frailties we shall finde no ground left us to erect any structure of pride upon The act therefore of the praevious touch of the Witch is purely naturall although the excitation of this magicall virtue depend upon the auxiliary concurrence of Satan in as near an interest as if the Witch had cut the throat of the horse with a sword which Satan had put into her hands This act of the Witch is naturall and corporeall as the other praecedent act is naturall and sprituall For indeed man doth naturally consist no lesse of a spirit then a body nor is there reason why one act should be accounted more naturall then the other or why the body the courser part of man should be allowed a power of action but the spirit the more noble and coelestiall part in its relation of being the Image of God accounted idle unoperative and altogether devoid of any activity peculiar to it self yea the Vitall spirits in most exact propriety of language are the immediate actors of sensation motion memory c. but the body and dead carkasse cannot in any respect whatever owne those faculties wherefore every action stands more relatively and properly regardant to its Agent then to the body which at best is no more then the transitory lodging of the Agent And thus it is evidenced that there passeth a spirituall radius or gleame of magicall virtue from the Witch to the man or horse appointed for destruction according to that Axiome That no action can be done without a due approximation of the Agent to the Patient and a reciprocal unition or marriage of the virtues of each whether the admotion or approximation be corporeall or spirituall which by an example ready provided to our hand we can both prove and illustrate For if the heart which is the presence-chamber of the vitall spirit of a horse slain by a witch taken out of the yet warme and reaking carcase be empaled upon an arrow and roasted upon a broach or carbonadoed immediately the vitall spirit of the witch without the intervention of any other medium and anon the whole witch since not the body but onely the spirit is capable of sensation becomes tormented with the unsufferable pains and cruelty of the fire which truly could by no meanes happen unlesse there praeceded a conjunction or reciprocall intercourse of the spirit of the Witch with the spirit of the horse For the horse after strangulation retaines a certain mumiall virtue so I call it whenever the virtue of the vitall nectar or blood is confermentate with the flesh which is the originary implantate spirit such as is never found resident in bodies that are extinct by voluntary deaths in any chronique disease or other ataxy irregularity or disruption of the inferiour harmony that is the temperament of the body to which the spirit of the Witch is associated as joynt commissioner In the reaking and yet panting heart therefore the spirit of the Witch before it shall by the dissolution of the praecedent conspiracie or divorce of the united spirits by putrefaction have returned backe into her bosome is imprisoned and held captive and the retreat of it praevented by the arrow transfixed and by the torrefaction of both spirits together and hence comes it to passe that the witch is afflicted and throwne into a horrid agony in her sensative spirit This effect admits a change or double construction from the intention of the experiment For if revenge be the motive or incitement to the experimentator then is the effect unwarrantable and inconsistent with the charitable rules of Christianity but if an honest and conscientious designe to compell the Witch to detect her self to betray her to the justice of the Magistrate to procure security to our neighbour and our selves by the remove of so impious blasphemous and nocuous a vassall of Satan that the greater glory to God and peace and benevolence to men may redound from the discovery then undoubtedly the effect cannot be disallowed or condemned by the most rigid precise or puritanicall judgement We are not to conceive that all the spirit of the Witch sallyed forth and transmigrated into the heart of the Horse for so the Witch her selfe had perished falne into an eternall swoune but that there is a certaine univocall participation or identicall traduction of the spirit and vitall light of the Witch in an equall analogie to the Plastique spirit or sole delineator and architect of the most curious and magnificent fabrick of man which in every distinct emission of the geniture or seed is covertly ambuscadoed and propagated sufficient to the procreation of a numerous issue the originary spirit of the father yet remaining unimpaired and conserving its individuall integrity For in sooth that participation and inheritance of the vitall light is magical and a rich and fruitfull communication of the specificall essence by the fertill virtue of that benediction delivered by the Protoplast of all seminall formes Let all Animalls and Vegetalls bring forth seed and hence is it that one individuall seed produceth ten myriads of other seeds aequivalent and as many seminall spirits comprehending the whole specificall essence by the same mysterious way of traduction whereby one Tapor is lighted by the flame of another But what the proper nature of this Magneticall spirit and what the Magicall entity begotten in the wombe of phansie may be I shall more largely declare in the processe of our discourse For it becomes me to retreat from my digression and now to progresse in that path which directly leads to our intended scope Nor is there any pretence of reason why any should conjecture that this reaction or rebound of magicall power upon the heart of the Witch is only imaginary and a chimaera of licentious phanfie or a plainly superstitious and damnable imposture and delusion of Satan since by this token the witch is infallibly detected and volent nolent compelled to appear in publick which in one of our praecedent suppositions we have sufficiently demonstrated to be è diametro opposed to the intention of Satan for the effect holds constantly good and never failes to succeed upon experiment as having its fundamentall causalities laid in reason and the spirituall nature of the inward man but not at all built upon superstitious supporters Hath not many a murdered carcase by the operation of the same magneticall spirit suffered a fresh cruentation upon the Coroners inquest in the presence of the Homicide and very often directed the Magistrate to a just and infallible judgement of the crime although the blood before that minute stood congealed and frozen in its cold rivulets The reason of this life in death this plea of the grave and loud language of silent corruption which hath empuzled the anxious disquisitions of many subtile heads we conceive to be thus in a man dying of a wound the inferiour virtues which are mumiall for these are not subject to the restrint of
in the body onely per nutum magically 99. In the body the Soule operateth onely by a drowsie soâ—…olent beck or restrained intuition but out of the body by a nimble and vehement The knowledge of the Apple eclipseth the knowledge magicall 100. The beginning of the Cabal drawn from dreams divinely infused 101. The defect of understanding in the outward man 102. How far the power of atan extends in Witches 103. What are the true and proper works of Satan 104. Sin took away the endowments of Grace and obscured those of Nature 105. The end of the pious exercises of Catholikes 106. The grand effect of the Cabal 107. Two subjects of all things 108. Man hath a power of acting as well by spirit as body 109. What kind of ray or effluvium is transmitted from a witch to a bruite 110. How a Witch may be discovered 111. How the spirit of a Witch may be captived and bound fast in the heart of a horse 112. The intention depraves a good work 113. The Virtue seminall is Naturally Magicall 114. The cause of the Cruentation of a murdered Carcase in the praesence of the homicide 115. Why the Plague a frequent concomitant of seidges 116. Works of mercy to be done upon the distressed though only in order to the avoydance of the Plague 117. Plagues arising from revenge and exsecrations of men dying under oppression most fatall 118. Why the carcases of malefactors were to be removed from the gibbet 119. Why excrements can be no authors of a Plague 120. Why the blood of a bull is venemous 121. Why the fat of a bulis made an ingredient into the Sympathetick unguent namely that it may be made an Armary Unguent 122. Why Satan cannot concur to the Unguent 123. The basis of Magick 124. When vanities and impostures are reputed for magick 125. A good magick in holy Writ 126. What may be called true magick 127. The cause of the idolatry of Witches 128. The Excitators of magick 129. Satan excites it imperfectly 130. Whence beasts are also magicall 131. The dominion of Spirits fostereth contention and love 132. Man why a microcosm 133. The mind generateth reall Entities 134. That reall Entity of an ambiguous or midle nature betwixt a body and a spirit 135. The descension of the Soul causeth a conformative Will 136. The cause of the fertility of seeds 137. Why lust doth in a manner alienate us from our mind 138. A Father by the spirit of his seed doth generate extra se beyond the limits of his own body in a subject suddainly removed to distance 139. What spirit that is which is the Patron of Magnetism 140. The will doth transmit a spirit to the object Unlesse the will did produce some reality the Devill could have no knowledge of it and unlesse it sent this produced reality forth from it self toward the object the devil being absent could never be provok'd thereby Where therefore the treasure is thither doth the heart of man tend 141. Magnetisme done by sensation 142. There is a plurality of sensations in one single subject 143. From the superiour phansy commanding it 144. Why glasse-makers use the powder of Loadstone 145. The Phansy of Attrahents changed 146. Inanimate creatures endowed with Phansy 147. Why some things eaten introduce madness 148. Why a mad dog biting a man causeth madnesse 149. The sting of the Tarantula causeth an alienation of the mind from reason 150. Why beasts defend not themselves against the biting of a mad dog 15â—… The sympathy betwixt objects removed at distance each from other is done by the mediation of an Universall Spirit which governing the Sun and other coelestiall orbs is endued with exquisite sense 152. The imagination in Creatures enriched with an Elective Faculty is various arbitrary and unconfined but in others of the same determinate identity alwayes 153. The first degree of power magicall dwelleth in the formes of the three grand Principles viz. Sal Sulphur and Mercury 154. The second is by the Phansies of the Forms of the Mixtum or integrall Composition which being destroyed the Principles yet remaine 155. The third ariseth from the Phansy of the Soule 156. What beasts are endowed with magicall power and can act beyond the circumference of themselves per nutum onely 157. The fourth degree of power magicall is from the excited intellect of man 158. The word Magick is analogous and appliable to many things in