saltness is a volatile and salt Spirit which being co-fermented with Earth doth at length in part assume the nature of Salt-peter The venal bloud also doth by distillation afford this salt spirit plainly volatile and not any thing distinguishable from the spirit of Urine Yet I have considered that they both do differ in this essential property that the spirit of the Salt of venal bloud doth cure the falling-evill even of those of ripe age the spirit of the salt of Urine not so Therefore it is manifest that in the Venal blood a salt and volatile spirit is contained But after what manner all the venal bloud may be transchanged by the ferment of the heart into spirit without a diversity of kind as much as may be said I have explained in the Treatise of Long Life Because otherwise Natures are not to be demonstrated from a former Cause as neither the operations of Ferments because they are essentiall causes for the transmutations of things Therefore the vital spirit is saltish and therefore Balsamical and a preserver from corruption and that not so much by reason of the salt as in respect of a light conceived in its own Salt And so neither can air be made the addition or nourishment thereof For although the Aqua vitae be easily assumed into vital spirit yet this is not oylie and combustible but the spirit of wine onely by the touching of a ferment doth easily ascend wholly into a saltish volatile nature forthwith assoon as it looseth its oylie or enflamable property Even as I have taught by Handicraft operation in the Treatise of Duelech To wit after what manner at one onely instant Aqua vitae may be truly changed into a yellow gobbet or lump not inflamable which thing doth more evidently happen to Aqua vitae by a saltish vital Ferment Therefore the Spirit of Wine is straightway snatched into the heart without delay or by a further digestion through the Arteries of the stomach and restoreth the strength because it is by small labour perfected in the heart yet we must not think that the vital Spirit is soure because the Spirit of Salt-peter is pleasingly sharp and is made at length of the Spirit of Urine Because the Spirit from whence Salt-peter is coagulated in the Earth was not soure or sharp while it was the Spirit of Urine Therefore the vitall Spirit is Salt not soure for that which is sharp out of the stomach is an enemy to the whole Body being nearer to the Spirit of Urine than to Salt-peter and it is as yet much more divers from the Spirit of Salt-peter by the adustion and co-mingling of the adjunct with the thing extracted But they do easily perceive the saltness of the vital Spirit who have had some stupid member which by degrees receiving touching doth suffer pricking and stingings which are the true tokens of saltness Indeed the saltness of the Spirit may be known but the light of the same proceeding immediately and fountainously from the Father of Lights doth drive away all further search of mortall men Furthermore that the whole venal bloud is a meer Salt it desires not more strongly to be proved than because the whole venal bloud is in Ulcers the dropsie Ascites c. homogeneally made a Liquor by an immediate degeneration For the venal bloud is intensly red but it growes yellow while it is made arterial bloud because redness waxeth yellow when it is as it were dissolved by a volatile Salt It is as yet a dead thing whatsoever I have spoken of hitherto The vital Spirit performs the offices of life But the famous top of life is not proper to a Liquor or exhalation as they are Salt things And that the life of things may live it ought of necessity to have a Light from the Father of Lights Therefore it behoveth that the Spirit or vital Skie or Air be enlightned with a Light simply vital not indeed universal but specifical and individuating Nor also with a fiery burning enfiaming light and conspicuous by concentred beames But it is a formal light of the condition of a sensitive Soul In which word the descriptions and further diligent searches of mortal men are stayed to which end imagine thou that Glow-worms have a light in their belly a little before night as also bubbles of the Sea have a night brightness and very many things which through purrifying do proceed into the last matter of Salts yet vital and that which is extinguished together with their life Suppose thou a certain a like light to be in the spirit of life which as long as it liveth shineth and when it forsaketh the eyes of one dying they appear horny and made clean And that light is now and then extinguished the material vital Spirit being as yet safe in the Plague poyson sounding c. yet thou mayst not think that the like essence of light is in us and Glow-worms that indeed lights do differ onely in the tone or tenor of degrees But in very deed there are as many particular kindes of vital lights as there are of Creatures that have life And that is an abundant token of divine bounty that there are as many