frailties we shall finde no ground left us to erect any structure of pride upon The act therefore of the praevious touch of the Witch is purely naturall although the excitation of this magicall virtue depend upon the auxiliary concurrence of Satan in as near an interest as if the Witch had cut the throat of the horse with a sword which Satan had put into her hands This act of the Witch is naturall and corporeall as the other praecedent act is naturall and sprituall For indeed man doth naturally consist no lesse of a spirit then a body nor is there reason why one act should be accounted more naturall then the other or why the body the courser part of man should be allowed a power of action but the spirit the more noble and coelestiall part in its relation of being the Image of God accounted idle unoperative and altogether devoid of any activity peculiar to it self yea the Vitall spirits in most exact propriety of language are the immediate actors of sensation motion memory c. but the body and dead carkasse cannot in any respect whatever owne those faculties wherefore every action stands more relatively and properly regardant to its Agent then to the body which at best is no more then the transitory lodging of the Agent And thus it is evidenced that there passeth a spirituall radius or gleame of magicall virtue from the Witch to the man or horse appointed for destruction according to that Axiome That no action can be done without a due approximation of the Agent to the Patient and a reciprocal unition or marriage of the virtues of each whether the admotion or approximation be corporeall or spirituall which by an example ready provided to our hand we can both prove and illustrate For if the heart which is the presence-chamber of the vitall spirit of a horse slain by a witch taken out of the yet warme and reaking carcase be empaled upon an arrow and roasted upon a broach or carbonadoed immediately the vitall spirit of the witch without the intervention of any other medium and anon the whole witch since not the body but onely the spirit is capable of sensation becomes tormented with the unsufferable pains and cruelty of the fire which truly could by no meanes happen unlesse there praeceded a conjunction or reciprocall intercourse of the spirit of the Witch with the spirit of the horse For the horse after strangulation retaines a certain mumiall virtue so I call it whenever the virtue of the vitall nectar or blood is confermentate with the flesh which is the originary implantate spirit such as is never found resident in bodies that are extinct by voluntary deaths in any chronique disease or other ataxy irregularity or disruption of the inferiour harmony that is the temperament of the body to which the spirit of the Witch is associated as joynt commissioner In the reaking and yet panting heart therefore the spirit of the Witch before it shall by the dissolution of the praecedent conspiracie or divorce of the united spirits by putrefaction have returned backe into her bosome is imprisoned and held captive and the retreat of it praevented by the arrow transfixed and by the torrefaction of both spirits together and hence comes it to passe that the witch is afflicted and throwne into a horrid agony in her sensative spirit This effect admits a change or double construction from the intention of the experiment For if revenge be the motive or incitement to the experimentator then is the effect unwarrantable and inconsistent with the charitable rules of Christianity but if an honest and conscientious designe to compell the Witch to detect her self to betray her to the justice of the Magistrate to procure security to our neighbour and our selves by the remove of so impious blasphemous and nocuous a vassall of Satan that the greater glory to God and peace and benevolence to men may redound from the discovery then undoubtedly the effect cannot be disallowed or condemned by the most rigid precise or puritanicall judgement We are not to conceive that all the spirit of the Witch sallyed forth and transmigrated into the heart of the Horse for so the Witch her selfe had perished falne into an eternall swoune but that there is a certaine univocall participation or identicall traduction of the spirit and vitall light of the Witch in an equall analogie to the Plastique spirit or sole delineator and architect of the most curious and magnificent fabrick of man which in every distinct emission of the geniture or seed is covertly ambuscadoed and propagated sufficient to the procreation of a numerous issue the originary spirit of the father yet remaining unimpaired and conserving its individuall integrity For in sooth that participation and inheritance of the vitall light is magical and a rich and fruitfull communication of the specificall essence by the fertill virtue of that benediction delivered by the Protoplast of all seminall formes Let all Animalls and Vegetalls bring forth seed and hence is it that one individuall seed produceth ten myriads of other seeds aequivalent and as many seminall spirits comprehending the whole specificall essence by the same mysterious way of traduction whereby one Tapor is lighted by the flame of another But what the proper nature of this Magneticall spirit and what the Magicall entity begotten in the wombe of phansie may be I shall more largely declare in the processe of our discourse For it becomes me to retreat from my digression and now to progresse in that path which directly leads to our intended scope Nor is there any pretence of reason why any should conjecture that this reaction or rebound of magicall power upon the heart of the Witch is only imaginary and a chimaera of licentious phanfie or a plainly superstitious and damnable imposture and delusion of Satan since by this token the witch is infallibly detected and volent nolent compelled to appear in publick which in one of our praecedent suppositions we have sufficiently demonstrated to be è diametro opposed to the intention of Satan for the effect holds constantly good and never failes to succeed upon experiment as having its fundamentall causalities laid in reason and the spirituall nature of the inward man but not at all built upon superstitious supporters Hath not many a murdered carcase by the operation of the same magneticall spirit suffered a fresh cruentation upon the Coroners inquest in the presence of the Homicide and very often directed the Magistrate to a just and infallible judgement of the crime although the blood before that minute stood congealed and frozen in its cold rivulets The reason of this life in death this plea of the grave and loud language of silent corruption which hath empuzled the anxious disquisitions of many subtile heads we conceive to be thus in a man dying of a wound the inferiour virtues which are mumiall for these are not subject to the restrint of