a third relation 159. Every magicall power stands in need of and is improved by Excitation 160. What may be said a subject capable of Magnetism 161. How Magnetism differs from other Formall Proprieties 162. The superfluous humours Excrements of the body have also their Phansy 163. Why Holy Writ doth give the attribute of life rather to the blood then to any other humor in the body 164. The seed inhaeriteth the Phansy of the Father by traduction Whence Nobility hath its originall 165. The skins of the Wolfe and sheep retain a Phantastique enmity of their former life 166. What the Phansy of the blood freshly added to the Unguent can doe The manner of the Magnetisme in the Unguent 167. The difference betwixt a magneticall cure done by the Unguent and that done by a rotten egg 168. The grand mystery of humane Imagination the foundation of Naturall Magick 169. The Intellect impresseth the Entity it selfe created upon the externall object and there it really perseveres 170. How to make powerfull pentacles or magicall Characters 171. The Phansy by a naile as by a medium holds captive the spirit of the Witch 172. If Satan can move a body without any corporeall extremity why cannot the inward man doe the same and why not rather the spirit of the Witch 173. The virtue of the Unguent not from the imagination of its Compounder but from diverse simples married into one Composition 174. The Author makes profession of his Faith IN the eighth year of this age there came to my hands an Oration declamatory made at Marpurge of the Catti wherein Rodulphus Goclenius to whom the publick profession of Philosophy was lately committed paying his first fruits to the University endevours to make good that the cure of wounds by the Sympathetick and Armarie Unguent first invented by Paracelsus is meerly natural Which Oration I wholly read and sighed that the history of natural things had faln under the protection of so weak a Patron The Author nevertheless highly pleased himself with that argument of writing and with a continued barrenness of probation in the year 1613. published the same work with some enlargement Not long since I also met with a succinct anatome of the fore-mentioned Book compiled by a certain Divine savoring more of a fine-witted Censure then a solid Disputation Whereupon my judgment what ever it were was much desired at least in that relation that the thing invented by Paracelsus neerly concerned him and my self his disciple I shall therefore declare what I conceive of the Physician Goclenius
effluxion of Wounds c. and the Magnetick endowment of some consists onely in this that they can onely extract the pestilential Atomes from the centrals of an infected body c. Yea if you shall annex the sanation in our Unguent to your own Argument your own weapon will wound you For from thence that the genuine effect of the Unguent is to cure perfectly speedily without pain without cost danger and decay of strength Hence I say it results a manifest truth that the Magnetical virtue of the Unguent is simply natural and proceeds from God and not from Satan The reason thus if Satan did cooperate to this Cure according to your assertion the chrâ—…â—…ould of necessity be imperfect attended with great amission of strength an universal languor and enervation of the body manifest hazard of life a difficil and at best a tedious convalescence an alienation of the minde a laesion of some more noble faculty and success of some notable misfortune All which events as they are ever annexed to Diabolical cures so are they never observed to follow upon a cure wrought by our Unguent Our appeal lies to Experience for so many as ever received a cure by the Unguent will freely give in their testimony on our side Now Satan is no Oracle that delivers truths no Counsellor to good unless with design to insinuate his delusions the smoother and cannot but betray himself by this that he never long continues in the truth he so speciously pretended for always when he has been an instrument of any good constant to the hostility of his nature he in the close tempers his favor with a larger allay of evil And introth the same method would he according to the custom of his malicious friendship have observed in the Unguent had he been interessed as an Author or Fautor either as Principall or Accessory at least this remedy would then have failed and become evirate when the wounded patient is rescued from the jaws of death and reprieved from the Gates of Hell who otherwise tainted with the mortal contagion of sin would by reason of his dangerous wound have poured forth his soul together with his blood unless perchance you seek to evade by saying that Satan in that Crisis that punctilio of danger suffered a change of his cruelty into compassion devested himself of his essential and inveterate enmity and put on the good Samaritan nay fell not onely to commiserate but even dress the wounds of humanity and that he hath acquired some interest some jurisdiction over the wounded patient himself leaves doubtful and open to dispute in that he preserves him by the Magnetical Unguent whom he had rather should perish It may be that Satan is in your esteem now held a strict and punctual observer of his word and bargain and no longer a turncoate fraudulent dissembler and perjured impostor Besides we positively deny that your supposition can carry weight in the ballance of truth that the blood once extravenated continues uncorrupt and conserves its interest of vitality but rather that it is deprived of all community and participation of life and immediately undergoes some degree of corruption but that it obtains onely a Mumial vitality To this purpose conduces the corrupted and yet magnetical blood in an Eg. Wherefore I pass by the absurdity of your objection since it hath been so bold as to wrest the Magnet of the Unguent to another intention then that which the wise bounty of God in the primitive decree of his counsel ordained it unto The Positive Reasons of Magnetism more neerly brought home to our knowledg by Metaphysical and Magical principles OPportunity now invites us to discover the grand and approximate cause of Magnetism in the Vnguent First by the consent of mystical Divines we divide man into the external and internal man assigning to each distinct part the powers of a certain minde or informative principle for in this disjunctive acception there is a will competent to flesh and blood which properly is neither the will of man nor the will of God and our heavenly Father reveals some things to the inward man and some things are revealed by flesh and blood that is the outward man in the single and abstracted relation of Animal For how can the adoration of idols envy and other such branches arising from the root of Corcupiscence be justly listed amongst the works of the flesh since they consist onely in the imagination if to the flesh also there did not peculiarly belong an Imaginative faculty and an elective will Again that there are miraculous Ecstasies competent to the inward man is a tenet true beyond the dispute or haesitation of a Sceptick And that there are also Ecstasies in the outward man is unquestionable by the most impudent infidelity Yea Martin Delrio an Elder of the Society of Jesu in his Magical Disquisitions brings in a certain youth in the City Insulis rapt with so intense and violent cogitation and ardent desire to see his mother that as if transported by an high Ecstasie he saw her many leagues distant and returning again to himself perfectly remembred all things his fancy met with in this more-then Pisgah Vision and reported many signes to attest his real and presential visit of his mother Many such examples occur to our quotidian observance which in conformity to our purpose of brevity we with industry omit But that this desire did arise from the outward man namely from flesh and blood is most certain for otherwise the soul once disliged and enfranchised from the body can never unless by miracle be again reunited to it Therefore in the blood there dwells a certain Ecstatical power which if at any time it shall be excited by an earnest and ardent desire is able to transport and on the immaterial wings of fancy waft the spirit of the outward man to some determinate object though at vast distance removed but this Ecstatical faculty lies dormant in the outward man as in potentia in hability nor is it deduced into act unless first rouzed and excited by the imagination accensed and exalted by fervent desire or some other art equivalent to affection Moreover when the blood has undergone some gradual corruption then and not till then are all the powers of it which before lay lock't up in potentia and slept in an unactive hability awakened and called forth to action without any praevious excitation of the imagination For by corruption of the grain the seminal virtue otherwise drowsie torpent and steril springs forth into the act of fertility For since the essences of things and their principles of vitality know no obedience to the tyranny of corruption by the dissolution of the inferior harmony the separation of their corporal Heterogeneities they awake into a vigorous activity and freely execute the commission of their faculties And from hence is it that every occult propriety the compage of their bodies being by certain
in this impious act there is a certaine power clearly peculiar and naturall to the Witch which proceeds not from Satan Moreover what the nature extent and quality of this Magicall yet naturall power of the Witch may be we must exactly explore and gravely consider It is manifest in the first place that it is not any Corporeall strength of the masculine sex for there concurres not any forcible attraction of the members of the body and Witches are for the most part old feeble and impotent women Wherefore of necessity to the production of this notable mischiefe there must concurre some other power of farre more vigour and activity then the strength of the body and yet purely naturall to man This power therefore must be ambuscadoed in that part wherein we most nearly resemble the Image of God And although all pieces of the hexameron Creation doe in some relation or other repraesent that most sacred and venerable image of the Creator yet in regard man doth most elegantly most properly and most exactly reflect that shadow of Divinity therefore doth the image of God shine more transcendent in man and as Lord Paramount beare rule and exercise dominion over the repraesentative Divinity of all other Creatures For haply by this praerogative all created Sublunaries are made subordinate to his royaltie and prostituted at the feet of his Soveraign will Wherefore if God execute his will and produce reall effects per nutum intuitively and by the single efficacy of his word then man also to make good his title of being the true mirrour or repraesentative of the Deity ought to enjoy a power of doing some actions per nutum For neither is that new paradoxicall or troublesome to our faith nor peculiar onely to God himself since Satan the most vile and abject of all Creatures can also move solid and ponderous bodies