particular kindes of Lights which are comprehended in us under one onely notion and word and that there are as many vital differences as there are Species of vital things because that those lights are the very lives Souls and Forms of vital things themselves yet I except the immortal minde while I treat of frail lights although it self also be a certain incomprehensible light and so by the same Lights themselves is the alone and every distinction of particular kindes Therefore the Father of Lights delighteth in the unutterable abundance of generall kindes of Lights with a far greater bounty than in fashioning almost infinite varieties in one onely humane countenance For there is with himself a certain Common-wealth of Lights and a Legion of unmemorable Citizens a certain likeness whereof he expresseth by the Forms of vital things in the sublunary World Therefore the vitall Spirit is arterial bloud resolved by the Ferment of the heart into a salt Air and enlightned by life which light is in us hot of the nature of the Sun and is cold in a Fish neither doth it ever aspire unto any power of heat wherefore our heat is not a consumer of the Original moisture even as concerning long life seeing fishes have not hitherto escaped death Neither could the first men who before the floud saw a thousand Solar years have had more radical moisture by ten fold than us unless they had had all things ten fold more extended which is an impertinent thing For truly it is probable that Adam being formed by the hand of God obtained the most exceeding perfect Stature of the Lord Jesus Christ neither to have exceeded the same Lastly Fishes should naturally be immortall under the frozen Sea seeing their radical moisture should not there evaporate by heat
in its essence by the Divine Goodnesse And the mind hath an eternal permanency henceforward not from its own essence but from the essence of eternity freely given unto it and kept with it Therefore from elsewhere and from that which is infinitely more powerful than it self Therefore it is sufficient that the mind is a spiritual vital Substance and a lightsome creature And seeing there are many general kinds and species of vital lights that light of the mind differs from other vital lights in this that it is a spiritual and immortal substance but that the other vital lights are not formal substances although they are substantial forms and therefore by death they depart or return into nothing no otherwise than as the flame of a candle But the Mind differs from the Angels that it is after the likenesse and image of the eternal God for the mind hath that light and lightsome substance from the gift of Creation seeing it self is that vital light but an Angel is not a light it self noâ— hath it an internal light natural or proper to it self but is the glasse of an uncreated light And so in that it faileth of the perfection of a true divine Image For else seeing an Angel is an incorporeal spirit if it were lightsome of it self it should more perfectly express the image of God than man Moreover whatsoever God more loveth that thing is more noble for that very cause but God hath loved man more than the Angel who to redeem the Angelical nature was not made in the Figure of the evil Spirit even as the thrice glorious Lamb the Saviour of the world took on him the nature of a servant that he might redeem man Neither also doth that withstand these things That the least in the Kingdome of Heaven is greater than John For the Son of man is not lesse in dignity and essence than an Angel although he be also made a little lesse oâ— lower than an Angel because the Son of man in his condition of living was diminished a little lesse than the Angels while he was made man so also was John therefore also an Angel doth alwayes remain a ministring Spirit but he is no where read to be the friend or Son of the Father the delights of the Son of man and the Temple of the Holy Spirit wherein the thrice glorious Trinity hath made its Mansion For that is the famous or royal Prerogative of the Image of God which the eternal Light imprinteth on every man that commeth into this world In the year 1610. after a long wearinesse of contemplation that I might obtain some knowledge of my mind and because I then as yet thought that the knowing of ones own self was a certain compleating of Wisdome I having by chance slidden into a dream being snatched out of the paths of reason did seem to be in a Hall dark enough on my leâ—â— hand was a Table whereon there was a Bottle wherein there was a little Liquour and the voice of the Liquor said unto me Wilt thou have Honours and Riches I was amazed at the unwonted voice I walked about weighing with my self what that should denote in the mean time on my right hand a chink was seen in the wall through which a certain light with an unwonted splendour dazled mine eyes which made me unmindful of the Liquor of its voice and former counsel because I saw