also to you seem far fetched truly the book of Genesis teacheth us that the Soule of every living creature dwels in the bloud of it as in its proper mansion For in the bloud there inhabite certaine noble and vital powers which as if they were endowed with animation cry loud to heaven for revenge yea from the hands of Judges here below demand vindictive justice to be done upon the homicide which since they cannot be denyed to be naturall Citizens of the blood I see no reason why any man should reject the magnetism of the bloud and unjustly reckon its rare admirable effects among the ridiculous acts of satan I wil say this further that men which walk in their sleep do by the conduct of no other Motor or guide then that of the Spirit of the Bloud that is of the outward man walk up and downe clime wals and praecipices and performe many other actions difficult and impossible to men awake I say by a magicall virtue naturall to the outward man That Saint Ambrose was visibly present at the exsequies of Saint Martin though corporally at home in his owne Chamber many Leagues distant Yet he was visibly present at the celebration of his holy brothers funerall in the visible spirit of the exteriour man and no otherwise for when many holy Fathers of the Church have seen the transaction of many secret and distant things this hath been performed without the circumscription of time and place in that ecstasy which is only of the internall man by the superiour powers of the soule collected and twisted into unity and by an intellectuall vision but not by a visible presence For otherwise the soule is never divorced from the body unless in earnest once and ever and then is not capable of a reunion until the resurrection which reconnexion notwithstanding is otherwise familiar and naturall to the spirit of the outward man divorced pro tempore in some ecstasy In so great a Paradox it can hardly suffice to erect a firme building of belief upon one single pillar of reason wherefore we conceive it our duty to frame a second basis for the more substantiall supportment of our doctrine of Magnetisme and to advance to the explanation of that mysterious cause by which this Magneticall alliciency is performed also betwixt bodies devoid of animation not by any Animall but a certaine Naturall sensasion Which that we may more seriously enterprise and solidly performe we are obliged by way of praeparation to praemise an enquiry what Satan can of his own power contribute to and by what meanes he can coopeperate in the meerly nefarious and impious actions of Witches and Conjurators for from hence will it clearly appear to what particular and just cause whether Naturall or Diabolicall every effect arising from abstruse originals ought properly to be ascribed And finally what kinde of spirituall power that is which tends to and arrives at an object removed at large distance or what is the action passion and velitation or reactive encounter betwixt Naturall Spirits or wherein consists the superiority and praerogative of man above other inferiour Creatures and by consequence why our Unguent compounded of human Mumies should also cure the wounds of horses I shall explain the matter by an example Let us therefore grant a witch who can vigorously torment an absent man by an image of wax by imprecation incantation or onely by some praevious touch for in this place we have nothing to doe with Veneficious Witches properly called Sorcerers in regard they execute their malice and destroy onely by poyson which every common Seplasiarie and petty Apothecary can imitate that this action is Diabolicall no man will doubt However it pleaseth us to distinguish how much Satan and how much the Witch can contribute to this mischiefe The first Supposition First you shall take notice that Satan is the sworne and irreconcileable enemy of mankinde and so accounted by all unlesse any please to esteem him a friend and therefore that he doth most readily without any the least haesitancy or negligence attempt and procure what mischief soever lies within the reach of his malice or power against us The second supposition Next you shall observe that although he be a mortall adversary to Witches also in so much as 't is essentiall to him to maintain a most destructive hostility against all the Sons of Adam yet in respect they are his confest slaves and sworn Subjects of his own black Kingdome he never unlesse against his will and by compulsion detects them never betrays them into the hands of the Magistrate nor exposes them to the scorne and reproches of other persons and that for three reasons 1 Since he is the Grand-father of pride he very well knowes that by the detection of his favorites there is much detracted from his reputation authority and dominion 2 Since he is an insatiate Nimrod an implacable persecutor of soules he is not ignorant that by the punishment and flames which justice inflicts upon his Zanies many other men else willing and prompt to list themselves in his regiment and fall under his jurisdiction are discouraged deterred and quite averted 3 Because he often observes many a Witch whom with an obtorsion or wresting round of her neck and secret stopping of her breath he could heartily wish to destroy converted by her punishment to become an Apostate from him and repenting at sight of the flames and by this meanes snatched out of his clutches From the former of our propositions I conclude that Satan if he were able singly by his own power to destroy man whom the guilt of mortall sinne hath made obnoxious to the tyranny of death would upon no motive whatever be induced to suspend and procrastinate the execution or his destructive malice but he doth not therefore he cannot destroy him But yet the Witch doth very frequently murder man and hence also it is clear that the Witch hath a power to destroy him no otherwise then an assassine hath a power at the liberty of his own will to cut the throat of him that is fallen into his hands and therefore in this detestable action there is a certain power peculiarly belonging to the Witch which depends not upon Satan and by consequence Satan is not the principall efficient and grand executor of the homicide for otherwise if he were the prime executor he could in no respect stand in need of the Witch for a Coadjutrix and Assistant but would ere this time by his own single power have cut off and swept into the grave the greatest part of mankinde Most miserable and deplorable indeed were the condition of the posterity of Adam which should lie in subjection to so horrid a tyranny and stand obnoxious to the fate of his arbitrary cruelty but we have the Almighty Preserver of men more faithfull in his mercies towards us then to subject the workes of his own hands to the arbitrary dominion of Satan Therefore