from place to place at pleasure onely per nutum for he hath no corporeall organs no extremities wherewith to touch locally move or assume any new body to himself No lesse therefore ought this priviledge to belong to the inward man in his spirituall capacity if we allow him to beare the image of God and that no idle and unactive one If we name this faculty magicall and this appellation sound harsh and terrible in the eares of your ignorance I shall not quarrel with you if you please to denominate it a spirituall vigour or energie of the inward man for wee are not at all sollicitous about names but ever with as direct an eye of reason as I can I look upon the reality of the thing it self This magicall power therefore naturally resides in the inward man whether by this title you understand the soule or vitall spirit of man is now indifferent to us since the inward man doth hold a certain correspondence with the outward in all things which commerciall influx thriving and as it were glowing with a fervour of activity in a peculiar manner is an appropriate disposition and proportionate propriety On which ground it is necessary that this active faculty be disseminated and diffused through the whole compositum of man but indeed in the soule more intense and vigorous and in flesh and blood far more remisse and languid The Vitall Spirit in the throne of flesh and blood that is the outward man sits Viceroy to the Soule and acts by her commission and is the same plastick spirit which in the seed comprehends contrives and models the whole figure of man that Magnificent structure limms out all the lineaments and accurate adumbration of the parts and understands the praedestinate ends of all its designes and undertakings which as Praesident and guardian accompanies the infant from the first moment of its conception to the last of its dissolution and which although together with the life it bid adieu to the body yet some little remaines as if strongly united unto and confermentated with the corporeall masse for a while sojourn in a Carcase extinct by violence But out of a dead body whose lamp of life languished and went out of its owne accord both the implantate and influent spirit depart hand in hand together For which reason Physicians distinguish this spirit into the originary implantate and inhaerent or Mumiall and the influent or acquisite vanishing together with the former life and afterwards they againe dichotomize or subdivide the influxive spirit into the naturall vitall and animall but we in this notion bind them all up together in this one terme the vitall spirit or inward man The Soule therefore by essence wholly spirituall could by no meanes move inform and actuate the vitall spirit which truely carries something of corporeity and bulk much lesse excite and give locomotion to flesh and bloud unlesse some naturall yet magicall and spirituall power inhaerent in the soule did streame down from the soule as from the first motor upon the spirit and so descend to the body I beseech you by what way could the corporeall Spirit obey and execute the command of the Soul unlesse it first receive commission and ability from her to move the Spirit and afterwards the body But against this Magicall Motrix you will instantly object that indeed there is such a naturall power but her wings are clipt she is restrained and confined within the walls of her owne tabernacle the body so that she cannot extend her authority and influence beyond the circumference of it and therefore although we give her the proud name of Magicall yet we cannot escape the guilt of wresting and abusively applying that Epithite since the true genuine and superstitious Magicall power desumes not her basis from the Soule in regard the Soule her self is devoyd of all ability to move alter or excite any the least thing at all without her own orbe of activity the body I answer that this Vigour and naturall Magick of the Soule which acts extra se beyond the dimensions of her selfe by virtue of the image of God doth now lye raked up and obscured in man and being impoverished in its force of excitation is grown unactive somnolent and stupid ever since the praevarication of Adam all which particulars we shall hereafter in convenient place and order commonstrate which power however it be charmed into a lethargick inactivity by the opium of originall sin and drunk with the narcoticall fumes of concupiscence within us yet it retaines force sufficient to performe all its requisite offices in the body This science therefore and Magicall power in man acting only per nutum intuitively grew dormant and evirate from that minute the Science or rather nescience of the Aple was drunk in and while this malignant Counter-science of the forbidden fruit that is of flesh and bloud of the outward man and darknesse growes up and flourishes the more noble Magical power withers is ploughed up and buryed in the rubbish of sensuality But in regard ever now and then
Animal pervicaciously surviving death is impressed not onely upon the blood but also whoever sleeps under the coverture of a blanket made of the skin of a Gulo or Glutten a beast of incredible because insatiate voracity very common in Swedland is forced continually to dream of feasting hunger voracity and the ensnaring of wilde beasts according to the natural condition of that animal while it was living and thus onely by an external coverlet the phansie of the beast which during life so journed in the skin is devolved and traduced unto a man that sleeps beneath it And thus also by the ministery of the Phansie of the blood comes it to pass that the blood extravenated being received upon the sword or weapon is introduced into the Magnetick Unguent For then the phansie of the blood before unactive and somnolent being by the virtue of the magnetical unguent excited and there finding the balsamical and medical virtue of the unguent earnestly covets the newly-induced quality to be communicated to it self throughout and from thence by spiritual magnetism to exhaust and drain out all the forein quality that had invaded the wound which when it cannot sufficiently perform upon the single stock of its own strength it implores the aid of the most of the blood fat and mumy which by coalition degenerate into such balsam that by no other means but it s own phansie becomes medical magnetical and also attractive of all the forein quality out of the body whose fresh blood abounding with spirits is applied unto it whether it be the blood of a man or any other Animated Creature The phansie therefore is reducible and ecstatical from part of the blood freshly and immediately after the effusion brought unto the unguent but the magnetical attraction begun in the blood is perfected by the medical virtue of the unguent But the unguent doth not attract the evil and depraved tincture or inquinament of the wound unto it self and so put on as much contagion as was enclosed in Pandoraes box but onely works a salutiferous alteration on the spirit of the newly effused and freshly applied blood makes it medical balsamical and rouzeth up its dormant virtue whence there results to it a certain medical and magnetical virtue which makes a speedy return to the body from which the blood issued forth with full commission and power to cure its cousin german the spirit of the blood yet flowing in its proper conduits throughout the whole man For it sucks out of the wounded party the exotick and dolorous impression diminisheth it by a medical power exileth it which medical virtue being the puissant conqueress of the evil is partly excited in the blood and partly ingenerated in the same by the unguent that is by the spirit of the unguent upon the magick of its phansie i. e. its created endowment thus exercising imperial power and efficacious soveraignty over the spirit of the blood In another case the blood enclosed in an egge shell putrefying with all its vigor about it and so as it were redeemed from the bondoge of corporeity and the spirit delivered from all impediments by previous putrefaction becomes attractive by the mediation of the mumy of a dog and really transfers that disease which was before seated in the phansie and astrality of the excrementitious impurities in the patient into the dog that devours it for no other reason but this that the magnetism cannot be advanced to perfection of operation without the intercession of the balsam of the unguent We have observed if it happen that the wounded party hath received many wounds at once that it sufficeth to have the blood effused out of any one of the wounds and that by the single application of that blood all the other wounds are cured together because that blood observes a correspondence and sympathetical concordance with the spirit of the whole man and from the same educeth the offensive extraneous quality communicated not onely to the lips of the wound but also to the whole body for from one wound there ordinarily is kindled an universal fever throughout the whole body of man Hitherto have I suspended the revealment of a grand mystery namely to bring it home to the hand of reason that in man there sits enthroned a noble energy whereby he is endowed with a capacity to act extra se without and beyond the narrow territories of himself onely per nutum by his single beck and by the natural magick of his phansie and to transmit a subtil and invisible virtue a certain influence that doth afterward subsist and persevere per se and operate upon an object removed at very large distance by the discovery of which sole mystery all that we have hitherto treated concerning the ideal entity conveyed in the arms of a spiritual emanation and sallying abroad to execute the mandates of the will concerning the magnetism of all Creatures proceeding as well from humane phansie as from the native and peculiar phansie of every thing and also concerning the magical superiority of man over all other sublunary bodies will receive illustration and shine bright in the eye of our understanding T is a meridian truth too clear to be eclipsed by controversie that of steel there may be made a needle which invigorated by the confriction of a loadstone doth point out the pole to Seamen but in vain is the steel hammered into a needle and placed at free range in the navigatory Compass to level at the north Star unless there hath preceded a fit and requisite affriction of the loadstone Which assertions since they sound loud enough to pierce the ears of the deafest incredulity it remains convenient that we frame and qualifie a Mariners needle solo nutu onely by the magnetism of our phansie and magick of intuition On the anvil therefore whereon the steel is hammered into a figure of a needle let the north point be chalked out and that in a strait line then stand you when you play the Vulcan with your back to the north that so when the steel is beating under the hammer you may draw it out into a needle towards your self and the north I say therefore that such a needle thus positionally and intuitively framed will acquire a vigorous polarity and punctually observe the north Star without any forein impregnation or magnetical infusion and indeed without any variation to which the ordinary needles invigorated by the loadstone are subject which carries with it a very great mystery Moreover that needle which is made upon the foresaid line by chance and without the knowledg or intention of the Fabricator continues bare steel devoid of all verticity and directs not to the pole Hence is it a natural Consequence that the imagination of the Fabricator in the very moment of the needles nativity when the glowing heat of the fire is somewhat abated and the steel but obscurely red doth impress this magnetical faculty into the steel needle as a