that which exceeds a cogitation or thought expressible by word and then that chink presently dispersed I returning thence unto the Bottle again but sorrowful brought this away with me But I did endeavour to taste down the Liquor and with long pains I opened the Bottle and being sore stricken with dread I awaked out of my sleep But the foregoing and great desire of knowing my Soul remained with which desire I breathed for 23 full years For at length in the year 1633. in the vexatious afflictions of Fortunes yet with the rest or quiet of my life given me to drink from the safety of an innocent life I saw in a Vision my mind in an humane shape but there was a light whose whole homogeneal body was actively seeing a spiritual Substance Chrystalline shining with a proper splendour or a splendour of its own but in another Cloudy part it was rouled up as it were in the husk of it self which whether it had any splendour of it self I could not discern by reason of the superlative brightnesse of the Chrystal spirit conâ—eined within Yet that I easily observed that there was not a sexual note or mark of the sex but in the husk But the Seal of the Chrystal was an unutterable light so reflex that the Chrystal it self was made incomprehensible and that not by a denial otherwise than because it cannot onely not be expressed in word but moreover because thou knowest not the essence or thinglinesse of the thing which thou feest And then I knew that that light was the same which I had seen for twenty three years before thorow the chink I likewise from thence comprehended the vanity of my long desire For howsoever beautiful the Vision was yet my mind obtained not any perfection to it self thereby for I knew that my mind in the dreaming Vision had acted as it were the person of a third neither that the representation was worthy of so great a wish But as to that which hath respect unto the Image of God I could never conceive any thing not indeed in the abstracted meditation of understanding which would not by the same endeavour bear some figure before it under which it should stand in the Considerer For whether I shall conceive the thing in imagining it by its own Idea or shape or whether the understanding doth transchange it self into the thing understood A conceipt hath alwayes stood under some shape or figure For neither could I consider the thinglinesse of the immortal mind with an individual existence deprived of all figure neither but that it at least would answer to an humane shape For as oft as the soul being separated doth see another soul Angel or evil Spirit that is made with a knowledge that these things are present with it while it distinguisheth the soul of Peter from that of John For truly such a distinction doth happen onely by a proper vision of the soul which vision of the Soul includeth an external interchangeable to urse and therefore also a figural one For truly an Angel is so in a place that at once he is not elsewhere wherein as well a local as a figural circumscription is of necessity included And then the Body of man as such cannot give unto it self a humane shape therefore it hath need of an Engraver which might be shut up within the matter of the seed and that had descended into it from elsewhere yet that Engraver for as much as it was of a material condition it hath of it self no more power of figuring than the Masse of the Body
An Argument for the Position 7. Another Argument 8. A third 9. A fourth 10. A fifth 11. A sixth 12. That the Mind doth not create the sensitive Soul as neither that another Mind is drawn from the light of the Mind 13. A seventh Argument 14. The Mind imprints an Image on the seed of the Body but not the Image of God that is it self 15. It is proved 16. An eighth Argument 17. What is generated by the Parents after sin 18. Even unto the 74. Article or Content a reasoning from the holy Scriptures 75. That it resists Christianity for Man to be called an Animal 76. Some Agreements of Fathers with the Position 77. An every way convincing Argument out of Augustine for the Position 78. A solid Argument for the Position 79. From the rule of falshood 80. The progress of Satan 81. The birth of Faunes and Nymphs 82. That there are Tudes-quills in the Canaries 83. Objections against the Position unto the 88. Article 89. An irregular race of Fishes 90. There is no figure of the Water neither doth it fall down circularly 91. The fructifying of Trouts 92. The unvalidity of the seed of the Male. 93. The prosperousness of Fishes strengthens the Position 94. Worms are the admonishers of a Resurrection without a material seed of the Male. 95. The Chick is formed of the yolk and the seed of the Cock doth materially remain without 96. A seventh Objection unfolds the Causes of the Flood 97. The common divulged explication of this Text confirms this Position 98. An Interpretation about the motive Principle of the Flood 99. Gyants were not from the first intent of