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-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
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-re-actions of the patient but the incapacities of the same For neither doth silver re-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-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
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 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 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
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
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
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
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
whereby they might have something to admire at and talk of to deceive the time as they say and so to neglect the Tree of Life which is appointed for the healing of the Nations But rather that man having eaten of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of good and evil and having experimentally known evil whereby he is expelled from the Tree of Life which before the Fall was his food and is become captivated in Understanding Will and Affections from whatsoever may be known of God either within in the light of his Immortal Mind which by Creation was in the very Image of its Creator or without in his visible Creation in whose invisible Power and Unity all things consist and subsist might come to know himself and his Creator in the Unity of the Spirit and all other things in that Unity so neither was it translated into our Mother Tongue to any other end than that naked and simple Uniform-Truth might appear to the confounding of that which appears to be Truth but is not but is masked various compounded and confused whose false Plea is Antiquity and chief support the self-ends of Ambition and Avarice It is a saying in the Scriptures He that is first in his own Cause seemeth just but his Neighbour cometh and searcheth him Also That the rich man is wise in his own conceit But the poor that hath Understanding searcheth him out How truly these sayings may be applied unto this Author with respect to the Schools both of Logick Natural Phylosophy Astrology Theology and in particular those of Medicine both as to the Theorie and Practick part thereof I may singly refer the judgement thereof unto him that hath the least measure of true Understanding without any further enlargment because such a one who with the Lamp or Candle of God being lighted in him whereunto the Author bears his Testimony in opposition to blind Reason in the Chapter of the searching or hunting out of Sciences is able to see in his measure eye to eye or as Face answereth to Face in a glass Nevertheless for the sake of some simple-hearted Reader who though not yet come unto such a discerning so as to separate the light from the darkness may notwithstanding truly hunger and thirst after the knowledge of the Truth I shall speak somewhat That the Schools of the Gentiles have had their time is well known wherein they have become vain in their imaginations exercised themselves in vain Phylosophy and opposition of Science fasly so called as the Apostle Paul observeth and whereof he admonisheth the true Christians as to take heed they were not deceived by it And although Histories mention That at the coming of the First-born Son into the World whom all the Angels of God were to Worship the Heathen Oracles at Delphos and elsewhere were struck dumb and gave no Answer as a sign that all Falshood false Voices deceitful Juggles vain Inventions c. were to give way and be abolished at the appearance and rising of the Day-Star and Sun of Righteousness on and over the Earth the Star of which Star the Wise men of the East saw and by its direction came to Worship the Child laying down all their wisdom at his Feet for a lively token that all true Wisdom and Science was to be received from him in whom all the treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge dwell and not by the dim and dark illustrations of mans own Reason and Discourse Yet such hath been the subtilty of the fleshly Serpent that under the pretence of owning and professing the Name of Christ he hath taken up in his Paganish means and instruments to build withal calling the dregs and dross of the Minerva of the Heathenish Schools Hand-maides unto Divinity and true Principles of Medicinal Science but this counterfeit fiueness can no longer dazzle or blind the eyes of those unto whom God hath given eye-salve that they may see and gold tried in the fire for such are able to discern an Image from a Man and true and pure Mettal from counterfeit Coyn so that the abettors of such deceits shall proceed no further but their folly shall be made manifest to all men forasmuch as that which alone tends to the healing of the Maladies of mans Spirit and the breaches there which Sin hath made is seated in the Invisible Life of God as is applied thereunto as a Remedy by the virtue of Christs Blood alone who is the Lamb of God and a quickening Spirit And so also seeing that which tends to the Healing of any Disease Radically in the Body is the Internal Faculty or Property seated in the first Being of Medicines which by due preparation being uncloathed of their gross corporeal cloathings are made fit to be applied by the Wisdom of a true Physitian unto the Archeus or vital Air of the Body wherein its Diseases Radically dwel not in Relolleous qualities nor in feigned Elementary complexions as in the following Treatise is clearly manifested And so that nothing can be a true Handmaid unto Divinity or Medicine but the gift of him who is Lord of the whole man And that which gives the Children of Wisdom an ability to justifie Wisdom her self and a Power to judge and condemn the Wisdom of this World whether it be conversant about things Visible or Invisible things Temporal or Eternal is the Son of God by whom the World was made and all living Souls created even the everlasting Father of Spirits who hath committed all judgement to the Son in whom they all subsist who filleth all in all this Son of God is the Eternal Eye of the Father which runs thorrow the whole Creation beholding the evil and the good it is that Eye which knows and sees the essence and frame of all things it doth not behold any thing in its essence to be evil because every thing in its Essence and Being is good and that because it is one and true but that which is double varie-form seeming or false that it sees to be evil and that is the fleshly and sensual apprehension and desire in man which vailes or taints his Spirit of Understanding and Will that they are not able to give a right tincture or rightly to apply themselves unto Objects intelligible or desirable whereby irregular and evil effects in Word Action and Conversation do visibly appear even as an Engine whose innermost Spring or Wheel being defective all its other parts and motions are out of order for the Body is but the Shell or Vessel of the Spirit That eye being opened in Man or Candle lighted so far as it is lighted or opened makes first to behold the evil and the good and the evil from the good in a mans self and so far as he doth this he is truly said to know himself for he consists of darkness and light till by a holy war the light hath comprehended the darkness The truth of this is not to be disputed for it hath been experimentally
not the causes of natural things 6. The Form is not the Act. 7. A false Maxim of Aristotle 8. He erreth in the attributes of the Form 9. He knew not the true efficient cause 10. The Father is not the efficient cause of the Son 11. There are two onely causes in Nature 12. The End hath no reason of a cause in nature 13. That the three beginnings of Bodies of Paracelsus have not the nature of causes 14. Whence the definition of any sort soever of natural things is to be required 15. The definition of a Horse 16. The division of sublnnary bodies among the Auntients is dangerous or destructive 17. The definition of Animalls Plants and Mineralls 18. The name of Subject sounds improperly in Philosophy why 't is to be called a co-worker 19. Things without life that are produced how they receive their ends 20. Why the seminal Power is attributed to the Earth 21. That there is not a conjunction of the Elements 22. The Principles of the Chymists have not the power of principiating 23. That there are two onely Principles or beginnings of Bodies to wit that from which and by which 24. What the Ferment or Leaven of things is 25. What are Ferments in their kinde 26. What is immediately in places 27. The Ferments of the Air and water 28. There is onely a speculative distinction of the Ferment and efficient cause 29. The Ferment is the original of some seeds 30. The principiating Ferment of what sort it is and where 31. Ferments are immediately in places in things themselves as if in places 32. The name of matter is speculative but that of water is practical 33. What the inward efficient cause is 34. A false Maxim of Aristotle 35. The efficient cause in natural things is explained 36. Fire is not of the number of seminal efficient causes as it hath deceived the Aristotelicks neither is the influence of the Heavens among the number of efficients 37. The diversity of the efficient and effective cause 38. The wit of Aristotle is ambitious and idle 39. A false Maxim of Aristotle 40. Aristotle was more able in the Mathematicks or learning by de monstration than in Nature 41. How great hath been the ignorance of the Schooles in natural things hitherto 42. Aristotle is in the things of natural Philosophy ridiculous and to himself contradictory I Come into a forsaken house to re-melt the dross that is to be swept out by me Most things are to be searched into and those things to be taught which are unknown those things which have been ill delivered are to be overthrown what are unclean are to be wiped off and what things are false are to be cast away but all and every thing duly to be confirmed But let it be sufficient to have forewarned thee of these things to withdraw wearisomness if happily new and Paradoxall things do more trouble than true things delight The knowledge of Nature is onely taken from that which is in act and in the thing it self for it is that which no where consisteth in feigned Meditations Indeed the whole composure of Nature is individual in very deed in act and fastned in any Body except the number of abstracted Spirits Lastly and chiefly I seriously admonish that as often as I speak of the causes of Natural things these things are not at all to be taken for the Elements or for the Heaven because they supernaturally began with the Title of Creation and to this day do also constantly remain the same which they were from the beginning Therefore I understand the causes of natural things to presuppose a Being subject to change And although the Bodies of the Elements have come under Nature yet their speculation is of another manner of unfolding and another kinde of Philosophy For they who before me have thought that to all Generations or Births of Bodies four Elementsdo co-mix have beheld the Elements after the heathenish manner have tried by their lies or devises to marry the Elements obey them Therefore every natural Body requireth no other than corporeall beginnings for the most part subject to change and succeeding course of dayes but Nature doth not consist of an undetermined hyle or matter and an impossible one neither hath it need of such a Principle as neither of privation but order and life are in the efficient cause of necessity And every thing is empty void dead and slow unless it hath been constituted or sometimes be constituted by a vitall or seminal Principle present with it And moreover those Lawes should rush down together unless there were a certain order in things which did interpose which might incline proper things to the support or necessities of the common good Aristotle hath declared four constitutive causes of things which have made also their own Authour ignorant of Nature For in the first place he confoundeth the Principle with the material cause to wit calling the first cause an undetermined or unlimited matter or a corporeal subjected heap wanting a formall limitation And then he confoundeth the other cause even the inward Essence or form of a thing with another of his Principles Next the third which is external he calleth the efficient cause and at length the fourth he nameth the end to wit unto which every thing is directed But this cause in the minde of the efficient he would have to be the first of the three former causes and so natural things not onely to be principiated or made to begin by the Being of Reason and mental but also as if they were inanimate things they did lie hid through the end in the minde of the efficient cause But if therefore he doth badly search into natural causes he hath far worse appointed a supernatural end in the minde of the first mover in the room of a natural cause or he requireth a mentall conceit of the end in things without life Truly I who have not been accustomed through the floath of consenting to serve others enterprizes without foreweighing them have very much found that the three latter causes in natural knowledge are false yea and hurtful But the first of the four I will by and by shew to be fabulous For first of all since every cause according to nature and succession of dayes is before its thing caused Surely the form of the thing composed cannot be the cause of the thing produced but rather the last perfect act of generation and the veriest essence and perfection it self of the thing generated for the attaining whereof all other things are directed Therefore I meditate the form to be rather as an effect than as a cause of the thing Yea more For the Form seeing it is the end of generation is not meerly the act of generation but of the thing generated and rather a power that may be attained in generation but the matter or subject of generation as it is in act so also its act is an inward worker or
Beere belcheth forth its Gas an easie sudden death and choaking doth break forth Wherefore I have greatly grieved and pittied mans condition that by so gross negligence of the Schooles the more profound Remedies of fumes are almost suppressed whereby not onely those who faint are refreshed but also whereby the healings of most Diseases are performed Which thing concerning odours or smells at sometime explained in the matter of Medicine every one shall with me more easily disclose Surely almost all Medicines are neglected which do restore the strength and they have applied themselves onely to the diminishments of bodies by the with-drawings of bloud and solutive scammoneated potions and by Cauteries Baths Clysters Sweats and Cantharides For a Gas is more fully implanted and odours do keep a more immediate co-touching with the vitall Spirits than Liquors if they are not partakers of a poysonous infection at leastwise of the dulled properties of second qualities and the which qualities or especially that sublime one of the first digestion they do lay aside as it were Soils covered with Clay if they are not as yet received with a great averseness of the Archeus or they being rebellious and stubborn do with anguish resist the digestive powers Notwithstanding the Scripture might be opposed against me which saith concerning man Thou art Earth and into Earth thou shalt go How therefore shall flesh bone c. be materially of water alone But I will say this from the force of the same Argument If man be Earth how therefore do the Schooles affirm that man materially is not one onely Element but foure Elements therefore from that Text those things which I have spoken above are confirmed To wit that the Earth is not in the holy Scriptures a primary Element but every thing co-agulated of water is called Earth because by its consistence it is more likened to Earth than to Water and so the veriest Earth it self the prop of nature is of water no lesse than Man Wood Ashes a Stone c. CHAP. XIX The Image of the Ferment begets the Masse or lump with childe of a Seed 1. There is no seminall successive change without a Ferment 2. Handicraft operation is brought into a Circle by Ale or Beere 3. The Ferment makes volatile that which otherwise is changed into a Coal 4. It is proved by handicraft-operation in the venall Bloud 5. The Bloud attains its own various ferments in the Kitchins of the members 6. The unconstancie of Paracelsus is taken notice of 7. The Beginnings of Paracelsus are made by the fire but they are not in Bodies 8. There are double ferments from whence are the seeds of things 9. The Birth of Insects 10. 'T is not sufficient to have said that Insects are born of putrefaction or corruption 11. A twofold manner of generation 12. How seedes are made 13. In what manner an odour or smell causeth a ferment and seed 14. A Scorpion from Basil 15. The ferment in voluntary seedes reacheth to the Horizon or bound of life 16. The ferment of Diseases and healings 17. Almost all Medicines do act by way of an odour onely 18. Therefore seedes are strong onely in a specificall odour 19. An odour and light do pierce the spirits 20. Odours do cause or incite and cure the Plague and divers Diseases 21. Art having forgotten its perfume is translated into a servile rage or madness 22. Vnappeaseable pains are presently appeased by the odour of an outward application 23. The ferment is the Parent of transmutations 24. Of what quality the ferment of the stomach is 25. Why very many do abhorre Cheese 26. A sharp fermentall thing differeth from soure things 27. From whence belching is 28. The labour of Wisdom 29. All things which are believed to be mixt are onely of Water and a ferment 30. The ferment of the Equinoctiall Line 31. The progress of seedes and ferments unto proPagation 32. The originall and progress of Vegetables 33. Ferments do sometimes operate more powerfully than Fire 34. Paracelsus is noted AS no knowledge in the Schooles is scantier than the knowledge of a Ferment so no knowledge is more profitable The name of a Ferment or Leaven being unknown hitherto unless in making of bread when as notwithstanding there is made no successive change or transmutation by the dreamed appetite of matter but onely by the endeavour of the ferment alone In times past leaven and all things leavened were forbidden and the Mystery hidden in the Letter was then of right interpreted according to the Letter For as leavens or ferments were altogether the way-leaders and necessary unto every transmutation of a thing so they did denote corruption unconstancy and impurity and therefore a flight from leaven was enjoyned I will first of all explain a thing surely so paradoxall in naturall Philosophy by an example The purest of Ales or Beeres which is deservedly the nourishing juyce or meat melting or finished right of the Grain requireth so much Grain by how much there is capacity and largeness in the Vessel or Hogs-head And so indeed that the Bran being taken away all the Meal doth melt into the Ale or Beer and the Water onely supplies the place of the Bran. That Ale or Beer by a very little ferment or leaven being administred doth boyl up by fermenting in Cellars it waxeth clear by degrees and the dreg falls down to the bottom at length something doth fermentally wax soure by which tartness it consumeth all its dreg And then it looseth more and more daily its sharp or pricking soureness At length it is deprived of the taste virtues and body of the meal And last of all it of its own accord returns into water That Ale or Beere being distilled layeth aside very much residence in the bottom like a Syrupe which at length by proceeding is changed into a Coal But if that same Ale or Beere by the degrees of the ferment shall passe over into water it leaveth no more dregs in the bottom while it is distilling than otherwise the water from whence it was boyled did contain because the natall sediment of the waters is not subject to the ferment of the Grain since it is not the object thereof but the Client of or dependant on another Monarchy Therefore the Grains do return unto their first matter whereof they are which is water and that by the virtue of the ferment onely In the next place every one of us doth daily frame to himself 7 or 10 ounces of bloud but at leastwise in our standing age as much bloud must needes be consumed as is a-new generated For else a man might straightway fear a hugeness or excessive greatness And then the bloud is by degrees changed into a vitall muscilage or flimy juyce the true immediate nourishment of the members of which it is wont to be said we are nourished by those things whereof we consist But they will have this nourishment to be sprinkled on all the particular members in
