at least that it be not on the other side encompassed by Liquor Therefore Tartar the new off-spring of coagulation is affixed Understand thou also that before it be coagulated there is not yet a coagulation and therefore that somewhat sour Wine the Lee being now dissolved by it in an instant before it is coagulated snatcheth hold on the Vessel and doth affix and glew it self on there by the proper Solder of its Cream Else it should settle to the bottom This very thing is the Tartar of Wine of which we are speaking That these things are on this wise Vinegar it self proveth For Wine set in the Sun and the Vessel being heated by the Sun the Vinegar never hath Tartar in the Vessel yet it is the same matter differing onely in cold or heat There indeed with Tartar but here without it First of all a remarkable thing plainly appeareth from what hath been before deduced that the aforesaid Maxim of Chymistry erreth in that because it will have the dissolution of a Body to be made together with the coagulation of the Spirit by the same action in number For if divers moments of motions should not intercede the coagulated thing it self should not adhere toughly glewed to the Hogshead as if by that which is melted it should be there powred on it but if it should be coagulated in the very motion of dissolution it should fall down to the bottom in the shape of a coagulated matter but should not adhere to the sides But on the other hand in the Region of the Lee Tartar is not found Let there be another remarkable thing and of greater moment that the Tartar of Wine is altogether impertinently taken according to the likeness of coagulated things in us wherefore the name History manner and end of Tartar of Wine hath been impertinently introduced into the Causes which make Diseases And these things shall be made manifest when as I shall make the devise of Tartar in Meats and Drinks plainly to appear Likewise as to that which belongs to Tartar of Wine for that is not a strange forreigner to Wine produced by a forreign Mother matter against or besides the nature of Wines as neither to expiate the wickednesses committed by Wine by those things which are adjoyned for a curse And then neither is the Tartar of Wine ever coagulated by a Cream proper unto it although Paracelsus hath otherwise so supposed but the Tartar is coagulated after that the dissolutive sourness of the Wine is woren out and glutted by the Lee. That is the sourness being overcome by the dissolved content doth think of making a coagulation not indeed to make a true Stone but a feigned one because it is that which is again dissolved in hot water as it were a sharp Salt in Liquor which is therefore commonly called Cremor Tartari or the Cream of Tartar All which things surely do badly square or suit with our coagulations yet they all have by a like identity or sameliness of Tartar in all particular nourishments been intruded by a winy devise Lastly and that a violent one Because Tartar is not an excrement of Wine unless in respect of one part which is a solved Dreg which thing surely was not also hid from Paracelsus who now and then doth extol the Tartar of Wine far above the Wine as it were an heir of greater virtues Wherefore he doth badly accommodate or fit the Tartar of Wine by the identity of Being and framing with diseasie Tartarers which he calls an excrement yea a curse arising from the Thistles and Thorns or an ill endowed entertained Being in a pure Saphirical Being of things Therefore the Tartar of Wine although there should be any other being erected into the matter of Diseases in taking the Tartars of Diseases they should even according to the minde of Paracelsus badly agree together And so he hath also but impertinently referred the cause of Diseases unto Tartar Seeing they do not any way agree in the matter efficient manner cause of coagulations in the bound of a Cream in their object as neither in their principles For the Sand or Stone are not resolved by elixing or seething even as otherwise the Tartar of Wine is Therefore the whole metaphorical transumption of name and property is frivolous and a bold rashness of asserting by bespattering all created things with a curse so as wholly throughout they should be nothing but of Tartar and the boldness hath proceeded so far that they seign Tartar to be even in the Marrows yet not coagulable which neither hath Paracelsus ever seen but hath asserted onely by a boldness Now he maketh Tartar not to be Tartar nor coagulable And so that not onely every coagulable thing and that which hath solidness but that every liquory thing that is the whole Creature should be nothing but Tartar appointed for a punishment of sin Now when new Wine hath waxed cold hath lost its sweetness and hath assumed the qualities of Wine the whole Lee hath fallen to the bottom and then the transmutation of the more sour part of the Wine beginneth to act of the Lee For truly that which is more fruitful than the Spirit of Wine desiring by degrees the more inward parts doth forsake the Superficies of the Hogs-head but this beginning thereby to wax sour nor finding an object nigh to it self on which it may act but onely in the bottom it by degrees dissolves that object in the same place And thus indeed the sharpness thereof is by degrees the more confirmed But seeing every sour thing doth as it were boyl up in corroding hence it comes to passe that when the sourness which is about the bottom hath acted upon the dreg it ariseth from thence and is substituted or affixed in another place Therefore the generation of Tartar is slow And therefore cannot the Tartar be affixed in the bottom by reason of the disquietness of that continual boyling up wherefore generous Wines nor Wines easily forsaken by their fleeing Spirit do not readily wax sour and they do yield none or but a little Tartar But old Rhenish Wines do become weak indeed in the acceptableness of a winie tast as their sourness was drunk up in the Lee yet are they stomatical because that their Spirits are not wasted according to
it self Therefore something doth precede in the masse or lump which should be plainly an immaterial yet a real and effective Beginning wherein there should be a power of figuring by the impression of a Seal Therefore the Soul of the begetter while it slides outward and doth lighten the Body of the seed in a certain Air it delineates the Seal and figure of it self which is the cause of the fruitfulness of seeds Otherwise if the Soul should not be figured but the figure it self of the Body should as it were of its own accord be formed now the Trunck in some member should also generate nothing but a Trunck for that the body of that generater is not entire but at least faileth in the implanted Spirit of that member If therefore the shape be implanted in the seed it shall receive that Image from a vital and former Beginning out of it self But if the Soul doth imprint a figure on the seed it shall not dissemble a forreign or strange face but shall decipher its very own Image For so the Souls of bruit Beasts do keep their own particular kinde in generating But the minde although by reason of its beginning it be above the Laws of Nature yet by what foot it hath once entred the threshold of Nature and is incorporated and joyned unto another it is afterwards also restrained by its own Laws Because there is a univocal or single progress ascention descention limitation and end of vital generations For neither otherwise doth it want absurdities that the operation of so great a thing as is the generation of man and the continuance of his Species should happen without the co-operation of the minde Therefore it must needs be that fruitfulness is granted to the seed by a participation and specifical determination of vital principles which thing surely doth not otherwise happen than by a sealing of the Soul in the Spirit of the seed whence the matter obtains a requisite maturity and a delineated shape or figure that at length it may obtain by request a formal light of life from the Creator or the Soul of its own Species the similitude whereof is expressed in the figure Furthermore it is of faith that our minde is a substance never to die The new framing of which substance of nothing belongs onely to the Creator who if it hath well pleased him to adopt the minde alone into his own Image it also seems to follow that the vast and unutterable God is of a humane figure and that from an Argument from the effect if there be any force of Arguments in this subject But because the Body is oft-times defectuous they have thought the glorious Image of God the Arch-Type represented in the minde to consist onely in the power of Reason Not knowing that the rational power is a servant to the understanding but not of its essence as neither its unseparable companion which thing I have already explained in the Treatise of the searching or hunting out of Sciences But others hold the Soul most nearly to express the Image of God by a single simplicity of its own substance and a ternary of its powers to wit of understanding will and memory which similitude hath alwayes seemed to me fabulous that the minde should be the Image of God by a singular valour or ability For truly an Image doth involve a similitude of essence and figure but not an equality or likeness of number onely yea if the Soul doth in its substance represent God himself now understanding will and memory shall not be the powers properties or accidents of the Soul And so the likeness of ternariness shall cease such an image shall badly square with the Type whose image it is believed to be And than it is absurd to compare the persons of the Trinity to memory or will Seeing no person of the holy sacred Trinity doth represent the will onely or the will a separated person in God Also the three powers in the Soul cannot any way expresse the image or a nearer supposed thing than a naked threeness of accidents collected into the substance of the Soul In which sense the Soul doth lesse denote the Image of God than any peece of Wood To wit because it by its resolution doth express Salt Sulphur and Liquor but not like the minde in the aforesaid similitude of its own powers and the divine persons three powers onely or a naked ternary For every Wood hath three substances concluded under a unity of the composed Body separated indeed in the things supposed which in their connexion do make one onely substance of Wood. But Tauterus severeth the Soul or minde not indeed into three powers but into two distinct parts To wit the inferiour or more outward which by a pecullar name he calls the Soul and the other the superiour the more inward and the which he calls the bottom of the Soul or Spirit In which part alone he saith the Image of God is specially contained unto which there is not access for the Devil because there is the Kingdom or God But to either part he assigneth far unlike acts and properties whereby he distinguisheth both from each other But at least that holy man doth blot out the simple homogenity or samelinesse of kinde of the Soul whereby notwithstanding it ought especially to express the likeness of God or at least he thus far denies the Image of God to be propagated throughout the whole Soul of man Surely I shall not easily believe a duality of the immortal Soul or the interchangeable course of a binary or twofold thing if it ought to shew forth in its very own essence a unity But rather I shall believe that the minde is rather made like unto God in a most simple unity by an indivisible homogeneity of Spirit under the co-resemblance of immortality and undissolution and identity without all connexion Therefore the glorious Image of God is not separated from the Soul as neither to be separated but the minde it self is the glorious Image as well intimate to the Soul as the Soul it self is to it self for therefore the likeness between the minde and God cannot be declared or thought seeing God himself is wholly incomprehensible neither can therefore the Character of identity and unity wherein that likeness is founded ever be thought or conceived It is sufficient that the minde is a Spirit beloved of God homogeneal simple immortal created into the Image of God one onely Being whereto death adds nothing or takes nothing from it which may be natural or proper to it in the essence of its simplicity And because from the constitution and appointment of it it is a partaker of blessedness therefore damnation coming upon it is to it by accident to wit besides its purpose and by reason of a future fall or defect Therefore the minde being separated from the Body doth no more use memory nor the inducing of remembrance by the beholding of place or duration but
that sense whereby I did percieve that I understood and imagined in the Midriffs and not in the Head cannot by any words be expressed And there was a certain joy in that intellectual cleerness for it was not a thing of a small time of continuance nor happened to me while I slept or dreamed or being otherwise diseasie but fasting and in good health Yea although I before had had experience of some extasies yet I took notice that those have nothing common with this discourse and sense of the Midriff understanding which excludeth all co-operation of the Head Because that I discerned with a sensible reflexion as before I had been forewarned the Head altogether to keep Holiday in respect of the imagination because I did wonder that the imagination should be celebrated out of the Brain in the Midriffs with a sensible pleasantness of operation In the meane time I somtimes in that Joy being in doubt feared least the unwonted chance should lead to madnesse because it had begun from poyson but the preparing of the poyson and only a somwhat light or gentle tasting of the same did insinuate another thing In the mean time although the joyous unthought-of cleernesse or illumination of my understanding did render that manner of understanding suspected yet a most free resigning of my self into the Will of God restored me into my former rest At length after about two hours space a certain gentle giddinesse of my head twice repeated invaded me For from the former I perceived the faculty of understanding to have returned and from the other I felt my self to understand after my wonted manner And then although I afterwards divers times tasted of the same Wolfs-bane yet no such thing ever happened unto me any more But I from thenceforth perfectly learned many things And first indeed that as by extafies certain flourishes of the soul do cleerly appear so by the aforesaid Rule of knowing it appeareth that our understanding as long as we are tied to the Body is originally formed in the Duumvirate or Sheriffdome Secondly And that thing is by so much the more unthought of because the ordinary framing of discourses is about the mouth of the Stomach but not in any Bowel but as it were in the Membrane or Filme of the Stomach as if in an undividable place Nor much othewise doth there inhabite in the Membrane of the Womb a certain Monarchy of the whole yet so that a wound of the Stomach doth presently import life but a wound of the Womb not so Thirdly That for about two hours I did perceive after an unlooked-for manner nothing to be acted in the head and after an undeclarable manner the whole Soul most cleerly to meditate in the Midriffs Fourthly That the like thing doth almost happen in the prayer of silence and more and more manifestly in an extasie Fifthly And that therefore the intellectuall Soul is centrally entertained in the same place Sixthly Then also that as madnesse is a defect of the understanding so therefore that it is stirred up from the part about the short Ribs Seeing the same faculty which in health performs a healthy function suffereth under diseases a defect of the same to wit as oft as the understanding is ecclipsed in its own seat Seventhly I have also certainly sound that the power of willing doth inhabite in the heart for from the heart proceed murders adulteries c. Eighthly That the memory sits in the Brain there imprinted by the soul and that therefore it is in comparison of the other faculties most easily hurt by a disease and old age Yea if any one doth labour that he may remember a thing forgotten he sensibly perceiveth this his labour in the fore-part of his head Ninthly Again seeing the will and memory differ are at a far distance from the seat of the soul or understanding I have concluded with my self that the understanding is of the Essence of the soul and unseperable but the will and memory as they are possessed in the frail life to be frail faculties and of the sensitive life Tenthly To wit that sins are made in the heart and will in the flesh of sin in the will of the flesh and of man Therefore that love is required wholly from the whole mind which by reason of its unseperablenesse is taken for the understanding from the whole heart or will from the whole imaginative soul and the powers thereof dispersed throughout the whole Body Eleventhly I have found the understanding to cast its beams lightsomly into the head yet by the means of a corporall connexion through an Aiery spirit which while it strikes the bosomes of the Head should bring on it a certain giddinesse and cloudly understanding So although for sense and fear the spirits in that state should be plentifully diffused from the brain yet there was likewise need of a singular light which ascending from the midriffs should enlighten the spirit the meane through which it did passe which lightsome beame is no otherwise expressible than that it is intellectuall and exceeding a sublunary contexture or composure Because it is that which ought to be framed by the soul alone which in it self is nothing but a meer understanding or a substantiall and intellectuall Light Twelfthly That because sense and motion stood free I did think there was another Light brought from elswhere or they did denote that there was in that state a free passage of the spirits through the Nerves or Sinews But my giddinesse did signifie that there was a certain obscurity in the head before not perceived and that it was dispersed in the Bosomes of the brain by a new light shining from beneath Thirteenthly That the Liver should be of a due strength or prosper well also the heart of the Spirit should uncessantly blow out into the Brain and likewise the required will of acting should persist indeed but the intellectual Powers onely being stupified in the Brain should as it were sleep if they should not be enlightned by the Midriffs But this light pierceth the whole Body which way it casts its Beams Even so as the light of a Candle doth ruddishly shine thorow the bones of the fingers in younger persons as if the bones themselves were transparent Fourteenthly That from that time I am wont also to have more significative dreams with a more formal discourse and a clearer than before For the minde once as it were retaking the offices of its own Body doth afterwards better understand From whence also afterwards I attained the knowledge how day unto day doth utter the Word and night unto night sheweth knowledge Fifteenthly I was more assured that then my state was one but that of madness the Lethargie Apoplexie c. another For I seriously weighed my self with circumspection whether that were the way whereby men became foolish Seeing that in my full judgement I was so void of all fear that I did contemplate of my own matters not as mine For I