Creation 100. The proof of a Prophetess NOw therefore the suspitions of a Law Disobedience and of a Curse being removed I proceed unto a Demonstration of the Position For which in the Frontispiece the most glorious Incarnation of the son of God by the most pure arterial blood of the alwaies unspotted Virgin his Mother is premised And then the Text hath strewed the way for me Except ye shall be born again of Water and of the holy Spirit That is unless ye are co-partakers in the new regeneration of those that are to be saved of the unspotted and most chast incarnation of the Lord Jesus and are as it were Members of that Head and as it were adopted Sons ye shall not be branches of that Vine For whatsoever is born of the flesh of sin and of the concupiscence of the flesh is flesh uncapable of eternal Life and of the Kingdom of Heaven And he which sowes in the flesh doth reap in corruption And whatsoever he shall reap is flesh and corruption it self For after what manner the holy Spirit had generated in Eve all the posterity of men that the mind of man is not able to attain unto unless the sacred Text had manifested the way thereof in the God-bearing-Virgin who indeed conceived not of but from the holy Spirit whom therefore Gabriel had foretold onely to overshadow the Virgin her self who was perpetually unspotted And therefore the Church calls the Eternal Father The first person of the holy Trinity The Father of the Eternal Son Neither doth she suffer the holy Spirit to be called the Father of the humanity of Christ because the material generation of Christ was drawn onely from his Mother Wherefore neither doth his conception from the holy Spirit include any Paternity or Fatherliness But as that generation proceeded without a begetting of the holy Spirit the which indeed about the conception of Christ was busied without begetting so it is safe for us to contemplate that wholly after the same supernatural and divine manner of over-shadowing in Eve had the generation of adoptive children and of the divine Image been established Therefore the Father of Lights is the onely Creator of all Soules as also supereminently of the Immortal Mind Therefore the generation of Man by the Father of Lights the Giver of Life in the creation of the Mind had been finished or perfected from the substance of Eve and from a co-operation of the holy Spirit in conceiving For as that conception of men had been plainly supernatural so also there had been a supereminent chastity of the Mother in the state of Innocency such as is now in the regeneration by Water and the holy Spirit Wherefore I will endeavour to stablish the stated Position First by a Reason from Nature And afterwards to confirm it by Reason and Authority fetched from the holy Scriptures And Lastly To fortifie it by the Opinions or Precepts of Fathers First of all it is agreeable to Reason that if God would make his own Image in flesh and blesse it by Posterity that that ought to be done in the Mother being a Virgin but not in a Woman defiled by Adam least God should have Man his competitor in the intended Incarnation of his own Image Otherwise if man should prevent and by preventing overthrow this holy and unpolluted production of mankind for whose sake he hath seemed to have framed the Universe afterwards also every generation of men so to be produced should happen after a bruital manner and whatsoever should be born thereof should be naturally uncapable of eternal glory For it is agreeable unto Reason that the Immortal Mind before the Apple was eaten had never made an off-spring Immortal in Duration because nothing is able of or by it self to produce that which is infinite in Duration but God alone whom therefore as yet unto this day in Adamical generation the Church confesseth to be the one only Creator of the Immortal Soul Else if the Mind should be able to produce any Infinite and Immortal Being thenceforth of an Infinite Duration out of it self and the which therefore should be a Substance now it should of necessity cease to be a Creature and should be a Creator Therefore the Mind never could nor never shall be able to produce an Immortal substance and by consequence it fights with the Divinity that the Mind which before the eating of the Apple had immediately undertaken on it self the whole government of the Body had of it self generated the Image of the infinite God and had generated a substance infinite in Duration Wherefore there is altogether an unlike reason whereby the mortal Lights of Life or mortal Souls do issue forth and whereby an immortal substance is created So that it is unpossible to the whole Nature that the Mind should generate a substance like unto it self Seeing that to produce a spiritual and immortal is reserved for God alone even altogether by the consent of all For truly such a Production presupposeth a creating of nothing otherwise if the Mind had intended before the Fall to produce a substance like it self of nothing seeing that thing is altogether impossible unto it it ought to divide and separate it self into Parts In the next place neither had it ever been the intention of the Mind to generate a mortal or sensitive Soul