rage Furthermore the transmutation of the Arterial bloud into Spirit which is begun in the heart is ripened in the current of the Arteries or stomach of the heart Neither therefore is it a wonder that in the Spleen abounding with so many Arteries a Ferment and the first motions of the heart are established instead of a stomach the mentall and sensitive Souls being indeed Saturns Kingdoms For the digestion of the heart is with a full transmutation of the arteriall Bloud into Spirit without a dreg and smoakiness Because it is that which neither containeth filths nor admits of diversities of kinde neither doth the Spirit the Son of heat degenerate by reason of heat Indeed it is the immediate operation of the sensitive Soul alwayes univocall or single like to it self and to life for the life that is uttered by vitall motions Therefore the chief aims of the Pulses are 1. A bringing of the venall bloud from the bosom of the hollow vein unto the left womb of the heart 2. An increase of heat 3. A framing of arterial bloud 4. And again a producing of vitall Spirit 5. And then there hath been another ultimate aim of Pulses to wit that the original life residing in the implanted Spirit of the heart may be participated of Therefore I will repeat what I have said elsewhere To wit that some Forms do glister as in Stones and Mineralls but some moreover do shine by an increased light as in Plants but others are also lightsome or full of light as in things soulified And so a vitall lightsomness is granted to the vitall Spirit by a kindling not indeed of fieriness but of enlightning and specificall or differing by its particular kindes So indeed Fishes do not live more unhappily are more straightly and lively and longer moved than hot bruit Beasts The Schooles in the room of those things which I have already demonstrated do suppose the bloud in the Liver to receive the nature of a Spirit which perhaps they therefore call naturall To wit such an Air as is wholly in all juyces of Herbs and from hence at length they will have the vitall Spirit to be immediately bred and made But I do from elsewhere derive the Spirit and from a far more noble race But whether the Schooles or I do more rightly phylosophize let the Reader judge who now drinks down both Doctrines together he being at least mindefull of that which I am straightway to say to wit that sometimes the whole arterial bloud and the nourishable Liquor created from thence or the nearest nourishment of the solid parts are at length dispersed by the transpirative evaporation of the Body without any dregs or remainder of a dead head And therefore that the Reader may from thence think that the arterial bloud is of it self inclined that it may sometimes be made Spirit which is not equally presumed of the vapour of the venall bloud For therefore they have been ignorant that the whole bloud of the Arteries is often turned into a spiritual vapour or vitall Spirit But the venall bloud if it be changed in our Glasses by a gentle luke-warmth into a vapour it leaves a thick substance and at length a Coal in the bottom Therefore the Doctrine of the Schooles is far remote from the knowledge of the Spirits who think the vitall Spirits to be framed of a vapour or watery exhalation for they have neglected in this vapour of the venal bloud how of bread and water and venal bloud prepared thence not indeed a watery exhalation as they think but a Salt and enlightned Spirit is stirred up and its heat not onely made hot but also making hot For no Authour hath hitherto diligently searched into that vitall light whereby the Spirit is enlightned and is after a sort made hot So that the Life Light Form and sensitive Soul are as it were made one thing Again the rotten Doctrine of the Schooles confoundeth the ends of Pulses and breathing To wit that Breathing is made for the nourishment of the vital spirit the life of the fire which they will have to be nourished with aire the cooling refreshment of the heart and expelling of smoaky vapours For they intend or incline to nourish the vitall heat and coolingly to refresh or to diminish it which things how they can agree together let others shew I am willingly ignorant thereof at least in the greatest want of vital spirit and while the increase thereof is chiefly desired then indeed there is the least and slowest elevation of the Arterie And on the other hand while the Spirit aboundeth there is the greatest elevation of the Artery I confesse indeed that breathing is drawn by the bridles of the Will or by the instruments of voluntary motion but the Pulse not so But seeing that a sound breast may satisfie by its breathings the ends of the Pulses the Pulse should not therefore be necessary as long as any one is cold and his breathing doth sufficiently inspire But seeing notwithstanding in the mean time the Pulse doth not therefore pause surely there must needs be one cause or necessity of the Pulses and another cause or necessity of breathing For we percieve the necessities of breathing we also do measure our breathing at our pleasure and some can wholly press it together or suppress it in themselves But why do we not feel the more vitall and no less urgent necessities of the Pulses Chiefly seeing it is the life that is the Original of sensibility which alone indeed doth feel all its own necessity and doth alone exclude us from every act of feeling Wherefore hence I conjecture that there are other necessities unknown to the antients I know indeed that from the Arterial bloud and from the vital spirit there are no dregs filths or superfluities expelled as I shall shew in its place but that smoaky vapours are wanting where there is no adultion but that the venal bloud in the wasting of it self by the voluntary guidance of heat doth produce a Gas as water doth a vapour or exhalation And that that Gas which the Schools do signifie to be the spirit of the Liver or natural spirit of the venal bloud is subsequently of necessity expelled it remains without controversie For otherwise a man being almost killed with cold should the sooner wax hot again if he should for some hours hold his breath understand it if the breath should be drawn for cooling refreshment notwithstanding neither indeed in that state doth he notably stop his breath upon pain of death Also a fish wants Lungs and breathing for the bubbles which do sometimes belch forth are blasts of ventosities of digestion but not breathings But Frogs and Sea-monsters that utter a voice have little Bellows which perform the office of Lungs yet Fishes are not colder than Frogs yea Frogs and Horse-leeches are preserved under the mud all the Winter from corruption and do live without breaching yet not without a Pulse Therefore there is one
fixednesse of a bone as also in the fractures of bones For the Chyle of the stomack is the same after growth as it was in a Youth But all that is at length discussed without any remainder of it self it again retakes the nature of a bone in a callous concretion in the solidness of fractures And therefore for that very cause all Chyle is volatile and thus far it sometimes doth assume the disposition of spirit in the venal bloud Not indeed because there is a natural spirit in it and diverse from the venal bloud but rather because the whole venal bloud hath obtained a spiritual Character in the promise John 5. The water the bloud and the spirit are one But I will teach concerning digestions after what sort that sowreness in the Chyle may be transchanged into a volatile Salt whose excrementitious part is banished with Urine and Sweats But the very Masse of venal bloud through the fermental virtue of the heart and assistance of the Pulses doth passe over into Arterial bloud of yellow looking reddish whence it is made vital spirit And so is not the air or vapour of the venal bloud but the venal bloud it self is brought into arterial bloud and from thence at length into vital spirit For the Office of the Liver is univocal and is called Sanguification but not the creation of spirit which do differ far from each other For neither do so many and so diverse Offices belong to one bowel especially because the rude heap of venal bloud is not yet a fit seminary for the spirits For it is sufficient for the Liver being enriched with so few Arteries and a communion of life that it performeth a true transmutation of the Chyle into venal bloud and a true generation of a new Being But in the heart as it were the fountain of life it is first of all meditated concerning vital Beginnings For the Venal bloud is there extenuated into Arterial bloud and vital air which two are wholly perfected by one only action according to the more ready and slow obedience of the venal bloud For the venal bloud is made with the in-thickning of the Chyle or Cream therefore by the separation of the liquid excrement or urine But the spirit is made with the attenuating or making thin of that which is in-thickned Both which actions so opposite do not therefore agree with one Liver But if the Schools will have a natural spirit to have fore-existed in meats but to have received a perfection in the Liver But yet it easily expires in things boyled cocted and roasted And if any doth by chance remain that spirit is not the hepatical or Liverie one of our Family Goverment I confesse indeed that the Spirit of wine is the spirit of Vegetables and is easily snatched into the Arteries as it were a simple Resembler previously disposed that it may easily passe over into vital spirit But from thence the Schools do frame nothing for their spirit of the Liver For the Spirit of wine is immediately snatched into the Arteries out of the stomack without digestion Neither is it taken as a vital companion by the degree of venal bloud it is also easily from thence gathered that the vital spirit doth not presuppose a natural one And what I have said is manifest For truly they which suffer fainting or trembling of the heart do presently and immediately feel the spirit of wine to be admitted into the fellowship of life for neither then also are they made drunk by much wine abundantly drunken Otherwise Wine being as yet corporally existing within the stomack drunkenness doth not from elsewhere proceed than because the winie spirit is abundantly snatched into the heart and head and there breeds a confusion of the fore-existing spirits it self being a stranger not yet polished in the shop of the heart Therefore the venal blood it selfe let it be the spirit of the Liver corporal coagulated into a matter and subjected to a vital Goverment with me it may be so so that we understand it Rhetorically to wit the venal bloud it self to be an object capable and a matter that it may thereby be made Spirit And in speaking Phylosophically or properly there is no spirit in the venal bloud made for it self by the Liver because the labour of Sanguification seperation of the Liquor Latex Urine and Sweat doth employ the Liver to wit while those do most swiftly pass thorow the slender Flood-gates of small veins For the venal bloud although it received an entrance of it self in the Meseraick veins yet the true generation of the same is made also the endowments of small threds and coagulation under the most swift passage together with its Whey through the small Trunks of a hairy slendernesse But if also the generation of spirit doth moreover employ the Liver Truly besides the vain generation of the same the Liver is to prostrate it self like an Asse with too much fardle and plurality of offices And it is sufficient for the venal bloud that being made a Citizen of the veins it doth partake of life and be illustrated with a vital light Therefore even as by the ferment and labour of the heart the venal bloud is made arterial bloud and volatile spirit So a ferment the Vicar of the heart being drawn from the arteries they are also made so volatile that after their consumings they leave no remaining lees that do go forth with a totall transpiration of themselves Therefore the heart doth frame out of the venal bloud arterial bloud which it fitteth and extenuateth by the same endeavour and makes so much vital Spirit in the arterial bloud as the groseness of the venal bloud and the resisting substance of the same doth permit in so little a space wherein it is agitated and shaken together within the bosoms of the heart yea indeed neither is it enough to have known the venal bloud to be Spirit also to be brought over into arterial bloud and to grant a vital Spirit by whose favour it may be informed by the minde and be made animate and from hence at length to be translated into the bosoms or stomachs of the Brain there to receive the various limitation of Characters So that it is made motive in the thorny marrow or Spina Medullae as we have seen in the Shops optical or of the sight which if they are through some errour brought to the tongue they are plainly unprofitable for tasting Wherefore it comes to passe that oft-times the fingers are benummed some moveable part looseth its sense being left either feeling or motion for that the parts are bedewed with a strange and wandring Spirit For the Authours of touchings are unfit for motion and those of this likewise for them But moreover it behoveth to have known the disposition of the vital Spirit For truly it will sometime sufficiently appear that of soure Chyle partly venal bloud and partly salt Urine and the excrements are made But that that excrementitious