of Rosins flowres and herbs have arisen and likewise those which are prepared of Minium or Red Lead Cerusse or Colcotar Hitherto also doth the Salt of â—artar tend being rectified by the Spirit of Wine until it obtains an astringent taste For it is the Balsam Samech or of Tartar of Paracelsus even as out of Arsenick for Ulcers whereof moreover there is its Balsam of smoak because that Arsenick is by skilful men accounted the fume of Metals Not indeed that it is not simple born and subsisting by it self but from a Similitude for that metallick smoaks do imitate an Arsenical malignity And so I close up the Doctrine of external Diseases CHAP. XLII An unknown action of Government 1. The Maxim is opposed That of Contraries the Remedies are contrary 2. The foundation of that Maxim 3. The Maxim concerning the re-acting of the Patient or of its defence in time of fight is examined 4. Arguments on the opposite part 5. The same by moving strengths by things generative and irregular 6. There is no re-acting of weight 7. Arebounding action neglected by the Antients 8. Bright burning Iron acteth and doth not re-act 9. The swiftness of a mover is not the action but the measuring of the action 10. Altering Agents do not properly re-suffer 11. Another Maxim is noted of falshood 12. From whence the falseness thereof hath issued 13. What Agents of a different inclination and irregular are 14. He proceeds to prove what he hath undertaken to prove 15. Wherein the opinion of Aristotle may be preserved 16. An explaining of action in the slowness of the fire 17. Actions on an object separated from the thing supposed 18. A Fermental and radial or beaming action 19. That these kinde of actions are not to be referred unto the fault of vapours 20. The Blas of Government hath been hitherto unknown 21. The falshood of a Maxim 22. The fire suffers nothing by a burnable object 23. To determine or limit an action and to re-act do differ 24. New actions 25. The dimness or giddiness of the Schools 26. Their staggering 27. Likewise some neglects of the same 28. The unknown action of Government is not that which they call an action by consent 29. The Errour whence it is 30. Why Anatomy hath arisen into so great curiosity 31. How much may be required from Anatomy 32. A neglect of the chiefest part of natural Philosophy 33. The Schools deluded by thinking 34. Many things happen in us by the action of Government without conveighing Pipes or Channels 35. Blindness hath brought blinde persons unto blinde vapours the action of Government being unknown 36. Things admitted by the Author 37. The action of Government is abstracted from a co-binding mean 38. A natural action in incorporeal Spirits 39. Which is a jugling action 40. Luxury takes away the Remedy of the Horse-hoof 41. An Example of Government 42. The government of the Womb is wholly over the whole Body 43. Government acteth into its own marks the middle spaces being untouched 44. The faculties of the actions of the Womb. 45. The furies of the Womb. 46. The manner of making in the birth of a Disease from the action of Government 47. Why the fore-head is not bearded 48. That Capital Diseases do not arise through Fumes out of the Stomach FRom the first time wherein the Schools placed contraries in Nature they presently universally established that nothing acted without strifes war and discords Even so that also chidings hatreds emulations have been reckoned the Foundations or Principles of Nature no lesse than self-love And moreover also they being credulous of hatred by the perswasion of Astronomers have introduced the same things into the courses or dances of the Stars Likewise they have determined that in the whole sublunary frame or stage nothing is done or generated but by a Relation of the Superiority of an Agent unto a Patient So indeed that the Patient is with violence compelled tamed altered destroyed and is wholly translated into the Nature of the Agent onely by the relation of a stronger on a weaker But when the Schools saw that Agents did by degrees languish away either through space of time or wearinesse of acting they likewise decreed from thence that that indeed did not so much happen through a tiring out of the seeds and powers but by a re-acting of the patient Therefore they confirmed it that every patient or sufferer doth likewise of necessity re-act and for that cause likewise every agent or acter doth re-suffer neither also that it is any other way weakened Whence by consequence I guessed with my self that sometimes the seeds of things shall at sometime be naturally wholly undoubtedly extinguished unless they are miraculously preserved Notwithstanding I do even contemplate that there is on both sides a perpetual rudenesse and continued sloath of a diligent search in the doctrines of the Schools And that one onely thing hath repelled from me the former fear For truly after that I with-drew contraries out of Nature I could not afterwards in sound judgment find out any re-acting in the patient as neither could I admit of hostilities in nature elswhere than among soulified or living creatures For contrariety is in those things alone wherein there is an actual defence in the will of the patient against the injuries brought on it and felt from the Agent Wherefore there is never a re-acting of the patient on the agent unlesse where there is a contrariety conceived in the soul But that this is thus ordinary and ordained in nature I will forthwith demonstrate For first of all the Universe should remain still even as it now subsisteth by the infinite power of the Word if it should be so commanded I say things should be infinite in their own successions and duration but they should not be infinite by an actual virtue of the unity of a creature And that thing because it is of faith it wants no proof Therefore there is no infinite of sublunary things by their own power Hence it follows that at length every particular Agent doth by degrees also of its own free accord at some time decay and having finished its offices dies by a dissolution of its strength circumscribed in space of place and in the power of continuance strength unlesse perhaps the appointed day of its proper and limited period or conclusion be shifted off by a preventing of the term or the impediments of the object But of natural Agents some are those which have a motive force which I have called a motive Blas but the Agents themselves I call moving strengths But other moving Agents I call an alterative Blas to wit those which do operate by the seminal force of a ferment And such Agents do for the most part generate their like Lastly in the third place some Agents are irregular or of a different inclination I will speak of those three in order Indeed acting strengths do act on their objects First by a prevailing weight
is boyled and afterwards formally resolved into a cream seeing the cream liquor or water could never take away the flatus's within or beneath it self it should of necessity presently exhale by belching But that a flatus out of the cream of meats doth remain in the blood or after sanguification is finished if that be rightly sifted it contradicteth the position of the Schools whereby they suppose that a natural or livery spirit is bred in the blood not indeed an external one stirred up and retained from things but being made anew by an ordinary power of the Liver For that flatus in the venal blood should be a forreign windiness to wit of the Parsnip Pease c. rebellious and stubborn against the formal transchanging of the food into blood Or if it be by the strength of the Liver supposed to be transchanged into natural spirit which they suppose to be the spirit of the venal blood first of all it shall be the spirit of the Liver acting not of the matter of the venal blood Seeing the flatus also which else every where is not produced but by the error of the digestive faculty in this place shall be priviledged and be made by the force or vigour of the digestive faculty And so it shall belong to the strong Liver to be able to stir up very much windinesse out of the cream Surely I think it a sign of notorious weakness not to be able to reduce the transchangeable lump into a single and equable substance but that a strange and heterogeneal windiness should be left by the Liver to be overcome The Schools therefore contend that the strength of Venus or carnal lust doth beg it self for a forreign flatus Shall therefore a windinesse arising from strange nourishments be fit for a species and specifical propagation or from an imaginative spirit of the Liver bred in the blood being as yet unripe shall it by the assuming of an external flatus be fit for natural spirit or in the Seed for humane generation I will not believe that the Schools were so mad as if the first mover of the seed and stones can be the supposed Air of the venal blood And much less the more crude flatus of nourishments Lastly neither do the Schools satisfie themselves herein For if a flatus of meats had remained in the cream and should afterwards as yet be surviving in the making of the blood for we must not think that a flatus can continue materially in act for the aforesaid reasons therefore at least wise they will that an aptness or disposition of the matter unto flatulency should remain But this very thing they seriously withstand being unwilling that the same accident should be in the thing bred or begotten which was before in the thing corrupted But all these devices of the Schools do sleep eftsoon after that it was plainly shewn that there is no spirit of the Liver in the venal blood and much less the retained flatus's of Pease Parsnip Eringo or the Seed of Ash For I have sufficienly shewn that the Gas which wanders to and fro in the vital blood is not a windy one nor that it doth relate unto the flatus's or smell of meats but that it is a lightsom but that it is a formal Being the seat of the Soul But that the matter bowel property interchangeble courses defects of Venus hath not yet been made known to the Schools I will teach in its place concerning the Spleen Here it sufficeth to have separated the matter or power of Venus from flatus's A weak digestion therefore brings forth many windinesses which a stronger digestion doth not find even by examining every thing more curiously and transchanging them more strongly For a wandring ferment draws out of a thing that which is not in it materially but only potentially That is a flatus ariseth from an error of the ferment being estranged in digesting For truly flatus's are not drawn out of the matter as though concreted and co-agulated ones had fore-existed in it not from the digestion it self as a cause by it self even as heat doth ordinarily allure vapours out of water but as there ariseth a certain diminished disposition under the digestion of the ferment from whence the digestive spirit sucketh a Flatus as it were a guest inconvenient for it and as though the Archeus would correct the Error of the ferment wherefore a begun indisposition of the matter was born to change into a wild Gas the which apprehend thou by an Example For Sal Armoniac and Aqua Fortis are those things which may be distilled and suffer heat by themselves apart but if they are joyned and become lukewarme they cannot but be presently transchanged into a wild Gas or an unrestrainable Flatus So that if the Vessel be most exactly shut and although most strong and large yet it bursts asunder even in the cold Salt-peter likewise melteth with a bright burning fire is cold and a remedy of Squinancies yet a coal being adjoyned unto it both are presently consumed and do flie away into a flamie Gas For neither are an Asse and a Horse turned into a Mule But the Seminal beginnings of both from their conjunction do produce the mule For so very many things which were not before materially within are made a new by adjuncts ferments digestions errors and interchangable courses And those things which under their first ferments were not materially flatulent yet because they were not fully digested and thereupon far removed they as excrements when as they undergo another following ferment do pass over into inordinate Flatus's So also a Flatus doth not fore-exist in the meats and much less in the Cream But there is a certain new and monstrous generation from the thorow mixed seeds of things or from the matter unduely transchanged being placed under the action of another ferment which thing concerning digestions shall be more clearly manifest For so a weaker stomack doth cause the food to putrifie before or in the chyle and brings forth frequent belchings also burntish ones even as in Feavers where out of an empty stomack a frequent belching leaps forth unaccustomed to healthy persons For so putrifying doth in distilling bring forth the colour of Roses together with the sweet smell and water thereof which otherwise is not lifted up by the same heat Likewise there is in the Bowels their own estranging of ferments and of that which is putrified it s own estranging and degrees under which Flatus's are generated and do break forth For as long as a Grape is on every side enclosed in its skin it is sooner dried putrifies by continuance or is changed into a raysin than that it sends forth a flatus but if the skin of the grape be never so little hurt presently after the wound the ferment the foregoer of any kind of putrifaction decayeth from whence neither doth a wild Gas afterwards ceale to belch forth as long as the heat of the boyling ferment
have ascended into a poysonsomnesse by addittaments But these seeing they are not admitted within the root of the Mercury do operate onely without about the Sulphur and are there variously disposed according to the manner of the receiver At length I perceived That there was a sixfold difference of Digestions in us and that the three former of them were busied about the disposing of the matter appointed for to nourish the which although they do truly transmute yet they are sent before rather for a preparatory disposing than for a vital espousing thereof For truly in the Fourth Digestion a vital power is communicated to the venal blood and so the Controversie is decided whether the arterial blood be quickned For the venal blood is not truly enlivened until it be made arterial blood The which is drawn through the partition of the Heart into the Arterie Aorta for no other end but that in that Buttery it may be endowed with Life and informed with a mind But we are nourished by both bloods even as we have our original of the seed of a twofold Sex For perhaps the Mysterie of the Lyturgie is hence known why a little Water is mixed with much Wine That the Water may pass into venal blood and the Wine into arterial blood I perceived therefore That the Fifth Digestion was plainly occupied about the participative communion of Life But Lastly That the sixth did operate by a dispositive quality but did rejoyce in an assimilating ferment and that inducing humanity Therefore external aides are stirred up and do operate by another quality than internal ones Fat or gross persons are taken with Paines or Crampes or Convulsions of the Tendons the which notwithstanding the grease of man being outwardly over-smeared doth alay For the Sixth Digestion is wholly assimilative therefore it indeavours to change the grease brought on it into its own vital aire But the internal grease of fat things being now subdued by an assimilating ferment is kept without action But the Sixth Digestion enters into the middle Life of the external anointed grease the which our Archeus doth therefore appropriate to himself which Life and its properties are hidden in the last Life of the internal grease Moreover I perceived after what manner a Cantharides doth embladder in living People but not in a dead carcase as neither doth it raise up a burnt Escharre in the dead carcase although it dissolves the dead carcase no otherwise than as Calx vive poudered doth resolve Cheese For the Cantharides as long as it remains dry doth not act but is moistened by an unsensible eflux of our dew then first it begins to itch whence the Archeus under the Epidermis or outward skin is furiously inflamed not much otherwise than as under an Erisipelas the burning Coal or burning Fever and so the Cantharides begins in the Epidermis and an Escharotick in the skin the same which a Gangreen doth at length finish in the habit of the Body For Causticks do at first crisp the skin the which afterwards they resolve into a muscilage after they have fully moistened For then they do not onely sharpen our heat but also they assume the strength of a proper corroding Then I say they do not onely make an Escharrhe which ariseth from an inflaming of the Archeus but do melt the whole Lastly I perceived also that Amulets or preservative Pomanders things bound about the Head and hung about the Body do act by the virtue of influence and that directive without the evaporation of those things which indeed do reside in the more fixed Bodies Although there are other things hung on the Body which are by little and little diminished of their Virtues because they dismiss a Vapour out of them But things tied to the Head or Body are Bony Horney Animals and Plants but others are Mettallick Stony Salts Transparent things or Thick or Dark things But Mettals are seldome Amulets unless they are as yet opened or exalted by an external adjunct Because they have a dividable Sulphur in them But in Stones there is great virtue but of Stones some are transparent Looking-glasses but some are thick or dark ones As Corral Coraline the Turcois the Jasper But in clear Stones the Evestrum or Ghost of Life being well or ill affected doth reverberate To wit the life rejoyceth to be reflexed in a clear glass whereby it is then made like to the Understanding which in its own light is altered after the manner of a Chamelion at the assimilation of Objects Neither also have I in vain perceived Gemms to be as it were thick Glasses well polished Because the native and natural Endowment that is in them from the nature of the Glasse doth more powerfully reflect the vital beam communicated unto it For something is continually and necessarily discussed or blown out of us which is not yet plainly destitute of the participation of Life That very thing doth keep the activity of its own sphear about us the which while it findeth in the polished Glass it easily reflecteth on the whole Body from whence it issued for thereby sympathetical Remedies or Things were first made known But afterwards when it was known that things tied about the Body were applied in operating by virtue of a Glasse there were thereupon boughtie or convex concavous c. figures of Looking-glasses presently bethought of whereunto Gentilisme joyned Hieroglyphicks that by a figure they might denote the sign of a hidden virtue Superstition in posterity thereby encreased who anointed Gamahen Talismanicks and devilish Scurrilities of that sort Thinking that Figures had not indeed the virtues of a Sign but of a Cause But transparent Glasses do receive an Evestral or Ghostlike faculty the which although they do not reflect as otherwise dark ones do yet they approach nearer unto the nature of life or the shining glasse Finally I perceived that the diversity of Effects the end and appropriation of Medidines did not proceed from the fourfold fiction of Complexions but from the very powers of Simples themselves whose Election dose and preparation have therefore stood neglected because they have not been hitherto searched into in their root and manner After the perceivances of all these things at length another Spirit took from me the bottle which the other had given me And with great grief I then perceived all the necessities of Death in me unfit to be declared Whereby I presently returned unto my self neither could I receive comfort but when I truly knew that all things were acted onely by a Dream and because that if I ought to rehearse the virtues of things I could not better performe it than if I had as it were felt all those things within This one thing at least I did moreover remember that Chymical things did rather act by the force of Art than by the native power of Nature because their beginnings were brought forth and changed by the Fire To wit Chymistry separates fixed things from things not fixed