the science of the aple is suspended and chained up in the leaden fetters of sleep hence it is also that sometimes our dreams are propheticall and that often God himself vouchsafeth to make a neerer approach and familiar visit to the sons of men in dreams or abstracted visions of the night for when the interior magick of the Soule stands unmolested and free from any disturbance of the Science of the interdicted fruit then and onely then doth the intelligence keep holy-day enjoy an halcyon Calme and freely diffuse its selfe through all its royaltie for thus doth it when it demergeth it self into the inferiour and subordinate faculties safely conduct and lead along those that walk in their sleep over such horrid praecipices where the strongest brained man awake durst not adventure to clime Whereupon the senior Rabbies of the Jews affirme that the Cabal was originally conceived in sleep namely when the science of the Aple was wholly consopited The intellectuall act of the Soule is ever clear enjoys a constant Jubile of calme serenity and continues in some sort perpetuall but so long as the principall Agent hath not transmitted its power so farre as the limits of Sense this kinde of action is not diffused through the whole man For we who are wholly imployed and taken up with the exercise of our sensitive Facultie together with our Carnall intelligence are perpetually oh misery worthy a deluge of teares distracted and impetuously hurryed away from the use and benefit of our more coelestial Magical science and held captives rather in the crepusculous and owle-light of congnition then in the Meridian of truth Nor do we the inhabitants of Aegyptian darknesse understand our own intellection untill there succeed a certaine mutuall traduction of the severall faculties a successive delivery of the image of the object from each to other and untill as it were certain angles of actions propagated by divers agents concurre and become complicated about the Medium Now Saran excites this Magicall power otherwise dormant and impeded by the Science of the outward man in his vassals and the same awaked into activity serves them in stead of a sword or instrument of revenge in the hand of a potent adversary that is the Witch Nor doth Satan adfer any thing at all to the perpetration of the murder more then the bare excitation of the somnolent power and a consent of the Will which in Witches is for the most part subject to his compulsion for which two contributions the damned miscreant as if the whole energy of the act were soly attributary to himselfe requires by compact a constant homage a firme and irrevocable oppignoration and devout adoration at least and frequently a surrender of the very soule into his possession When intruth this power was freely conferred upon us by God our Architect and is no more then purely naturall to man For those praestigious acts and impostures the effascination by the optick emission of the eyes the false disguises of Witches in borrowed shapes and other delusions of this kind are onely derived from the legerdemain of Satan and his proper acts And for this reason all the operations of this Montinbanco this Hocus-pocus are meerly ridiculous pageant delusions and counterfeit apparitions by the praesentment of formes that delude the sense because the God of mercies permits him not to enjoy any greater range of power but holds this mischievous Leviathan by a hook in his nostrils but on the other side the Witch doth by the magick of her own naturall faculty perform reall and impious effects Since that by sin not the endowments of Nature but of Grace were obliterated in Adam no man disputes and that these gifts of Nature although they were not totally cancelled and lost yet remained eclipsed and as it were envelloped in the obscurity of a midnight sleep For as man from that unhappy moment wherein he forfeited his primitive Soveraignty became inevitably obnoxious to the same fate of mortality together with his fellow creatures so also were all his heroick and imperial faculties withdrawn behind a cloud and so oppressed with the opacity of fleshly lusts that ever since they stand in need of excitement and eduction from that Cimmerian umbrage And to the procuring and advance of this excitation abstracted Contemplations fervent and uncessant Prayers taedious vigils macerating Fasts and other acts of mortification are strong and praevalent conducements that by these spirituall antidotes the Lethargie of flesh and blood being subdued men may obtain this faculty renewed into its primitive agility and in a calme requiem of spirit offer up their addresses to that pure Essence which requires to be worshiped no other way then in purity of spirit that is in the zealous abysse of the Soule the profundity of the inward man To this purpose also mainely conduceth the practice of the Cabal which may restore to the Soule this her naturall and magicall praerogative and rowze it up from the slumber and inchantment of Carnality I will explain my self yet farther like a Mathematician by Examples and assume the very operations of Witches which although of themselves they are full of impiety and horrid mischiefe yet they grow upon the same root indifferently disposed to the production of good or evill fruite namely upon this Magicall facultie For it proclaimes not the majesty of Free-will or the tractate of it if we from thence collect argument concerning a thiefe an assassine a whoremonger an apostate or Witch Grant therefore that a Witch kill a horse in a stable removed at good distance there is some certain naturall power derived from the spirit of the Witch and not from Satan which can oppresse strangle and perish the vitall spirit of the horse Grant that there be two subjects of diseases and death and that one of these is the body wherein every disease takes up its quarters and because all Entities discharge their activities on this as the most passive and flexible men have conjectured that the other spirituall dominion was derived immediately from Satan but the other is the impalpable and invisible Spirit which is constituted in a capacity of suffering every disease perse in its own solitary nature The Spirit once invaded by any forreign hostility and subdued to the obedience of passion the body also cannot but submit to compassion and deuteropathy since every action is terminated in the body for the mind after once it is adliged to the body alwaies flowes downward as when the Palate is misaffected with paine the tongue alwaies tends thither on the designe of relieving it but on the contrary the body may often be assaulted and entered by the force of a disease and yet the spirit remain exempted from sympathy For there is a classis of diseases onely materiall which arise singly from a materiall tincture So various and numerous are the occasions of death that when we have taken the just dimensions of our