the various Evaporations or Aporrhoea's of mixt bodies especially such as are then suffering the Act of Putrefaction violently invadeth the part and thereupon impresseth an exotick miasm or noxious Diathesis which disposing the blood successively arriving at the wound to Putrefaction by the intervention of Fermentation caused by some gradual Acidity for proved it may be that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Corruption must be Acidum Extraneum succeeding upon a desertion of vital Heat introduced maketh the same wholly unfit for the Nutrition and destructive to the Incarnation or reunion of the sides of the orifice Against this Hostile Acidum Nature instantly ariseth in Arms sends a large supply of Arterial Blood Vital spirits I understand none at least in a disjunctive acception and doubleth both the strength and number of her Pulses insomuch that most times the overcharged part suffereth an increase of Pain and Intumescence from the distension of its vessels membranes and intermusculary Capacities but finding her self too weak to expel so subtle and potent an enemy encamped within her borders though she cannot preserve the blood from submission to the tyranny of this Putrefactive Acidity in some degree and so not transmute it into a laudable Cement to soder up the disunion yet she so far hindreth especially in green wounds the dilatation of Corruption that she subdues the revolted blood into the form of a white Purulent Effluxion which is therefore to be accounted an infallible signal that Nature is not yet evirate but holds out bravely and if relieved in time will be an happy Conqueress This Exotick Acidity by the forementioned means impressed upon the sides of the Wound I apprehend to be the sole Impediment that defeateth the design of Nature in the Redintegration of the Unity of any part infringed by external violence and that by the rule of Consequence the onely way of Assistance to Nature in this exigence is the destruction or Extinction of that Alien Impression the Factor of Putrefaction by the specifical Counterviolence of some superior Antagonist Now Pyrotechnical Philosophy and the Mechanick Experiments of Chymistry have sufficiently instructed us that every Acidum is at first encounter subdued by any Alchahal or Lixivial Salt as is autoptically demonstrable in the sudden Transformation of the Spirit of Vitriol into Alumen by the inspersion of Mercury dulcified The same effect may be also exemplified in the Acid Spirit of Sulphur which for ever loseth its native Acidity and in a moment degenerateth into an aluminous sweetness at the Conjunction of the Salt of Tartar resolved into an oyl by Deliquium For which reason also as Helmont hath profoundly observed our Traumatick or vulnerary Potions which as well in regard of the Balsamical Plants as of the stony Concretion found in the stomacks of Creafish entering their Composition acquire upon decoction a Lixivial Tincture or Alchahal are most laudable because in truth most smartly operative Medicaments in all wide Perforations or Incisions of the body as hath been found true by the unquestionable testimony of Experience and sounds consonant to Reason Since by reason of their Lixivial Salt which doubtless passeth the several Concoctions viribus haud multum castratis they stand è diametro opposed to the Putrefactive Acidity the Capital Remora that impedeth the Consolidation of all Wounds and Ulcers And whether Roman vitriol may not be justly referred to the Classis of Saline juices Concreted or Alchahal Salts since it must be a parergy here to dispute it I shall with industry leave as well to the experiment of its easie Eliquation upon the access of any Humidity as to the decision of the most knowing Mineralogists Who also have unanimously esteemed it as the Sacra Anohora or Panchreston for the cure of Cheironian Ulcers and inveterate Wounds though the Cardinal efficacy and manner of its operation may well be thought to have continued in darkness until of late the light of Helmonts Furnace had the honor of its revealment And I am bold to conjecture that upon this single hint of the incomparable Balsamical or Muâ—…l Viâ—…tâ—…e of Vitriol Helmont first founded the invention of his admired Drif or universal Medicine whose master Ingredients are Sal Marinus Vitriolum Veneris and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the omnipotent Odor or radial activity whereof he rashly imagined that all irregularities exorbitances and excandescence of the humane Archius or Vital Spirit may be rectified reclaimed and calmed and that in a moment Having thus brought within the reach of verismillty that in many wounds all the vigor of Nature cannot suffice to the ejection of that forein Acor that hath once made an encroachment upon her tender confines and that upon the first charge the usurper must surrender at the access of a Lixivial Traumatick Salt It remaineth onely that we bring it quite home to our intended scope and make a short enquiry Whether the Sanative Faculty of Vitriol may not be conceded so longâ—…manous and extensive as to produce the same effect at distance And this we must do with exceeding brevity in this respect that this speculation doth more properly belong to our disquisition of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Causalities of Hoplochrism I am bound to believe that in the infinite Magazine of Nature are to be found various Agents noâ—… obliged to the dull conditions of an immediate Corporeal Contact but richly endowed with an Influential or Radial activity so have I taken the liberty to Christen it in reference to the Cognition and nâ—…er Analogy betwixt the manner of the Stars transmitting their Influence by invisible Deradiations and the imperceptible Emissions streaming in a semi-immaterial thread of Atomes 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 bodies qualified with this kinde of Astral Faculty which arriving at a determinate object though 〈◊〉 at indeterminable distance nimbly operate upon it to the full satisfaction of the particular end preordained in the primitive Intellect of the Creatoâ—… 〈◊〉 conceive also that Vitriol hath a very just title to the prenogative of being listed in the Inventory of these Astral Natures and that when the powder thereof is applied to the blood effused out of a wound the Balsamical Faculty of it is not confined to a meer Topical Operation but being conducted by the Manial 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the blood which undoubtedly by a Congenerous Magnetism holdeth a certain sympathy with that Fountain from whence it was derived as is to â—…aâ—…ety of satisfaction demonstrated by Hilmont 〈◊〉 a stream of subtiâ—…ted Atomes extendeth to the individual Wound and there operateth to the Deletion or extâ—…rpation of the Acid Impression against which â—…carrieth a Seminal Antipathy If this be thus 〈◊〉 I may be sooner destitute of leasure then substantial Arguments 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 force that it was either Ignorance or Prevacation that first contrived this detractive objection 〈◊〉 the dignity of Hoplochristical Remedies as also that Nature though according to the great Aphoâ—…
of Quality but all the Predicaments are found in every particular disease Since indeed it may be lawful to accommodate names to things but not things to names The Heliotropian or Solisequous Flowers are wheeled about after the Sun by a certain Magnetism not for his heat whose comfort they may long after for in a cloudy and cold day they imitate the rhythme of the Sun nor for his light are they the Lacqueis of the Sun for in the dark night when they have deserted him they face about from the West to the East You will not account this Diabolical in regard you have another subterfuge at hand namely the harmony of superior bodies with inferior and a faculty attractive purely celestial and no way communicable to sublunaries As though the Microcosm unworthy this heavenly prerogative could in his blood and moss observe and correspond to no revolution of the Planets I might here with pertinence discourse of Philters or amorous Medicines which require a Mumial Confermentation that the affection and desire of the minde may be forcibly drawn and rapt on to one determinate object But on a sober consult with thought it seems more advised to supersede that theme when I shall first have mentioned this one observation I know an Herb commonly obvious which if it be rubbed and cherished in thy hand until it wax warm you may hold fast the hand of another person until that also grow warm and he shall continually burn with an ardent love and fixt dilection of thy person for many days together I held in my hand first bathed in the steam of this love-procuring plant the foot of a Dog for some few minutes The Dog wholly renouncing his old Mistress instantly followed me and courted me so hotly that in the night he lamentably howled at my Chamber door that I should open and admit him There are some now living in Bruxels who are witnesses to me and can attest the truth of this fact For the heat of a mans hand warming and resolving the plant I say not a bare simple and solitary heat but excited and impregnate with a certain effluvium or emanation of spirits natural doth peculiarly determine and individuate the vertue of the plant to himself and by this ferment communicated to a second person doth by Magnetism allect the spirit of that person and subdue him to love I omit the cures of many diseases which the Arcanum the mystery of humane blood doth Magnetically perform For unless the blood yea the very sanies or purulent effluxions from Wounds and Ulcers the Urine and that subtle effluvium which by insensible transpiration evaporates through the pores of the skin did continually exhaust and carry with them some part of the vital spirit and unless these had also some participation of vitality and conspiracy with the whole body after their remove from the whole concretum Undoubtedly the life of man could not be so short For indeed this is the cause of our intestine calamity and that principle of death we carry about us ambuscadoed in the very principles of life The Herbs Arsemart or Water Pepper Cumfry Chirurgeons Sophia or Flixweed Adders tongue and many other of the Vulnerary tribe have this peculiar endowment that if when cold they are steept in water for an Oke felled when the North wind blows will grow verminous and rotten if not instantly sunk under water and then applied to a Wound