also that That Oyls and Emplasters are the true food of wounds so that a wound is truly nourished by them and that the corrupt matter is the excrement of that nourishment Therefore the sour salt of the Cream seeing it is destitute of an object and the which seeing it wandreth through the action of a dissolver into a fixed salt as I have taught before concerning volatile spirits it is suitably exchanged into the volatile salt of Urine And that not by the action or re-action of sournesse on a certain object but by a true fermental transforming for the Spirit of life it self is of the nature of a volatile salt and of that which is salt And so even from hence alone the vital action of the Gaul is proved For Sea salt being oft eaten doth remain almost whole in the excrements Which thing the Boylers of Salt-peter do experience against their wills For they are constrained to seperate salt out of the dung of Jakeses being sometimes eaten up by the Salt-peter through a repeated boyling and coagulation of cooling For the Sea salt being coagulated doth stick fast to the spondils or chinks of the vessels being nothing changed from it self long ago eaten And that before the Salt-peter hath obtained a sufficient drying up of its own coagulation And therefore from hence it is known that Sea-salt is more readily coagulated than Salt-peter Therefore humane excrements are lesse fit for Salt-peter than otherwise those of Goats Sheep and Herds Yet as much of that Sea-salt as is subdued by the ferment of the stomack so much also is sour and volatile Consequently also although any one do use no salt his Urine should not therefore want salt because it is that which is a new creature and a new product out of the sour of the Cream The Salt of the Urine therefore hath not its like in the whole Systeme of nature For not that of the Sea Fountain Rock Gemme not Nitre not that of Salt-peter Alume or Borace Lastly not of any of natural things as neither the Salt of the Urine of flocks or herd with which although it may agree in the manner of making yet the salt of mans Urine disagreeth from them throughout the general and particular kinds no lesse than dungs do vary throughout the species of Bruits although bruits are fed with common fodder to wit by reason of the diversities of an Archeus and Ferment Therefore of meats and drinks not sour or salt is made a salt sour and at length a salt Salt and it is easier for a thing of a sour salt to be made Salt than of not Salt to be made sour salt I remember that I have seen a Chymist who every yeer did fill a Hogs-head of Vinegar to two third parts with water of the River Rhoan he exposed it to the heats of the Sun and so he transchanged the water in it self without savour into true Vinegar a ferment being conceived out of the Hogs-head This I say he was thus wont to do by reason of the singular property of that Vinegar For truly out of the Vinegar of Wine the weaker part doth alwayes drop or still first but the more pure part a little before the end riseth up with the dregs but this Vinegar made of meer water as it wants dregs so it alwayes doth minister an equall distillation from the Beginning even to the end Wherefore as the ferment of a vessel doth by its odour alone change Water into Vinegar So indeed by the fermental odour of the Spleen breathed into the stomack meats are made a sour Cream which afterwards is turned into a urinous salt yea and into a vital one Because the Schools never dreamed of these things neither had their followers read them in the labours or night watches of their Predecessors therefore they have been ignorant of the use of parts and ferments and the celebrations or solemnities of transmutations but they have introduced both the Cholers into the masse of the bloud Lastly They have not known the Contents and be-tokenings of the Urine Therefore the third Digestion is made by the President-ferment of the Liver which is by the blind odour of a Gas doth begin Sanguification in its own stomack of the Mesentery and at length perfecteth it in the hollow Vein Furthermore The fourth Digestion is compleated in the Heart and Artery thereof in which elaboration the red and more gross blood of the the hollow Vein is elaborated made yellower and plainly volatile For the heart is said to be eared on both sides and hath at its left bosom one onely beating Artery inserted in a great Trunk fit for it that by a double rowing it may the more strongly draw the fenced venal bloud which is between both bosoms in the middle of the heart Refer thou hither what I have above noted concerning the porosity of the hedge or partition which distinguisheth the bosoms of the heart and why the Arterial bloud doth not return from the left bosome into the right but only the spirit of life as it were through a thin sive Therefore the venal bloud of the Liver differs from the arterial bloud by the fourth digestion manifested by the colour and consistence of the matter digested But the fifth Digestion doth transchange the Arterial blood into the vital spirit of an Archeus of which I have discoursed under the Blas of man as also under The Spirit of Life I could not satisfie my self that in the venal bloud of the Liver there was any spirit although it hath gotten a degree of its perfection after that it hath overcome or exceeded the Mesentery But that venal blood alwayes seemed to me as it were a certain Masse of Mummie and the matter Ex qua or whereof But not as yet to be accounted for perfect vital blood For if the blood of the hollow vein had begged a spirit from the Liver the right ear of the heart had been in vain which works uncessantly for no other end than that some spirit may be drawn from the left bosom thorow the fence of the heart that the blood in the hollow vein nigh the heart may begin to be quickned by the participation of that spirit But seeing from the left sides there is an ear and especially the notable Trunk of an Artery hence also the â—â—cking is stronger from the left bosom And from hence by consequence also little of the vital Spirit is communicated to the venal blood For truly the blood of the Liver is alwayes throughout its whole moist with too much liquor whereof it ought to be deprived before that it be made a fruitful and worthy support of spirit neither finally hath the Liver had a fit hollowness in it self for the framing of spirit Wherefore as I have intellectually seen throughout the whole Scene of Generation one onely Framer and Ruler of the spirits of life in the seed So also I admit of one onely spirit of the vital family-government For the venal
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
or downwards beset to wit when as that which I but now before spake concerning hoarsnesse is cast out of the breast by Coughs Therefore the Snivel of the nostrils dropping down from above even as also that which is â—â—it out by Coâ—â—bs doth take its rise from the Keeper the faculty an excrement indeed in it self profitable but through errour of the Keeper hurtful But I call these powers placed at both the solding doors of the gates of the air Keepers or Watchmen and oft-times erring or wandring ones while by reason of a frequent strife with forreign injuries the Keeper doth not rightly execute his Offices Yet the Keeper is not to be numbred under the Quaternion of faculties to wit the attractive digestive retentive and expulsive Because it doth not onely expell its own but also frameth its own and indeed onely excrements which are not made by digestion but by an abortive or miscarrying power Wherefore the Schools have altogether neglected both these Faculties prefixed before the doors of the Brain and Lungs and have dedicated both onely to the Brain and have accused onely the distemper hereof in those who are in the most perfect health As long the Keeper is in its right-strength as a Conqueress of the Cruelty of the Air it overcomes but when by reason of its much broken strength it cannot satisfie its first ordination according to its desire it at least frames much Snivel that it may wash off the conceived blemish in separating about which it was not at first bruised Therefore the Keeper differs from the digestive and family-administring property of the Brain And it happens that one is hurt the other remaining safe which truth sneezing medicines do discover unto us which do presently after the neighbour Snivel being dispatched stir up meer waterishnesses most speedily brought forth by the provoked Keeper So that at length if the sneezing medicine shall be the sharper fibers of venal blood do fall down with the thin muck and a salt water waxing pale is expunged from the red According to the Proverb he that expungeth too much doth at length draw forth blood For the red blood begâ—n to wax palish which through the troublesomnesse of sneezing was untimely drawn oâ— allured otherwiâ—e it had been snivel Therefore the Keeper doth first of all witnesse Divine Providence to have watched over both Bowels in so ready and frequent a necessity Also they do bewray the effects not indeed of the digestion of the Brain and Lungs but of their own proper power which neither brings forth diseasie effects unlesse it wander from its mark Therefore it is false to have said that a pose is healthy as being the expunger or wiper out of filths For the Offices of both the Keepers and their errours I have by the way already touched Now moreover for the confirmation of the granted Doctrine I will explain the exorbitances of the wandering or eâ—ring Keeper As the Keeper hath received its Lievtenantship chiefly by reason of the cruelties of the adverse Air so it also moderateth the same taking to it a matter obeying its functions to wit out of the masse of the whole to wit of the liquor Latex and venal blood Which Doctrine although it shew a novelty and for that cause may carry difficulties with it yet the ignorance of Ages is never able to prescribe to the truth For first of all a multiplicity of matter being drawn out under the errour of the Keeper sheweth the same not to be the excrement of the brain otherwise sound and strong Therefore the instinct of preparing speedy ready and diverse mucks is raised up from â—lswhere Indeed the Powers are for the washing of the filths off the atomes of the air therefore placed at the doors or entrance of the Bowels that are passable for Air Surely all things proceed well and orderly so long as the Keeper doth not exceed its own limits But seeing all humane things are exposed to ruines where as often as the Keeper wandreth from its aim presently Poses or Distillations Hoarsnesses Coughs c. do invade us after a miserable manner Concerning the Grief or Stuffing of a distilled Rheume or Pose I have already spoken sufficiently Now moreover I will speak of the Cough The Cough ariseth from a feeling of that which is hurtful troubling the wind-pipe from the beginning thereof even unto the bottome or depth of the Lungs to wit smoaks smoaky vapours sharp exhalations minerals and likewise moist vapours stinking ones c. At length cruel cold overcomes the force of its Inne as if tending to the extinguishing of the vital guest The Cough therefore is an effect of the act of Feeling for as soon as the spirit implanted in those parts is grieved with a trouble leaâ—ing on it from without the Keeper presently performs his own office For that unnamed Faculty doth readily call to it as much out of the mass of the juyce Latex as seemeth fit for it and transchangeth it into snivel which in manner of a dew it thrusts forth unto the wind-pipe whereby the injury of the Air may the lesse nakedly and immediately affect the solid pâ—â—â— it self but may break it self against the aforesaid coat of snivel But alas I when either the outward injury is greater than that which may â—â—ffer it self to be mitigated by touching or doth more deeply strike the very substance of the wind-pipe or Lungs now the Keeper stumbleth neither doth it withdraw its aid onely from the Lateâ— but doth alienate the very substance of the next nourishment and wander into a muckie glew indeed so much the nearer to the immediate nourishment of the Bowel by how much it shall come deeper unto a Colour of yellow looking ruddy and nearer to redness and having slidden from that Colour it returns into its former Colour while it shall approach from a ruddy Colour nearer to the yellowness of Chaffe and from thence at length unto the similitude of the white of an Egg. Hence on the other hand in hectick Fevers the snivel becomes bloudy and assumeth the Colour of the more dark ashes while the very substance of the nourishment it self being transchanged departs and doth there shew forth a failing integrity of life Then indeed the stinking smell of a dead Carcase beginning in the breath doth bewray the faintings or doataâ—â—s of the Archeus of the Lungs Therefore the snivel doth readily serve for a partition wall between the hurtful thing coming unto it and the forces or strength of the Inn wherefore it hath a saltness brought to it as the prick of its expulsion that it may provoke the feeling of the Wind-pipe And in the smallness of Salt snivel Coughs are dry But because old Age is likened to a defect and the Lungs are first deficient as above hence Coughs are natural to old Age as it were by property and they are scarce silent do scarce cease or are restrained woren-out nature not admitting a restauration These things of the
Bowels after the manner of Stars For although the Stars do borrow their light from the Sun yet there is in every one of them his own peculiar property and strength of acting which is far most evident in the Moon about the ebbings flowings and overflowings of the Sea Be it therefore that the arteries of the Spleen do supply the place of the Sun yet the Spleen it self hath obtained a double and native dignity peculiar to it self although the Family-service of the Heart rejoyceth in the preparing of vital blood and spirit Therefore the Spleen is the seat of the Archeus the which seeing he is the immediate Instrument of the sensitive soul doth determine or limit or dispose of the vital actions of the soul residing in the stomach For the sensitive soul doth scarce meditate of any thing without the help of the Archeus because it rejoyceth not being abstracted as doth the minde the which in its ebbing or going back by an extasie doth sometimes and without the props of the Archeus and corporal Air intellectually contemplate of many and great things Also in exorbitances of the Archeus an aversion confusion exorbitancy and indignation is administred And the sensitive soul it self being as it were the husk of the minde doth alwayes will it nill it make use of the Archeus Hence indeed all foolish madnesses some whereof onely have been made known are called praecordial or Midriffe ones and are ascribed to the place about the short Ribs the which notwithstanding do spring from the same seat and the same fountain of the soul as it were by the hurting of one onely point Also Remedies do scarce materially go without the hedges or bounds of the stomach And therefore they are rare which are brought thorow unto the spleen which thing in the difficulties of a Quartane Ague is plain enough to be seen For the immortal minde is read to be inspired into Adam by omnipotency and that without the Wedlock of the sensitive soul And that breath of life he calls a substance And therefore that is not found to be breathed into bruit Beasts Therefore the minde was first of all immediately tied to the Archeus as to its own Organ or Instrument the which therefore it could at its pleasure daily substitute a-new out of the meats being sufficiently and alwayes and perpetually alike strong And from thence to awaken the immortal life worthy of or meet for it self For truly the immortal minde being every where present did perform all the offices of life immediately by the Archeus and the which therefore doth borrow his own liveliness from the minde who also is therefore after some sort superiour to mortal things and seemed to be the foster-Child of a more excellent Monarchy than of a sublunary one These things were so before the fall of Adam But seeing that in the same day of their transgression they were made guilty of death a soul subject to death came unto them the Vicaresse and Companion of the minde To wit unto whom the minde it self straightway transferred the dispositions of the government of the Body For at first there was an immediate Wed-lock of the immortal minde with the Archeus Presently after the fall and the stirring up of the sensitive soul the minde withdrew it â—â—lf like a Kernel into the center of the sensitive soul whereto it was tied by the bond of life The minde is not nourished by foods it could chuse meats for its own Archeus and prepare them for him who now is constrained with an unwearied study to watch for his own support of nourishment And that by degrees he lesse and lesse fitly prepares and applies to himself by reason of the defective duration and power of the sensitive soul Thus therefore I ought to speak concerning the seat of the minde of the material occasion of mortality and the necessities of Diseases and distemper For truly what things are here required in the Treatise of the entrance of death into humane nature is demonstrated at large with an explication of that Text From the North shall evill be stretched out over all the Inhabitants of the Earth Therefore for a Summary The central place of the Soul is the Orifice or upper mouth of the stomach no otherwise than as the Root of Vegetables is the vital place of the same The minde sitteth in the sensitive soul whereto it was consequently bound after the fall But the Brain is the executive member of the canceipts of the soul as it sits chief over the sinews and muscles in respect of motion but in respect of sense or feeling it possesseth in it self the faculties of memory will and Imagination Therefore the stomach failing or being defective there are palenesses tremblings drith's Consumptions of the flesh and strength wringings of the Belly or Guts the Asthma or stoppage of breathing Jaundises Palsies Convulsions giddinesses of the Head Apoplexies c. For the most famous Physitians do wonder that oft-times extream defects are overcome not otherwise than by remedies pertaining to the stomach and that the evil of the stomach doth bring forth Diseases far distant from it self And the more modern Physitians are amazed that vulnerary potions should succesfully cure wounds of the joynts And that according to Paracelsus the Cancer Wolf the eating inflamed Ulcer are cured by a Drink Therefore the errour of those that cure the more outward parts that are ill-affected as if they were fundamental ones and they who do translate all healing about the head it being hurt by the lower parts proceedeth from hence by reason of the ignorance of the seat of the Soul life and government CHAP. XXXVIII From the Seat of the Soul unto Diseases 1. A greater sense is proved to be in the mouth of the Stomach than in the eye or fingers 2. The Schools do every where being unconstrained consent to the Paradox concerning the seat of the Soul although they do openly dissent therefrom 3. The wayling of those that are exorbitant through much leachery 4. The life of the stomach is chief over the other digestions 5. The Ferment that is a friend to the stomach is afterwards an enemy to all the particular shops of digestions 6. Divers Diseases are stirred up by the Ferment of the stomach being transplanted 7. The snare of Gatarrhs 8. The foundation of Diseases 9. The joynt-sickness proves that thing 10. Very many Diseases do flow centrally from the stomach which are feared and healed by the Head 11. Of what sort the co-mixture of the Character of some Diseases may be 12. How Medicines applied to or bound about the Head do operate 13. It is proved that the seat of the Soul is not in the heart it self 14. Remarkable things about the Character of Diseases 15. Why the effects of fear do vary their own effects 16. The same thing is considered for a poysonous occasional cause 17. They are appropriated to the vital light 18. An objection 19. The intent of the Author 20.