are from within drawn out of the Body the which I will enclose in one only or two Examples The Wife of a Taylor of Mecheline saw before her Door a Souldier to loose his Hand in a Combate she being presently smitten with horrour brought forth a Daughter with one Hand but dead through an unfortunate and bloody Arm because the Hand thereof was not found and a flux of Blood did kill the Infant The Wife of Marcus of Vogelar a Merchant of Antwerp in the year 1602 seeing a Souldier begging whose right Arm an Iron Bullet had taken away in the Siege of Ostend and who as yet carried that Arm about with him bloody by and by after she brought forth a Daughter deprived of an Arm and that indeed her right one the Shoulder whereof being as yet bloody ought to be made whole by the Chyrurgion she married a Merchant of Amsterdam whose name was Hoocheamer she also surviving in the year 1638 But her right Arm was no where to be found nor its Bones neither appeared there any putrifying Disease for which the Arm had withered away in a small hours space Yet while the Souldier was not as yet beheld the Young had two Arms Neither could the Arm that was rent off be annihilated Therefore the Arm was taken away the Womb being shut but who plucked it off naturally and which way it was taken away surely trivial reasons do not square in so great a Wonder or Paradox I am not he that will shew these things only these things I will say that the Arm was not taken away as neither rent off by Satan And then that it was a thing of less labour for the Arm being rent off to be derived else where than it was to have plucked off the Arm from the whole Body without Death A Merchants Wife known to us assoon as she heard that 13 were to beheaded in one morning it happened at Antwerp in the time of Duke Alban or D'â—lue and Women great with Child are led by inordinate Appeties she determined to behold the beheadings Therefore she went up into the Chamber of a Widow her familiar acquaintance dwelling in the Market place and the spectacl being seen a travaile pain presently surprized her and she brought forth a mature Infant with a bloody Neck whose Head no where appeared At leastwise I do not find that mans Nature doth abominate the piercing of dimensions seeing it is most frequent to the Seeds of things Thou shalt bring forth Children in Sorrow is the punishment of Sin Before Sin therefore she had naturally brought forth tall Young without pain at least-wise of that bigness with which we are now born But not that a Woman had been unsensible before Sin but because it had gone forth the Womb being shut Therefore it was a proper or familiar thing to humane Nature from his Creation for dimensions to pierce each other because he was made that he might live in the Flesh according to the Spirit But Nature being corrupted that authority of his Spirit over his Body perished and therefore Woman doth thence-forward bring forth after the manner of Bruits Yea Writers do make mention that Ulcers or Imposthumes are made thorow the Bones that all things are carried upwards and downwards without the guidance or commerce of the Vessels Indeed that primitive efficacy of piercing Bodies doth as yet consist in the seeds of things but is not subjected by humane force art or will or judgment For there are many Bodies much more ponderous than the Matter from whence they are composed It must needs be I say that more than fifteen parts of Water do co-pitch into one that one only part of Gold may be thereby made for weight is not made of nothing but doth prove a matter weighing in an equal tenour Therefore Water doth naturally as often pierce its own Body as Gold doth exceed Water in weight Therefore a home-bred and dayly progress of Seeds in generations requireth a Body to penetrate it self by a co-thickning the which is altogether impossible for an Artificer to do Let us grant pores to be in the Water yet these cannot contain fourteen times as much of its entire quantity It is therefore an ordinary thing in Nature that some parts of the Water do pierce themselves into one only place And the Seeds do act this by virtue of a certain Spirit the Archeus For although the Archeus himself as well in the aforesaid Seeds as in us be corporeal yet while he acts by an action of government and sups up the matter into himself he utters many effects not unlike unto enchantments because in speaking properly the Archeus doth not imitate enchantments but enchantments do follow the rule prescribed by the Archeus to wit as he doth operate far otherwise than Bodies do on each other As in affects of the Womb the Sinewes are voluntarily extended the Tendons do burst forth out of their place and do again leap back the Bones likewise are displaced by no visible mover the Neck riseth swollen unto the height of the Chin the Lungs are stopped up from air unthought of Poysons are engengred and the venal Blood masks it self with the unwonted countenances of Filths But as to what doth belong unto the penetrations of Bodies our Archeus sups up Bodies into himself that they may be made as it were Spirits For example Aqua-Fortis doth by its Spirit make Brass Iron or Silver remaining in their own Nature thick or dark so transparent that they cannot be seen and doth transport a mettal thorow merchant Paper the which otherwise doth not transmit the finest Powder thorow it it as yet essentially remaining in the shape of a mettal but not that the similitude of the piercing of dimensions doth uniformly square with the Example of a Mettal proposed Because as I have said reasons do not suite with so great a Paradox where I do willingly acknowledge the manner to be undemonstrable from a former Cause Even as no Man can know after what sort an Idea imprinted on Seeds may figure direct and dispose of its own constituted Bodies And therefore we will search after the same from the effect First of all let it be supposed that the Devil hath no authority or command over us against our will unless by the peculiar permission of God For know ye not that we are the Temple of God and that the very Kingdom of God dwelleth in us which thing is to be re-furrowed from its original First therefore it is of Faith that we are the sanctuary of the holy Spirit that the holy sacred Trinity doth make its mansion with the Just That the delights of God are with the Sons of Men unto whom he hath given Power to become the Sons of God but Children being Baptized are innocent just of them is the Kingdom of God the fitted Temple of God Yet Children are killed by enchantments sooner than others Therefore it must needs be that that thing happens from some
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
Ingredients of the Fountains of the Spaw What the Vitriol of Mars may be 4. Coagulation is never made without Dissolution nor this without that 5. Bodies do not act into each other 6. Between an Action there is the Odour of a dissolving Spirit 7. The dissolving Spirit is Coagulated 8. Why a vein of Iron is Invisible in the Waters 9. Why Waters do smell of Sulphur 10. Why Sharpnesse perisheth in the Waters and when 11. That which is manifest becomes hidden and that which is hidden is made manifest 12. Why not the Iron but the Vein may be said to be in Being 13. The Salt of Fountains doth not grow in the vein of Iron 14. Why one Fountain is stronger than another 15. The difference of Things contained in Fountains 16. Why the Fountain Savenirius is not translated elsewhere 17. Why the Water of Savenirius is the Lighter 18. The Spirit of Salt doth for some time operate upon a Vein VVRiters do with one accord affirm Water to be the continent of the Fountains of the Spaw But we differ from them only in their Original because it is that which brings no small moment unto the Nobility of the same But in respect of the thing contained in the Waters they far disagree from us For indeed they affirm that Vitriol is in the Water of the Spaw and that Calchitis or red Vitriol Mysy Sory Melantera or Blacking Salt Nitre that Nitre I say hath been found to be in them by the examination of Distilling which elsewhere they never saw because they testifie it is that which since the Age of Hippocrates had failed from thence Bitumen or a liquid Amber the pit Coal Alume Bole Oker Red-lead the Mother of Iron the Vein of Iron Iron Aerugo or Verdigrease burnt Chalcanthum Burnt Alume also the Flour of Brass and Sulphur have therein discovered themselves These things I say we read to be attributed by Authors unto the Fountain of the Spaw under their Mistris Uncertainty and so they doubting unto what Captain they may commit so great an Army do conclude that there are some Fountains in which thou mayest most difficulty discern an eminent Subterraneous Matter Elsewhere in the Fountains of the Spaw that a Heat of Vitriol is tempered with the Cold of Red-lead and Brass In another place that the Fountains of the Spaw are actually cold and moist but in Power or Virtue which one Physitians do examine to be hot and dry and therefore especially because they extinguish Thirst At length they say that there is the Faculty of Iron Sulphur Vitriol and of other mineral Things in these Fountains yet an uncertain Proportion of the first Qualities remaining whether thou dost consider the Variety of subterraneous Things or the various Disposition of the Drinkers And I also read that that is to be noted That the Fountain Savonirius puts on it rather the Virtues of mineral Things than their Substance that is Faculties above without or not substantial ones For elsewhere they say that Fountains wax sharp by Vitriol alone and that Vitriol is of a most sharp Savour but in another place with Diascorides they find in Vitriol more of an ungrateful and earthy astriction than of a sharpness Lastly even as nought but the extream torture of the Fires doth allure forth a most sharpe Oyl out of Vitriol to wit a hungry and sulphurous Salt elevating the brassy Spirits So from hence they suppose Fountains to wax sharp and not otherwise to wit that such an Heat in the Earth doth stir up the sharp Spirits of Vitriol unto the Superficies of the Earth which being there constrained by Cold and changed into a sharp Matter are co-mixed with the neighbouring Fountain Which Position many Anguishes do accompany First Because there is no such voluntary Distillation in the Universe And then because at least the inward parts of the Earth according to Hippocrates are Cold in Summer to wit when the Water of the Spaw is at best Thirdly Because the Spirit of Vitriol cannot but gnaw the Earth or Rockie-stones which it toucheth and therefore put of all sharpness which is vainly dedicated to Fountains Fourthly Because in Summer the coldness of the Earth is not in its Superficies only because it is more in condensing the Spirits than the more inward Parts from whence they imagine the Spirits to be chased through the force of heat Fifthly Because the Spirits of Vitriol being immingled with the Water although negligently locked up do neither lay aside their sharpness nor are they tinged with a ruddie colour the which notwithstanding is altogether social unto Fountainous Waters Hitherto the Opinion of others hath led me aside I will confess my Blindness I at sometime seriously distilled Savenirius and Pouhontius and indeed I found not so great a Catalogue of Minerals yea not any thing in them besides Fountain-water and the Vitriol of Iron by other Writers before me neglected But the Vitriol of Mars consisteth of the hungry Salt of embryonated Sulphur and of the Vein of Iron not of Iron which Vein the hungry Salt being as yet volatile hath by licking corroded In which Act of corroding there is made a certain kind of Dissolution of the Vein it self and a coagulation or fixation of the volatile Salt The Salt I say as long as it is volatile that is apt by being pressed by the Fire to fly away is reckoned among Spirits But Bodies do not corrode Bodies as such neither do fixed things act on or into each other but only as one of them is volatile that is a Spirit whether it be grown together or liquid In the next place in all solution as may be seen in the activity of Aqua Fortis distilled Vinegar c. Some Exhalations are stirred up being before at quiet which as they are wild ones they do not again obey coagulation therefore the Waters do of necessity fly away or being restrained do burst the Vessels But besides that also is afterwards to be noted that how much of the Spirits hath compleated the solution of the Body so much also it hath assumed a corporality in the solved Body From hence therefore a reason plainly appeareth why the Waters of the Spaw in so great a clearness or perspicuity do hide in them the dark Body of the Vein of Iron Next why in the activity of an hungry Salt they do cast a smell of Sulphur notwithstanding the corporal Sulphur be absent At length it is also easie to be seen why the Waters about the end of their activity for that speediness of solution doth continue a longer or shorter time in diverse Fountains do loose their Sharpness and why the Vein being before transparent doth then appear ruddy To wit the Spirits being now partly chased away or the same being weakened and coagulated at the end of Activity the imbibed Vein settles and is manifested which before had remained hidden the Waters in the meantime recovering their natural or proper Simplicity Furthermore it is not
idly to be denyed that Iron or the Fragments of Iron are in the Fountains of the Spaw but the Vein of Iron to be in them For truly there doth more Virtue occur in the Vein than in the Iron to wit of those subtile Parts which the Furnace filched away in time of Fusion Wherefore the Juice Spirit or hungry Salt call it as thou listest doth not grow within the Vein of the Iron so that there may be a like co-melting of both in the Waters far be it The Salt hath obtained other Wombs in the Earth from whence the Water sliding by melts that Salt and snatcheth it away with it self as it were a Cousin-germane being once the Son of another Water But if therefore it be the longer detained in a notable hollowness about the Vein it suppeth up more of the Vein into it self as doth Pouhontius and this the Fountain Geronster doth as yet more amply do But Tonneletius being richer than the two foregoing Fountains in a hungry Salt yet is poorer than the same in the Vein For from hence it is Cold and more troublesome to the Stomack Therefore which-soever Fountain doth more provoke Stoole is the more fertile in the Vein Neither indeed was that thing unknown to the Antients who used the Scale of Iron for the loosing of the Belly Virgins also taking Stomoma or the Powder of Steel are wont also to vomit on the first dayes Geronster therefore hath received more of the Vein than Tonneletius but as much of Salt but mitigated by reason of the Activity of the Vein received into it and therefore that Salt hath become more gross and corpulent But Savenirius is far more washy in Waters having the least of the Vein and hungry Salt and therefore it sooner finisheth the Action of the hungry Salt and Vein and the Medicinal water sooner dyeth And for the same Cause it most easily passeth thorow the Stomack is sooner concocted and doth penetrate The presence therefore of the Spirit acting into the Vein enlargeth the Pores in the Water and works up the Water of the Fountain unto a lighter weight It is further to be noted that even as in Wines and unripe Oyl of Olives there is a fermental boyling up So the Action of the hungry Salt it self is made And not only upon the Vein while it gnaws and passeth thorow the same but also it operates for some time upon the same being snatched away with it Pouhontius I say far longer than Savenirius c. until that the Activities of the Spirits being worn out of exhausted as well the Agent as the Patient the thing dissolving I say like as also the thing to be dissolved do decay or faile in the same endeavour CHAP. XCVIII A Fifth Paradox 1. The virtues of a hungry Salt 2. The effect of obstruction 3. How far Fountains may act in a Man 4. Whom they may not help 5. An example of an effect by it self and by accident 6. A Woman is subject unto double Diseases 7. The faculties of the Vein of Iron 8. An objection 9. A Solution 10. After what manner Iron opens and after what manner it doth binde 11. A proof by an allied Example 12. Whether they are convenient in the Stone and how far 13 That is a Cloakative Cure which doth onely expell the Stones 14. The Waters of the Spaw are for a Cause that the Stone doth the more easily re-increase or grow again 15. Wherein the true Cure of the Stone is placed 16. From whence the remedy is to be fetched and of what sort it is 17. The first qualities are in Fountains 18. Water not Air is Internally moist 19. The Virtues of Rellolleum and Cherto 20. An objection 21. A resolution thereof WE being now about to Treat in a brief Method concerning the Virtues of the Fountains of the Spaw and being to speak by the Rule of a supply will resume that no other Natural Endowments are to be found than those which are drawn out of a hungry Salt and the dissolved Vein of Iron Wherefore seeing a hungry Salt dissolves Muscilages cleanseth them away consumes them and sends them forth therefore first of all it helps Stomacks that are beset with Muckiness also by the same endeavour it dispatcheth the same preter-natural sliminess which we have called a Coagulable excrement of things in us being crept a little more deeply and inwards as well into the innermost Chambers of the Veins as into those of any Bowell but by so much the slower by how much farther it hath taken its Journey from the mouth Hence it doth not sluggishly succour the obstructions arisen in the Liver Spleen and Kidneys and Fevers the Dropsie and Jaundise bred from thence For the matter obstructing being consumed the obstruction ceaseth which otherwise seeing it is a hinderance whereby the Spirit of Life may spring the less freely throughout all Places and perform its offices Therefore it deprives the parts which are behind it in a future order of a Vital Communion and consequently calls for Putrefactions Therefore the Waters of the Spaw being drunk are convenient altogether in all Diseases which arise from the Enemy Tartar being received and Coagulated within besides Nature So that a sufficient Root of Life be remaining that is if they are drunk seasonably enough Yet with that adjoyned Limitation that the Power of the Waters doth not Transcend the Hypochondrials or places about the short Ribs For the Waters do not reach beyond the Reins to wit unto the Heart Lungs or Brain Wherefore also the Waters of the Spaw do not succour those affects which are Naturally or peculiarly from a property of Passion unless by accident The reason is Because seeing Minerals are altogether unapt for nourishment they are banished out of the Body with the Urine the last excrement of Salts to wit the Commerce whereof the lively Arterial blood doth no longer suffer Therefore if they may seem to bring any help unto the Head Heart or Lungs all that is to be reckoned to happen by a withdrawing of the affect which causeth a distemperature therein by a Secondary Passion and consent In the next place neither do the Waters of the Spaw profit in Epidemical Endemical and Astral Diseases as are the Plague Plurisie burning Coal c. as neither do they very much profit in those Diseases wherein a Poison subsisteth being either inwardly received or bred or participated of from contagion As also neither in Diseases of Tincture such as are the Leprosie Pox or Foul Disease the Morphew Cancer Falling-Evil c. Wherefore we do not well agree with those who commend the Water of the Spaw for all Diseases altogether without Exception And so that they extoll the same even unto blasphemy To wit There is no cause that we having obtained the Fountains of the Spaw should now henceforeward be amazed at the Miracles of Ancient Waters or of the Fish-Pool of Siloah or of Jordan curing of Naaman seeing here also we see those