or Ulcer until they grow warm and after buried in a muddy uliginous Earth when they begin to putrifie they then operate upon and draw from the Patient whatever is evil superfluous and hurtful to him And this the Herbs perform not while they grow in the earth nor so long as they remain in their primitive and pristine form for necessary it is that the grain be mortified that it may bring forth fruit but in the putrefaction of their Corporeities for the Essential virtues being then as it were released from the prison and impediments of the corporeal matter do put forth and freely execute that Magnetism which otherwise had lain dormant and enchained and according to the contagion and impression received from the wounded or ulcerated part powerfully suck out much of the remaining evil though seated deeply and at great distance in the body If any one in gathering the leaves of Asarabecca shall pluck them upward they will perform their operation respectively and purge any third person that is wholly ignorant of that positional traction by vomit onely but if in gathering they be wrested downward they then will purge onely by stool Here at least can be no suspect of superstition for what need I here to mention any thing of Imagination when your selves concede that by the power of imagination nothing can be acted upon a third object especially where that third object is utterly ignorant of the position which the decerpent used Will you again take hold of the sacred anchor of ignorance and accuse this secret of an implicite Compact with Satan But herein lurks no vain observance chiefly when the decerptor shall have the assument being wholly inscious of the position pluckt off the leaves either upward or downward Doubtless besides Asarum and the extremities or clusters of Elder no other Cathartick Medicines are enriched with this propriety for they in what position soever collected from the plant do ever operate univocally that is either constantly upwards or constantly downwards according to the destination of their gifts But in Asarum in the integral plant there sensibly appears a Magnetical propriety and so it doth variously endow its leaves according to the sense of their decerption That not onely plants but also almost all created Entities have a certain adumbration of sense or obscure sensibility they largely declare as well by Sympathy as Antipathy which presuppose and cannot consist without sense maintained amongst themselves which satisfactorily to manifest shall be the subject of some succeeding lines A second Fit of the Gout surprized a Noble Matron of my acquaintance after the first paroxysm had gone off and left her and thenceforward the Gout by an unwonted recidivation and periodical recourse infested her without remission for many moneths together But she not apprehending whence so violent and unexpected a return of the disease had happened to her at length she rising from her bed as often as the fury of the fit by intervals somewhat remitted reposed her self in a Chair wherein a brother of hers many years past and in another City cruelly tortured with the Gout was wont to sit she instantly found that from thence the disease did awake and afresh invade her This effect likewise is on no pretence whatever to be ascribed to Imagination or doubt since both these were much yonger then the effect But if it hapned that any third person subject to the Gout sate in the same Chair to him there succeeded not any reincrudation of the disease For which reason
praevious digestions which we call putrefactions once dissolved as it were emancipated from the bondage of corporeity comes forth free expedite and ready for action Wherefore when the Wound by the ingression of the offensive aër hath admitted an adverse and extraneous quality from whence the blood immediately aestuates and ferments in the lips of the Wound and otherwise is converted into a purulent matter it happens that the blood in the Wound freshly made doth by reason of this exotick quality suffer some degree of putrefaction which blood then received upon the weapon is emplastered with the Magnetick Unguent by the mediation of which gradual putrefaction the Ecstatick power of the blood formerly latent in potentia is drawn into act which because it holds a commerce and secret friendship with that body from whence it was effluxed by relation of its hidden ecstasie hence is it that this blood constantly carries an individual respect and determinate amity to the other blood yet running in the veins of the same body For then is it I say that the Magnet sets it self a work in the Unguent and by the concurrence and mediation of the Ecstatick power for so I christen this quality in defect of a more convenient Epithite sucks out the noxious tincture from the lips of the Wound and at length by the mumial balsamical and attractive virtue acquired in the Unguent the Magnetism is consummate and the Cure perfected Lo now you have the true and positive reason of the Natural Magnetism in the Unguent deduced from Natural Magick to which the Soul of Reason and Light of Truth is pleased to assent in that sentence Where the treasure is there the heart is also For if the treasure be in Heaven then the heart that is the spirit of the internal man is fixed upon God who is the true Paradise who onely is the life of eternal life But if the treasure be laid up in transitory and fading things then also is the heart and spirit of the outward man chained to things that must perish and confess their dust Nor is there cause why you should infer any mystical signification or second intention by understanding not the spirit but the cogitation and naked desire for the heart for that would sound frivolous and absurd that where-ever a man should place his treasure in his cogitation there also would his cogitation be placed and Truth it self interprets this present Text literally and without enfolding any mystery or deuteroscopy and by an example annexed manifestly shews the real and local presence of the Eagles with the Carcase And in this signification also the spirit of the internal man is said to be locally in the Kingdom of God which is very God himself within us and the heart or spirit of the external man locally dwells about its treasure What wonder that the astral spirits of fleshly minded men should long after their funerals appear wandring about such places as their treasures are hidden in by which apparitions the whole Nectromancy of the Antients emancipated itself I say therefore that the external man is singly an Animal governed by the reason and will of the blood but in the interim not barely an Animal but also the image of God Let Logicians therefore hence observe how defectively and improperly they use to define man from his power of ratiocination But of this subject more largely elsewhere For which consideration I shall in this place opportunely insert the Magnetism of Eagles to Carcases newly slain for Fowls of the aër are not endowed with so much acuteness of the sense of smelling that by the nostril they can receive an invitation in Italy to come and feast on dead bodies in Africa For neither can an Odor be diffused to so vast a circumferential distance since both the great latitude of the Sea interposed must of necessity hinder and the elemental propriety of the Odor subject to diminution and impairment in so long a tract of aër forbid so huge an expansion of the Atomes streaming from the odorible Body nor is there any ground whereon to build your conception that birds can by their sight discover carcases at so large distance especially when they lie Southward behinde some high Mountain But what need is there for us by the tedious force of words to inculcate the Magnetism of Fowl since God himself the Alpha and Omega of Philosophy hath in express terms decreed the process of intercourse or commerce betwixt the heart and its treasure to be the same with that betwixt Eagles and their prey of dead bodies and so on the contrary interchangeably For if Eagles were carried on to their prey the Carcases by the same incitement of appetite whereby all Quadruped Animals are goaded on to their pastures assuredly he would have said in a word that Animals are directed and congregated to their food by the same motive that the heart of a man sallies forth and invades its treasure Which would contain a most gross falsity for the heart of man progresseth not to its treasure with design to devour it and sate it self therewith as Animals are by the swinge of appetite rapt on to their food And therefore the comparison betwixt the heart of man and the Eagle holds not good in the final cause or attractive for which they tend to desire of fruition but in the manner and processe of tendency namely that they are equally invited allected carried on by Magnetism really and locally to their determinate objects Wherfore the spirit and will of the bloud effused out of the wound adhering to the weapon and together with it embalmed in the Vnguent instantly tend and egresse towards their peculiar treasure the residue of bloud yet running in its proper conservatory the veines and enjoying a community of life with the inward man But the Pen of Divinity in a peculiar Elogy writes that the Eagle is allured to the Carcases of the slaine because he receives his summons and invitation from the originary implanted and mumiall spirit of the carcase but not from any odour exhaling from the body under the arrest of putrefaction For this Animal in assimilation appropriates to himselfe onely this mumiall Spirit and hence is it in Sacred Writ said of the Eagle My youth shall be renewed like an Eagle In regard the renovation of its youth proceeds not from the bare eating the flesh of a carcase but from an Elixir or essentiall extract of the spirit balsamicall exquisitely depurated and refined by a certaine singular digestion or concoctive faculty proper only to this Fowle for otherwise Dogs Ravens and Pies would also receive an equall benefit of rejuvenescence which experience assures us to be false You will say we have travelled far indeed to fetch home a reason to support and illustrate our Magnetisme But what will you infer hereupon if you confesse that what seems far remote from the capacity of your intelligence must