heeded that an Insect by one onely Liquor extended throughout his length doth supply the promiscuous offices of Veins Arteries Sinews and Bowels so as that a Flie as yet flies away his Head being cut off and I have seen the Head of a horned Hornet which they call a flying Stag which was cut off to live and be moved six dayes after Therefore varieties do not depend on a necessity of powers and Organs but onely because it hath well pleased the Creator to distinguish some offices and ends or bounds in the more perfect living Creatures by a blinde and mutual dependance of Organs or Instruments In the mean time the action of government doth not cease in man by reason of this dependance and reciprocal successive course of members the which I have already accused in an Insect but not a few offices are administred in the Family-government of the same without all connexion of deriving Channels which thing because it hath stood doubtful therefore the Schools have assigned the greatest glory of life and studies unto Anatomy And when as the bond or conjunction was to them unknown they therefore with the amazement of the unwonted matter presently fled unto blinde ascending vapours or humours prostrating themselves without order for a sacred Anchor of ignorance For as much as after that they had dissected at pleasure those that were strangled by the womb those that were cut off by swooning or those who died by fits of the Falling-sickness or tremblings of the heart and had found no destroyer of life in the passages to whom the guilt of the murder might be imputed they betook themselves unto blind vapours and filthy or defiled exhalations derived into the heart and head However they then at leastwise ought to admit those deadly vapours to be carried about on every side by no continued commerce of passages I willingly admit of corporeal actions whereby heat doth afterwards make that hot which is brought unto it also of a passage whereby belching doth ascend out of the stomach thorow the Weasand into the throat and nostrils in the next place that excrements do covet their own Conduits and from which that which is grievous is exorbitant or stumbleth also that the vital Spirits are ordinarily dispersed into the Body by the vassally Channels or Pipes of their own Bowels I may be accounted out of my wits unless I confess these things Again I admit of an action whereby the Ferments of the Bowels do issue into the Kitchins of the digestions as it were by certain beames nor are they carried by an oblique or crooked motion But I do not passe by a third action in mans Body which is called Influential or that of government The which although it cannot ordinarily wander without the Body yet it is abstracted from a co-binding mean For neither doth it act by a direct and Sun-like beam onely but also by another to wit by that which doth unsensibly pierce the whole juncture of the parts and in manner of the Moon whatsoever it also obliquely beholdeth that it affecteth or moveth even as already before in our new Meteors This is I say the action of government or of dependance shining or beaming and piercing every way without the bawdery of co-binding or conjoyning yet not but unto a proper object Note here that I have elsewhere said that the Beard is generated by the stones in a man whom they distinguish from a gelded person But besides this action of government I acknowledge moreover two natural ones but prodigious or monstrous ones Therefore there is a third action proper to incorporeal Spirits which for action do not require a direct beam nor a beholding of the object nor a nearness disposition or co-binding of the same but they act onely by a powerful beck for indeed they want extreamities or outmost parts whereby they may touch as well the Bodies which they pretend to move as also the meanes themselves whereby they may move Bodies with a far more efficacious influential force or virtue That action is nigh akin to that whereby the Soul doth signifie its will or beck unto its own Organs whereunto it is tied For thou hast made him O Lord a little lesse than the Angels by the obligatory bond of a Body otherwise he is more worthy whom thou more esteemest of who art not deceived in thy estimation Thou wert incarnate for the redemption of men not for the redemption of Angels There is also a certain lying action usual with wicked Spirits to wit a jugling and bewitching one The which although it contain in it a true action yet it doth not manifest a true effect But the bewitcher befools the sight while the same things appear to one which are not or which are not to another or not in the same manner He befools the eyes that he may represent false things unto them and mock them with his beck or at his pleasure It is almost just as in Fevers doatages are naturally objected which are not before the eyes and ofâ—-times also without doatage a feverish matter seemeth to be brought thorow the back-bone unto the places affected For they are impostures the participation of a blemish the dispersing of a strange tincture from a contagion of the inflowing Spirit but not a puffie dispersing of corporeal vapours That is government whereby one part obeyeth another In the joynt-sickness or Gout that doth clearly appear Because a certain indisposition of the stomach with a small Fever goes before before that any sign doth manifestly appear in the joynts So in swooning sudden death the Falling-sickness giddiness of the Head Apoplexie c. the part is played about the mouth of the stomach so that for this cause it hath deserved the name of the heart and stomach-remedies being suddenly offered they are for the most part restored And so like juggles they are made elsewhere and seem to be carried to some other place For whatsoever is written concerning vapours lifted up out of the stomach and womb they do spread forth bewitching darkness as well about the matter conveyances of passages and meanes as the government of life it self After another manner there are true actions and true effects Even as elsewhere I have distinguished in the Treatise of Catarrhs or Rheumes I must now more deeply enquire into the Paradox of the action of government For indeed in the first place it is commonly well observed that anger fear and other passions of the minde do not onely with speed diversly affect the Spirit carried in the Arteries and Sinews with the very stroak of the eye that the Cheeks do fall the Appetite perisheth the hairs stand upright the voyce sticks the Spittle foams sweats and the other excrements themselves do defile through the storm of disturbances â— But a Horse-beast affords the fragments of his hoof which being fried and taken cures the Bloudy-flux but if the Beast be a wanton Colt then his hoof is mortal to those that have
recompence the fore-going errours and defect Nevertheless although it may be lawful from the aforesaid considerations to prove a greater necessity of difficult Breathing yet at leastwise they do nothing convince why there is a straightned Breathing in our Man of sixty Years old but otherwise in a healthy person not any at all And seeing in the Man of sixty Years old the Lungs do want obstruction even as is manifest from the signs supposed it must needs be also that his defect be fetched from elsewhere especially seeing he feels in his Abdomen or lower Belly the place of his Stomack pressings together the causes of his Asthma Therefore his Asthma is from the Spleen being ill affected and that from the Duumvirate and the cause is stirred up by an ascending motion otherwise sleeping by reason of the considerations above which by the action of government doth otherwise strain a weak Lungs by aspect only no otherwise than as was declared concerning a dry Asthma whither a lurking Falling-sickness the pain of the Spleen after riding the sore shaking of the whole Body in riding c. do tend Moreover that I may give the more safe judgment whether the Lungs did labour by a passion of its own or indeed by a secondary passion I busily enquired whether he felt carnal copulation troublesome unto him and he confessed to me that before the Asthma was manifested Venus had hurt him that after the flesh lyact he felt cold in his Breast a looseness in his Muscles and fainting threatned unto him But involuntary pollutions that he experienced no such thing At length in his old age presently after a seldome carnal act that he perceived a snorter of Phlegms in his rough Artery or else silence Whence I certainly conjectured that seeing from an Infant he had retained his Spleen troubled by a Quartane-ague and falling-sickness and that the Milt is the nest of carnal Lust because in the case proposed the Duumvirate strikes the Lungs with a right Line especially being prostrated by an unequal strength that the provoking and radical cause of his Asthma was in the Spleen yet so as that the Lungs doth not altogether want blame although it labour not with the first or chief affect of the Asthma For it sufficeth that it is trodden down by an unequal strength that the Duumvitate may exercise on it its own diseasie Tyranny For if the Lungs should labour with an Asthma from a primary or first affect or moving they should continually pant for Breath and breath forth a difficult air Indeed a thin or slender poyson layes hid in the Duumvirate which is the cause of this dry Asthma ordinarily fast a sleep in it self nor awakened but by too much motion and so in climbing sooner than in descending for the considerations of the oblique Muscles of the bottom of the Belly afore-touched Neither doth that poyson strike the Heart and Lungs materially in manner of an exhalation vapour or Smoakiness but by the action of Government And seeing the Heart doth beat the pulse is inordinate and also a great and frequent panting for Breath is desired and the place between the Navil and mouth of the Stomack is vexed from one only cause stirred up and by one only motion and after a like manner it becomes undoubted that there is one only Poyson which may affect the vital power of the Heart and Lungs Then also he is vexed more grievously manifestly and cruelly every Year because an unacceptable guest abiding in the Spleen doth daily through old age become more troublesom And these things I have more strongly concluded with my self because that Asthmatical Man doth complain that for many Years his left hand was now and then astonied or stupified and that he was cold in the Palm or hollow of his Hand under the auricular or ear vein and likewise that his left shoulder did greatly pain him although laden with a light habite if he walketh the farther although but modestly For I have observed that all Splenetick persons when the Spleen begins by reason of old age to fail of its office do difficultly breath This therefore is sufficient to be spoken concerning the Asthma of the Man of sixty Years of of age one thing only I will here note to wit that his left hand in the length of the palm doth pain him through cold piercing it and likewise that his fingers are now and then benummed from the discommodities of his Spleen that that is made by the action of Government But if the Schools do command that that comes to pass by reason of blind vapours at leastwise let them strew the way whereby they may go thitherto The archer therefore of this Asthma is in the Duumvirate but his mark is the Lungs Therefore there is a two-fold Asthma a moist and a dry one That indeed hath found its name from a plenteous spitting by reaching and for the most part is made by the proper vice of the Lungs and so is continual and doth more trouble one at seasons the cold and the moist in old age weakness and things a-kin to Death But a dry Asthma is for the most part interrupted And even as it tumultuously sore shaketh the whole Body even the Teeth with a confusion of the vital Spirits it must needs be the Falling-sickness of the Lungs wherein the Lungs alone suffereth a constraining or convulsion of it self because it causeth a straining together of the Pores thereof For in this Asthma the whole Archeus is defiled in its root some part to wit the Womb or Spleen c. doth first affect the inbred Spirit of the Lungs by the action of government And therefore from an invisible and sudden immaterial storm the whole Body is sore shaken and is again suddenly restored to an unhoped for health In vain therefore are openings of the pores hitherto unknown attempted in a dry Asthma and in vain are many and easie expectoratings because they are cloakative and vain helps as many as are intent on products or effects indeed vain are the Remedies which are wont to be administred in Coughs seeing the Cough doth most far differ from a dry Asthma But a moist Asthma although it for the most part produceth the Cough that it may expectorate the produced Snivelliness yet it is severed from the Cough in the whole particular kind because it is wont to be bred from many causes For it hath either a mattery imposthume or some secret phlegm obstructing in the very bowel it self or an imprinted mark of some cold or some other injury from whence it may bring forth many muckinesses or snivels and corrupt its proper nourishment Oft-times also those muckinesses are stirred up not so much from the malady of the Bowe◠as from the weakness of the wandring keeper Although this kind of vice 〈…〉 rather bring forth a Cough than an Asthma yet they do easily happen or agree together for the unequal strength of the Lungs and obstruction thereof The
ferments of the bowels which being enslaved by snatched ferments do often and successively measure their Original To wit of a mummial ferment is made the salt of the venal blood which is to rectifie or govern our family-administration but if in the kidney it be made diuretical it is now made an Urinary salt I perceived therefore that those things are onely and truly provokers sf urine which have a faculty of increasing the urinary salt and which do make it an easie client unto themselves In the next place I perceived that not onely in the dispositive ferments of the organs but besides by reason of Magnum Oportet or the necessary remainder of the middle life in Simples themselves that there are their properties of propagating and changing salts For some things have more gross salts and those unfit for receiving the ferment of the stomack and therefore they remain unconquered Others in the next place there are which by a hostile property are contrary to the vital powers and so they enter not but for troublesome ends into the Inns of Life I perceived that the volatile salt of the spirit of Vitriol did from a ready obedience in the first action of dissolution pass into a meer Alume For if the body of Mercury shall coagulate into a white powder although it reserve nothing of the matter or vertues of Mercury for that declareth the former weight of Mercury yet it passeth into a meer Alume But if the sharpness of Vitriol shall finde in the stomack a muscilage meeting with it it melts the same neither yet therefore doth it become Aluminous So that I perceived one and the same salt to be diversly transchanged by the thing connexed with it I perceived therefore that there were some salts which would cleanse away the filths in the stomack before they were subdued by its ferment but others which did slowly open their saltnesses and that not but after another digestion and seeing they did now manifest that thing that they were diuretical and diaphoretical or sudoriferous salts so also that then they would successfully free the veins of their obstructers I moreover perceived that there are salts which do not finde their disposition but at the time of dunging and they are sharp and colical or those which are opposite to these and are connexed in oily essences But the chiefest and most successfull of salts is that which reacheth unto the utmost bound and subtility in Nature which passeth thorow all things and in acting doth alone remain immutable and the which doth at pleasure through a ready obedience resolve other things and melts and makes volatile all rebellious matter even as hot water doth snow I by and by perceived specifical savours to wit of Mace Saffron c. to be as properties or as the shop of the ultimate forms uttered by salts excelling in strength Not indeed that these savours were the proper vertue of that form but rather the fermental putrifaction of that seed proceeding unto that ultimate form For truly a savour as such is a solitary quality unprofitable for healing a witness of the putrifying of its ferment by continuance a co-operator of curing as it disposeth the Archeus as a messenger that it may descend into the knowledge of a hidden property For unless things shall smile on the Archeus by savour and odour they are not admitted within Yea purging Medicines being in their first look without savour as are Turbith Hermodactiles Jallop Mercury Stibium c. as being masked with much Sugar yet if they are taken again they cause horrour and abomination There is therefore one taste of the tongue and another in the stomack as it were the utmost part of the Archeus Therefore stomatical savours which are acceptable do denote that there is in the thing a bountiful life a-kin to ours Wherefore a Cat is more delighted with the smell of putrified and stinking fish than of Cinnamon So indeed we do oft-times well perceive that poysons are occult or hidden by reason of their specifical savour and odour horrid to our Midriffs In like manner as oft as a pleasing taste appears in a poyson I have perceived that under the same Simple there lurketh a great secret the which the poyson being repelled is born and ordained for difficult effects