noble effigies of the Deity and that this virtue is qualified with a celestial activity and semidivine prerogative of operation that is a power of acting per nutum intuitively spiritually and at vast distance and that too with much more vigor and efficacy then by any corporeal helps and assistance The reason briefly and plainly thus the soul is the diviner particle and more noble moity of man far overweighing the body both in dignity of essence and extraction therefore also is the activity competent to it spiritual Magical and of superlative validity That the Soul by the dictates of this Virtue which hath suffered a consopition and abatement of its primitive agility by the counter-magick of the forbidden Apple in Paradise doth regulate manage and move onely her own peculiar body but the same being exsuscitated and awakened again into action she extends her dominion beyond the narrow limits of her earthly cloyster to an object at distance and becomes so longimanous as to operate onely per nutum by intuition conveyed through convenient mediums for upon this point is founded the whole basis of Natural Magick but in no respect upon the brittle and sandy foundation of Benedictions Ceremonies and vain superstitions for these vain and impious observances were all introduced by him who hath ever made it his study to conspurcate and defile the best things with the sophistication of his tares And in this sense we have not trembled at the name of Magick but with the Scripture understood it in the best interpretation and yet we have allowed it to be indifferently imployed to a good or evil end namely by the lawful use or abuse of this power And so under this term we comprehend the highest ingenite cognition of natural things and the most vigorous power of action equally natural to us with Adam not wholly extinguished nor obliterated by original sin but onely obscured and as it were consopited and therefore wanting expergefaction and excitement And therefore we declare that Magnetism is not exercised by Satan but by that which hath no dependance upon Satan and consequently that this power which is peculiarly connatural to us hath been abusively fathered upon Satan as if he were the sole patron and promoter of it that this Magical Faculty lieth dormant in us charmed into a somnolent inactivity by the opiate of the primitive sin and therefore stands in need of an Excitator to promote it into action Whether this Excitator be the Holy Spirit by illumination as the Church commemorates to have happened in the Eastern Magi and frequently happens in many devout persons even in our days or Satan for some previous oppignoration and compact with Witches in whom this excitation is wrought as by a Coma vigil or Catoche and is therefore imperfect in regard of the manner evil in regard of the end obscure in regard of the means and nefarious in regard of the Author nor doth the versipellous or Protean impostor endure that the Witch should know this power to be her own natural endowment on purpose to hold her the more strictly obliged to himself and lest the exercise of so noble a faculty once excited should be employed to any other atchieveme but what is impious and destructive to mankinde and so he keeps the reins in his own hand nor can the Witch know how at her own pleasure to excite this dormant Magick who hath wholly prostituted the freedom of her Spirit to the will of another tyrant That man of himself without the auxiliary concurrence of any forrein Causality can where and when he please by the practise of the Cabalistique Art awaken and excite this grand Virtue into action and such who have attained to this renovation of their impaired nature are honored with the title of Adepti Obtainers or Acquirers the select vessels of God whose wills stand in humble and full conformity to the dictates and advisoes of the Holy Ghost That this Magical Virtue is also naturally inherent in the outward man namely in flesh and blood but yet in a far less measure and of a more feeble energy yea not onely in the outward man but even in Brutes in some proportion and of inferior vigor for so the Book of Moses hath positively observed unto us that the soul of every beast is lodged in its blood and therefore he deservedly forbids it to be listed in the bill of humane fare and perchance in all other created natures since every single entity contains within the narrow tablet of its own nature an adumbration or landskip of the whole Universe and on this hint the Antients have left it on record unto us that there is a God that is an universal Entity in all things That this Magick of the outward man no less then that of the inward man doth want excitation nor doth Satan excite any other Magick in his base miscreant vassals then that of the outward man for in the interior closet of the Soul is seated the Kingdom of God to which no Creature hath access We have further demonstrated that there is a mutual connexion between spiritual Agents and that spirits as they combat which we have shewn in the example of the Witch so also they hold a friendly and amicable correspondence each with other which we prove by the testimony of Magnetical experiments and proper arguments for the fascination and ligation of souls as in the amours of David and Jonathan c. Finally we have stretched the sinews of our reason to manifest that man enjoyes a dominion paramount over all other corporeal Creatures and that by his own natural Magick he can countermand the Magical virtues of all other sublunaries which royal prerogative and predomination some others have erroneously and abusively transferred upon the power of charms and incantations By which Hierarchy we have to satiety of satisfaction made it manifest that all those admirable and abstruse effects are wrought which the rustical and too corporeal Philosophy of others hath ascribed to the dominion of Satan That those who are ignorant of most things we have delivered should yet remain dubious and unsatisfied in many things is necessarily certain wherefore we have determined to make a summary rehearsal of all chiefly that so what we have spoken in the former part of our dispute concerning the duello or conflict of spirits and the reciprocal amity or mutual conspiration of their united virtues may receive the clearer explanation It is a task worthy our sweat and oyl to discover and handsomely define the arms militia and encounters of spirits and their Commonwealth in order whereunto we are with great sobriety of judgment and acuteness of reason to perpend the example of a pregnant or great bellied woman who when she hath intently and with violence of desire fixed her minde upon a Cherry immediately there is impressed upon the fruit of her womb the model or pourtract of the Cherry in