Life and Soul of soulâ—fied Creatures For in that those Words did differ to say Let it be made and to make For in the sixth or last day Adam was formed But on the seventh day God rested At length he afterwards translated Adam from the Earth into Paradise and deliberated to make Woman of the Rib of the Man but not of his Reins Thigh or Belly Therefore on the eighth day that it might be the Beginning of a new week for a new and super-natural Generation of an off-spring to come Wherefore it may be collected that Woman being wholly an Out-law ascended into a new heap of Choiceness as being a Vessel of Choiceness or Election But we may after some sort conjecture of the quality of humane generation in Eve a Virgin before the Fall by the most glorious Incarnation of our Lord For indeed the Father unto whom every name of Paternity is singularly and solely due and whom his Son as a Father doth alwayes adore hath indeed alwayes generated his Son from Eternity who yet is not read to be the Father of his Incarnation The which thing I even reverence for a vast mystery and the rather after that I understood the insinite goodness of the same as well from the first virginal conception of Creation as in the restoration by the regeneration of Man Indeed the Father Almighty would that the glorious incarnation of Christ should be conceived of the Person of the holy Spirit the which it self to wit therefore was not generated but proceeded from eternity from the Father and the Son For the Spirit of God had caused a humane conception of off-springs in the Arterial Blood of the Heart of the Virgin Eve it being the Image of the Divinity with all its free Gifts without the pleasure of the Flesh But the Mind being thus in the garment of Arterial Blood conceived in the Womb of the Virgin in a humane Shape had took an increase and full maturity from thence For he who the Womb being shut and the Gates being closed came into the World and unto his own also out of the Case of the Heart wherein he was conceived was by a foregoing consent brought unto the Womb of the Virgin and kept even unto the maturity of his Body For he piercing all Members was brought into the Womb For therefore our Lord's Incarnation happened altogether besides the order of Nature now accustomed For 1. The Incarnation of the Lord happened not first in the Womb but in the very Sheath of the Heart of the Virgin 2. Of the most pure and most lively Blood of the Heart but not of the Seed of the Virgin For truly the God-bearing Virgin in that singular respect was not only cleansed from Original Sin but was conceived altogether free from Sins to wit that she might be so much the more void of all Seed than a Child that is newly born For Seed is composed of a mixture of Venal and Arterial Blood or from a co-mixture of Bloods which mixture was no manner of way not so much as materially in the conception of the Son of God who was conceived not of Bloods nor of the Will of the Flesh or of Man but of God alone and born of a Virgin 3. He had not a Man to his Father nor a masculine Matter from whence he should be made which thing surely confirms that a feminine Matter was the more excellent governess or deputy and alone fore-elected from the Beginning 4. He fore-elected the most chast and unspotted Virginity of a Mother which he formed with a divine Hand 5. He was materially conceived onely and of most pure Arterial Blood To wit whereinto the seal of the holy Spirit inspired an humane Mind and a most pure Image of it self made or framed by his Father God 6. That conception was brought from the Heart into the Womb of the Virgin with a piercing of Dimensions 7. Lastly He exspected an increase and just maturity of Nativity as it were in the celebration of a Sabbath Furthermore that the knowledge of Good and Evil signifies nothing but the Concupiscence of the Flesh the Apostle doth manifestly testifie calling it the Law and Desire of Sin From whence to wit the first Bruital and Original Sin the fewel of the other Sins hath immediately issued and is hereafter to endure for a continued Seed of Mortals In the 8th to the Romans God sending his Son into the likeness of the Flesh of Sin hath also concerning Sin condemned Sin in the Flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us Original I say because it is the Beginning of the original of a humane Generation whereby all contagion of Impurity is derived on Posterity and Death became natural unto Man even as unto Beasts So that although the eating of the Apple did contain a note of distrust and ingratitude and the which also is a Companion unto every Sin Yet therefore even every Sin afterwards ought with the same Punishment of necessity also to descend unto Posterity unless the