I afterwards perceived that besides specifical savours and the gratefulness benevolence or horrors of these there was a certain formal property issuing forth yet unperceivable by the tongue and to be comprehended by the Archeus alone The Schools are amazed when they come unto occult qualities as they do therefore call them For when they cannot ascribe their trifles to heats colds and the begged complexions of these Writers indeed do lay aside their pen and Physitians do lift up their shoulder and eye-browes because they accuse that property to be known to them in the effect but unknown in the cause and they excuse themselves of this ignorance because the searching into those properties is impossible for mans understanding the which they else had already long since enquired into As if they should say We Schools are able to determine of as much as the mind of man can search We therefore decree that no powers of things can be understood or searched into by man but those which are the first qualities of the Elements or to arise from these We confess therefore that the formal faculties are occult because unpossible to be known Certainly the Schools are exceeding clayie or earthy watery airy cloudy and fiery how ignorant do they shew themselves of their own objects and how unlike to the exercise or practice which they profess For they have enslaved their wits to sluggishness that nothing may be more acceptable unto them than to have inclined to excuse their excuses in the ignorance and impossibility of nature wherewith every one vails his own in particular For at first when the Antients saw any Disease to be cured by a specifical and appropriated Remedy they were amazed as it were at the miracle of an unwonted thing But afterwards the Schools thought it satisfaction enough to have banished their blockishnesses into a general ignorance For neither although they had distinguished causes from the elementary qualities unto them known had they therefore spoken any thing undefiled and without suffusion of the sight For whoever hath more searched out the cause of moistness in the water or of heat in the fire by a reason from a former cause than of drawing Iron in the Load-stone The elementary qualities therefore are as hidden as any other Truly in this were the Schools blinded because they have proceeded against the Doctrine of the Gospel For primitive Truth willeth that we know the Tree by its Fruits but the Schools will that the Fruit ought to be known by the Tree I will therefore shew by the Fruits in what manner we must come unto the knowledge of the Tree First of all therefore for the knowing of occult causes a certain
poysons of Minerals are bred of Salts Sulphurs and Mercuries whereby their fury is propagated by a Seed Analogical or agreeable in proportion But how evident is that thing in the company of Vegetables where those seminal perturbations and therefore also co-natural ones are by Seeds transplanted with a continued course For we may well know any kind of poysons which are reduced by the ranks of perturbations by distinguishing of them Consequently also the knowledge of specifical properties is drawn per quia or from the Effect of the Cause if they are reduced unto the certain orders of perturbations or disturbances and affections Even as more largely elsewhere concerning the Plague So indeed many things are searched into and found out we thereby by the Effects come to the Causes and being led by the hand from one knowledge to another the poysons of an Erisipelas and Dysentery being in their Tearms from the wroth of the Archeus their cure is in a Hare wherein is fear meekesse flight and an harmless life Neither is the argument of contrariety of value For first of all I have admitted of contrarieties in living Creatures and I say that the properties of those being as it were sealed in the Idea's of living Creatures are in some sort contrary in the priority of the efficient tree as the Seals of Passions do end in to this Idea And so the fruits of this tree do act no more by way of contrary Passions but from the force of a received and inbred seminal Character wherein every thing acteth according to the Talent received even as it is in it self but not by reason of a repugnant duality or disagreeing contrariety Therefore the blood wherein is the seminal product and the effecter of the fearful meekness doth mortifie the poyson which is bred from a poysonous wrothfulness For I have noted in things loves hatreds terrors and the seminal products seals Idea's and characters of these Whence I have found out the immediate Causes of many hidden Remedies But I have interpreted them to be found out and suggested by me with the truth of possible and appearing consequences These things I have spoken concerning occult or hidden properties out of the Dream that we may cease to be occult Philosophers and may follow the manifest Doctrine of the more tractable ones Now I will prosecute my Dream I perceived I say that Smallage Asparagus and whatsoever things are taken to open Obstructions have indeed a Salt of a specifical savour the which being with their middle life made the Cream of the Stomack remaineth surviving although enfeebled yet that they do obtain weak Remedies for the opening of Obstructions For truly those things which do keep the Savour of their own concrete Body under the ferment of the Stomack as Onion Garlick Mace Turpentine Asparagus c. Those I perceived even to slide along with the Superfluities because they wax soure with their specifical Savour and then do take under the Gawl the nature of a Salt and at length under the dungy ferment of the Reines do put on a Urine-provoking or diuretical faculty But whose specifical Savours do putrifie by continuance and perish with the sourness of the Cream those things I perceived to be indifferent meats but whose Savours do not plainly yeild themselves into the sourness of the Cream and do after some sort remain in their mediocrity for the Cream if it should alike on every side receive a ferment and wax soure it should easily be sharper than Vinegar those things indeed-do through the force of the Gawl easily perish in the Meseraick Veines that together with a third or mumial ferment they may be changed into Venal Blood Therefore I perceived those to reach forth feeble aides for dissolving or opening of Obstructions At length I perceived that all simple Salts of the Sea Sal gemmae Fountaines Salt Peter c. as such do depart through the Urine and Intestines and in the mean time resolve the filths or dregs in those passages and render the expulsive faculty mindful of its duty But I perceive that Salts which carry a Mineral fruit in them are Strangers to our Nature and therefore are scarce to be inwardly admitted But Salts which are a part of the composed Body as Lixivium's and Alkalies I perceived to be deprived of Seminal Virtues and to have onely an abstersive or cleansing Soapie or resolving property unless they are volatile wherein I perceived the radical Beginnings and seminal Balsams of the concrete Body to be I perceived I say that these are easily transchanged into a new fruit because they do associate themselves with and act in all things according to their inbred endowments In the next place I have perceived the corrosive spirits of Minerals to differ far from themselves being crude to resolve the Excrements adhering to the sides of the first Vessels Yet not to be altogether destitute of Dammages by reason of an occult infection of Arsenick admixed with them from their original Therefore I perceived that occult properties as they call them being seminally traduced into the Archeus by the generater or efficient do unfold the presence of their Object and a sympathetical knowledge as they are immediately entertained in the bosom of the Formes Some to wit by a motive local Blas as the Load-stone Amber Gummes Lacca the herb Turne-sole Diamond for this also even as Carabe or Amber doth attract chaffes c. do bewray themselves but other things are terminated into an alteration as poysons likewise laxatives medicines tied about the Head or Body Antidotes c. Laxatives I have peculiarly perceived to operate onely by reason of a poyson lurking within them which being once admitted inwardly nigh the entrance whatsoever they touch they do ferment do afterwards resolve the things fermented and for that very cause do putrifie the things resolved I perceived therefore that Laxatives do putrifie the vital juyces but seldom the excrements the occasional causes of Diseases For seeing they are Poysons in respect of us and not of excrements hence they rise up rather against us than against Diseases And most speedily indeed do putrifie the more crude juyce or the not yet vital blood of the Veines or the yesterdays Cream But because they scarce suppress the excrements neither do these in like manner obey them seeing every action or Blas in us doth proceed from the Spirit which maketh the assault whereof excrements are deprived hence no Physitian dareth by taking Laxatives to promise a cure But true Solutives do neither cause Putrifaction nor selectively draw forth feigned Humours neither therefore do they resolve our vitial parts or things and the which Solutives I have perceived to bewray themselves by a three fold Sign First That they draw nothing from a healthy Body neither do they move after or weaken that Body Secondly That they do not fetch any thing forth but what is offensive and therefore they do not aggravate but ease of the burden and presently
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
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
Ferments as many Varieties of Putrefactions and as many Dungs of one Bread as there are particular Kindes of Animals nourished by Bread Yea and moreover there are more Ferments for the Corruption of Bread because also Bread doth putrifie after many manners as well of its own accord as through the Odour of Places and Impressions of Agents And that which is said of Bread the same thing may be understood of other Foods The Schooles taking notice also that nothings will profit us but that which in its Root containeth the Flourish of Life therefore also they would that the Spirit of the Liver being actually natural should glisten in the Venal Blood like an Air And they have thought it to be a Vapour and therefore also they have confounded it with an Exhalation Not knowing that a Vapour is Water but that it is not a Gas a wild Spirit an uncoagulable Air and Skie Therefore they have thought that a Vapour exhaling out of the out-chased venal Blood even as elsewhere it breaths out of any lukewarm Liquors was that Spirit of the venal Blood from whence the vital Spirit should afterwards be materially framed Of which I have elsewhere profesly spoken For indeed whatsoever defcendeth into an healthy Stomack if it be concocted by the Ferment of the Spleen it waxeth sharp through the fermental and specifical Sharpness of our Species And Superfluities being first sequestred from thence it is at length turned into venal Blood Which Blood after the Bound of its Digestion is transferred into the Heart and is made Arterial Blood which in the holy Scriptures is called A ruddy or red Spirit wherein the Soul inhabiteth For it is made fit to pass over into Vital Spirit and the remainder thereof to undergo the last Digestion of the solid parts and at length without that its residence to exhale into the Air Therefore also for that very Cause it ought to be volatile and to have assumed the Disposition of a Spirit in the Heart Furthermore that Sharpness of the Stomack by Virtue of the ferment of the Gaul is converted into a Salt even as elsewhere concerning Digestions And the Actual Saltness is separated with the Urin and Sweats because it became Excrementitious But the Mass of the venal Blood it self seeing it cannot pass over into Spirit but by the Vital Ferment of the Heart I say there is made a substantial Derivation or Translation of the Venal Blood into Arterial Blood and of the Arterial Blood into Spirit wholly throughout the whole without any residence and separation of heterogeneal Parts because the Excrements are first withdrawn from thence and the Substance of the Heart is restless being continually busied about this Office of Transmutation that it may uncessantly effect Arterial Blood out of the Venal Blood and of this vital Spirit So that a certain natural Spirit doth not fore-exist in the venal Blood from whence as it were of the matter whereof vital Spirit may be made But the whole venal Blood it self if there shall be need is made Arterial Blood and from thence â—ital Spirit Therefore the making of Venal Blood in the Liver and the making of Arterial Blood in the Heart do differ For one is a true transmutation of the Chyle into venal Blood and the generating of a new Being But the other is an extenuating of the Venal Blood into a volatile Arterial Blood and into a Vital Air For venal Blood is made with a thickning of it self and with a Separation of the liquid Excrement or Urin. But the Vital Spirit is made with a melting of that which is thickned and an Aiery extenuation thereof to wit whereunto the Arterial Blood affords a Degree or Mean I confess indeed that the Spirit of Wine is snatched as a Spirit into the Arteries as a certain simple Symbolizing and previously disposed thing that it may easily passover into vital Spirit but the Schooles do from hence conclude nothing for their Spirit of the Liver Therefore let the venal Blood be the Spirit of the Liver it self coagulated and the fore-existing Matter of the Vital Spirits Which Spirit indeed hath the Nature together with the Power of a Body that it may be Spiritualized Therefore even as from the Ferment of the Heart the venal Blood is made arterial Blood and a volatile Spirit So in the Arteries as it were in the Stomack of the Heart and the Ferment of the Heart being drawn the Arterial Blood it self passeth over into the Common-wealth of Spirits Yea the secondary Humours also or the immediate Nourishments of the solid Parts are by degrees made Volatile least they should leave a remaining Residence behind them but they make an egress with a total transpitation of themselves The Heart therefore by its Ferment frameth arterial Blood out of venal Blood the which by the same endeavour it so fits and extenuates that moreover so much of vital Spirits is made out of the arterial Blood in the Arteries as it were in its Stomack as the Grosness and resisting Substance of the arterial Blood in so small a space wherein it is agitated or wrought in the Arteries permits to be made And there is well nigh a single Action while the venal Blood passeth over into arterial Blood and the Arterial Blood into Spirit Because they differ not in their Shops and likewise in the Degrees of Digestion Extenuation and Subtilizing For as much of arterial Blood is bred of venal Blood and as much of vital Spirits is made out of the arterial Blood by the same Feâ—ment of the Heart as is needful for every one of them and the Faculties of concocting are able to make Neither is it sufficient also to have known that the venal Blood doth ascend into arterial Blood but that the arterial Blood passeth over partly into vital Spirit and partly departeth into the Nourishment of the solid Parts Also that at length of vital Spirit it is made animal and the which receiveth an ultimated or utmost Determination in its Nerves so indeed that it is made visive or visible Spirit in the optick Nerves or Sinews of Sight but being exorbitant from thence and being derived into the Tongue it should be plainly unprofitable for tasting even as also the Aanimal Spirits the Authors of touching are unfit for Motion and those of this for them But moreover it behoves us to have known the Marrow of the vital Spirit For indeed of the Sharpe Chyle partly venal Blood and partly a Urin and sweat is made But that excrementous Saltness of the Urin is a volatile and Salt Spirit the which being co-fermented with Earth at length a Salta-peter is formed wherefore that Salt Spirit is excrementous The venal Blood indeed by Distillation shews unto us also a saltish Spirit plainly volatile not any thing distinguishable in Smell as neither in Tast from the Spirit of the Urin Yet essentially different in this that the Spirit of the Salt of Venal Blood cureth the Falling-sickness but the
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
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
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