that part whereon the ingravidated woman laid her hand Nor doth there remain onely a bare and idle figure of a Cherry and a spot or maculation of the skin but a certain real production which buds blossomes and ripens in its due season at the same time with other trees the signatures of colour and figure passing gradual changes till it come to maturity High and sacred in good troth is the power of the microcosmical spirit which without any arboreal trunck produceth a true Cherry that is flesh by the sole seminality and conception of Phansie qualified with all the proprieties and virtue of a real Cherry Hence we understand two necessary consequences The first that the seminal spirits and in some latitude of acception the very essences of all creatures do lie ambuscadoed in our nature and are onely educed and hatched into realities by the microcosmicratical Phansie The other that the Soul in the conception of thought doth generate a certain idea of the thing conceived in the minde which as it before lay concealed and raked up as fire in flint so by the concitation of Phansie it doth produce a certain real idea or exact pourtraict and an essential determination in every part responding to the quiddity of the Cherry which cannot be a meer quality but something like a substance of an ambiguous essence between the body and the spirit that is the Soul This production is so far spiritual that it is not wholly exempted from a corporeal condition since the actions of the soul are terminated in the body and the other inferior faculties subservient to her nor yet so far corporeal that it may be circumscribed by dimensions which is onely proper to a seminal Entity as we have formerly related This ideal Entity therefore when it falls from the invisible and intellectual world of the microcosm it then puts on corporeity and then first becomes subject to be circumscribed by the determinate dimensions of Locality and Numeration The proper object of the intellect is an abstracted naked and pure essence subsisting of itself and not an Accident by the consent of Practical that is Mystical Divines This Protheus the intellect doth thus as it were cloath and apparel this conceived essence with Corporeity But in regard every operation of the soul whether external or internal hath its fieri in its own proper image therefore can not the intellect discern and know the Will like and select and the Memory recollect and recogitate unless by images and this same image of the object the intellect doth cloath in corporeity and because the Soul is the simple Form of the body which readily converts and applies her self to every member therefore cannot the intellect entertain and harbor two images at one and the same time but successively first one and then another And thus the Soul wholly descends upon the intellect and the yet-tender and embryon image newly conceived and impressed and afterwards forms the cognition of the peculiar essence into a persistent and durable image or ideal Entity The minde being once polluted by the leprous miasm or contagious tincture of sin soon became obnoxious to the wrath of God and because this was at once deturpated and depraved being devested of the Nobility of its primitive condition therefore Death found an entrance upon our nature not by the original decree of the Creator but by the degeneration of man delapsed into filthiness and impurity and ungenerously degrading himself by reason of this ideal entity now arrayed with comparative corporeity which corruption and turpitude with deplorable fertility springing up in every the most venial peccadillo we must extenuate and mortifie by showers of poenitential tears in this world or too late bewail in the next This entity therefore while it remains in the forge of the intellect is but lightly and slenderly characterized nor doth any where but in a pregnant woman receive a more firm consistence which in the masculine sex it never obtains but by the Will more familiarly thus the Agent Intellect always procreateth an ideal Entity or semi-substantial pourtraict of the essence of an object but cloaths it not with corporeity unless by the immediate action of the Will great-bellied women onely excepted Sin therefore whether we allow it to be a reality or non-reality at least a consent and propensity to evil can never be committed without the real production of this kinde of Entity and the assumption and indution of it And this truly hath ever been the Cause of the foecundity of seeds for the Phansie excited by the orgasmus or heat of lust produceth a slender reality or ideal entity which when the soul hath clothed with corporeity for the action of the minde while it remains immured in walls of flesh always tends downward and outward it instantly diffuseth this new ideal entity into the liquor of the seed which without this impregnation had still continued barren and devoid of any Plastique power which action is performed as it were by an alienation of the minde the will being ravished by the true Magick of the outward man into a kinde of short ecstasie in which there happens a communication or bequest of a certaine Mentall light to the entity descending into the body or masse of seed Whensoever therefore the Cogitation draws the sense and will into consent so often is there hatched and incorporated a filthy spurious ideall entity by which production the will is said to be confirmed and this ideall entity with all expedition rangeth through the body whithersoever it is sent on an errant by the will and by this meanes the will now moves the arme now the foote anon the tongue and so all other parts Againe when this entity is disseminated upon the Uitall Spirit on a designe of love reliefe or harme to any object then it wants no more then a slight and easie excitement from the auxiliary hand of God of the Cabalistique Art or of Satan that so the portion of the spirit which is impraegnated with the ideall entity may sally abroad and atcheive the enterprise enjoined it by the will Thus every male projects his seed at distance from the dimensions of his body which seminall emission carries along with it that foecundity which it drew from the infused entity and executes its procreative commission beyond the trunck of the individuall protoplast Undoubtedly bodies scarce make up a moity of the world but Spirits possesse a full mediety and indeed the major part of the world And therefore in this whole Context I call Spirits the Patrons of Magnetisme not those that are sent downe from heaven doe we mean much lesse those that ascend from the horrid Abysse below but such only which have their originall and existence in man himselfe for as fire is by excussion kindled from flint so also from the Will of man by a kinde of secret scintillation something of the vitall influent spirit is desumed and