unwonted transgression of a loving Admonition should not so much consist in the disobedience of eating or abstaining as in the horrid Distrust of doubting and confidence of Faith given unto the Devil And so that the generation of the Flesh of Sin which is an effect of the Concupiscence of the Flesh hath of necessity defluxed into Death even unto all Posterity For it pleased the Lord of things to insert in the Apple an incentive of the Concupiscence of the Flesh to wit from which he was able safely to abstain by not eating the Apple therefore diswaded from For otherwise he had never at any moment been tempted by the Flesh or his genital Members the which I will hereafter shew to be therefore called the North in the holy Scriptures Therefore the Apple being eaten Man presently from a natural property of the Apple conceived the lust of being luxurious and from thence was made an Animal Seed which hastening into the previous or foregoing Dispositions of a sensitive Soul and undergoing the Law of other Causes reflexed it self into the vital Spirit of Adam which therefore like an ignis fatuus or foolish fire presently receiving an Archeus or ruling Spirit and animal Air I say a houshold Thief it conceived a Power of propagating an Animal and mortal Seed ending into Life At the arrival whereof at length the immortal Mind putting off the Rains of the Life and government of the Body substituted the sensitive Soul as its Chamber-maid From hence therefore we are conceived born and do die after the manner of Beasts For the day before the immortal Mind acted all in all and was the very immortal Life it self in the whole Body because it was solely and wholly immortal in the whole Body But that very so great Beauty of Nature was presently vitiated in our first Parent after that he was cloathed with the similitude of a bruital generation For then the immortal Mind being moved
perceived because if they should be sensible verily they should not be spiritual and meerly abstracted For indeed although it may seem to us that we understand nothing by a total sequestration of Discourses and abstraction from all Things which may fall under Sense under the Mind and Understanding and that under the Beginning of Contemplations Yet the Soul in the mean time acts after its own un-sensible manner and spiritual Efficacy the which I have thus understood For he that confesseth doth oftentimes not feel the Effects of Contrition and he greatly bewailes that his unsensibleness yet being asked whether he would Sin Perhaps he would answer he had rather die The unsensible Operation therefore of the Soul in confessing is an Effect of a supernatural Faith Because the Actions of the Understanding are the Clients of another and uncessant Magistrate For therefore mystical Men do teach That the Soul doth more operate in Faith alone without Discourse and Cogitation and in operating doth also more profit than he that Prays with many Words and by Discourse stirs up Compunctions in himself But he is happy unto whom it is granted to perceive those unsensible Operations of the Soul and issuingly to reflect the same upon the Operations or Powers of the sensitive Soul Because they do for the most part leave their Footsteps afterwards on the Life and for the future do stir up the Memory operating with Grace in Faith The Libertines of the Christians and first Atheists do deride the similitude of God in us as feigned or that we are framed after the Image of God But the other Atheists of the second and third rank do not only grant that we are created after the Image of God but do feign an Identity or Sameliness in us with the vast uncreated Deity and that neither doth man differ any otherwise there-from in his Substance than as a Part from the whole or that which had a Beginning with that which was not Principiated but not in Essence and internal Property The which besides Blasphemy hath very many Absurdities or blockishnesses For truly whatsoever began for that very Cause it is a Creature but it includes an Imperfection in God that he could create any thing out of himself coequal unto himself in Substance Because it is manifest from Phylosophy that all the Parts of an Infinite are of necessity Infinite Therefore a Creature cannot be more infinite in Substance than as it was in Duration co-like to the Eternal And much less is the Soul a part of the Substance of God or essentially like unto him the which in Power Greatness Duration Glory Wisdom c. in it self and of it self is a meer nothing If therefore it were not made from God much less from it self but of nothing Therefore they greatly erre who believe that the Thingliness or Essence of the divine Image is seated in the Soul by way of Identity of Substance Seeing they differ from each other by way of an Infinite yea it should of its own free accord be again dissolved into nothing unless it were conserved in its Essence by the divine goodness Truly the Souls of the damned