Excitation is as it were by a waking sleepiness by a Catochus and therefore is imperfect in regard of the manner Evil in regard of the end Obscure in regard of the Meanes and Wicked in regard of the Author Nor doth the Turn-coat-impostor suffer that the Witch should know this Power to be natural unto her self whereby he may hold her the more fast bound to himself or least the exercise of so noble a Power being stirred up should incline otherwise than to Wickedness therefore he commands the Rains himself neither hath the Witch known how to stir it up at her own pleasure who hath wholly prostrated her self to the Will of another Tyrant Also Man himself is able through the Art of the Cabal to cause an excitement in himself of so great a Power at his own Pleasure and these are called Adeptists or Obtainers whose Governour also is the Spirit of God That this same Magical Virtue is also in the more outward Man to wit in the Flesh and Blood Yet after its own and far more feeble manner yea not only in the external Man but also proportionally in Bruits for so the Book of Genesis minds us that the Soul of Bruit-Beasts is in their Blood and upon this account it deservedly enrouls the same out of the Bill of our Food and perhaps in all other things Seeing all particular things contain in them a delineation of the whole Universe and upon that account at least the Antients have seriously signified unto us that there is a God that is an All in All that the Magick of the more outward Man hath need of exciting no less than that of the more inward Man neither that Satan doth stir up any other Magick in his Imps than what belongs to the more outward Man For in the more inward bottom of the Soul is the Kingdom of God whereto no Creature hath access We have further taught that there is a connexion between things spiritually acting and that Spirits as they combate with Spirits as in example of the Witch So also we have shewn by Magnetical Examples and proper Reasons for the fascination and binding up of Soules that they hold a friendly correspondence even as concerning David and Jonathan c. Last of all we have endeavoured to shew that Man predominates over all other corporeal Creatures and that by his natural Magick he is able to tame the Magical Virtues of other things which predominacy others have falsly and abusively transferred on the authority of Verses or Charmes and Enchantments By which Hierarchy or holy Dominion we have sufficiently and over-sufficiently cleered up that those Effects whatsoever they be are wrought which those who not but too rustically and corporeally Phylosophize have referred unto the dominion of Satan It must needs be that those who were ignorant of all things that have been spoken should as yet doubt of many things therefore we determine to repeat all things First of all whereby those things may become the more clear which we have spoken above concerning the Duel of Spirits or their mutual friendly Conspiracy It is worth our labour to define the Weapons of Spirits and the Common-wealth of the same Wherefore we must seriously note the Example of a Woman great with Child who if she hath with violence of desire conceived a Cherry in her Mind the Foot-step thereof is presently imprinted on her Young in that Part whereon the great-bellied Woman shall lay her hand Nor is it indeed only an idle Image or Spot of a Cherry but that which flowers and grows to Maturity with the other Trees in their season to wit the Signatures of Colours and Figures being changed Truly high and sacred is the force of the Microcosmical Spirit which without the Trunck of a Tree brings forth a true Cherry that is Flesh ennobled with the Properties and Power of the more inward or real Cherry by the Conception of Imagination alone from whence we understand two necessary Consequences The First is that all the Spirits and as it were the Essences of all things do lay hid in us and are born and brought forth only by the working Phantasie of the little World The Second is that the Soul in conceiving generates a certain Idea of the thing conceived the which indeed as it before lay hid unknown and as it were Fire in a Flint So by the stirring up of the Phantasie there is produced a certain real Idea and a quiddative or some particular essential Limitation of a Cherry which is not a naked quality but something like unto a Substance hanging in suspense between a Body and a Spirit that is the Soul That middle Being is so spiritual that it is not plainly exempted from a Corporeal Condition since the Actions of the Soul are limited on the Body and the inferiour orders of Faculties depending on it nor yet so corporeal that it may be enclosed by Dimensions the which we have also related to be only proper to a seminal Being This Ideal Entity therefore when it fals out of the invisible and intellectual World of the Microcosme it puts on a Body and then also it is first inclosed by the Limitations of Place and Numbers The Object of the Understanding is in it self a naked and pure Essence not an accident by the consent of Practical that is mystical Divines Therefore this Protheus or transformable Essence the Understanding doth as it were put on and cloath it self with this conceived Essence But because every Body whether External or Internal hath its making in its own proper Image The Understanding knowes or discerns not the Will loves and wills not the Memory recollects not but by Images or Likenesses The Understanding therefore put on this same Image of its Object and because the Soul is the simple Form of the Body which turns her self about to every Member therefore neither can the acting Understanding have two Images at once but first one and anon another Therefore the whole Soul descends upon the Intellect or Understanding and the comprehended Image being as yet tender and forms this Knowledge of the Essence into a persisting Image or Ideal Entity or Beingness The Mind being defiled hath slidden into the Indignation of God and because the same mind was at once polluted the nobleness of its former Condition being put off Death found an entrance not indeed by the command of the Creator but from the degeneration of Man being slidden into filthiness and degenerate from himself by reason of the same Ideal Entity being now put on which Filthiness seriously and diligently springing up even in all particular Sins it is conveâ—ient to extenuate or consume by Repentance here or in the World to come This Entity therefore being as yet in the Understanding is but lightly imprinted neither doth it find a consistence any where but in a Woman with Child the which in us Men it doth not obtain but by the Will that is the Understanding doth alwayes procreate an Entity
also conceived it within and doth not that Knowledge presuppose a Phantasie proper to its kinde for so some Simples induce an Alienation of the Mind but some others a Madness or maddish Fury not indeed through a Destruction of the Brain or a dispersing of its Spirits for then at least the Strength and most strong Faculties of the mad or furious Person would not remain but by a strange kind of and furious Phantasie of those Simples being introduced which being victress subdues ours and keeps the same a Servant it self for a time as in Doatage the Phrensie c. Sometimes also perpetually as in lunatick and mad or Bedlam-persons Doth not the Madness of Dogs thus pass over into Man For the maddish Phantasie of Fury is transplanted into the Spittle of their Tongue which as victress soon triumphs over the Blood of that Animal which the Skin being opened it shall never so slenderly touch Then indeed the antient Phantasie of the whole Blood gives place and will it nill it assumes an hydrophobial Phantasie or an estranged Imagination of the fear of Water From whence at length comes a Binsical Death that is from the sole Sickness of the Mind to wit the magical Virtue of the Dog being exalted and excited or stirred up above the non-excited but drowsie Imagination of the Animals Plainly after the same manner is the Phantasie of the Tarantula imprinted by a slender stroak of his Sâ—ing and the Wounded or Stung Persons being presently alienated in their Mind fall a dancing and leap hugely yet the Venom of the Tarantula differs from that of a mad Dog in this that this acts by a Magical Power being stirred up and so by the Magick of a true name But the other by a drowsie Magical Faculty even as the same difference is manifest in Wolâ—s-bane and other destructive Plants which kill with a very small quantity because no living Creature Secures or defends himself against a mad Dog because there is in him a binding magical Power against which Teeth or Horns do not prevaile which cannot be said of the Poyson of the Tarantula In the External Man therefore even as in his fellow Animals the magical Power is as it were laid asleep neither can it be stir'd up only in Man although indeed much more easily in him but in some living Creatures his Consorts Yea neither is it sufficient that Spirits do observe this Law of Concord and single Duel with Spirits but moreover there lurks a certain Spirit in the whole Universe which we call the great Magnal or Sheath which being the Pander of Sympathy or Fellow Feeling and Dyspathy or difficulty of suffering doth exist as a Communicater and Promoter of Actions and by reason whereof Magnetism or Attraction is by a Vehicle or Instrument of conveyance extended to an Object at a distance That thing is proved to our sight For if thou shalt place a slender Straw upon the Cord or String of a Lute hanging with a doubtful extremity or with an equal weight in the Air like a Ballance and shalt strike the like string of another Lute that is aloof off when the Tunes do co-agree in the eighth Note thou shalt see the Chaff to tremble but when the Tunes or Notes agree in a Unisone then otherwise the string of the quiet Lute being impatient of delay quavets or hops a little skips for joy and shakes off the hated Straw by its jumping Shall here also Satan be the Fidler in their esteem Which Straw doth not happen to leap although all the Strings of the other Lutâ— be unanimously strongly and near at hand struck upon Nor also doth the naked Tune constrain the other and quiet string to leap a little for then every Note would effect that but it is only the Spirit which is the common Pander inhabiting in the middle of the Universe which being the faithful executer and assistant of natural Actions derives promotes and also causeth the Sympathy Why are we so sore afraid of the name of Magick Seeing that the whole action is Magical neither hath a thing any Power of Acting which is not produced from the Phantasie of its Form and that indeed Magically But because this Phantasie is of a limited Identity or Sameliness in Bodies devoid of choice therefore the Effect hath ignorantly and indeed rustically stood ascribed not to the Phantasie of that thing but to a natural Property they indeed through an Ignorance of Causes substituting the Effect in the room of the Cause When as after another manner every Agent acts on its proper Object to wit by a fore-feeling of that Object whereby it disperseth its Activity not rashly but on that Object only to wit the Phantasie being stirred after a sense of the Object by dispersing of an ideal Entity and coupling it with the Ray of the passive Entity This indeed hath been the magical Action of natural things yet the Magick and Phantasie that is properly so named is in Creatures enlarged or ennobled with a Power of choice I will go thorow them according to their ranks The formal Properties therefore which issue from the Forms of the three Principles Salt Sulphur and Mercury or Salt Fat and Liquor from whence every Body is composed and again resolved into the same and the Mercury or Liquor is so often diverse as there are Species or particular kinds of things let the same Judgment be of the Salt and Sulphur Those Properties I say flow from the Phantasies of these Forms the which because they are exceeding corporeal and do as yet stick in the Bosom of the Elements therefore they are called formal and occult Properties by reason of the Ignorance of the Forms which otherwise are magical Effects propagated from the Phantasie of the said Forms but they are ignoble and very corporeal ones yet abundantly satisfying the ends which they have respect unto Of this kind are the subductive or loosening Property of the Belly the sleepifying Property c. in things There are also besides these other more noble Properties arising from the Phantasie of the Forms of the mixt Body and those of this sort are in the whole composed Body by reason of its Form as the Magnetism of the Load-stone the Virtue of Tinctures Likewise all specifical and appropriated Things or Medicines which happen by reason of the whole homogeneal Mixture or of the Form of any one entire part but not of some one principle alone such as those are which are seated in the Flesh or Trunck Root Leaves and Fruit and not in any one of the three Principles being separated there-from Likewise Antimony as long as it remaines in its Form obtaineth most excellent Properties the which it never attaineth in its Principles and these are also from a corporeal Bosom and therefore the spiritual Magick is also hidden in these and is thought to be due only to Nature by unfitly distinguishing this in opposition to Magick So the Leaf of the Rose hath another kinde of
Judge be taken away from the society of these according to the Law of God For if the Work be limitted unto any outward Object that work the Magical Soul never attempts without a medium or mean therefore it makes use of the Nail or Arrow aforesaid Now this being proved that man hath a power of acting per nutum or by his beck or of moving any Object remotely placed It hath been also sufficiently confirmed by the same natural Example that that efficacy was also given unto man by God and that it naturally belongs unto him It hath been hitherto an absurdity to have thought that Satan hath moved altered and transported any thing and to have applied Active things to Passive by local motion onely per nutum since indeed they doubt not that he himself was the first moover in the said motions that by those outmost parts or extreamities whereby he toucheth he can snatch away transferre or any way move at least an aiery body which they feign yet wanting a Soul Absurd I say it is to think that Satan since his Fall hath retained a Magical dignity whereby he acteth any subjects by beck alone because that was once his natural gift but that the same natural faculty was withdrawn from man as denied unto him and given unto the Devil the most despicable of Creatures But if there are any such effects proceeding from man they have also attributed them at least to a suppliant or servile compact with him Open your eyes for Satan hath hitherto promiscuously gloried in your so great ignorance as if thou didst make his Altar smoak with the Incense of Glory and Dignity and didst extract thy own natural Dignity as pulling out thine own Eyes and offering them up unto him We have said that happily every Magical faculty lyes dormant or asleep and hath need of excitement which is perpetually true if the object whereon it is to act be not most nearly disposed if its internal phantasie doth not wholly conform to the impression of the agent or also if the patient be equal in strength or superiour to the agent therein But on the contrary where the Object is plainly and most nearly disposed as Steel is for the receiving of a Magnetism or plainly weak and conscious to it self as the Murderer Adulterer Thief Witch are then the Patient without much stirring up the alone phantasie of the more outward Man being drawn out to the work and bound up to any suitable mean yeelds to the Magnetism The Magitian I say always makes use of a Medium for so unless a Woman with child shall stretch forth her hand unto her Leg Fore-head or Buttocks the Young will not be marked in the Leg Fore-head or Buttocks For so the words or forms of Sacraments do alwayes operate Because from the work performed But why Exorcisms or Charms do not alwayes operate the defect is not in God but onely because the unexcited mind of the Exorcist or Charmer renders the words dull or uneffectual Therefore no man is a happy or succesful Exorcist but he who hath known how to stir up the Magical virtue of his mind or can do it practically without Science Perhaps thou wilt say That in the Armary Unguent or Weapon Salve there was obtained no other Magnetical Virtue than what was begotten by the Phantasie of the Compounder Thou errest Yet if that should be granted thou wouldest be never the better thereby because the effect should thereupon happen not to be ascribed to Satan For so the Unguent would be Magnetical or attractive not from a Phantasie inbred in it but from that which was imprinted on it from without by the compounder since there can be no nearer Medium of the said Magnetism than humane blood with humane blood Truly the blood alone as the most disposed subject should be sufficient for the Oyntment and the other Simples would be in vain which is false especially Bulls blood and honey where there is a sufficient cure without the blood of a Bull by the Weapons of the Wounder being bathed in the Unguent without being distained by the blood of the Patient which is false Lastly the Magnetism of the Unguent should be plainly general because the person compounding it had intended by his Phantasie to effect an impression too liberal wandering uncertain and unsold for all Wounds of man and also of all bruit Beasts What if he shall not intend the Cure of a Dog Shall therefore the Oyntment not be for Curing the Wound of a Dog Fie What hath Bole Armeniack what Lynseed-Oyle what Honey and lastly what hath the blood of a Bull of disposition to the Wound of a Horse or Man that on those as on a proper mean and not on any other the Phantasie of the compounder should be imprinted the which notwithstanding if they shall be banished out of the composition they will render unguent Barren and void of Efficacy The natural Phantasie therefore of the Unguent is the cause of the Magnetism or attractive influence and the proper cause of the Cure and not the Imagination of the Compounder Behold Thou hast our that is a Christian Phylosophy not the Dotages or idle Dreams of Heathens Beware I beseech thee that thou for this cause cast not me also into censure who hast been too ready in thy censures I am thine and a Roman Catholick whose mind hath been to ponder of nothing which may be contrary to God and that may be contrary to the Church I know that I was not born for brawlings or contentious debates not to Write the Commentaries or Patronages of another Therefore what I knew I was willing to divulge abroad in the liberty of a Phylosopher I shall as yet subjoyn this one Clause Whosoever attributes a natural Effect so created by God so bestowed on the Creatures unto the Devil he estrangeth the honour due to the Creator and reproachfully applies the same unto Satan The which under thy favour I shall speak it if thou shalt well recal under thy Anatomy thou wilt find to be express Idolatry I beg of God our most Clementious Father that he would be favourable or merciful to the Faults which from humane not stubborn ignorance and frailty we have contracted Amen There are three bear record in Heaven the Father the Word and the holy Spirit and these three are onely one and presently speaking of the humanity of Christ There are three that bear record in Earth the Blood the Spirit and the Water and these three are onely one We therefore who have the like humanity it s no wonder if we contain Blood and a Spirit of a co-like Unity and that the action of the Blood is meerly spiritual Yea therefore in Genesis it is not called by the Etymology of Blood but is made remarkable by the name of a Red Spirit Depart thou therefore whoever thou art from thy stubbornness and acknowledge thou another Spirit in the Blood besides the evil Spirit unlesse thou canst go