the Exotick Tincture from whence in excess of time comes a Binsical Death i. e. from the sole disease and exorbitancy of the minde the Magical virtue of the Dog being excited and exalted above the non-excited but somnolent Phansie of the Animal By the same mysterious traduction in all respects is the Phansie of the Tarantula impressed upon man by a slender thrust of his sting and the wounded suffering an immediate alienation of their reason fall into a violent fit of dancing and capering high levoltoes onely the poyson of the Tarantula differs from that of the mad dog in this particular that this operateth by a magical power excited and so by magick truly and without the favor of a metaphor so called but that acteth by a magical power non-excited and somnolent as the same difference is undeniably manifest in Monkshood Aconite c. deleterious plants which are speedy and inevitably destructive in very small quantity in regard no Animal endevours to secure or defend it self against the biting of a mad dog since the magical power of his excited phansie being diffused is binding and obligatury against which neither the teeth nor horns of any beast can make the least prevalent resistance which cannot be affirmed of the Venome of the Tarantula In the outward man therefore as also in all his fellow Animals the Magical power is latitant and as it were consopited nor is it capable of excitation onely in man though we confess with greater facility and to higher atchievements but even in many other Animals consorted with man at the Creation Again it sufficeth not that the Spirit of one individual maintain and observe this law of concord and monomachy or duello with the Spirit of another individual but moreover there dwells a certain universal or mundan spirit in the whole world i. e. in all things within Trismegistus Circle which we Christen the Magnum magnale which exsisteth the universal Pander of all sympathy and dyspathy the invisible Mercury or common Intelligencer and the Promotor of all natural actions and by whose mediation or convoy the Magnetism is as by the most convenient vehicle transported and wafted to an object at vast distance This is made good by an autoptical demonstration for if upon the miniking of a tuned Lute you place a slender straw hanging with a doubtful extremity i. e. equilibrated in the aër and at convenient distance in the same room strike the minikin of another Lute when there succeeds a consonance in the eighth note you shall see the straw to tremble but when the notes concord in an unison then the minikin of the untouched Lute impatient of delay will quaver caper for joy echo the same aër and by a nimble subsultation throw off the offensive straw What will you impute this effect to Satan and make him the Fidler Now you shall never observe the straw to rebound from the string though all the strings of the other Lute be unanimously strongly and neer at hand plaid upon for it is not the bare and simple tone that compels the untouched string to quaver for then every tone would cause the same effect but it is onely the universal spirit the Common Mercury inhabiting in the middle of the universe and being the faithful executor and adjutor of all natural actions transports promotes and causes the Sympathy But why tremble we at the name of Magick since the whole action is Magical nor hath any natural Agent a power of activity which is not emergent from the phansie of its peculiar form and that magically too But in regard this phansie in bodies devoid of voluntary election is onely of a determinate and limited identity therefore have some vulgar heads erroneously and dully imputed the effects of such restrained bodies not to the phansie of them but a Natural propriety out of an ignorance of Causes substituting the effect in the room of the Cause When indeed every Agent doth operate on its proper object by a praesensation or distinctive foreknowledg of it whereby it is directed not to discharge its activity rashly and at random but onely on its own peculiar object For the diffusion or emission of activity necessarily succeeds the sensation of the object and the effect results from an excitement of the phansie by transmitting of the ideal entity and conjoyning it with the radius or gleam of the passive entity And this in our dialect hath ever been the Magical action of natural bodies yet in most accommodate language and just propriety of denomination this Magical and phantastique activity belongs principally if not solely to Creatures ennobled with a power of election I shall muster up the Creatures and guide our disquisition through every Classis of them All formal proprieties flowing from the forms of the three universal principles Sal Sulphur and Mercury or the salt Unctuous fat and liquor whereof every body is composed and into which it is by corruption of the corporeal harmony again resolved and the Mercury or liquor is so often diverse and differently qualified as there are different species of compound bodies which same variety of impregnation we are to conceive also of the other two Sal and Sulphur All specifical proprieties I say are derivatory from the phansies of these forms which in regard they are very corporeal and deeply immersed in the bosome of Elements therefore are they called Formal and occult proprieties out of a gross ignorance of the forms which in another and introth more Philosophical acceptation are Magical effects produced by the phansie of the said forms but we confess less noble and more corporeal yet abundantly satisfactory to those ends which by the primitive destiny of their Creation they regard To this series belongs the subductive virtue of Cathartick or Purgative the somniferous faculty of Hypnotick or dormitive medicaments c. Besides these there are other nobler Proprieties taking their original from the phansie of the forms of the whole Compositum and these are diffused through and inherent in the whole Compositum by reason of the Form of it such are the Magnetism of the Loadstone the virtue of Tinctures and all specifical and appropriate Medicaments which are occasioned by reason either of the whole homogeneous neixture or the particular form of some integral part but not of any single or divided principle such as these are naturally inherent in the trunck leaves root and fruit of plants and not in any one of the three principles diacritically separated from the compage or conjuncture Thus also Antimony while it remains in its primitive form and native integrity is enriched with noble and excellent qualities which it could never aspire unto in its solitary and divided principles But these are also closely enshrowded in Corporeity and therefore the natural magick lies covertly ambuscadoed and obscure in them and hath been thought wholly attributary to Nature by an unjust and unadvised distinction of Nature from Magick opposing the