from it Self I could scarce discern by reason of the superlative lustre or brightness of the Christaline Spirit contained within it Yet that I observe that the Mark of the Sexes was not but in the Husk but not in the Chrystal The Seal whereof was an unuttered Light so reflexed in the Chrystal that the Chrystal it self was made incomprehensible and that not indeed by a Negation or Privation because they are those things which are in respect of our Weakness so called but it represented a famous being which cannot be expressed by Word And it was said unto me This is that which thou once sawest thorow the Chink But I intellectually saw those things in the Soul which if the Eye should see it should afterwards cease to see The Dream therefore shewed unto me that the Beauty of the Soul of Man doth exceed all Conception At least-wise I comprehended the Vanity of my long desire therefore I desisted from the wish of seeing my soul For however beautiful that spiritual Chrystal was yet my soul retained no perfection unto it self from that Vision even as otherwise after an intellectual Vision the Mind is adorned with much Perfection of Knowledge I knew therefore that my Mind in that Dreaming Vision had acted the Person of a third and so that it was not worth the labour of so great a Wish But as to what hath regard unto the Image of God in the Mind I according to my slenderness confess that I could never conceive any thing whether it were a Spirit or a Body or in the Understanding or in the next place in the Imagination or in a meer intellectual Vision which through the same endeavour may not represent some Figure of it self under which it might stand in the considerer Because surely whether I conceive a thing by its Image or Likeness or whether the Understanding transchangeth it self into the Thing understood At least-wise I cannot consider this thing to be done unless it should wander from it self into the thing understood with an interchangable course of it self the which seeing it hath a certain actual Being it hath alwayes stood with me under a certain Figure or Shape For indeed although I conceived the Mind to be an incorporeal and immortal Substance Yet I could not assoon as I thought of its individual Existence consider of the same as deprived of all Figure Yea nor indeed but that it would answer unto the Figure of a Man For as oft as the Soul that is separated seeth another Soul Angel or evil Spirit that must needs know that these things are present with it that it may distinguish the Soul from the Angel and likewise the Soul of Peter from the Soul of Judus Which Distinction cannot be made by Tasting Smelling Hearing and touching but only by a proper Vision of the Soul Which Vision or Sight doth of necessity include an interchangeable course of Figure For seeing an Angel is so in a Place that he is not at once in another Place Therein also is of necessity included a certain figural Circumscription no less than a local one And then I have considered the mind of Man to be figured after this manner For the Body of man as such cannot give unto it self an humane Shape For therefore it had need of an external Engrave which should be enclosed within the Matter of the Seed and which had descended into it from elsewhere Yet for as much as that Engraver was of a material Condition he was not able to draw a Virtue as neither an Image of figuring either out of himself nor from the Masse of the Body it behoves therefore that something doth precede which was plainly immaterial yet a real and effective Beginning whereunto a Power should be due of figuring by a sealing impression on the Archeus of the Seed The Soul of the Begetter therefore while it slides downwards and through natural Lust doth lighten the Body of the Seed it delineates the Figure of its Seal and the Seal of its Figure there which is the one only Cause of the Fruitfulness of Seeds from whence therefore ariseth so lofty a Stature of a Young For if the Soul it self were in it self not figured but that the Figure of the Body should arise as it were of its own accord a Trunk in any Member could not but generate a Trunk Because the Body of the Generater not being entire doth at least-wise faile in the implanted Spirit of that Member If therefore a Figure be implanted in the Seed certainly it shall receive that Image from a more vital and former Beginning But if the Soul doth imprint a certain Figure on the Seed it shall not counterfeit a forreign or strange Face but shall decypher its own Likeness For so also the Souls of Bruit-beasts do And although our Soul by reason of its Original be above the Laws of Nature Yet by what foot it hath once entered the threshold of Nature and is incorporated therein it is afterwards also constrained to stand to its own Laws because there is a univocal or simple Progress and end of vital Generations For neither otherwise doth it want Absurdities that an Operation of so great a Moment as is the Generation of Man should happen without the consent and co-operation of the Mind which if it be so it must needs be also that fruitfulness is given to the Seed by the Soul by a Participation of its Figure and other vital Limitations Indeed every Soul doth to this end Seal the Image of it self in the Spirit of the Seed that the matter being reduced unto a requisite Maturity shewing a delineated Beauty and also the similitude of the Begetter may be able to beg a formal Light from the Creator or a Soul of that Species whose similitude is expressed in the Figure For we believe by Faith that our mind is a true Substance which is not to die but that the new Creation of a Substance out of nothing doth belong to God alone From whence there is not many but one only spiritual Father of all Spirits who is in the Heavens who if it hath well pleased him to have adopted the mind only into his own Image it seemeth also to follow that the vast and unutterable God is also of a humane Shape and that from an Argument from the Effect Seeing that the Body is like wax on which the Seal of the Image of the Mind is imprinted but the mind hath its Image and essential Perfection from him whose Image it beareth before it But because the Body is now and then defectuous and like unto a Monster Most have thought that the glorious Image of God doth wholly consist in the rational Power or Power of Reason They not considering that the Image of God doth in the nearest and more perfect manner consist in the Soul and from thence also in the Body being formed after the exemplary Character of the Soul In Operation of the Figuring if there be an Errour that
Quick-sighted and provident Nature comes to meet or prevent this same Dryness with a more large Nourishment of Marrow and She would have it to be Fat and less discussable or dispersable by Heates that it may vindicate the Old Age of the Bones from Dryness by its Unctuous Moisture For therefore there is a greater plenty or Marrow in four-footed Beasts that are Aged than in the little Young Ones because there is a greater necessity thereof I therefore do no longer highly esteem of the irrepairable radical Moisture for the Foundation of Life as neither being astonished at Dryness in as much as it is such neither also am I wont to measure out the Life according to the Pleasure of the first Qualities Because I knew that the Life did not wax dry as neither was it to be drawn from the Bosom of the Elements after that I beheld the interchangeable Courses of a long and short Life to be in the Center of Life CHAP. CV The Vital Air. THe Schools have not performed enough in teaching that Nourishments are transchanged first into Chyle and then from hence into the Digested Juice of Venal Blood and so that in the Liver a natural Spirit is made which by a repeated Digestion in the Heart is formed into vital Spirit and at length that in the Brain it is made animal So as that the natural Spirit should be fit for using the Parts but the Vital for quickning and conserving the same as also lastly that the Animal Spirit should be appointed for the Functions of Sense Motion and of the Mind But moreover in my Judgment it had behoved them more largely to discover the Thingliness and History of the Deed in so long a race of Studies and Repetition of Writers Indeed they know that there is a certain Spirit that Maker of the Assault according to Hippocrates which holds the Stern of Life in its Hand It was to be sought for and pronounced in what Organs or Instruments that Spirit should be made or what it should act and also they ought to have explained every Disposition the Substance thereof and the Properties of its Substance and also the manner of its making I therefore will declare what I may meet with in this respect That therefore we may be led into the Knowledge of the Vital Spirit the Blas of Man should first of all be repeated in this place but least I be tedious I will here omit it and refer the Reader elsewhere unto the Volume of the rise of Medicine I have elsewhere also delivered a Mean or Manner whereby through instilled Ferments an Aqua Vitae may be made of every Plant and Fruit whatsoever Which manner the vulgar Sort hath known and doth exercise while it frameth an Aqua Vitae or Liquor of Life out of Grains Fruits Ale or Beer Hydromel or honied Water no less than out of Juice of the Vine But an Aqua Vitae is a volatile Liquor Oylie indeed as it is wholly enflamed and likewise wholly Salt for as much as being an Air it biteth yea and being but a little while detained in the Mouth it burns and embladders the upper skin of the Gums I in this place taking notice by the way that two Beginnings of Chymistry are one only and an undivideable Simple thing I have shewn also elsewhere after what manner one Pound of Aqua Vitae being combibed in the dryed Salt of Tartar scarce half an Ounce of Salt can be made but that the whole Body may be made an Elementary Water as it was before And so that from hence it is easie to be seen that Water is by Nature a more formerly and simple Body that the Chymical Beginnings themselves While as the Water which at first was not in act in the most expurging or refined Aqua Vitae is nevertheless by its reducement thereby made its first Element of Water The which handicraft Operation moreover by transferring unto the Speculation of Life I find that the Wine in its winy Parts containeth the Aqua Vitae the Water of Life and therefore that is easily quickly and without the digested Maturities of the Liver and Gaul snatched through the Arteries of the Stomack unto the Heart or to be called unto it immediately for the supply and defect of the vital Spirit and in this respect to delude the Opinion of the Schools which presupposeth that the Spirit of the Liver ought to precede For if there be more of the Spirit of Wine in the Stomack than is meet Drunkenness follows to wit as the Spirit of Wine is more largely attracted than can in a fit Interval be changed into Vital Spirit Which thing surely proveth first of all a changing of and also the Operations of a Digestion and Ferment In the next place that also is remarkable To wit that there is a certain more mild Spirit in the Wine a Partaker of another and more noble Quality than that Spirit which is immediately drawn out by Distillation and is called refined or expurged Aqua Vitae The which is easily beheld by the Sight in the simple Oyl of Olives because Oyl being Distilled without the Additaments of Bricks or Tiles and the which therefore is called Oleum Philosophorum differs much from its Oyliness which is extracted the simple Oyl being first reduced into unlike Parts only by the Digestion and Application of the circulated Salt of Paracelsus For truly the circulated Salt is separated the same in weight and antient Qualities from the Oyl after that the Oyl of Olives is disposed into its diverse kinds of Parts For then by this means a sweet Oyl is separated from the Oyl of Olives even as also a most sweet Spirit of Wine from the Wine and that far distinct from the tartness of Aqua Vitae But in us although the meat together with the Drink do after some sort putrifie for that Purefaction is a manner and mean of transchanging a thing into a thing yet in our Digestions the Spirit of Aqua Vitae is not by such a Putrefaction and action of the Ferment of the Spleen drawn out of Potherbs Pulses Bread-Corns or Apples For truly it is not the Intention of our Nature to procreate an Aqua Vitae for it self but there is a far different Ferment in us whereby things are resolved into Chyle And a far different one whereby things do putrifie and are separated into an Aqua Vitae For this Ferment is introduced by many Mediums but that is not attained but by a specifical fermental Property of any Species For while Herbs through a long steeping in Water are made to putrifie by their Ferment or Vicar for the extracting of an Aqua Vitae the stalke branches and entire Leaves remaine in their Figure and Hardness the which notwithstanding being chewed swallowed and well concocted within do in a few hours depart into Chyle and loose the first Nature of Herbs Wherefore I have also elsewhere pressed to wit that there are as many specifical digestive
Marriage-bed was Barren But therefore the extension of the Womb ought to be suitable to the Seed by reason of avoiding a Vacuun And then every strange thing is a hostile impediment to Generation Then in the next place after that the Seed of the Man is joyned with that of the Woman the sucking of that Load-stone in the aforesaid hollowness of the Womb presently ceaseth and the Door of the Womb is shut nigh its Neck But the Womb doth by shutting out all Air on every side and equally embrace its Content with a bountiful Favour and a more exact co-mixture of them both beginneth by reason of an occult co-marriage unfolded in the Seeds on both sides Presently after although the conceived Seed be at the first disturbed and a thick or dark Liquor yet two dayes after it assumeth the likeness of the transparent white of an Egge But on the Sixth day but not before the Archeus the Inhabitant of the Seeds appeared unto me as it were a cloudy Vapour the which on the thirteenth day after was shadowily endowed with the Figure of a Man together with a certain clarifying of its own thickness For then the Seed had increased perhaps in the tenth part of it self and had married the nourishable Liquor unto it self being the original or first-born Liquor In the mean time I wondered at the begun Self-love of Selfishness which even in Seeds should presently begin to meditate of their Increase For as lukewarm Milk doth presently incrust it self in a thin Skin so also the Seed straightway after three dayes arms it self with a Skin the which notwithstanding becomes more manifest by Degrees Yet both the Garments do differ in that that the Milk over-spreds its Skin only against the Air but the Seed on every side because the thin Skin is not extended over the Milk by a Spirit the Former or Framer thereof but by Heat which separateth the Diversities of the Milk For from hence it comes to pass that the more slymie and more Fat and more Neighbourly parts of the Milk are alwayes designed for the making of a skin by a separation from the rest and the which being consumed the skinnifying of the Milk ceaseth In Milk therefore that tendeth to Corruption unlikenesses of matter are made The which doth not happen in Seeds collected and disposed to Generation Furthermore although the Air was seen under the Figure of a Man Yet a sexual Character could not as yet be noted by me after some dayes from the Vision I lighted on that place of the Apostle There shall not be Greek or Hebrew not Male or Female but they are all one in Christ About the 17th day I saw that this figured Air did sink and plainly espouse it self within the White and did as it were sleep for full three Days space and about 12 hours and was again a certain dark Chaos in the Seed In which interval it covered it self with a visible Secundine and the hardness of a Membrane which it found not in the Matter it had made unto it self by a formative and transchangative Faculty Indeed this forming Air while it engraveth the Body it useth not separation neither therefore hath it need of a diversity of matter whereby it may frame or fashion the Diversities of Alterations of Organs proposed unto it self in the Figure Which three dayes being finished that Spirit the Framer then first appeared being markable with the Signature of the Sexes yet no longer undistinctly walking up and down throughout the whole Lump of the Seed but under a certain confusion proper unto that three dayes space all that very Air had grown together in every of his Parts although they not yet appearing For neither was there as yet so much another wandring and floating Spirit in that Mass but one only implanted Spirit continual unto it self through the Rudiments of the Parts did finish the whole distributive Divisions of Generation and that its own Pains was uncessant yet without toyle