it leave any dreg of it self behind But the earth becomes volatile in the urine from the putrified Ferment A dungy putrefaction therefore growing in the urine to wit in the drosse or liquid dung that was brought thither it sometimes obeyeth the Spirit the Coagulater namely as oft as a mutual action of them both is stirred up from the ferment of putrefaction I have distilled a Duelech that was cut out of a man by himself neither have I extracted any thing from thence besides a stinking spirit of urine and a yellow Crystal and also an Oyl such as is drawn out of dryed urine But that which remained unto me in the bottom was a black scorched brickle and un-savoury earth Therefore the Writers of the first Beginnings of Chymical Medicine deceive their Readers as many as from the distillations of the stone of man and its preparations do boast of the Ludus of Paracelsus or of the Prince of stone-breaking Medicines For they have a desire to write meer and a great many lyes Neither am I sufficiently angry at the Impudence and rashnesse of these men in a matter of so easie an Experiment especially when as any one might have fitly known that thing from the shavings of the Urinal Surely there is not so much as the least of those things extracted out of the stone of man which those Instructers of Children do rashly write It is certain in the mean time that by the means of putrefaction not a few things are made volatile which before their Closets being not unloosed were more straightly bound up For so also Vegetables afford the more unmixt or meer waters to the Stiller than themselves yet being not putrified We perish not therefore by the stroak of one onely Weapon since all particular ones which are mild if they grow but a little exorbitant do fashion new Calamities in us For the substance of the Kidneys being the hardest of all the Bowels and destitute of finewes and Arteries was the fittest for a dungy Ferment of the urine whereunto if the Ferment even but of a fore-threatned putrefaction in the urine shall have accesse a speedy inclination into the Disease of the stone is imprinted on the trans-sliding urine For truly the odour onely of the fore-named putrefaction in the urine stirs up a heterogeniety or diversity of kind which was before hidden therein For presently the urine which lighted into a foul Urinal becomes of a very stinking smell and far sooner bewrayes the sand that was hidden in it than that which otherwise was received in a clean Glass For I have shewn by an undoubted experiment that even the urine of healthy persons affixeth Duelech on Urinals in the form of graines or scales And that not presently after making water that they do forthwith settle but they are affixed some houres after To wit while the urine now unfolding the Ferment conceived in the Kidney enters into the way of corruption In those that have the stone of the Reines indeed the urine receiveth a putrefactive Ferment which otherwise is not communicated to the urine of healthy Folk a dungy Ferment being otherwise sufficient for it Furthermore it is not necessary that an actual putrefaction be in the Kidney that it may stir up a sand within Even as neither doth the urine in Urinals as yet stink while it now freed it self from the sand but a sore-threatned or beginning putrefaction is sufficient that the spirits may freely enjoy their right and mutually their Bolts being cast off act on each other But I suppose that to be a sore-threatned putrefaction which is onely seminally in the Archeus of the Reines although not unfolded For otherwise if there were but the least actual putrefaction in the Kidney a slow Fever would accompany that putrefaction but of how small a quantity soever it shall be it easily takes root within the urine whereinto indeed a uriny-Ferment hath already pierced the which as it is in it self a dungy one so also it is a putrified one For there is an easie association of putrefaction and of an excrement in a Fermental co-resemblance Whosoever therefore shall endeavour that his urine may not stonifie within let him seasonably provide that it do not unseasonably wax stony within him For therefore there are some Medicines which tinge the urine and Kidneys with a gratefull odour and for this cause are kind to their Organs For as they are Diureticks or provokers of urine they obtain a passage unto the Kidneys and immingle themselves with the urine For whatsoever things through an ocult or manifest quality have deserved the surname of Stone-break do indeed cleanse and wipe off and for this cause do comfort the Kidneys being threatned with putrefaction but surely they do not melt or resolve any thing of the sand Such as are sharpish Fountaines Diuretical stones and herbs which by washing off and wiping away do banish the sands and thinner clots but do not dissolve them and much lesse do they restrain the new Beginnings of the stone Because they being destitute of a Balsame and the seasoning of a gratefull Odour do notwithstanding not appease the filthinesses of the putrefactive Ferment however dull they as yet may be For even as the re-budding of a plant is not taken away by the lopping off its branches but by rooting of it up so neither is the stone of the Kidneys cured by thrusting out of the stone There is not any thing done that is worthy of Reward If a person that hath the Falling-sicknesse be raised up from his fall if he be not also freed from a Relapse for the future Yet this top of perfection or healing the Schooles have not any thing touched at yea they have rather despaired thereof because they saw that the contracted blemish of the affect of the stone did oft-times Tyrannize on the posterity as being translated by an hereditary right For when Physitians had seen one that was cut for the stone of the Bladder to have been afterwards free there-from all his life-time they promising to themselves that the same thing would happen for the future in the stone of the Reines concerning a Relapse they being not any thing carefull of to morrow perswaded the sick to hope well they themselves at least well hoping that they should receive money at the next Markets of its return For they supporting themselves by blockish principles must now and then use onely the more mild Laxatives that they may brush off the foregoing lump or rubbish of the stone For indeed they think that they do wipe away all matter of the stone out of the stomach and in speaking seriously They boast that by their blessed Looseners they have provided for a Cloakative Cure if the sick party were but readily obedient in a repeated going to stool and the observed Rules of Dyet But unto these Trifles I have abundantly given satisfaction in the Book of Fevers For we are nourished of the same things whereof we
the aforesaid poyson and also confound or dissolve the ice of the foregoing winter with a new Spring And although that poyson be fermental in respect of the poyson and therefore also from a formal quantity of it self it endeavours to creep into all places afterwards yet it is not apt as to be co-fermented equally with the spirit by reason of the force and fighting nobleness of the Subject into which it is received and the drowsie sluggishness of its icie disposition For such is the difference in contagious things that the poysons of some things do voluntarily or by art depart and are separated from and forsake the bodies infected by them But of others that there is no voluntary division to be hoped for for the ice of the Leprousie doth the rather besiege the more outward parts because it is an icie malady and is thrust forth abroad by the in-bred heat for therefore it more defiles the Standers by towards their outward parts than their more inward bowels which are co-touching with them in the root in the unity of life But no Physitian ever cured the Leprosie which obtained not the Liquor Alkahest The which since it is of a most tedious preparation none although skilful in art shall come unto the obtainment thereof whom the most High shall not by a special gift conduct thither For he must needs be chosen and endowed by a particular priviledge if he ought to obtain that Medium or Mean To wit whereby as well sensitive as unsensitive sublunary bodies are equally pierced even into the seminal and intrinsecal root of their first Being therefore also it subdueth and changeth all things under it without a re-acting of the Patient and impoverishing of the Agent For otherwise it is vain whatsoever hope the Leprosie shall perswade it self of from elsewhere Therefore in times past the curing of those that had the Leprosie was granted for a sign unto the Messias alone My first born daughter being now five years old became leprous and that more and more and at length wan Ulcers and horny white scales grew throughout her whole body But then the image of the Virgin Lady newly shewed it self by many Miracles in our City famous for the Hospital of St. James The Girle therefore being now seven years of age desired to go to the place and the Grandmother with her Nephew hasten thither and she returns after an hour sound and forthwith the scales fall off Presently after a year the same Leprosie suddenly returned And I confessed my self guilty that I had concealed the honour of the Lady Virgin Therefore my little daughter returnes with her Grandmother unto the sacred Image and she again returned healed and so afterwards remained But I fearing the return of the Leprosie divulged the Miracle and by a publick Writing confessed the favour and clemency of God unto whom be all praise and glory with the sanctifying of his name for ever I have already said that sensation or the act of feeling according to the mind of Hippocrates doth as well effectively as susceptively or receivingly consist in the Animal spirit But because all such spirit is dead and a dead Carcass unless it be illustrated from the life it self And because life it self in that spirit is not proper unto it and unseparable from it but life is from the vital or animal spirit I now confound them both in name it being distinct in the whole subject the which elsewhere more manifestly concerning long life therefore first of all it is manifest that that vital spirit doth not immediately feel but that it is the very life it self which doth the more nearly and immediately feel and grieve or pain in that spirit For indeed I have demonstrated in the Treatise Concerning the Forms of Things that the life or form of things is a certain light a special Creature shining in its own Inne throughout all the Guardians of the parts yet that it is not a substance nor an accident however by reason of the so great Novelty of the thing the School of the Peripateticks may crack Which Paradox I have demonstrated by Mathematical demonstration and Mechanically in the book of the Elements And so I here assume it as being elsewhere sufficiently proved I will therefore speak much more nearly than Hipprocrates concerning Sensation and Sense That if Sensation or the act of Feeling were in times past said to be made with a passion of the body wherein the spirit making the assault receiveth the impression of the thing to be felt and the which therefore is abusively called the very Sensible Species it self We now understand that this impression is in one only moment and in the same point â—sinuated into the life existing in it To wit under which Insinuation Application and Suiting Sensation doth then first arise being made in the life it self and by the life Of which life indeed Sense it self is an unseparable property And seeing Life is not of a body nor proper to a body nor lastly of the Off-spring of corporeal properties but is a light comming into it by the gift of the Creator beyond the condition of the Elements and Heavens Hence also Sensation is not of bodies nor of matter nor of a solution of the Con-tinual c. But plainly a vital property proceeding from the very trunk of life As also it is not sufficient that there be an Eye a Mean a vital Spirit that Seeing may be made but moreover there is required an application of the visual spirit unto the Life and therefore the effect of seeing however altogether ordinary doth exceed the whole Elementary nature because it contains the image and co-resemblance of the Life it self for that Seeing Tasting Smelling Touching c. are the immediate effects of the Life sporting it self or playing thorow its own Organs For in all sense it must needs be that the allurements of the spirits and the Species of things perceived are fitted immediately to the life if sensible acts do at any time happen But indeed in a matter so difficult and so far separated from the common Doctrine grant me Reader that I may as yet talk more nearly with thee For thou hast perceived that it is not sufficient unto Sense and Sensation to have have said that the Brain and likewise the Sinew is the immediate Organ of Sense nor also that it is enough to have implored for this purpose the inflowing spirit yea or the spirit it self implanted in the parts as it is cherished from the influxing vertue of the brain or nerves unless unto all these the life shall concurre For Sensation it self is of so great a weight that it easily exceeds the compass of all Sublunary things together with the whole power of the Heavens and Elements Therefore since thou hast already perceived that I will speak further For what things I have now spoken concerning the Life I have shewen in my whole book Of long Life whereunto I dismiss thee for speedy
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
is present that is while that formal Animal and Sensitive Light is kindled even as elsewhere concerning the Birth of Formes believe also that the immortal mind is present and that it doth wholly sit immediately in the Sensitive Soul as being associated or joyned thereunto Not indeed that it sits in a certain corner bowel prison of the Body or shop of the spirits But I conceive that the mind is throughout the whole Sensitive Soul and that it pierceth this Soul nor that it doth exceed the Sphear thereof as long as it lives and in this respect that it is subject unto many importunities of circumstances But in death the mind is separated because the Sensitive Soul it self departs into nothing as it were the light of a Candle which things surely were here to be fore-tasted of before the explication of Sensation Pain therefore as that which is chiefly to be felt shall open unto us the way For it is a hurtful and sorrowful Sensation or act of feeling conceived in the vital Spirit being by life implanted in the sensitive soul And in speaking most nearly Sense or Feeling is a Possion of the sensitive soul conceived in the spirit of Life For nothing can be glad sorrowful or in pain besides the soul it self And so that Sense seeing it is the first conception of Pain or well-pleasing it is by all means made primarily in the Soul And therefore Sense represents unto me nothing besides that power of the Soul of conceiving and judging passively of external Objects rushing on it Therefore seeing that these Acts do depend on the Soul the whole History whereof is blind unto us it is no wonder that it hath been hitherto nought but carelesly treated by the Schools concerning the Soul and Sensation Because they are those who have skipt over the Enquiries of far more manifest things as untouched yea through sloath they have neglected them by subscribing to the dreams of Heathens In Pain therefore the irrational Sensitive Soul is first or chiefly sorrowful is mad is angry is perplexed doth itch or fear and as it is in the fountainous root of all vital actions it naturally moves and contracts not only the Muscles but also any of the parts unto the tone of its own passions Sense therefore is the action of external Objects that are to be perceived the which while they are conceived in the Soul it self also suffers no less than life its companion than the animal spirit and the rest of the guard But the immortal mind suffers not any of these things in its own substance but only in its Subject Seat Inn to wit the Sensitive Soul Otherwise all voluntary things at once are too invalid so as to be able to affect an immortal Being which is Eternal in its future duration But it is as yet a very small matter that the Sensitive Soul doth suffer by sensible Objects unless it self be made as it were hostile to it self