could wish to be dissolved into their former Nothing which divine Justice keeps in their Being Indeed the Soul hath henceforeward an eternal Permanency from an internal Eternity freely bestowed on it and preserved in it It is sufficient therefore that the Mind is a spiritual vital and lightsome Substance And seeing there are many kindes and species of vital Lights that Light of the Mind differs from other vital Lights in that that it is a spiritual Substance but that other vital Lights are not formal Substances although they are substantial Forms and therefore also they are by Death reduced into nothing no otherwise than as the Flame of a Candle But the Mind differs from the Angels because it is after the Image and Similitude of the eternal God The Soul therefore hath that Light and Substance of Light from the Gift of Creation Seeing that it self is that vital Light But an Angel is not a Light it self neither hath he a natural or proper and internal Light but is the Glass of an uncreated Light and so that therein he fails of the perfection of a true Divine Image Otherwise an Angel seeing he is an incorporeal Spirit if he should be lightsome of himself he should more perfectly express the Image of God than Man Moreover whatsoever God more loveth that is more noble But God hath loved Man more than the Angel For neither for the redeeming of the Angelical nature was he made the Figure of the evil Spirit even as the thrice glorious Lamb the Saviour of the World took on him the Nature of a Servant For neither doth that hinder these things that the least in the Kigdom of Heaven is greater than John For the Son of Man is not less than the Angel although he were diminished a little less than the Angel For in his condition of living while he was made Man he was diminished a little less than the Angel For therefore an Angel alwayes remains a ministring Spirit but he is no where read to be the Friend or Son of the Father the Delights of the Son the Temple of the holy Spirit wherein the Thrice-glorious Trinity makes its aboad that indeed is the prerogative of the Divine Image which the eternal Light doth imprint on every Man that cometh into this World But moreover in the year 1610 after a long weariness of Contemplation that I might obtain some knowledge of my Soul by chance sliding into a Sleep and being snatched out of the use of Reason I seemed to be in a Hall dark enough on my left Hand was a Table whereon was a Bottle wherein was a little Liquor and the Voice of the Liquor said unto me Wilt thou have Honours and Riches I was amazed at the unwonted Voice I walked up and down delibreating with my self what that might denote Straightway on my right hand there was a Chink in the Wall through which a certain Light dazled mine Eyes which made me unmindful of the Liquor Voice and former Counsel because I saw that which exceeded a Cogitation expressible by Word that Chink forthwith dispersed I from thence returned sorrowful unto the Bottle took this Bottle away with me but I endeavoured to taste down the Liquor and with much Labour I opened the Vial and being smitten with Horrour I awaked out of my Sleep But a great desire of knowing my Soul remained in which desire I breathed for 23 full years At length in the year 1633 in the sorrowful or troublesome Afflictions of Fortunes I saw my Soul in a Vision But there was somewhat a more Light in a humane Shape the whole whereof was homogeneal or simple in kinde actively Seeing being a spiritual Chrystaline and shining Substance But it was contained in another cloudy Part as it were the Husk of it self the which whether it gave forth a Splendour
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
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
known and witnessed by all the children of light in all Generations This being granted to be true it must needs be accounted the Christians Epoche or stop of Time from whence he is to reckon upon his progress in all or any other true Knowledge or Science whatsoever For as the Father knoweth all things and no man knoweth the Father but the Son and him to whom the Son will reveal him So as the Son revealeth the Father unto any one according to the measure and manner of his revelation other things are known also as in the bulk of Unity wherein the Almighty compasseth all things in the hollow of his hand and swallows them up as out of sight which is the knowledge of the blessed so also as from this blessedness a reflex act goes forth with a pure clear ray or Beam towards particular things or objects apprehending or looking thorow them according to their particular natures and properties placed in them by the Word the Creator This kind of knowledge is not the fruit of the forbidden tree but of the Tree of Life for Life is its Root and Love is its Branches first extended towards God the Creator in the measure of whose Image the Understanding doth apply it self by an intellectual act unto the particular