and grief or wearisomness And although it was not wearied in its Work yet it required a Vicar for it self for a distinction of the Parts is more and more unfolded and there is made a growth or increasing of the whole Lump by the Mothers and that more pure Blood and it forms unto it self a Radical Moisture the constituter of the solid Parts Wherefore also it draws an Increase and Fewel to it self from the vital Spirit of the Mothers arterial Blood the which to wit it soon assimilates unto if self by a most perfect Union Indeed the Spirit is nourished and increaseth in the delineation of the Seed no otherwise than as the corporeal Lump of the Embryo it self Yet the inflowing Spirit was not seen by me before the thirty second day after Conception It was then indeed as yet thin and drawn from the arterial Blood of the Mother being translated into a neighbouring Species But this Spirit about the one and fourtieth day had obtained a certain vital Light or Splendour and also it expressed the stature of a Man but heaped round together yet deformed by reason of a disproportionated bigness of the Head which Light was as it were a shining or brightness from a flame which Aqua Vitae sheweth in burning And not much after some moments of time this Light was on a sudden made more Lightsome than it self The sensitive Soul although it make a Species in Bruits and therefore subsisteth by it self yet in Man it contains not a Species but only a subordinate Diversity of Light or a Degree unto the Mind therefore scarce subsisting without the Mind And although in Man there be a sensitive Life yet it is not a specifical Being by Creation but a seminal Being occasioned through the Lust of our first Parent the Character whereof is wholly restrained by the Mind The sensitive Life therefore doth presently inform the Spirit of the Seed under a skie-coloured and obscure Splendour and is also informed by the Mind and that with a clearer Light Yet 4 5 6 or 7 Points of the Cord of a Foot-length do interpose because Seeds do differ in the Perfection of Dispositions and therefore the Spirits the Formers of Seeds do differ in their Perfection and chearfulness of Acting For from hence it is that that which happens unto one Conception in one forty Dayes that happens to another in the second forty or in the third neither yet therefore are the more slow or sluggish Quicknings more imperfect than swift ones no otherwise than as fore-ripe Wits are oft-times to be set behind or less esteemed than the more slow ones At leastwise the whole race of our Generation breaths forth some famous thing For although the Archeus the forming Work-man containeth in it a humane Figure and figureth the Body after its own likeness yet the Fabrick of Man is not from the Begining in an erected or upright Stature as neither confusedly rouled into a circle but bent or hooked after which manner the Young is defective
Ointment is called Sympathetical another Magnetical 3. What Mummy is 4. Phylosophy is immediately reproved by Reasons onely 5. The difference of Law and Phylosophy 6. From an ignorance of the Cause Magnatism is accounted a Devil 7. Who may be the Interpreters of Nature 8. Why Alchymists onely can Interpret Nature 9. He is proud who from an ignorance of the Cause believes a thing to be of the Devil 10. Who are the Devils flatterers 11. Magnetism is no new Invention 12. The Armary or Weapon-unguent 13. The intent aim remedies or ingredients and manner in the Ointment are good 14. Why the Unguent is not unlawful 15. Why it is not Superstitious 16. What Superstition is 17. Why the manner of the Unguent being unknown to the censurer can nothing disprove it 18. What Magnetism is 19. Some Effects of the Load-stone 20. The Magnetical Cure of incurable Diseases is perfect 21. Milk being burned dries up the Dugs 22. Vitriol dies through Magnetism or Attraction 23. Mummy operates from Italy even to Bruxels 24. The Carline Thistle under the shade draws wonderfully 25. Likewise the same Disease in number changeth its Subjects 26. That from Magnetism Flowers are followers of the Sun 27. Mummies which are Philtrous or pertaining to Love how they are attractive 28. That the Arcanum or secret of the Blood is the Load-stone of Alchymists 29. Herbs why and after what sort they are Attractive 30. Asarabacca and the Elder are Magnetical 31. An implicite compact or covenant is the Anchor of the Ignorant 32. Sympathy presupposeth a sense or feeling 33. The Mummy of a Dead Brother being long since impressed on a seat is as yet attractive 43. The Saphire is an imitator of the Unguent in Magnetism 35. The Saphire by touching of one Carbuncle cures others 36. Why the Prelates of the Church wear skie-coloured Rings 37. Man hath his Load-stone 38. An Amulet for the Plague 39. It is of necessity that the same accident should pass from subject into subject 40. Magnetism is an heavenly quality 41. A Thief Robber or Murderer and an honest Man or Woman afford the same Mosse of their dead skull 42. From whence and what the seed of that Mosse is 43. The fruit of the Air. 44. That Usnea or Mosse is a fruit of Fire 45. In that Mosse also is the Back of the Load-stone the scope being changed 46. God in Miracles follows Nature 47. God approves of the Magnetism of the Unguent by Reliques 48. A supernatural Magnetism proves a natural one 49. A lock of that Mosse being incarnate in the fore-head is a defence against a sword but a Thred or rag of the stole of S. Hubbert against the tooth of a mad Dog 50. A rag being incarnate in the fore-head preserves from the biting of a mad Dog for ones whole life time an impression of blood doth the same in the Zinzilla 51. Pepper degenerates into Ivy. 52. How we must judge of Persons 53. Paracelsus the Monarch of Secrets 54. Every thing hath its own particular Heaven 55. From whence inclination is 56. From whence a Disease is Astral in us 57. Whence sick persons have a fore-feeling of the stormes of the times 58. What may cause the flowing and ebbing in the Sea 59. Whence Windes are stirred up 60. The Heaven doth not cause but pronounce things to come 61. The Being of every seed hath the firmament and virtue of its own influence 62. The Vine not the Heaven disturbs Wines 63. Antimony observes an influence 64. The Load-stone directs its self but is not drawn 65. Glass is Magnetical 66. Rosin is Magnetical 67. What Garlick acteth against the Load-stone and why the same thing also concerning Mercury 68. The virtue or power of operation on an Object at a distance is natural even in sublunary things and it is Magnetical 69. Every Creature liveth in its own mode or after its own manner 70. What the Unguent can draw from a Wound at a distance 71. Every Satanical effect is imperfect 72. Why Satan cannot co-operate with our Unguent 73. What may be called the Will and Imagination of the Flesh and of the outward Man 74. A twofold Extasie 75. The Ecstatical power of the Blood 76. Corruption makes that lurking power manifest 77. The Essences of things do not putrifie 78. The putrefaction of Alchymy to what end it is 79. The Cause of Attraction in the Unguent 80. The heart is drawn by the treasure magnetically or after the manner of a Load-stone 81. Necromancy or the Black-Art from whence it is 82. What Man is as a living Creature and what Man is as being the Image of God 83. After what manner the Eagle is allured by the Magnetisme of a dead Carcase 84. How the venal Bloud is drawn in the Unguent unto its own treasure Why Eagles are allured to a dead Carcase magnetically 85. A natural feeling or perceivance and an animal feeling do differ 86. The Effects of Witches are wicked ones 87. The power of a Witch is natural and of what sort that power may be 88. Where the Magical power in man is seated 89. Whether man bears command over all other Bodies 90. Why a man may act per nutum or by his beck or pleasure 91. What the Magical faculty may be 92. The Magical power lyes hid in man after divers manners 93. The inward man is the same with the outward fundamentally but materially diverse 94. What the vital Spirit its knowledge and gift is 95. In a Carcase which dies of its own accord there is no implanted Spirit 96. The divining of Spirits according to Physitians 97. The Soul acts in the Body onely per nutum Magically 98. The Soul acts in the Body onely by a drowsie beck but out of the Body by an excited beck The knowledge of the Apple hinders Science Magical or Wise Knowledge 99. The beginning of the Cabal is drawn from God in Dreams 100. The defect of Understanding is in the outward man 101. What Satan can do in Witches 102. What are the true works of Satan alone 103. Sin hath withdrawn the endowments of Grace and hath obscured the gifts of Nature 104. Whither the pious exercises of Catholicks tend 105. The most powerful effect of the Cabal 106. There are two subjects of any kind of things 107. Man acts as well by his Spirit as by his Body 108. What kind of ray or beam is sent from a Witch into a bruit 109. How a Witch may be bewrayed 110. How a Witch may be bound up in the heart of a Horse 111. The Intention depraves or vitiates a good Work 112. The Seminal virtue is natural Magick 113. Why blood issues out of the dead Carcase when the Murtherer is present 114. Why the Plague is frequent in Sieges 115. Works of Mercy are to be exercised at least in respect of avoiding the Plague 116. Plagues from Revenge and execration are detestable 117. Why Bodies were to be removed from the Gibbet 118. Why Excrements
to wit by reason of an Impression communicated to the Glass without corporeal remainders Steel also after the touch of the Load-stone though well washed and cleansed doth nevertheless point at the Pole which two Bodies seeing they have neither a like co-temperament or form between themselves nor with the Load-stone do demonstrate that the Pole doth not attract Load-stones for either of those two ends Thou wilt say that by rubbing on them there is a participation of the Load-stone made in the Pores of the Steel or Spondils of the Glass A miserable excuse For the Rosin of the Firr-Tree is of it self coagulated into the hardness of the Stone the which then allures Iron unto it no otherwise than the Load-stone doth Here at least-wise thy feigned participation of the Load-stone sinks to the Ground The Load-stone only by the affriction or rubbing of Garlick thereon neglects the Pole its Form Matter and Properties being the while preserved indeed because that spiritual sensation or feeling in the Load-stone is by the Garlick laid asleep which sensation we have already before avouched to be the one only Cause of the Act of formal Properties Verily that would be a weak attraction in the Pole which could pass through so many Orbs of Heaven and the vast Region of the Air through Houses and Walls but should not know how to pierce the Juice of Garlick alone or the fumousness of Mercury the same material Root and one only Form of the Stone remaining stedfast A swimming Load-stone is carried in one certain part thereof to the North in its other part to the South Therefore if that positional conversion should be made by the drawing Pole the whole Northern side of the Stone would be alwayes drawn by the North Pole which is false For if it shall touch a piece of Iron with its North side it shall not incline that Iron according to its own Property to the North but to the South although the dust of the Stone shall adhere to the Iron but if it shall touch the Iron with its Southern side it shall turn that Iron to the North. Likewise the Load-stone in what part it hath alwayes inclined it self to the North beyond the Aequinoctial line it tends to the South As yet a little longer let us prosecute this Argument A Load-stone swimming in a Skiff of Cork on a quiet Poole if in its Northern Part it shall be violently turned to the South presently that that North side as it were by a forcible conduct re-addresseth it self to the North Therefore if the Load-stone should by the Pole it self be pull'd towards the Pole and that direction of the Stone were not voluntary the whole Skiff should of necessity by the same drawing float and be drawn or towed to the Northern Bank of the Poole which is false for the direction of the North side being attained both the Load-stones and Skiffe stand unmovable upon the water There is therefore in the Load-stone an influential Virtue which without respect had unto the nearness of its Object is after the manner of Celestial Bodies freely carried as far as the Pole it self seeing there is a voluntary eradiation or darting forth of the Rayes of the Load-stone unto the Pole or North Star therefore if there be now found one only natural Virtue in Sublunaries to wit in the Load-stone beaming forth it self unto an Object at a most remote distance which is never or in no wise to be ascribed to Satan It shall be also sufficiently proved that there may be also many the like Virtues or Properties wholly Natural as in the Examples alleaged and the Weapon Salve The Load-stone therefore or Iron touched by the Load-stone seeing they voluntarily convert themselves to the Pole a certain Quality is of necessity extended from the Load-stone to the Pole the which seeing we have known to be done without any corporeal Efflux therefore we denominate the same to be a spiritual Quality herein disagreeing from our Divine who distinguisheth a Spirit in opposition to every corporeal Nature as it were something besides Nature But Physitians only in opposition to the more gross compact of a Body and in this respect we say that the Light of the Sun and Influx of the Heavens the ejaculation or stupefactive darting forth of the Cramp-Fish the sight of the Basilisk c. are Qualities plainly Spiritual to wit because they are not dispersed on an Object at a distance by the Communion of a substantial Evaporation but as by the Medium of an unperceivable Light they are beamed forth from their Subject into a fit Object Which things being thus supposed and proved it is sufficiently manifest that our Divine not having as yet understood Goclenius hath nevertheless many times undeservedly carped at him First because Goclenius would establish a Spiritual Quality in a Corporeal Unguent Secondly because He affirmed that it being drawn or conveighed as through a Medium or Vehicle is carried unto its appropriated Object like as a radial or darting Light Thirdly inasmuch as such Qualities are derived unto a remote and appointed Object by a certain feeling of the Spirit of the World the causative Faculty of all Sympathy This Spirit the Divine interprets to be a Cacodaemon or evil Spirit but by his own and I know not what Authority seeing it is the more pure and vital An of Heaven which Spirit nourisheth the Sun and the sunny Stars within and being a mind or intelligence diffused through the Limbs of the Universe acts the whole help thereof and so governs the World by a certain Communion Conspiracy of Parts and Faculties according to the consent of all that have rightly Phylosophized For Examples sake the Sun-following Flowers do feel the travall or journey of the Sun the Sea takes notice of both Lunestices or the full and change of the Moon In Summ every Creature doth by its self Let us worship the King to whom all things live Essence Existence and Sensation or Perceivance bear witness to the Majesty Liberality or Bounty and Presence of the Creator Wherefore our Censurer is deservedly to be reproved in that before he understood the Physitian Writing in a Phylosophical Style he hath plainly carped at him with an unsufferable boldness For so hard a thing hath it been to have kept a Mean in all things Thou askest us what can be attracted out of the wounded Party and after what manner an attraction can be made by the absent Unguent But surely I should not answer injuriously when thou thy self shall shew us for what Cause the Load-stone shall attract Iron and convert it self to the Pole Then shall I also shew thee after what manner Mummy can cure another Mummy being touched on by a third mediating Mummy but because we have determined to repaire the insufficiency of Goclenius in this respect we are also presently to shew by a doctrinal Argument from the Cause to the Effect how a Magnetical attraction of the Unguent happens yet provided
that I shall first satisfie thee what can be drawn from the Wound It is to be noted therefore that in a Wound there is made not only a Solution of Continuity or disunion of the part which held together but also that a forreign quality is introduced from whence the lips of the Wound being enraged they by and by swel with heat are apostemized yea and from thence the whole Body is in a conflict through Fevers and a various concourse of Symptoms For so an Egg whose shell is but even slenderly hurt or crackt putrifies whereas otherwise it might be preserved The Magnetism therefore of this Unguent draws that strange disposition out of the Wound from whence its lips being at length overburthened or oppressed by no accident become without pain and being no way hindred suddenly hasten unto a growing together Natures themselves are the Physitianesses of a Wound the Physitian onely the Servant thereof Neither doth the Medicine beget flesh in a Wound it hath enough to do if it shall but remove impediments Which impediments the one onely Armary Unguent or Weapon Salve doth otherwise sufficiently securely and plentifully expel Thou wilt Object That the Weapon Salve ought not rather to allure forth the forementioned strange quality than the natural strength and powers of the Veins and that the Blood seeing it is sound or uncorrupt in the Unguent ought to call to it the Health but not the indisposition of the wounded party even as indeed was written of the Carline Thistle I Answer that there are divers Magnetisms for some attract iron some chaffs and lead some flesh corrupt pus or matter c. but such is the favour of some Magnetisms that they extract onely the Pestilential Air c. Yea if thou shalt couple the effect of curing in our Ointment with thy own Argument thy own Weapon will wound thee For from thence that the Effect of the Unguent is to heal perfectly speedily without pain costs peril and loss of strength hence I say it is manifest that the Magnetical Virtue in the Unguent is from God in a natural way and not from Satan Because if this Satan should be a co-worker of the said Cure which thou affirmest the same Cure would be imperfect together with loss of Strength Weakness Dammage or hazard of Life a difficult Recovery or with a sensibility of some greater inconveniency and relapse of misfortune All which events as they are annexed to Diabolical Cures so they are far absent from the Cure of our Unguent As many as ever have been cured by this Unguent will give in their Testimony for us Satan is never a teller of Truth never a perswader unto Good unless that he may deceive thereby yea neither doth he long continue in the Truth For alwayes if he shall bring any thing of good to any one this Enemy under-mixeth somewhat more of evil therewith And surely he would according to his custome observe the same rule also in this Unguent if he were the Author or Favourer thereof At least-wise this Remedy would then