since then you would implicitely confess the effect not to be ascribed to Satan So the Unguent would not be magnetical from any innate and natural phansie peculiar to it self but from an external adventitious inspiration namely the phansie of the Compounder impressed upon it since there can be no neerer medium of the foresaid Magnetism then humane blood with humane blood truly the blood alone as the most proportionate and predisposed subject would suffice to the composition of the Unguent and all the other simples ingredient into the confection would be frustraneous and unnecessary especially the blood of a Bull and hony where the cure is to be performed by applying the salve to weapons not distained with the blood of the Patient which is manifestly false by experiment Finally the Magnetism of the Unguent would then be general in respect the Confectioner may by the wilde and universal range of his Phansie intend to make the impression uncertain undeterminate and extensive to the wounds not onely of man but of all beasts whatever What if the Compounders phansie were not fixed upon a dog must the Unguent therefore have no virtue to cure the wound of a dog Away with such idiotism such ridiculous dotage What hath Bole Armeniake what Line seed oyl what Hony and in fine what hath the blood of a Bull of peculiar disposition or determinate respect to the wound of a horse or man that upon them onely as upon the most proper medium and not upon any other things the Phansie of the Confectioner should be impressed and yet if these were secluded the Composition the Unguent would be barren and devoid of all power and vulnerary efficacy The Natural phansie therefore of the Unguent is the sole and grand cause of the Magnetism and the immediate and proper cause of the Cure but not the imagination of the Component Behold you have our understand true Christian Philosophy not the frantick sophisms or idle dreams of Ethnicks Be cautious I beseech you that you bring not me into censure who have been your self more forward and rash in censuring others I am yours and a Roman Catholick who have cordially and firmly determined in my self to mediate or write nothing that may be contrary to the Word of God or the fundamental Articles of the Church I well understand the constellation of my own genius and know my self born not to allow or foment contentious debates not to write Comments on or defensive Apologies for the pens of other men wherefore what I knew I desired with a freedom becoming a Philosopher to communicate to the world I shall annex onely this one clause Whoever attributeth to the Devil an effect arising from Natural Causes so created by God and so conferred upon the Creatures he doth alienate the honor due to the Creator and ignominiously others might say blasphemously apply it unto Satan which under your favor if you shall strictly call under the test of your Anatome you will finde to be express idolatry My earnest prayer to the fountain of all Clemency our God and Father of Mercies is now and ever shall be that he would be pleased to look with the eye of compassion and forgiveness upon those errors and lapses of our understanding which from our native not stubborn ignorance and humane fragility we have contracted Amen THere are three that bear record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And anon speaking of the Humanity of Christ there are three which bear record in Earth the Blood the Spirit and the Water and these three are one To us therefore who have the like Humanity it is no wonder that we contain Blood and a Spirit of the like unity and that the action of the Blood is meerly Spiritual Yea for this reason in Genesis it is not called by the name of Blood but dignified with the appellation of a Red Spirit Withdraw therefore whoever thou art from thy incredulous pertinacy and ingenuously acknowledg another Spirit in the blood besides the Devil unless thou wilt dare to oppose thy mis-informed Faith to the Book of Truth The Translators Supplement NEmo hûc Geometriae expers ingrediatur was the Motto which the semi-christian Philosopher Plato caused to be engraven on the porch of his Academy implying not onely the exact measure of lines but also the Geometry of a mans self the dimensions and just extent of the passions and affections of the minde to be the previous qualification necessary to any that should hope to benefit by his Lectures And Nemo hûc Philosophiae expers ingrediatur shall be our inscription in the front of this Translation understanding by Philosophy the ample knowledg not onely of the Elemental and visible World but also of the Intellectual and Spiritual not onely of the more plain and obvious tracts wherein Nature progresseth to the production of ordinary effects but even those obscure and unfrequented paths she walks in when she advanceth to Abstrusities and more mysterious Magnalities together with that acquired Candor of judgment and habitual Equanimity which as well emancipateth the understanding from the pedantick tyranny of subscription to all that 's read if but disguised in the specious dress of probability and ushered in by Antique Authority as it inclineth the reason to a sober assent and modest conformity to such Assertions which carry the face of judicious Enquiries and serious majesty of Truth though they be presented at disadvantage under a cloud of Novelties or Paradoxes Nor can we fear that this our device or impress will be suspected of impertinency by any that shall do so much right to their own judgments as to conced that a Reader thus qualified must be the onely he that can survey understand censure and enrich his head with the subtler speculations and profound Dihoties of our more then ingenious Helmont while it is of confessed necessity that the gross ignorance of some must obscure and the prevarication of others pervert the prospect of these splendid though Heterodoxical Notions and Natural though spiritual or magical Causalities which his finer pen hath drawn in landskip upon this tablet The Magnetically-Natural cure of Wounds Now though the pensive Consideration of the incapacity some would have said Barbarity of the numerous multitude on one side and of the deplorable inflexibility of the leading part of learning more then a moity of Schollers being swallowed up in a deluge of Presumption and Prejudice on the other might in some measure excuse our despair of finding many heads of this soveraign temper wherein sufficiency in knowledg ought to have received the just allay of Candor and non-adherence to Antiquity yet may we not incur the odious premunire of singularity so far as not confidently to hope that our worthy Author will fall into the hands of some whose unbyassed intellectuals will smoothly run him over and gather so full satisfaction from many of his Experiments that Gratitude her self