while aâ— impatient it is exorbitant or disorderly For it begins to act while it is provoked and doth suffer by sensible Objects For truly it shakes the vital Spirit and the whole body and at length as prodigal it disperseth the vital furniture and breeds diseases on it self and hastens its own death That even from hence also the Proverb may be verified That none is more hurt than by himself as the Sensitive soul is a meer act And so that it being once spurred up by sensible conceptions for it is wholly irrational brutal wrongful and greedy of desire it leaps over into furies and symptomatically or furiously shakes all things Therefore sensible Objects are the occasions of hurts and diseases But the sensitive Soul well perceiving the same occasions nor being willing to suffer them diversly stirs up its own Ministers and by Idea's imprinted on them estrangeth them from their Scope or Purpose From whence afterwards proceed various seeds and Off-springs of Diseases The Soul therefore undergoes and suffers the aforesaid affects from the Object that is to be felt from whence it being disturbed or tossed by the pricks of Sensations doth act and suffer lastly as being prodigal it in a rage disperseth its own family-order of Administration And while it perceiveth sweet plausible helpful Objects and those things which are grateful unto it self it is not in this its acts of feeling differing from the Judgement whereby it feeleth hurtful corrosive pricking rending brusing Objects not but by accident which is plainly external to the life it self From whence it is easily discerned that Sense is made by the Judgement of the sensitive Soul being brought upon a conceived sensible object it altering at first by it self according to the Sensation conceived and then it conveigheth it further unto another imaginative Judgement which is separated from the sensitive Judgement no otherwise than as Sense and Phantasie or Imagination do disagree in their Faculties but not in their Subject Spare me ye Readers if I attribute all material perturbations and affections immediately to the sensitive soul and to the spirits its guardians but not unto the organs of those For there are some tickling things which by their itching and itch-gumme do stir up laughter and a small leaping in some which in others do not move the least of these For oft-times the Soul is inwardly overclouded with a natural Sensation and is also sadned the Subject thereof being scarce known yea it elsewhere doates And elsewhere the sensitive soul becomes unsensitive as in those that have the Falling Sicknesse for a time but in the Palsey oft-times for Life at leastwise in Organs that are hurt although as yet alive But in many without Sense Judgement and Reason although the animal spirits do issue forth and being diffused into the habit of the body do move and in the mean time do otherwise draw hurtful impressions So the life and that sensitive soul have their own drowsinesse madnesse and trouble within although nothing shake and burden them from without because seeing that in sleep also there is its own foolish Lust or Desire Hunger Thirst Fear Agony and a wondrous dissolute liberty of irrational vain dreams And moreover friendly things are presently changed into mixt neutral or hostile ones as the Archeus which never keeps Holiday or is idle doth of sweet things make bitter and corroding ones For the Soul as I have said conceiveth of sensible things by the means of a Guard and Clients unto whom she her self as present is an an Assistant and by applying those objects unto her self stirs up Sorrow Love Fear c. To wit of which Idea's she sealingly forms the Characters or Impressions in her own Archeus whereby she changeth all things acording to the Image seminally proposed unto her self Which Character being through a bedewing of the Sensitive Soul made partakers of Life and Sense do first cloath the seminal body of the Archeus from whence at length most prompt faculties or abilities for action do spring And there is
readily burnt But let us suppose dead flesh to be first made lukewarm and to be in the same degree of heat no otherwise than if it did live yet it is not therefore easily scorched or burnt nor after the same manner wherein live-flesh is Therefore the aforesaid evasion hath no place Wherefore seeing that from the agent of a single degree of heat divers operations do happen in the same subject of flesh being distinct only in life Therefore it must needs be that the life is the only cause of that diversity which is to say that the life is the proper agent of Sennsation in Sesitive Creatures and that the life is such a cause which besides hath a power of making burnings or scorchings in live bodies and in the matter of Medicine yea also of resisting or not Wherefore I find Life to be the first or chief and immediate Efficient of Sense and pain For truly the force of fire being received and introduced into a dead Carcase is not to be felt yea neither properly is it a Scorching or burning one such as is in live bodies but rather a roasting and parching one For in live bodies the liquor of flesh is through an indignation of the Sensitive Soul most speedily converted into a sharp liquor and substantially transchanged the which in dead bodies is not subject unto a vital transmutation And so by boyling and frying it parcheth and roasteth fleshes between the Fibers For flesh that is dead suffers by degrees the which other bodies not sensitive do suffer after a single manner from the fire But in live bodies even boyling water presently produceth bladders and then the solid part is swiftly contâ—acted and burns Therefore that action of scorching or burning in live and and sensitive bodies is made efficiently by the Life it self but by the fire effectively by way of an active occasional and external mean To wit the life it self feeling the rigour of the fire sharpens its own liquor and transchangeth it into a bladdering one and afterwards into an Escharrotick liquor And as much indeed as is snatched by the fire so much afterwards is by a disposition that is left corrupted because it is dead But because of sensible things known by Sense touching is the chief Judge therefore a demonstration hath scarce place and the history and root of pain by its causes hath hitherto remained neglected Therefore I will repeat some things which in so great a Paradox I wrote before in a more contracted speech Wherefore for the searching into the proper agent in pain I have considered that Frogwort Smallage Scarwort c. do not embladder in a dead Carcase yet they embladder live flesh I judged therefore that in the very sensitive soul the difference of this act consisted and not primasily in the Scarwort Because it is that which embladders only so far as by a biting more sharp than is meet it thus molests the Sensitive spirits the which that they may mitigate blunt or extinguish the perceived sharpness the soul rageth in them and therefore resolveth the proper vital substance of the members into a corrosive liquor even as elsewhere concerning the Plague wherefore the sensitive Soul it self as it is the immediate sensitive substance so it is the efficiently effective cause of the bladder But the Scarwort which operates nothing in a dead Carcase is the effective occasional external and excitative cause By reason whereof the Schools being astonished have taught that Medicines are wholly sluggish and as it were dead unless they are first prepared by our heat as it were by a Cook and being stirred up are sharpned thereby The which thing surely wants not its own perplexities For they have determined of that very thing as Medicines being assumed or applied should not forthwith display their faculties on us like fire but as they should have need of a certain space of time wherein they might produce their own effects by foregoing dispositions notwithstanding if a space be required that an altetation may made which is the effect of the medicine Surely that not any thing proves the action of a Medicine otherwise necessary to be from our heat that the Medicine may obtain the gift of its own nativity or a liberty of acting the which it obtained safe full and free to it self by Creation But as I have said it operates after another manner yea oft-times a far other thing in live bodies than otherwise in dead or unsensitive ones And so the effects of Medicines are not wrought unless they are first duly applied and afterwards by a more exact appropriation they do imprint their power on us to wit that from thence a disposition may arise which the sensitive soul stirs up by its own judgement and afterwards also unfolds and perfects For the Schools have erred in Medicinal affairs because they have beheld external and occasional causes for principal and vital ones Therefore they have neglected to connex in live bodies and in cures themselves things effected unto their proper efficients by the due journeys of degrees Wherefore be it a foolish thing that Pepper Vinegar c. ought to borrow their activities and gifts received for acting from our heat As if one only heat should be the primary cause of so many-form effects Because in very deed that a thing may act on us it hath no need of another forreign thing out of it self for this purpose but as primarily so it without delay presently uncloaths its faculties by the moments of dispositions if it be duly applyed even as I have demonstrated at large as well concerning the action of Government as in the Treatise that heat doth not digest in sensitive Creatutes But because the sensitive Soul which the Schools shamefully confound with heat applyeth the received faculties and from thence frameth a certain new action proper to it self and wholly vital Therefore the faculties which the Sensitive soul receiveth from the medicine are the effective and occasional causes only and it might if it would pass by and neglect the same The which is manifest in the more strong persons who digest laxative medicines even violent ones without trouble and drink being in vain as if they were foods And likewise in dying persons unto whom indeed there is an application of Medicines but not an appropriation to wit by reason of a neglect and defect of the sensitive power For in the more strong folks an exciting heat is not wanting and yet thâ—re is no effect For otherwise the vertues of a Medicine are presently received and do pâ—oceed by degrees more and more and then those powers being received into the sensitive Soul this sensitive Soul presently behaves it self well or ill toward them If well then it useth its own Objects for the cherishment of their powers or for the vanquishment of that which is hurtful But if amiss now the sensitive life carries it self foolishly furiously angrily vexingly c. And it spreads the seminal Idea's of these
they are opened thou Paracelsus callest Ulcers and distinguishest against wound and thy own self Too fabulously therefore is the heaven defiled with out corruption and is a revenger of these injuries even as also a Notary and wounder of our crimes That was an invention of Heathenism in times past that it might blasphemously extol the heavens and starry Gods into a worship Four Elements also are blasphemously and foolishly brought in by Paracelsus who was wont to laugh at the Relolleous quality of them especially because in the original of our medicine a Quaternary or four-fold number of Elements is taken away as well in the nature of the Universe as in the constitution of mixt bodies For how ignorantly is a Quaternary of Elements suited with the aforesaid Ternary of emunctory places For Paracelsus having obtained Arcanums plainly heroical for the supplanting of diseases and being destitute of medicinal Science descending from the Father of Lights and of his own accord assuming to himself the Title of the Monarch of secrets and from this boldness invading the principality of healing treated of the Plague as it were of an enemy unknown unto him Therefore he ascribeth the Plague sometimes to the heaven at another time to the Sun and sometimes to the elements alone and oft times to Pythonisses or women of a prophecying spirit witches and to spirits as well those infernal as elementary Deasters being for the most part forgetful of the doctrine of his own Paramire where he proposeth plagues of the being of nature of the being of poyson as if any Plague could exist void of poyson or as if some poyson were not natural of the being of the Stars as though the Stars were above nature or without it of the being of witches these he attributes unto Incubi or devils in mens shapes hobgoblins sylphs c. he distinguisheth them also against the being of the Stars least peradventure witches may be the wise men which are said to bear rule over the Stars and of a God-like being and he there forgat his own and an imaginative being the remembrance whereof notwithstanding he ought to have had before the rest unlesse he had rather that an imaginative being cannot cause disease or that it is no where vigorous but in the possession of Witches And moreover as I judge a plague sent from the hand of God to despise the remedies of nature so also if there were any proper unto devils or witches which is not a thing to be believed yet at least it should in no wise owe its original unto the heaven For otherwise if there were a witch Plague it would be far more cruel than accustomed ones are by reason of an external poyson being adjoyned and a readinesse of its acting speedied and enlarged through the wrath of the evil spirit P. Boucher a Minorite Frier in his oriental or Eastern pilgrimages tels as an eye-witnesse That although Egypt be otherwise exceeding subject to the Plague yet that every year before the inundation of Nile a singular dew falls down which they call Elthalim at the coming whereof as many as lay sick of the Plague are readily and universally cured and are preserved as healthy there from by the same dew For if this be true neither hath it been sufficiently searched into by Prince Radzvil yet not any thing can be drawn from thence whereby we may know that the Plague is naturally caused by the heaven since from thence at least it follows that some meteors are healthy but others hurtful to some which none hath hitherto denied For although the Sun the day before the inundation of Nile returns every year almost unto the same place yet the same stars do not return as companions together with him And then that dew is not the off-spring of the heavens or stars nor of a meteorical Blas of the heaven but the day before the inundation of Nile the more high land of Aethiopia being more hot and southern was long since overflown which sends forth a great vapour from it filled with Nitre for the whole water of Nilus is nitrous which vapour is not only resolved into a dew the dew elsewhere weepes Honies Tereniabin or the fatnesse oftwood hony found in good quantity in the summer months with a manna-ie Being and Laudanum being as it were gummy things and among us the May dew daily abounds with a sugary salt and accompanies Nile running but it well washeth the whole aire of Aegypt even by moistening it and refresheth the bodies of the sick not much otherwise than as a shower doth the earth after long driths At leastwise I being admonished by the holy scriptures despise the sooth-sayers of heaven Therefore if the heaven be the cause of a destroying or devouring Plague it ought likewise to be the cause of every other Plague Because the same Being in the Species obtaines the same constitutive causes from which the Species it self recieveth its identity or samelinesse Therefore I constantly deny that a pestilent poyson is bred by the heaven or dismissed from the stars but all Plagues which are not singularly sent from God for a scourge are either endemical ones or proper to a Country or framed by a certain terrour But those which are borrowed as being drawn in from contagion do follow their own seed and ferment But an endemical Plague although it be drawn in from without occasionally yet it is not to be reckoned for the plague unlesse the terrour of our Archeus do first frame a poysonous Idea of sore fear conceived from the endemical Being even as shall by and by be manifested I deny moreover that any Plague is endemical For although the aire may myire the bodies of many unto diverse confusions of putrefaction yet it is in no wise the original cause of a Postilential poyson For as all putrefaction differs from the Plague so in like manner also the poyson of the Plague differs from any corruption that is the daughter of a thereor The which unlesse it be rightly and perfectly known the nature of the Plague also shall not be able to be any way understood and much lesse a radical healing of the same promoted For a conclusion of this Chapter I will adde an argument which is drawn from the bank of rivers For I have seen those who that they might avoyd houses infected with the Plague departed from Antwerp others who fled from the Smalpocks through which two years before they as yet carried about with them a face he potted with the scats thereof which were smitten in the river Scalds it self with the diseases which they presumed they had avoyded and had withdrawn themselves as healthy I remember also that a certain girle was cured by me of the Leprousy at Vilvord who when shew is now accounted to have been whole for the space of seven weeks and returned to Antwerp she presently felt in the River it self the Leprousie to bud again upon her throughout her whole body Who at
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
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