fail when the wounded Person is recalled as it were from the pit of death who otherwise through the mortal contagion of Sin had through his dangerous wound soon poured forth his Life together with his Blood unlesse haply thou shalt say that Satan then takes compassion on us and that he hath now attained to himself a right or jurisdiction over such a wounded person himself leaves it in doubt to wit in curing him by the Magnetical Unguent whom he had rather should perish perhaps because Satan is now in your esteem a strict observer of his Word and Bargaine and no longer wholly a turn-coat fraudulent impostor and lyar Besides we deny the supposition also That the out-chased blood is perfectly sound or uncorrupt but rather that it being now deprived of a common life hath also entred into the beginnings of some degree of corruption onely that it obtains a Mumial Life Hitherto conduceth the putrified and yet Magnetical blood in an Egg. I therefore pass by the absurdity of thy Objection in that it hath been so bold as to wrest the Magnet or Attractive faculty of the Unguent according to thy own pleasure and not to that end for which it was given of God Positive Reasons of Magnetism more nearly brought home unto us by Metaphysical and Magical Science It is now seasonable to discover the immediate cause of Magnetism in the Unguent First of all by the consent of Mystical Divines we divide Man into the external and internal Man assigning to both the powers of a certain Mind or Intelligence For so there doth a Will belong to flesh and blood which may not be either the Will of Man not the Will of God and the heavenly Father also reveales some things unto the more inward Man and some things flesh and blood reveales that is the outward and sensitive or animal Man For how could the service of Idols Envy c. he rightly numbred among the works of the flesh seeing they consist onely in the Imagination if the flesh had not also it s own imagination and elective Will Forthermore that there are miraculous Ecstasies belonging to the more inward man is beyond dispute That there are also Ecstasies in the Animal man by reason of a intense or heightened Imagination is without doubt Yea Martin del Rio an Elder of the society of Jesus in his Magical disquisitions or inquiries brings in a certain young Lad in the City Insulis that was transported with so violent a cogitation of seeing his Mother that through the same burning desire as if being rapt up by an extasie he saw her being many miles absent from thence and returning to himself being mindful of all that he had seen gave also many signes of his true presence with his Mother Many the like Examples daily come to hand the which for brevities sake I omit But that that desire arose from the more outward man to wit from Blood and Sense or Flesh is certain For otherwise the Soul being once disliged or loosed from the Body is never but by a miracle re-united thereunto There is therefore in the Blood a certain ecstatical or transporting power the which if it shall at any time be stirred up by an ardent desire is able to derive or conduct the Spirit of the more outward man even unto some absent object But that power lies hid in the more outward man as it were in potentia or by way of possibility neither is it brought into act unless it be rouzed up by the imgination enflamed by a fervent desire or some art like unto it Moreover when as the Blood is after some sort corrupted then indeed all the Powers thereof which without a fore-going excitation of the Imagination were before in possibility are of their own accord drawn forth into action for through corruption of the grain the seminal virtue otherwise drowsie and barren breaks forth into act Because that
in the Soul indeed more vigorous but in the Flesh and Blood far more remiss The vital Spirit in the Flesh and Blood performes the office of the Soul that is it is that same Spirit in the outward man which in the seed formes the whole figure that magnificent Structure and perfect delineation of Man and which hath known the ends of things to be done because it contains them and the which as President accompanies the now framed Young even unto the period of its Life and the which although it depart therewith some smatch or small quantity at least thereof remains in a Carcass slain by violence being as it were most exactly co-fermented with the same But from a dead Carcass that was extinct of its own accord and from nature failing as well the implanted as inflowing Spirit passed forth at once For which reason Physitians divide this Spirit into the implanted or Mumial and inflowing or acquired Spirit which departs to wit with the former Life And this influxing Spirit they afterwards sub-divide into the natural vital and animal Spirit But we likewise do here comprehend them all at once in one single Word The soul therefore being wholly a Spirit could never move or stir up the vital Spirit being indeed corporeal much less flesh and bones unless a certain natural power yet Magical and Spiritual did descend from the Soul into the Spirit and Body After what sort I pray could the corporeal Spirit obey the commands of the Soul unless there should be a command from her for moving of the Spirit and afterwards the Body But against this Magical motive faculty thou wilt forthwith Object That that power is limited within her composed Body and her own natural Inn Therefore although we call this Soul a Magitianess yet it shall be only a wresting and abuse of the Name for truly the true and superstitious Magick draws not its foundation from the Soul Seeing this same Soul is not able to move alter or excite any thing out of its own Body I Answer That this Power and that natural Magick of the Soul which she exerciseth out of her self by virtue of the Image of God doth now lye hid as obscure in Man and as it were lay asleep since the Fall or corruption of Adam and stands in need of stirring up all which particulars we shall anon in their proper place prove which same power how drowsie and as it were drunk soever it otherwise remains daily in us yet it is sufficient to perform its offices in its own Body Therefore the knowledge and power Magical and that faculty in Man which acteth only per nutum sleeps since the knowledge of the Apple was eaten and as long as this knowledge which is of the flesh and blood outward man and darkness flourisheth the more noble Magical power is trampled under foot But because in sleep the whole knowledge of the Apple doth sometimes sleep Hence also it is that our dreams are sometimes Prophetical and God himself is thereofre the nearer unto Man in Dreams through that effect To wit when as the more inward Magick of the Soul not being now interrupted by the knowledge of the Apple doth even on every side diffuse it self in Understanding to wit even as when it sinks it self into the inferiour Powers thereof it safely leads those that walk in their sleep by moving or conducting them whither those that were awake could not climb Therefore the chief Rabbies of the Cabal affirm that it was learnt or conceived in time of sleep to wit when the knowledge of the Apple was consopited or lull'd asleep The intellectual act of the Soul is alwayes clear and unshaken and after some sort perpetual yet as long as the principal agent hath not transferred its power so far as the limits of sense that kind of action is not yet propagated throughout the whole man For we who are only conversant with the virtue or faculty of thinking or of the senses and with our carnal intelligence are perpetually drawn away Alas for grief by the same from the more superiour and Magical Science or Knowledge and are retained in the shadow of Knowledge rather than in the Light of Truth For neither do we the Inhabitants of darkness observe that we do understand but when there is made a certain mutual traduction or passing over of faculties and till as it were the angles or corners of actions being prorogued or propagated by divers Agents are folded together about the middle Satan therefore stirs up this Magical power otherwise sleeping and hindred by the knowledge of the more outward man in his bond-slaves and the same readily serves them in stead of a sword in the hand of a potent Adversary that is the Witch Neither doth Satan contribute any thing to the murtherer at all besides an exciting of the said drowsie power and consent of the Will which is for the most part compelled in Witches by reason of which two contributions the mocking Scurre as if the whole office or performance were due to himself requires by a compact a continual firm and irrevocable submissive engagement a perpetual homage and devout worshipping of himself if also nothing more When as otherwise that kind of power was freely conferred by God the workman being plainly natural to Man For indeed juggling Impostures bewitchings by the emission of the sight or eyes and how falsely soever disguises of Witches may appear and such like delusive acts they are only from Satan and are his proper acts For therefore his works are onely ridiculous ones and false apparitions because our merciful God suffers not the same miscreant to have any longer power but keeps him bound When as otherwise the Witch displaies real and wicked acts from her own natural faculty For truly through sin not the gifts of Nature but those of Grace were obliterated in Adam And moreover that the same natural gifts although they were not taken away yet that they have remained as it were restrained and benummed with sleep For even as Man from that time became subject to mortality after the manner of his fellow creatures so also were the Heroick or excelling powers in Man obscured which therefore have need of a stirring up and drawing out of darkness For hitherto have contemplations continued prayers watchings fastings and acts of mortifications regard to wit that the drowsiness of the flesh being vanquished men may obtain that nimble active heavenly and ready power toward God and may sweetly confer with him in his presence who importunately desires not to be worshipped but in the Spirit that is in the profundity or bottom of the more inward man Hitherto I say hath the art of the Cabal regard which as it were by sleep shaken off may restore that Natural and Magical power of the Soul I will after the manner of Mathematicians yet further explain my self by Examples and will assume the very works of Witches the which although they are wickedly mischievous and
temperature of the seeds of their composed Bodies But the spirit of mans urine is neither sharp nor Alcalized but meerly salt even as also that of Horses is And that for this cause because the Volatile sharp matter of the Chyle of the stomach is by vertue of another ferment transchanged into a Volatile salt Even as elsewhere concerning the digestions of Animals I here give thee to observe by the way that in things transchanged there is not an immediate regresse or return unto that from whence they were transchanged no more than from a privation to a habit For that in transchanging the last life of the thing perisheth because the whole disposition of the middle life of the former Being is at once taken away by reason of the extinguishment of its former seed For therefore things transchanged do keep the essence of a new Being with a neglect of their former composed Body Therefore have I found any Remedy whatsoever unprofitable which I otherwise had believed to be very likely a dissolver of the Stone from its former composed Body Yet that is a truth that the spirit of Urine in the fundamental point of its nativity is salt and that by reason of that salt it doth more readily coagulate other Spirits than any sour or sharp spirit doth Milk Neverthelesse the spirit of urine doth not coagulate milk or the venal Blood Because the spirit of the venal blood yea and our vital Spirit is salt after the manner of Urines From hence indeed the spirit of the urine hath it self after the manner of an excrementitious spirit cut off from the blood and so by reason of a co-resemblance it is its Chamber-fellow neither do they act on each other And then also I observed that the spirit of Urine doth not more strongly coagulate those things which were already before coagulated For Bole Clay or the rocky or Chalk-stone do by degrees degenerate by the spirit of urine into a nitrous Salt and are rather dissolved Since therefore the spirit of Urine doth not coagulate Bodies already coagulated such as are Bole Clay c. As neither Bodies coagulable such as are Milk and the venal blood but it coagulates the spirit of Wine or the like thing which is entertained with it in the urine for as was shewn above after the fermenting of urine that urine containes also a spirit of Wine or Aqua vitae I desisted not seriously to enquire after what manner the stone is coagulated in us and in our urine 1. First of all it is an undoubted truth that Duelech is not of a calcinous or limy condition however Paracelsus may be carried on the contrary 1. Because a calcining degree of heat is wanting in us 2. And then because every Alcali is rather that which is destructive to a rocky stone than a Coagulater thereof 3. Because a Calx or Lime presupposeth a Chalky-stone and therefore Duelech should be calcined before it were a stone 4. From the composing parts of Duelech it shall by and by be made manifest that it is not possible for Lime to be in it yea nor that Duelech himself is calcined or doth send forth a Lixivium or Lye Likewise neither is Duelech of the nature of a gowty Chalk because he growes together in the midst of the urine but that Chalk is coagulated from the Sunovia But the Sunovie is a living seedy muscilage which degenerated in the journey of nourishment and from a transparent and Crystaline matter hath passed over into a thick white and slimy matter as of Gouty persons elsewhere from a matter without savour I say it is transplanted into a sharp one though the tartnesse whereof indeed it hath attained a thickness or grossness For then also it is unfit for a total diflation or transpirative dispersing of it self To wit whereby the nourishable Liquor is wholly consumed without any remainder But the Sunovie being once infected with a tartness its watery parts are pufft away but the gross remainder waxeth dry by degrees into the utmost dryth and hardnesse of a Sand-stone But Duelech attaines to the utmost hardness of it self in one onely instant of time The Gouty Chalk therefore differs from Duelech in its whole matter and efficient cause For therefore such a Chalk is hardned out of the water because indeed by drying Neither for that cause doth it imitate the hardness of a rocky stone but onely of a sandy stone I have spoken these things to that end that it may be manifested that Duelech differs from any other coaguted Bodies whatsoever in its different kind of Agent and matter And seeing notwithstanding I as yet knew not the manner or process of the birth of Duelech but I knew in the mean time that Bodies do nor receive the limitation of their hardning but by the actions appointments and properties of their own seeds Lastly Since I knew that whatsoever things do act corporally are altogether sluggish slow and idle as for the coagulation of Duelech therefore I enquired into fermental savours and Odours as the Authors of many seeds Therefore I found the savours and actions of Salts to be indeed famous ones but not any thing reaching the vertue of the salt of Urine And then also I beheld the more weak or feeble Salts which might follow the Race of Sulphurs But Mercury although it alone according to Paracelsus did contain the whole perfection of the thing yet I found it to be slow and feeble For as oft as I distinguished Salts and Sulphurs from their Mercuries I admired at their sluggishnesse and indeed at the dignities of these two Principles Wherefore I stuck in Salts for the searching out of the nativity of Duelech I confess indeed that Mercury being a flowing mettal in its nature and properties is never sufficiently known But that body hath deceived Paracelsus through a similitude of proportion he thinking because his Device had pleased him because he had endowed the watery matter of things with the name of Mercury that therefore the properties of Quick-silver and its natures without a peere being never to be sufficiently searcht into did agree as suitable to all Liquors which may be drawn out of Simples For all the Philosophers of former Ages confess that nothing in the Universe is not so much as by far to be likened to Argent Vive Yet it hath not been hitherto sufficiently unfolded that Argent-Vive or Quick-silver is a Simple actually existing body but not a constitutive part of things And so that there hath been nothing but a meer abusive passing over of a Name For this cause I as yet perswaded my self that seeing a non-Duelech was made of Duelech that ought to be done by the action of an Agent on a disposed matter And although I knew these and many the like things yet I discerned that I therefore knew nothing the more Wherefore I as yet more detested a wording or discursive Philosophy because it was that which stayed me before the Threshold of Nature