also to you seem far fetched truly the book of Genesis teacheth us that the Soule of every living creature dwels in the bloud of it as in its proper mansion For in the bloud there inhabite certaine noble and vital powers which as if they were endowed with animation cry loud to heaven for revenge yea from the hands of Judges here below demand vindictive justice to be done upon the homicide which since they cannot be denyed to be naturall Citizens of the blood I see no reason why any man should reject the magnetism of the bloud and unjustly reckon its rare admirable effects among the ridiculous acts of satan I wil say this further that men which walk in their sleep do by the conduct of no other Motor or guide then that of the Spirit of the Bloud that is of the outward man walk up and downe clime wals and praecipices and performe many other actions difficult and impossible to men awake I say by a magicall virtue naturall to the outward man That Saint Ambrose was visibly present at the exsequies of Saint Martin though corporally at home in his owne Chamber many Leagues distant Yet he was visibly present at the celebration of his holy brothers funerall in the visible spirit of the exteriour man and no otherwise for when many holy Fathers of the Church have seen the transaction of many secret and distant things this hath been performed without the circumscription of time and place in that ecstasy which is only of the internall man by the superiour powers of the soule collected and twisted into unity and by an intellectuall vision but not by a visible presence For otherwise the soule is never divorced from the body unless in earnest once and ever and then is not capable of a reunion until the resurrection which reconnexion notwithstanding is otherwise familiar and naturall to the spirit of the outward man divorced pro tempore in some ecstasy In so great a Paradox it can hardly suffice to erect a firme building of belief upon one single pillar of reason wherefore we conceive it our duty to frame a second basis for the more substantiall supportment of our doctrine of Magnetisme and to advance to the explanation of that mysterious cause by which this Magneticall alliciency is performed also betwixt bodies devoid of animation not by any Animall but a certaine Naturall sensasion Which that we may more seriously enterprise and solidly performe we are obliged by way of praeparation to praemise an enquiry what Satan can of his own power contribute to and by what meanes he can coopeperate in the meerly nefarious and impious actions of Witches and Conjurators for from hence will it clearly appear to what particular and just cause whether Naturall or Diabolicall every effect arising from abstruse originals ought properly to be ascribed And finally what kinde of spirituall power that is which tends to and arrives at an object removed at large distance or what is the action passion and velitation or reactive encounter betwixt Naturall Spirits or wherein consists the superiority and praerogative of man above other inferiour Creatures and by consequence why our Unguent compounded of human Mumies should also cure the wounds of horses I shall explain the matter by an example Let us therefore grant a witch who can vigorously torment an absent man by an image of wax by imprecation incantation or onely by some praevious touch for in this place we have nothing to doe with Veneficious Witches properly called Sorcerers in regard they execute their malice and destroy onely by poyson which every common Seplasiarie and petty Apothecary can imitate that this action is Diabolicall no man will doubt However it pleaseth us to distinguish how much Satan and how much the Witch can contribute to this mischiefe The first Supposition First you shall take notice that Satan is the sworne and irreconcileable enemy of mankinde and so accounted by all unlesse any please to esteem him a friend and therefore that he doth most readily without any the least haesitancy or negligence attempt and procure what mischief soever lies within the reach of his malice or power against us The second supposition Next you shall observe that although he be a mortall adversary to Witches also in so much as 't is essentiall to him to maintain a most destructive hostility against all the Sons of Adam yet in respect they are his confest slaves and sworn Subjects of his own black Kingdome he never unlesse against his will and by compulsion detects them never betrays them into the hands of the Magistrate nor exposes them to the scorne and reproches of other persons and that for three reasons 1 Since he is the Grand-father of pride he very well knowes that by the detection of his favorites there is much detracted from his reputation authority and dominion 2 Since he is an insatiate Nimrod an implacable persecutor of soules he is not ignorant that by the punishment and flames which justice inflicts upon his Zanies many other men else willing and prompt to list themselves in his regiment and fall under his jurisdiction are discouraged deterred and quite averted 3 Because he often observes many a Witch whom with an obtorsion or wresting round of her neck and secret stopping of her breath he could heartily wish to destroy converted by her punishment to become an Apostate from him and repenting at sight of the flames and by this meanes snatched out of his clutches From the former of our propositions I conclude that Satan if he were able singly by his own power to destroy man whom the guilt of mortall sinne hath made obnoxious to the tyranny of death would upon no motive whatever be induced to suspend and procrastinate the execution or his destructive malice but he doth not therefore he cannot destroy him But yet the Witch doth very frequently murder man and hence also it is clear that the Witch hath a power to destroy him no otherwise then an assassine hath a power at the liberty of his own will to cut the throat of him that is fallen into his hands and therefore in this detestable action there is a certain power peculiarly belonging to the Witch which depends not upon Satan and by consequence Satan is not the principall efficient and grand executor of the homicide for otherwise if he were the prime executor he could in no respect stand in need of the Witch for a Coadjutrix and Assistant but would ere this time by his own single power have cut off and swept into the grave the greatest part of mankinde Most miserable and deplorable indeed were the condition of the posterity of Adam which should lie in subjection to so horrid a tyranny and stand obnoxious to the fate of his arbitrary cruelty but we have the Almighty Preserver of men more faithfull in his mercies towards us then to subject the workes of his own hands to the arbitrary dominion of Satan Therefore
the science of the aple is suspended and chained up in the leaden fetters of sleep hence it is also that sometimes our dreams are propheticall and that often God himself vouchsafeth to make a neerer approach and familiar visit to the sons of men in dreams or abstracted visions of the night for when the interior magick of the Soule stands unmolested and free from any disturbance of the Science of the interdicted fruit then and onely then doth the intelligence keep holy-day enjoy an halcyon Calme and freely diffuse its selfe through all its royaltie for thus doth it when it demergeth it self into the inferiour and subordinate faculties safely conduct and lead along those that walk in their sleep over such horrid praecipices where the strongest brained man awake durst not adventure to clime Whereupon the senior Rabbies of the Jews affirme that the Cabal was originally conceived in sleep namely when the science of the Aple was wholly consopited The intellectuall act of the Soule is ever clear enjoys a constant Jubile of calme serenity and continues in some sort perpetuall but so long as the principall Agent hath not transmitted its power so farre as the limits of Sense this kinde of action is not diffused through the whole man For we who are wholly imployed and taken up with the exercise of our sensitive Facultie together with our Carnall intelligence are perpetually oh misery worthy a deluge of teares distracted and impetuously hurryed away from the use and benefit of our more coelestial Magical science and held captives rather in the crepusculous and owle-light of congnition then in the Meridian of truth Nor do we the inhabitants of Aegyptian darknesse understand our own intellection untill there succeed a certaine mutuall traduction of the severall faculties a successive delivery of the image of the object from each to other and untill as it were certain angles of actions propagated by divers agents concurre and become complicated about the Medium Now Saran excites this Magicall power otherwise dormant and impeded by the Science of the outward man in his vassals and the same awaked into activity serves them in stead of a sword or instrument of revenge in the hand of a potent adversary that is the Witch Nor doth Satan adfer any thing at all to the perpetration of the murder more then the bare excitation of the somnolent power and a consent of the Will which in Witches is for the most part subject to his compulsion for which two contributions the damned miscreant as if the whole energy of the act were soly attributary to himselfe requires by compact a constant homage a firme and irrevocable oppignoration and devout adoration at least and frequently a surrender of the very soule into his possession When intruth this power was freely conferred upon us by God our Architect and is no more then purely naturall to man For those praestigious acts and impostures the effascination by the optick emission of the eyes the false disguises of Witches in borrowed shapes and other delusions of this kind are onely derived from the legerdemain of Satan and his proper acts And for this reason all the operations of this Montinbanco this Hocus-pocus are meerly ridiculous pageant delusions and counterfeit apparitions by the praesentment of formes that delude the sense because the God of mercies permits him not to enjoy any greater range of power but holds this mischievous Leviathan by a hook in his nostrils but on the other side the Witch doth by the magick of her own naturall faculty perform reall and impious effects Since that by sin not the endowments of Nature but of Grace were obliterated in Adam no man disputes and that these gifts of Nature although they were not totally cancelled and lost yet remained eclipsed and as it were envelloped in the obscurity of a midnight sleep For as man from that unhappy moment wherein he forfeited his primitive Soveraignty became inevitably obnoxious to the same fate of mortality together with his fellow creatures so also were all his heroick and imperial faculties withdrawn behind a cloud and so oppressed with the opacity of fleshly lusts that ever since they stand in need of excitement and eduction from that Cimmerian umbrage And to the procuring and advance of this excitation abstracted Contemplations fervent and uncessant Prayers taedious vigils macerating Fasts and other acts of mortification are strong and praevalent conducements that by these spirituall antidotes the Lethargie of flesh and blood being subdued men may obtain this faculty renewed into its primitive agility and in a calme requiem of spirit offer up their addresses to that pure Essence which requires to be worshiped no other way then in purity of spirit that is in the zealous abysse of the Soule the profundity of the inward man To this purpose also mainely conduceth the practice of the Cabal which may restore to the Soule this her naturall and magicall praerogative and rowze it up from the slumber and inchantment of Carnality I will explain my self yet farther like a Mathematician by Examples and assume the very operations of Witches which although of themselves they are full of impiety and horrid mischiefe yet they grow upon the same root indifferently