melted at the fire restoring to it a small quantity of this essential vital Nectar The story is introduced for this end that hence it may be observed That the spirit of Wine by a natural tendency flies from cold as from his proper enemy and gently withdraws itself from its former mansion into the Centre of the Wine But on the contrary Wines are therefore exposed to the heat of the Sun that they may grow Acide and the spirit exhaling leaves behinde it a flat cadaverous substance devoid of spirit and life which is Vineger But since it is far more noble and useful that the spirit of Wine should retreat into the Centre then perish by exhalation therefore hath necessity for the conservation of Wines hinted the invention of cold deep Cellers The Austrian Wines still operating on themselves by an uncessant tumultuous heat of Fermentation are for the most part gross and viscid For which reason the Cellers at Vienna are ordinarily digged to no less then aâ—…undred foot in depth The Spanish Wines also would suffer the same restless ebullition and conflict betwixt their Heterogeneities were they not prevented by the admixture of a Lime which the Spaniard calls Hiesco at the very instant of their flowing from the Wine Press Whence results it a clear and unquestionable truth that the spirit of Wine in cold Cellers retreating from its adversary cold returns to the heart of the Liquor as to a safe refuge and there conceals it self Wine therefore in the cortex or outward circumference of it self is less generous as having fewer spirits then in the middle or inmost retiring room Hence it is a necessary consequent that as by reason of the exhalation of spirits Wines set in the Sun grow acide and phlegmatick so also proportionably the exterior Cortex of Wine in a cold Celler must be more acide then the Centrals And thus when the musts of Wines are freshly brought in from the Press lodged in Store-houses and have suffered Fermentation the spirit by and by flying from cold concentres it self and therefore the superficies of Wine having already entred some degree of Acidity immediately begins to operate on the dregs floating on the yet troubled and unclarified mass of Liquor For an absolute impossibility it is that there can be any the least Acidity which having once met with a proportionate object does not immediately begin to operate on it This really is the Law and unavoidable necessity of Naturals By example Vineger how flat and weak soever having once touched upon the stone concreted in the head of a Creafish vulgarly but erroneously called Crabs eye can by no means contain it self but must immediately act to the dissolution of it and resolve it into a clear diaphanous Liquor The Acidity of Wine having once sated it self on the dregs and spent much of its activity by degrees inclines it self to coagulation But coagulate it cannot without a conspiracy with and assistance from the Fracid Odor of the vessel impregnate with a spirit or power of Fermentation whereby it may in some measure admit of putrefaction And for this onely reason is the Coagulation made at the sides of the vessel to which it affixes it self according to that familiar Chymick Axiome Omnis spiritus dissolvens eddem actione quâ corpora dissolvit coagulatur Every dissolvent spirit is it self coagulated in the same action wherein it dissolves other concreted bodies The more acide Wine therefore in the extremities of it self dissolves the dregs and at the same instant the acide dissolvent spirit is coagulated together with the newly dissolved faeces and soon applies it self to the neerest side or concave of the vessel And this lest both the dissolvent and dissolved might not be hindred from coagulating but on one side at least they might not be invironed by Liquor And thus by this progress and succession of natural motions there is affixed a new production of Coagulation Tartar Observe also that before the compleat act of Coagulation there is no existent Coagulatum and therefore the acide spirit in the verge of the mass of Wine having newly dissolved the dregs in a moment before the act of coagulation finisht seazes on the vessel and by a Cement or glue native and proper to it self there fixes and constantly adheres Otherwise depressed by gravity it would immediately sink to the bottom And this new Entity thus coagulated is the Tartar of Wine of which our Discourse That these are sober solid truths we have clear and demonstrable evidence from Vineger it self For Wine insolated to a calefaction of the vessel may produce Tartar but Vineger never And yet Wine and Vineger are one and the same matter differing onely in those qualifications heat and cold in the former indeed with Tartar in the latter without it From the premisses there breaks forth a considerable truth that our forementioned Axiome by Chymicks concluded of eternal verity grosly fails in that it makes the dissolution of any concreted body to be done in the instant of time and numerical action with the coagulation of the spirit dissolvent For if there intervened not in some short interval of time a diversity and succession of motions the Coagulation could not soder it self to the circumambient planks of the vessel as is there affused by liquefaction but would of necessity if it were coagulated at the instant of dissolution sink down to the lowest region in the form of a simple coagulation and not cement it self to the walls of the hogshead But on the other side in the bottom the peculiar region of the Lees there is never found any Tartar Here also accurs to our serious consideration a second and more weighty verity that the Analogy or resemblance which the vulgarity of Physicians conceives betwixt the Tartar in Wine and those preter-natural Coagulations in the body of man is erroneous vain and altogether impertinent and therefore the name history manner and end of Coagulation of Tartar in Wine are foolishly and unfitly accommodated to the causes of diseases All which I shall demonstrate to ample satisfaction when I come to discover that grand and popular delusion of the Existence of Tartar in our meat and drink Allowing to Wine onely a fertility of Tartar For that we acknowledg to be no Alien no son of an exotick mother from the concurrence of forein principles intruded into Wine having its production contrary to or besides the ordinary and simple nature of Wines neither owing its original to the adjuncts of the primitive Malediction delivered in Paradise by divine providence for the expiation of those Crimes committed by man in the heat and distraction of Wine Again neither is the Tartar of Wine ever coagulated by any originary activity or power of coagulation proper to its own nature though Paracelsus dreamt so but then undergoes Coagmentation when the circumferential Acidity of the Wine hath newly exhausted much of its Energy