although I knew mans urine to be onely in our species and that the spirit of mans urine alone was in the possession of man Yet I examined Horse-pisse in the name of the bigger Cattel as being carefull whether perhaps there might not be another like coagulating spirit which by reason of Impediments co-bred with it could not every where obtain the command of coagulating But however I laboured I found not that spirit the Coagulater in Horse-pisse As neither the spirit of a ferment or of Aqua vitae Therefore I found a potential Aqua vitae intimate with mans urine and that a pliable one between that spirit the Coagulater and the putrified spirit the Receiver of the aforesaid Runnet or Coagulum And it is chiefly to be noted that the spirit of urine doth not coagulate but by the Wedlock of Aqua vitae the which I have often approved by distilling There are therefore three things in the urine of man which must of necessity concur and by so much the more powerfully by how much every person troubled with the stone doth now bear no light or small principle of corruption in his urine as presently in its place from whence indeed a ferment is swiftly stirred up in the urine for the aforesaid Aqua vitae that is capable of Coagulation For neither doth it withstand these things that as well the spirit of Life as the Aqua vitae it self are exceeding swift of flight and so scarce fit for the stubbornnesse of Duelech for it is certain that the spirit of Vitriol doth most swiftly flye from its volatile Companion yea and that it is presently fixed by the swift Sal Armoniack So that it undergoes a fusion or liquidnesse of substance whereby our followers being perfectly instructed do presently cease to wonder which things otherwise affect the ignorant with amazement CHAP. IV. A processe of Duelech 1. The manner of making Duelech 2. It is a singular Being nor having its like 3. A mechanick or handicraft Operation of the Fountaines of the Spaw 4. Oker in the Fountaines of the Spaw might have scared Paracelsus from his device of Tartar 5. A dissection in the actions of Spirits 6. The Fire-water that hath not an homogeneal Being like unto its self 7. The difference of the aforesaid dissolving liquor with all others of the whole Universe 8. Some Oyl of Gold is of a Pomegranate or light-red colour 10. What the generation of Duelech may bespeak 11. The action of Bodyes on Bodyes of what sort it is 12. The Doctrine concerning the action of Bodyes and Spirits 13. The participations of faculties out of mettals without a metalick matter 14. The delusion of the Alchymist 15. Diseases are appointed for a punishment and Reward 16. Some exercises beginning from salts 17. The spirit of salt is made earthly 18. A trivial Question 19. The device of frosty Tartar 20. From whence the Strangury of old people is 21. Four remarkable things issuing from thence 22. A second Question 23. A third 24. A fourth 25. Catarrhs or defluxions of the Bladder are ridiculous 26. A fifth Question 27. A sixth 28. Astrologers are taken notice of 29. Paracelsus is noted like as also Galen 30. The solving of a question proposed 31. The heedlessnesse or rashnesse of Galen THe spirit of the Urine laying hold of the volatile earth that was procreated by a seed and a hoary and putrifying ferment stirs up the spirit of Wine the inhabitant of the Urine as yet laying hid in Potentia or possibility by the which as it were by two Sexes concurring the certain aforesaid earthly spirit drinks in the one onely aforesaid Coagulater by reason of which reciprocation or mutual return a most thorow connexion of them both ariseth in acting because they conjoyn in manner of spirits throughout their very least parts And so the Coagulater doth at one instant coagulate the spirit of Wine that was potentially stirred up in the putrifying ferment whereunto when the hoary or fermental putrified Masse hath applyed its matter they are condensed or co-thickned together into a true Duelech surely a Monster this new something coagulated in the middle of the urine Nor therefore capable of being again resolved into water For it is a rocky Animal Being like unto no other and the which therefore Paracelsus names Duelech And that Being will the more easily enter into the mind by a daily example which the Fountaines of the Spaw present unto us For they have a sulphureous spirit manifestly tart from whence they are called the sharp Fountaines and also a vein of Iron For both being of an imperfect and immature shape are contained as dissolved in the simple water Therefore they both begin mutually to joyn their reciprocal forces against each other And at length when as their strength being tyred they have desisted from their action they are condensed into a stony body which affixeth it self to bottles in the form of Oker and so the water returns into its antient Element as uncloathed of every strange quality Which Sharpish Fountaines if Paracelsus had sufficiently contemplated of or he had neglected the history of the Tartar of Wine borrowed from Basilius Valentine for he had known that there is not the like birth of Oker and of Tartar of Wine At leastwise he might have been with the more difficulty convinced Because Tartar is resolved into water but Oker is not as neither is the stone For neither have I ever attempted to deny that solid bodyes are constituted of Liquors But I refuse tartarous liquors they being forcibly brought into the Causes of Diseases as in the Treatise concerning Tartars but on the contrary I have reverently admired the activities of spirits on spirits Truly since Oker growes out of the waters of the Spaw or since a stony crust is spread over bottles throughout their whole hollownesse let it first of all be wickednesse to give the water of the Spaw to drink if we believe that Tartars are made just as Oker is in the Spaw-water That is if we believe that there is Tartar in the water of the Spaw which is presently to be coagulated in the Drinker he commits wickednesse who gives the Spaw-water to drink For while the acide or tart salt of Wine corroded the Lee that salt indeed which before was tart and not coagulated remaines tart and is coagulated Neither doth it change the essence of Salt although that salt which before was fluide be constrained or bound fast together In like manner also although the Lee hath supt up the acide spirits and coagulated them into it self yet a solid body remaineth while the spirit of the acide salt is coagulated into the solid body of Tartar of Wine Yea before that it be fully coagulated it affixeth it self to the Vessel For in the Generation of Tartar of Wine the spirit acteth on a body and there is altogether a far different action while two spirits act on each other For in this action even
as in the water of the Spaw in Duelech c. a new and neutral Being is constituted such as is Oker of the spirit of Sulphur and the volatile vein of Iron But in the Tartar of Wine onely the tart spirit or sour liquor of the Wine is changed into a Salt and the Lee remaineth such as it was before And therefore the matter constituted thereby is again dissolvable For a metal stone or solid Body is not unbodyed changed or volatilized by reason of the corroding of spirits That is manifest For Silver Pearls Corâ—als Spongy-stones Crabstones Snails-stones c. although by Aqua fortis and other sharp Liquors they vanish out of our fight yet they are stones as before even as concerning Fevers indeed the spirit did what it could but it operated as it wore in vain upon the body while in corroding that body it coagulated it self For indeed there is in the whole nature of the Universe one onely fire the burning Vulcan So also there is none but one onely Liquor which dissolveth all solid bodyes into their first matter without any changing or diminishment of their faculties which thing Adeptists have known and will testifie but in all other faculties of Liquors a body can never radically co-mingle it self with the solving Liquor And therefore it is corroded indeed but is not intimately solved or loosened even as otherwise is required for a formal transmutation For every sharp gnawing spirit in gnawing of another body is coagulated and well nigh fixed and passeth over into the form of a thickned salt yet the body that hath suffered the wil of the gnawing spirit to be done upon it doth not act any thing on that spirit which in gnawing by its own proper action coagulated it self the which indeed comes to passe while two active spirits run together on each other For then there is a double action whereby both of them do mutually act on both For therefore such an action of theirs is made with a thorow radical mixture and there is constituted of them both an of-spring of unseparable mixture and this transchanged body is a neutral product from them both But if Paracelsus bad timely of fitly contemplated instead of his Tartar of Wine he had taken the Oker of the water of the Spaw and had spoken something more probable than that there were Liquors in all things which were coagulated after the manner of Tartar in Wine and that they were the common mother and matter of any Diseases whatsoever Oker indeed the daughter of the Spaw is not again resolved like as Tartar of Wine is and yet it differs from Duelech as much as a Mineral stonifying doth from the stone in man For in this the Spirit the Coagulater existing in the urine operates by vertue of its own and of a different salt upon a hoary and putrifying spirit of earth without the boyling up or belching forth of a wild Gas and so it finisheth its operation and coagulates it self with the spirit of Wine that is proper to the urine in a moment even as I have above declared in the handicraft Operation of the spirit of urine and Wine or of a burning water But the acide spirit of the water of the Spaw having sprung up from an Embryonated or non-shaped Sulphur do operate first in a long Tract do stir up bubbles and a wild Gas and at length affix themselves to the Vessel For otherwise if that Gas cannot be belched forth the waters of the Spaw remain safe being fit for healing For if the Gas be hindered from going forth it hinders whereby the subsequent effect cannot follow and the spirits are rendred feeble and barren in acting But the lee of Wine seeing it hath its own coagulation and that which is proper to it self it hath no need to attain it from elsewhere But since the sharpish spirit of Wine hath gnawn the lee there is no reason that it should give that in gnawing which it self hath not in it self Therefore in the generation of the Tartar of Wine that sharpish saltish spirit shall be coagulated indeed by reason of the earth of dreg but it shall remain in the shape of a dissolvable salt and not in the form of a rocky stone By reason of that Rule that a transmutation of the essence presupposeth a transmutation of the matter Therefore the earthy body whether it be dissolved by a Corrosive or not keeps its own antient Being Because that Dissolver doth not pierce the matter dissolved in the radical bond of connexion The which notwithstanding in things that are essentially to be transchanged is exceeding necessary to be done Therefore let the young beginners in Chymistry learn that bodies are not resolved by the calcinations of Corrosives although they are also often repeated unlesse a fermental impression through putrifaction whichgoes before every radical dissolution doth interpose Camphor indeed in Aqua fortis assumeth the nature of a swimming Oyl but that Corrosive being washed away by common water the Camphor is presently what it was before whether that be once done or lastly a thousand times For in my young beginnings I rejoyced that by a Retort at the seventh Repetition I had dispatched Gold into the shape of a Pomegranate-coloured Oyle As being mindfull that he who knew how to destroy Gold hath known likewise how to make or build it up But the Corrosive its Companion being taken away the Gold returned into its self and my vain joy ceased He labouring in vain to extract that which is not in it They also labour in vain who do not operate by due meanes The generation of Duelech therefore is not the imaginary stonifying of a cocted muscilage or of a feigned phlegme dryed by the heat of the place or confirmed or hardened by drying for so a Bole or clod onely should be resolvable but not Duelech but there is a passing over of three spirits at once into Duelech by a true essential transmutation Truly Bodyes do not act on Bodyes by a natural action of Composition but whatsoever Bodyes do perform on each other that is done by reason of weight greatnesse or magnitude hardnesse figures and motions And truly those are serviceable for Science Mathematical but scarce for Science Natural But if corporeal salts do operate it comes to pass either because they after some sort contain a volatile spirit or do find that spirit in a Body Let young Beginners at least remember that Bodyes after whatsoever manner they shall be once intermingled by co-melting do notwithstanding remain in their antient essence unlesse they are transchanged by the fire or a ferment Lastly that Bodies do operate nothing on Spirits but do onely limit these by suffering Which operation of Bodyes therefore is not a true re-acting but father a meet effect of spirits resulting from the proper activity of the same For therefore Spirits when their faculties are woren out and exhausted do voluntarily decay in the end of their motion And
although that action of spirits be made with the suffering and losse of their own powers yet they do not therefore transchange Bodyes into their own nature For they onely gnaw them and grind them into pouder the which also they interpret to be a calcining by water By way of example joyn thou a pound of Crocus martis to a sixfold quantity of Oyl of Vitriol then distill thou whatsoever shall be watery Thou shalt find the Vitriol of Iron or Mars Take from thence the Iron and thou hast the Vitriol of Iron A Salt I say like Vitriol whose tast is of Iron Yet retaining nothing of the Mars or Iron For thou hast a limitation from the Mars as to its efficacy but not in respect of its matter And the former spirit of Vitriol or Oyl of the vitriol of Copper shall be fixed into a certain salt onely by the odour of the Iron Again Take the same and more clear example Conjoyn thou a pound of running Mercury or Quick-silver unto a four fold quantity of Oyl of Vitriol Take away its flegme by distilling and a white precipitate shall remain in the bottom like snow Likewise If thou shalt pour on it more Oyl than is meet the Mercury will unsensibly surmount together with the Oyl Furthermore If by a Liver thou shalt take away the tartnesse from the aforesaid snow there will be a pouder of a Citron colour in the bottom which being revived or unto Life recovered shall be of equal weight with the former Mercury But the water which in washing off the salt drinks it up into it self affords a true Alum For so one onely pound of Quick-silver onely by its touch should be able by degrees to change many thousands of pounds of the sharpest Oyl of Vitriol into an Alum without any losse of its substance which same Oyl by the touch of the Iron is in like manner changed into the vitriolated salt of Mars being a noble Medicine for healing Let the action of the Mercury without an essential â—â— suffering of its substance be taken notice of And it is a Contemplation of great moment For truly a great rout of Alchymists are deluded by their own hope thinking that fixed Bodyes being solved in Corrosives gave unto these Corrosives their properties at leastwise if those dissolving Corrosives have from a voluntary motion of activity coagulated in their possession They know not I say that Spirits being wearied by acting do degenerate into a new Being To wit while they descend unto the limit of their power in acting And then we must know that every operation which tendeth unto a transmutation of both namely the Agent and Patient consisteth onely between meer Spirits But that the operation of a Body with a spirit of things without Life begins from the spiritual odour of a certain putrifaction by continuance because seeds and fermental dispositions depend thereupon and according to their own will or arbitration do command Liquors appointed for Generation Wherefore the Antients have not unfitly advertised us That the rise and continuation of the visible world is from an invisible and incorporeal Essence such as are Odours and Ferments And in our own borders Duelech growes together from an incredible Spirit the Coagulater and from an invisible Beginning For neither hath it stood in need for its nativity of Tartar brought from without of the Son of a more inward muckinesse or of the feigned curdlings of drying It is a far more calamitous thing that we carry the very vulcan of the Stone about us in our urine unto the importunate command whereof the properties of a volatile spirit do hearken For God had seemed to have loved Bruits before us if he had not directed Diseases unto a Reward and so unto good whereof a temporal punishment is not worthy But besides where a fore-seen end of punishment is present he hath from the Gift of his Bounty erected the powers of Medicines In Beasts also stones are bred but not given for a punishment nor for a Reward which grow in them for Medicines to us And therefore they also arise from a far different Root Moreover before that I proceed unto the History of the Stone I will premise some exercises First therefore In the Salt-pits of Burgundy there are at this day no more than two pits the pit of Brine and the pit of Gray But if indeed an hundred measures of both pits are boyled apart they yield far lesse salt than if they are boyled in the same quantity being conjoyned The Inhabitants admire at the Experiment and therefore they henceforward confound both Brines together For indeed the one of them containes more of a vapory or volatile salt which being boyled apart by it self with a flaming fire flyes away before its coagulation Notwithstanding meeting with another more fixed salt it is imbibed and constrained into a solid salt The example teacheth this That Bodyes of Salts do drink up their own Spirits and that their spirits in like manner do gnaw their Bodyes For truly the Brine of Burgundy being clearer than Crystal doth notwithstanding through its vapory salt spirit drink up into it self a great part of a rocky stone which therefore in time of boyling To wit while the spirits are coagulated in the more solid body of the salt settles and is scummed off with difficulty Therefore that spirit of salt although it dissolved the stone yet it therefore contracted not wedlock with the earth as that either this should stonifie or the other be made salt Yea it even from thence is manifest that although the Sea-salt had vapory or volatile parts yet it could not come unto the stone as neither to the spirit of urine for an increase Because it is that which consists of far different principles even as elsewhere concerning Digestions but the Sea-salt by how much it is a stranger with the Urine by so much it shall stir up consultations of dissolving Duelech For whatsoever dissolveth the stone of a Rock and doth hide it invisibly in it self that at least shall not perswade the original of the stone Thus far concerning a fixed Earth dissolved by the spirit of salt and of the vapory and coagulated spirit of Salt Now concerning a volatile salt decaying into a solid body Sublime thou Stibium with an equal part of Sal Armoniack by a gentle or indifferent fire thou shalt see the salt to arise tinged with divers colours Separate the colour from the salt by water and thou shalt have a pouder which with Salt-peter flyes away almost wholly into a flame But if that which is left with the Sal Armoniac be as yet twice sublimed by it self and freed from its salt thou shalt have a pouder of Stibium voyd of salt wherewith if thou shalt then mix Salt-peter it shall be no longer inflamed but as much Salt-peter as thou shalt mix with it is changed into an earth and neglects the nature of a salt For the odour of the Sulphur pierceth