disposed to the production of good or evill fruite namely upon this Magicall facultie For it proclaimes not the majesty of Free-will or the tractate of it if we from thence collect argument concerning a thiefe an assassine a whoremonger an apostate or Witch Grant therefore that a Witch kill a horse in a stable removed at good distance there is some certain naturall power derived from the spirit of the Witch and not from Satan which can oppresse strangle and perish the vitall spirit of the horse Grant that there be two subjects of diseases and death and that one of these is the body wherein every disease takes up its quarters and because all Entities discharge their activities on this as the most passive and flexible men have conjectured that the other spirituall dominion was derived immediately from Satan but the other is the impalpable and invisible Spirit which is constituted in a capacity of suffering every disease perse in its own solitary nature The Spirit once invaded by any forreign hostility and subdued to the obedience of passion the body also cannot but submit to compassion and deuteropathy since every action is terminated in the body for the mind after once it is adliged to the body alwaies flowes downward as when the Palate is misaffected with paine the tongue alwaies tends thither on the designe of relieving it but on the contrary the body may often be assaulted and entered by the force of a disease and yet the spirit remain exempted from sympathy For there is a classis of diseases onely materiall which arise singly from a materiall tincture So various and numerous are the occasions of death that when we have taken the just dimensions of our
our will and operate not in conformity to the diâ—… ates of reason have deeply impressed upon themselves a certaine Character of revenge and hence is it that at the approach of the assassine the bloud whose fountaine death had sealed up begins a tumultuation and ebullition in the veines and violently gusheth forth being as in a furious fit of anger enraged and agitated by the image or impresse of revenge conceived against the murderer at the instant of the soules immature and compulsive exile from the body For indeed the bloud after death retaines a peculiar sense of the murderer being present and enjoyes a certaine though obscure kind of revenge because it hath its peculiar phansie and for this reason not Abel himselfe but his innocent bloud cries loud in the eares of divine justice for revenge This also is the cause why the Plague is so frequent a concomitant to seidges and why the beleaguered see the revenge of their dead acted upon their enemies by the surviving Magick of their friends bloud for the magicall spirit of the inward man in the heat of the encounters sallyes hath conceived a character and impression of revenge and sometimes the defendants especially th common Souldier being by want and other extreame miseries reduced to desperation and man and wife conjoyned as well in death as life falling into the cold armes of the grave bequeath heavie imprecations and maledictions to the surviving Officers who engaged them in the calamity and might had their charity been but halfe so weighty as their wealth have relieved their famine by which earnest curse there are more strong and durable impressions engraven on the sidereall-spirit of the dying man chiefly of a great bellyed woman which survive the funerall of the body This posthume spirit call it Ghost if you please immediately after death taking a vagabond progresse in the lower region of the ayre applies it selfe to the contrivement of such spirituall means of revenge and ruine as lye within the sphear of its activity and having once designed the way most readily advances to execution And Plagues of this originall are most fatall aswell in the universality of contagion as destruction sparing no sex age or constitution but impartially blasting all as if immediately shot from the quiver of incensed Divinity But our pen is tender and feares to divulge the mysterious cause why such spirituall plagues scorne to obey the empty and frustaneous help of corporeal remedies for to reveale the reciprocall connexion of mumies the concordance of their interchangeable and cooperating faculties might prove unsafe and offensive to vulgar heads in regard of the whole Nectromancy of the Antients was originally founded on this basis For the same reason also God in the Levitical Law severely prohibited the suspension of the bodies of Malefactors upon the Gibbet expresly commanding their remove before the Sun went downe upon them You will answer that Camp-plagues are generated from the odious and unwholsome nastinesse of the Souldier and from the unburied excrements of men and entrails of beasts polluting the ayre with putrid and malignant vapours but to this erroneous opinion we oppose the example of Coriars Tanners and such who imploy their industry in the sordid manufacture of glew made of skins dissolved by putrefaction for all these are observed for the most part so farre are they from being obnoxious to the infection of the Plague to enjoy the blessings of health and longavity so conspicuous and admirable is the finger of Divinity in the spirit of the Microcosmé Doe you desire to be informed why the blood of a Bull is toxicall and poysonous but that of an Oxe though brother to the Bull safe and harmelesse the reason thus the Bull at the time of slaughter is full of secret reluctancy and vindictive murmurs and firmly impresseth upon his owne blood a character and potent signature of revenge But if it chance that an Oxe brought to the slaughter fall not at one stroke of the Axe but grow enraged and furious and continue long in that violent madnesse then he leaves a depraved and unwholsome tincture on his flesh unlesse he be first recalmed and pacified by darknesse and famine A Bull therefore dyes with a higher flame of revenge about him then any other Animall whatever and for that transcendent excandescence his fat but by no meanes his blood lest the humane blood in the unguent be subdued and overawed by this exotique tincture of the Bulls blood is an ingredient wholly necessary to the composition of the Armary unguent where the weapons which made the wound are not besprinkled with the blood of the Patient For if we expect a perfect cure from the dressing of the weapon truely the mosse and other its fellow ingredients will prove insufficient to worke a cure when the weapon is not distained with blood effused from the wound Since there is required a more violent and efficacious namely a taurine impression and an aëreall communication of florid honey And thus have wee to the satisfaction of the most incredulous and prejudicate made it out that the admirable efficacy of the Unguent ought to be imputed not to any auxiliary concurrence of Satan who could performe the cure without the use of honey and Bulls blood but to the communion of Naturall qualities by the energy of the posthume Character of Revenge remaining firmly impressed upon the blood and concreted fat Our Adversaries will whisper and secretly exult that the power of our Magnetical Unguent could have hardly been supported but by Analogical Arguments drawn from the abstruse operations of Witches from the impostures of Satan and the spiritual magick of the invisible world which is a science onely imaginary of no solid concernment or weight in the ballance of reason and a dangerous if not damnable error Nevertheless not any sinister obliquity or perversion of truth nor any indirect design in us by specious similitudes to impose upon the weaker credulities of the illiterate but the gross ignorance of others and the deplorable condition of humane fragility which by the propensity of our vitiated nature more readily inclines to evil more nimbly apprehends evil and is more familiarly instructed by evil then good hath compulsively directed our pen to observe this method in the explanation and probation of our thesis However what we have represented in this scene concerning Satan and his familiar Zany the Witch affords no encouragement or ground for others to hope a perfect conformity or resemblance of the power of our Unguent with that of Witches for neither the spiritual faculty of the Vnguent nor the ecstatique phansie of the blood are excited by the manuduction or impulsion of Satan The mark we shot at was that there is inhabitant in the Soul a certain Magical Virtue infused by the primitive bounty of her Creator naturally proper and of right belonging to her by that just title that Man is the image and
since then you would implicitely confess the effect not to be ascribed to Satan So the Unguent would not be magnetical from any innate and natural phansie peculiar to it self but from an external adventitious inspiration namely the phansie of the Compounder impressed upon it since there can be no neerer medium of the foresaid Magnetism then humane blood with humane blood truly the blood alone as the most proportionate and predisposed subject would suffice to the composition of the Unguent and all the other simples ingredient into the confection would be frustraneous and unnecessary especially the blood of a Bull and hony where the cure is to be performed by applying the salve to weapons not distained with the blood of the Patient which is manifestly false by experiment Finally the Magnetism of the Unguent would then be general in respect the Confectioner may by the wilde and universal range of his Phansie intend to make the impression uncertain undeterminate and extensive to the wounds not onely of man but of all beasts whatever What if the Compounders phansie were not fixed upon a dog must the Unguent therefore have no virtue to cure the wound of a dog Away with such idiotism such ridiculous dotage What hath Bole Armeniake what Line seed oyl what Hony and in fine what hath the blood of a Bull of peculiar disposition or determinate respect to the wound of a horse or man that upon them onely as upon the most proper medium and not upon any other things the Phansie of the Confectioner should be impressed and yet if these were secluded the Composition the Unguent would be barren and devoid of all power and vulnerary efficacy The Natural phansie therefore of the Unguent is the sole and grand cause of the Magnetism and the immediate and proper cause of the Cure but not the imagination of the Component Behold you have our understand true Christian Philosophy not the frantick sophisms or idle dreams of Ethnicks Be cautious I beseech you that you bring not me into censure who have been your self more forward and rash in censuring others I am yours and a Roman Catholick who have cordially and firmly determined in my self to mediate or write nothing that may be contrary to the Word of God or the fundamental Articles of the Church I well understand the constellation of my own genius and know my self born not to allow or foment contentious debates not to write Comments on or defensive Apologies for the pens of other men wherefore what I knew I desired with a freedom becoming a Philosopher to communicate to the world I shall