whether that water which contains in it the salt of Embryonated Sulphur and keeps with it the gnawn vein of Copper doth distill or drop by it self or be boyled by fire into the consistence of Vitriol or in the next place be elsewhere coagulated of its own accord that no way distinguisheth of its kind or goodness for truly it looseth nothing hereof in boyling For when the watery liquor hath in boyiing sufficiently exhaled the residue is at length afterwards of its own accord coagulated in the cold But the diversity of veins alone varies the price of Vitriol for nigh Antwerp while the Sulphur is melted out of the fire-stone the rest is exposed under the open air and as to the greater part of it doth by little and little melt for by the scorching and smoaky fumes of the Sulphur it conceiveth a rust which is known by the residing salt and through rain flowes down into the ditches So also the neighbouring Eburians do prepare their Vitriol from a richer vein Elsewhere indeed there is a vein of the very Copper it self being rich in the coagulated salt of Sulphur and it drops flowes abroad and is coagulated of its own accord which otherwise is washed off or dissolved by the moistness of the neighbouring fountain The difference therefore of the goodness consists in the purity of the salt but not in the wealthiness and plenteousness of the Copper for I speak not as a Merchant but as a Physitian it differs also by reason of the co-mixture of a certain forreigner to wit if in the fire-stone or vein of Copper a vein of Lead be co-mixed which is frequently obvious or perhaps there be present a malignant participation of Arsenick for Arsenick because it for the most part ensnares and accompanies mettals hence by a usual name it is called the Fume of mettals And so that which otherwise would be a lawful Vitriol is made hurtful in healing But the Azure or sky-colour of Vitriol is for the most part preferred before the green colour perhaps because that more pleaseth the eyes at leastwise by a most easie business the Be-juglers of Simples do of green Vitriol dissemble an Azure colour therein But moreover the Chalcitis or red Vitriol the Mysy Sory and Black of the Greeks have at this day perished as unprofitable distinctions of the veins of Copper For the Greeks are only Alphabetaties and in respect of the Germanes a sluggish generation whatsoever the antient ones have published to posterity concerning the matter of mettals But there are some who with Paracelsus commend and extol that Vitriol in healing which is accounted the most rich in the plenty of Copper and so they prefer that before all which is composed out of the Copper it self Some therefore sprinkle Sulphur on bright-burning or melted Copper and so by great labour procure the green rust thereof c. But Paracelsus prepares the best Vitriol in healing by plates of Copper being spread abroad through cementing them with common Salt and Sulphur The more modern ones being from hence seduced do repeatingly distill the thin plates of Copper by the spirit of common Sulphur or Vitriol until they are plainly black and brickle the which at length they melt in water and it becomes of a sky-colour the which in boyling is thickned and a Vitriol growes together in the cold For so indeed that is at this day adulterated which is set to sale for Cyprus Vitriol By the leave of Paracelsus I know and certainly find that Vitriol made of Copper is far more sluggish in healing than the common Vitriol which wants the suspition of Miscellanie or Hotch-Potch things And so that the spirit thereof is nothing but a meer Mineral Vinegar deprived of the vapour of Coppery Sulphur For I have certainly found that the Vitriol made of Copper is far more poor than that which is dig'd out of its Mineral vein Likewise that digged Vitriol wherein there is very much Copper is slower than the common sort in healing and distilling For I have distilled Vitriol that was prepared by art being of an Azure colour and in no wise to be distinguished by the sight from Cyprus Vitriol and it yielded a little sluggish acide spirit and all its spirit by and by ceased within a few hours and all its remaining body abode condensed into a black Feces or dreg and restored its Copper unto me according to my wish For truly Copper is a compleat metral not easily to be destroyed or returning back unto its own Principles So that although it be diminished through the cruelty of sire yet whatsoever thereof shall fly away is as yet a true mettal for the reasons above alledged Truly among Metallick veins there is none with the like difficulty brought unto the perfection of a Mettal as is Copper it self the which George Agricola testifieth for truly it requires to be re-cocted at least nine times before Copper issue from thence whereas the while the veins of other Mettals pour out their treasure at the first melting The vein of Copper therefore attains its perfection by a sequestration of the parts mixed with it from its nativity But these parts are those which are as yet fast bound unto their own first Being from whence it therefore the Copper being now perfect refuseth and as stubbornly as it can resists a dissolution of its body and by consequence neither can there a perfect Medicinal Vitriol be had from thence which may have a vertue from the Sulphur of Venus because this is not separable from the Copper unless by an every way destruction of the Metallick Body even as I have before taught Those parts therefore of the Copper vein which are far remote from a Metallick nature and which are the nearer to their first Being do afford a medicinal vertue unto Vitriol which is denied unto Calcanthuns or Vitriol artificially made For the common and base or cheap Vitriol doth breath forth its exhalation but in a full eight days space at least However it may be urged with the most ardent flames of a Reverbery By how much therefore freer the vein is from a forreign Malignity and shall be nearer to the first Being of Venus to wit the farther off from the Metallick constitution of Copper by so much the salt thereof which is bred in it of its own free accord and co-melted with it doth produce the more unblamable Vitriol and affords the richer spirits and those most fit for healing But the unusual manner of distilling it is this Take of common Vitriol that is not suspected of a forreign Malignity let it melt by boyling it in a large earthen Pot and let it be boyled even to a dryness The Pot being broken let the Vitriol that is now hardened like a stone be beaten into a pouder But let the distillation be made by at least six Retorts at once and let those Retorts be of glass For all stonie ones are Porous because all earth retains pores For that after
recourse how variously the Life glistens in nature to wit as it is seminally in the very vital spirits but as it were fountainously in the sensitive soul it self Therefore in speaking properly of Sense and Sensation the Sensitive Soul it self is the primary and also the immediate Being which acteth all Sensations and in acting undergoes them in it self And therefore the spirit of the Brain is only the immediated Organ but the life is the Organ or Medium whereby the Sensitive Soul perceiveth external Objects rushing on it For Sensation is not immediately in the thing contained nor in the things containing nor also in the spirit diffused through the Sinews into the vital parts Because that spirit which makes the assault differs from the Sensitive Soul no otherwise than as a fat material smoak doth from the flame by which it is enflamed But the Soul the immortal Mind is wholly unpassable by humane conceptions as it is the Image of the very incomprehensible God himself But the Sensitive Soul although it begins in nature from an occasional seed that is dispositively yet seeing it is the nearest Image of that Image it is also after the manner of men unknown and altogether scanty For therefore indeed neither can it be defined by its causes but only is described by an absurb or incongruous Circle of reflexions own its own actions and properties To wit that the Sensitive Soul is a formal light whereunto the properties of a Sensitive life do chiefly agree but in man that it is the Prop and Inn of the immortal Soul and its immediate bond with other created corporeal Bodies besides it self Therefore there is as yet a more remote aspect or beholding of the Soul as being related to the life Seeing life and the Soul are distinct things as it were the abstract and the Concrete or rather as the property of a Being and a Being it self This same Soul therefore through life perceiveth in the animal Spirits and seeth immediately in the Optick or visual spirit which inhabits in the apple of the eye the visible Species conceived For the Optick Spirit there is a transprrent glass the light whereof is the very Sensitive Soul it self present in the same place being the Seat and Chamber-maide of the immortal mind Therefore there is no need of a recourse of the received Species that are to be perceived thorow the Sinews to the Brain But the Soul being immediately present and bestowing all vertue from it self upon the visual Spirit she her self sees and discerns But the Brain is only the Shop and Cup of those spirits wherefore the sinews do not serve for the conveighing of the Specie's drawn unto the Brain in the act feeling or perceiving But for bedewing of the spirits illustrated in the Brain for the refreshing and confirming of the parts wherein themselves are implanted Neither is there also altogether a like reason of the external Senses with the imaginative power and its Sisters For the sensible Specie's outwardly perceived by the Soul are abstracted by sensibility and then at length as it were of the matter whereof Specie's or shapes are from thence forged into the Image of the thing to be perceived After another manner Sensitive Objects entring from without are conceived after a Concrete or conjoyned manner in the Organs of the senses and therefore they do not only displease but moreover do now also pain But concerning the seat of the Soul it is variously disputed for the Heart and the Brain But I may suppose that the Sensitive Soul is conformable to its own seeds and by a real Act distinguished from the immortal mind the image of the Divinity Yet that the Sensitive Soul which is the carnal old Adamical man and Law of the flesh is not on both sides distinguished from a formal and vital light neither that it sirs immediately in the inflowing Spirit the which indeed is wholly slideable and flowing But the Spirit which increased in the Organs presently after their first constitution although it live in the last life of the seeds yet it doth not as yet truly live in the middle animal life which is the Sensitive life until that a vital light comming upon it shall actually shine The dispositions whereof are indeed gradually premised But notwithstanding they are in one only instant enlightned by the divine goodness of the Creator Even as in the Book of long life For that happens no otherwise than as in the co-rubbing of the flint against the Steel Therefore an undeclarable light is kindled by the Creator in the spirit of the more noble Bowels and first indeed in the heart which light as it attaineth strength by degrees is more powerfully enlarged no otherwise than as the smoak of a lower Candle doth visibly receive the dismissed flame from the upper Candle So that although the Organs are divided in diversity of Offices yet by a mutual conspiracy they readily serve for the necessities and ends prefixed by the Lord the Creator Notwithstanding there is one only Harmony and continued Homogenial Life and Sensitive Soul of all the Bowels and Members which in every one of them receiveth and presently after cloatheth it self with certain limitations or properties which it had prepared for it self by the seeds For as the flame of a Candle is not extended above or without its own Sphear nor perisheth as long as it lives within that Sphear although the smoaky fumes arising from thence being void of flame did fly far away out of that Spheare so likewise the inflowing spirits although they are illustrated by a participation of life are pufft away do wander far and therefore are materially diminished in their Cup or Buttery yea and for this cause the liveliness of a vital Light growes feeble yet nothing of the essence of the Sensitive Soul perisheth because Life is not attained by parts and degrees as neither doth it subsist like accidents but is alwayes life although more or less liveliness may appear in that light For no otherwise than as a fire where it is never so small is as well fire as another that is heightned In like manner also whatsoever exhaleth from the body which before rejoyced in the participation of Life yet looseth life so soon as it departs out of its own limits So also Excrements do not indeed keep Life but a co-participation of the vital spirits Wherefore also from thence the order of the inferiour Harmony slides into disorder according to that saying My spirit shall be diminshed and therefore my dayes shall be shortned Therefore a more immoderate evacuation of corrupt Pus and the like brings sudden death As indeed they do not contain the Soul but only the last seminal life of vital spirits For as concerning the immediate existence of the immortal Mind or Divine Image the matter is as yet in controversie between the Heart and the Brain For I who know that even Quickning is made at the very instant wherein the Sensitive Soul
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
seeing the essences of things and their vital Spirits know not how to putrifie by the dissolution of the inferiour harmony they spring up as surviving afresh For from thence it is that every occult property the compact of their bodies being by fore-going digestions which we call putrefactions now dissolved comes forth free to hand dispatched and manifest for action Therefore when a Wound through the entrance of air hath admitted of an adverse quality from whence the blood forthwith swells with heat or rage in its lips and otherwise becomes mattery it happens that the blood in the Wound freshly made by reason of the said forreign quality doth now enter into the Beginnings of some kind of corruption which blood being also then received on the Weapon or Splinter thereof is besmeared with the Magnetick Unguent the which entrance of corruption mediating the ecstatical power lurking potentially in the blood is brought forth into action which power because it is an exiled returner unto its own body by reason of the hidden extasie hence that blood bears an individual respect unto the blood of its whole body Then indeed the Magnet or attractive faculty is busied in operating in the Unguent and through the mediation of the ecstatical power for so I call it for want of an Etymologie sucks out the hurtful quality from the lips of the Wound and at length through the Mumial Balsamical and attractive virtue attained in the Unguent the Magnetism is perfected Loe thou hast now the positive reason of the Natural Magnetism in the Unguent drawn from Natural Magick whereunto the light of Truth assents saying Where the Treasure is there is the Heart also For if the Treasure be in Heaven then the Heart that is the Spirit of the Internal Man is in God who is the Paradise who alone is Eternal Life But if the treasure be fixed or laid up in frail or mortal things then also the Heart and Spirit of the more external Man is in Fading things Neither is there any cause of bringing in a Mystical sense by taking not the Spirit but the Cogitation and naked Desire for the Heart for that would contain a frivolous thing that wheresoever a Man should place his Treasure in his Thought or Cogitation there his Cogitation would be Also Truth it self doth not interpret the present Text Mystically and also by an Example adjoyned shews a local and real presence of the Eagles with the dead Carcase So also that the Spirit of the Inward Man is locally in the kingdom of God in us which is God himself and that the Heart or Spirit of the animal or outward sensitive man is locally about its Treasure What wonder is it that the astral Spirits of carnal or animal men should as yet after their funerals shew themselves as in a bravery wandring about their buried Treasure whereunto the whole Necromancy or art of Divination by the calling of Spirits of the Antients hath enslaved it self I say therefore that the external Man is an Animal or living creature making use of the reason and will of the Blood But in the mean time not baâ—ely an Animal but moreover the Image of God Logicians therefore may see how defectively they define a man from the power of rational discourse But of these things more elsewhere I will therefore adjoyn the Magnetism of Eagles to Carcases for neither are flying Fowls endowed with such an acute smelling that they can with a mutual consent go from Italy into Affrica unto Carcases For neither is an odour so largely and widely spread for the ample latitude of the interposed Sea hinders it and also a certain Elementary property of consuming it Nor is there any ground that thou shouldest think these Birds do perceive the dead Carcases at so far a distance with their sight especially if those Birds shall lye Southwards behind a Mountain But what need is there to enforce the Magnetism of Fowl by many Arguments since God himself who is the beginning and end of Phylosophy doth expresly determine the same process to be of the Heart and Treasure with these Birds and the Carcase and so interchangeably between these and them For if the Eagles were led to their food the Carcases with the same appetite whereby four-sooted Beasts are brought on to their pastures certainly he had said in one word That living Creatures flock to their Food even as the Heart of a Man to his Treasure which would contain a falshood For neither doth the Heart of Man proceed unto its Treasure that he may be filled therewith as living Creatures do to their Meat And therefore the Comparison of the Heart of Man and of the Eagle lyes not in the end for which they tend or incline to a desire but in the manner of tendency namely that they are allured and carried on by Magnetism really and locally Therefore the Spirit and will of the Blood fetch'd out of the Wound having intruded it self into the Oyntment by the Weapons being anointed therewith do tend towards their Treasure that is the rest of the Blood as yet enjoying the Life of the more inward Man But he saith by a peculiar Testimony that the Eagle is drawn to the Carcass Because she is called thereunto by an implanted and Mumial Spirit of the Carcass but not by the odour of the putrifying Body For indeed that Animal in assimilating appropriates to himself onely this Mumial Spirit For from hence it is said of the Eagle in a peculiar manner My youth shall be renewed as the Eagle For truly the renewing of her youth proceeds from an essential extraction of the Mumial Spirit being well refined by a certain singular digestion proper to that Fowl and not from a bare eating of the flesh of the Carcases otherwise Dogs also and Pies would be renewed which is false Thou wilt say that it is a reason far fetcht in behalf of Magnetism But what wilt thou then infer hereupon If that which thou confessest to be far remote for thy capacity of understanding that shall also with thee be accounted to be fetcht from far Truly the Book of Genesis avoucheth That in the blood of all living Creatures doth their Soul exist For there are in the blood certain vital powers the which as if they were soulified or enlivened do demand revenge from Heaven yea and judicial punishment from earthly Judges on the Murderer which powers seeing they cannot be denyed to inhabit naturally in the blood I see not why they can reject the Magnetism of the blood as accounting it among the ridiculous works of Satan This I will say more to wit that those who walk in their sleep do by no other guide than the Spirit of the blood that is of the outward man walk up and down perform business climbe Walls and mannage things that are otherwise impossible to those that are awake I say by a Magical virtue natural to the more outward man That Saint Ambrose although he were far distant