annex onely this one clause Whoever attributeth to the Devil an effect arising from Natural Causes so created by God and so conferred upon the Creatures he doth alienate the honor due to the Creator and ignominiously others might say blasphemously apply it unto Satan which under your favor if you shall strictly call under the test of your Anatome you will finde to be express idolatry My earnest prayer to the fountain of all Clemency our God and Father of Mercies is now and ever shall be that he would be pleased to look with the eye of compassion and forgiveness upon those errors and lapses of our understanding which from our native not stubborn ignorance and humane fragility we have contracted Amen THere are three that bear record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And anon speaking of the Humanity of Christ there are three which bear record in Earth the Blood the Spirit and the Water and these three are one To us therefore who have the like Humanity it is no wonder that we contain Blood and a Spirit of the like unity and that the action of the Blood is meerly Spiritual Yea for this reason in Genesis it is not called by the name of Blood but dignified with the appellation of a Red Spirit Withdraw therefore whoever thou art from thy incredulous pertinacy and ingenuously acknowledg another Spirit in the blood besides the Devil unless thou wilt dare to oppose thy mis-informed Faith to the Book of Truth The Translators Supplement NEmo hûc Geometriae expers ingrediatur was the Motto which the semi-christian Philosopher Plato caused to be engraven on the porch of his Academy implying not onely the exact measure of lines but also the Geometry of a mans self the dimensions and just extent of the passions and affections of the minde to be the previous qualification necessary to any that should hope to benefit by his Lectures And Nemo hûc Philosophiae expers ingrediatur shall be our inscription in the front of this Translation understanding by Philosophy the ample knowledg not onely of the Elemental and visible World but also of the Intellectual and Spiritual not onely of the more plain and obvious tracts wherein Nature progresseth to the production of ordinary effects but even those obscure and unfrequented paths she walks in when she advanceth to Abstrusities and more mysterious Magnalities together with that acquired Candor of judgment and habitual Equanimity which as well emancipateth the understanding from the pedantick tyranny of subscription to all that 's read if but disguised in the specious dress of probability and ushered in by Antique Authority as it inclineth the reason to a sober assent and modest conformity to such Assertions which carry the face of judicious Enquiries and serious majesty of Truth though they be presented at disadvantage under a cloud of Novelties or Paradoxes Nor can we fear that this our device or impress will be suspected of impertinency by any that shall do so much right to their own judgments as to conced that a Reader thus qualified must be the onely he that can survey understand censure and enrich his head with the subtler speculations and profound Dihoties of our more then ingenious Helmont while it is of confessed necessity that the gross ignorance of some must obscure and the prevarication of others pervert the prospect of these splendid though Heterodoxical Notions and Natural though spiritual or magical Causalities which his finer pen hath drawn in landskip upon this tablet The Magnetically-Natural cure of Wounds Now though the pensive Consideration of the incapacity some would have said Barbarity of the numerous multitude on one side and of the deplorable inflexibility of the leading part of learning more then a moity of Schollers being swallowed up in a deluge of Presumption and Prejudice on the other might in some measure excuse our despair of finding many heads of this soveraign temper wherein sufficiency in knowledg ought to have received the just allay of Candor and non-adherence to Antiquity yet may we not incur the odious premunire of singularity so far as not confidently to hope that our worthy Author will fall into the hands of some whose unbyassed intellectuals will smoothly run him over and gather so full satisfaction from many of his Experiments that Gratitude her self
melted at the fire restoring to it a small quantity of this essential vital Nectar The story is introduced for this end that hence it may be observed That the spirit of Wine by a natural tendency flies from cold as from his proper enemy and gently withdraws itself from its former mansion into the Centre of the Wine But on the contrary Wines are therefore exposed to the heat of the Sun that they may grow Acide and the spirit exhaling leaves behinde it a flat cadaverous substance devoid of spirit and life which is Vineger But since it is far more noble and useful that the spirit of Wine should retreat into the Centre then perish by exhalation therefore hath necessity for the conservation of Wines hinted the invention of cold deep Cellers The Austrian Wines still operating on themselves by an uncessant tumultuous heat of Fermentation are for the most part gross and viscid For which reason the Cellers at Vienna are ordinarily digged to no less then aâ—…undred foot in depth The Spanish Wines also would suffer the same restless ebullition and conflict betwixt their Heterogeneities were they not prevented by the admixture of a Lime which the Spaniard calls Hiesco at the very instant of their flowing from the Wine Press Whence results it a clear and unquestionable truth that the spirit of Wine in cold Cellers retreating from its adversary cold returns to the heart of the Liquor as to a safe refuge and there conceals it self Wine therefore in the cortex or outward circumference of it self is less generous as having fewer spirits then in the middle or inmost retiring room Hence it is a necessary consequent that as by reason of the exhalation of spirits Wines set in the Sun grow acide and phlegmatick so also proportionably the exterior Cortex of Wine in a cold Celler must be more acide then the Centrals And thus when the musts of Wines are freshly brought in from the Press lodged in Store-houses and have suffered Fermentation the spirit by and by flying from cold concentres it self and therefore the superficies of Wine having already entred some degree of Acidity immediately begins to operate on the dregs floating on the yet troubled and unclarified mass of Liquor For an absolute impossibility it is that there can be any the least Acidity which having once met with a proportionate object does not immediately begin to operate on it This really is the Law and unavoidable necessity of Naturals By example Vineger how flat and weak soever having once touched upon the stone concreted in the head of a Creafish vulgarly but erroneously called Crabs eye can by no means contain it self but must immediately act to the dissolution of it and resolve it into a clear diaphanous Liquor The Acidity of Wine having once sated it self on the dregs and spent much of its activity by degrees inclines it self to coagulation But coagulate it cannot without a conspiracy with and assistance from the Fracid Odor of the vessel impregnate with a spirit or power of Fermentation whereby it may in some measure admit of putrefaction And for this onely reason is the Coagulation made at the sides of the vessel to which it affixes it self according to that familiar Chymick Axiome Omnis spiritus dissolvens eddem actione quâ corpora dissolvit coagulatur Every dissolvent spirit is it self coagulated in the same action wherein it dissolves other concreted bodies The more acide Wine therefore in the extremities of it self dissolves the dregs and at the same instant the acide dissolvent spirit is coagulated together with the newly dissolved faeces and soon applies it self to the neerest side or concave of the vessel And this lest both the dissolvent and dissolved might not be hindred from coagulating but on one side at least they might not be invironed by Liquor And thus by this progress and succession of natural motions there is affixed a new production of Coagulation Tartar Observe also that before the compleat act of Coagulation there is no existent Coagulatum and therefore the acide spirit in the verge of the mass of Wine having newly dissolved the dregs in a moment before the act of coagulation finisht seazes on the vessel and by a Cement or glue native and proper to it self there fixes and constantly adheres Otherwise depressed by gravity it would immediately sink to the bottom And this new Entity thus coagulated is the Tartar of Wine of which our Discourse That these are sober solid truths we have clear and demonstrable evidence from Vineger it self For Wine insolated to a calefaction of the vessel may produce Tartar but Vineger never And yet Wine and Vineger are one and the same matter differing onely in those qualifications heat and cold in the former indeed with Tartar in the latter without it From the premisses there breaks forth a considerable truth that our forementioned Axiome by Chymicks concluded of eternal verity grosly fails in that it makes the dissolution of any concreted body to be done in the instant of time and numerical action with the coagulation of the spirit dissolvent For if there intervened not in some short interval of time a diversity and succession of motions the Coagulation could not soder it self to the circumambient planks of the vessel as is there affused by liquefaction but would of necessity if it were coagulated at the instant of dissolution sink down to the lowest region in the form of a simple coagulation and not cement it self to the walls of the hogshead But on the other side in the bottom the peculiar region of the Lees there is never found any Tartar Here also accurs to our serious consideration a second and more weighty verity that the Analogy or resemblance which the vulgarity of Physicians conceives betwixt the Tartar in Wine and those preter-natural Coagulations in the body of man is erroneous vain and altogether impertinent and therefore the name history manner and end of Coagulation of Tartar in Wine are foolishly and unfitly accommodated to the causes of diseases All which I shall demonstrate to ample satisfaction when I come to discover that grand and popular delusion of the Existence of Tartar in our meat and drink Allowing to Wine onely a fertility of Tartar For that we acknowledg to be no Alien no son of an exotick mother from the concurrence of forein principles intruded into Wine having its production contrary to or besides the ordinary and simple nature of Wines neither owing its original to the adjuncts of the primitive Malediction delivered in Paradise by divine providence for the expiation of those Crimes committed by man in the heat and distraction of Wine Again neither is the Tartar of Wine ever coagulated by any originary activity or power of coagulation proper to its own nature though Paracelsus dreamt so but then undergoes Coagmentation when the circumferential Acidity of the Wine hath newly exhausted much of its Energy