thing understood and so in that Image adoring his Wisdom and Power therein Secondly towards the Neighbour in directing such a particular knowledge or knowledges unto the use service benefit necessity and health of the same in this mortal Life Now to bring this home unto our present purpose such a Root and Branches do I judge yea and feel to be of this present Authors knowledge For although he was as to his visible profession of Religion a member of the Romish Church after the Tradition of his Fathers and so in that respect was in the captivity in some things which may well be accounted hay stubble c. Yet as Daniel was a true Israelite yea and a man of an excellent Spirit though in Babylon who saw over the Babylonians and was hated of them even to the death for his Wisdom and Uprightness So may it be said of this Author who by a Divine gift from God in the light of sound Judgement and true Understanding out of love to his Neighbour hath as a Modern come after the Schools the Sons of Antiquity as they would be accounted and so searched them out in their principles that being weighed in the Ballance of true Science they are found lighter than Vanity Neither hath the Errors of the Chymical Schoole in divers particulars escaped his Pen yet well observe thou whatever carping self-ended partialists may say that the Author doth as well build up his own as pull down others Doctrine I do not speak this from a desire to boast in another mans Lines or to glory in man or as thinking him infallible even in the Mysteries of Nature for that were not only to derogate from Gods Honour to wrong my own Soul but also to wrong the deceased Author himself while I should seem to own the gift of God in him for I find him in his Writings wholly renouncing all vain glory self exaltation and ambition or to receive honour from man as knowing that every good gift descended from the Father of Lights and so that he had nothing but what he had received Therefore whosoever thou art who desirest to be bettered in the reading and considering of this work see that thy mind be somewhat stayed and composed out of the giddiness lightness and wantonness for Wisdom is too high for a Fool Desire above all things and in the first place the Fear of the Lord for that is the beginning of Wisdom and a good Understanding have all they that do thereafter So may Wisdom pour forth her Words unto thee and give thee knowledge of wise Counsels Secrets and of witty Inventions but the wicked shall dwell in a dry land For Friend believe me the hour is coming and the day hastens wherein all things shall be seen and enjoyed in the root which beareth them that all the Pots of Jerusalem may be holy to the Lord and holiness seen even upon the Horse Bridles and this was the Word of the Lord to Daniel concerning the last times that he should stand up in his Lot at the end of the days and that before the end came many should be purified and made white and tryed but the wicked should do wickedly and none of the wicked should understand but the wise should understand such are those who depart from evil and abide in Gods fear as I have said And as for the manner of rendring the sense of the Author I have been careful and faithful according to my ability to make himas plain to be understood by my Country-men as the Work would even possibly bear therefore have I not studied for abstruse words or high flown language For Veritatis simplex oratio the speech of Truth is simple or plain also that might have proved not a true genuine translation but a subversion to the Readers apprehension It is not Words but Things not Names but Natures not Resemblances but Realities not Sublimities but Simplicities that the Sons of Truth do seek after Yet the Jews seek a Sign and the Greeks seek after Wisdom but all in the wrong part and so wherein they think to be Wise they become Fools So that I may truly apply that antient observation unto the seeming Wise and Learned of this Age Satis eloquentiae sapientiae parum abunde fabularum audivimus Enough of Eloquence Fables abound But of true Wisdom little is to be found Wherefore be sober be watchful be humble be gentle be courteous be impartial wait in silence and desire of the Lord God in Faith and Love unfeigned unto the Truth as Truth that thou mayest receive it as it is in Jesus for there is no Truth out of him For thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the Foundations of the Earth and the Heavens are the work of thy hands they shall perish but thou shal remaine and as a Vesture shalt thou fold them up and they shall be changed but thou art the same Truth and thy years shall not fail So the God of Peace and Truth be with all the upright in heart who seek the Lord with their whole hearts in this backsliding generation and with every truly honest-hearted Reader of this Book that it may answer the laborious ends of the Author and the poor endeavour of thy real Friend John Chandler TO THE FRIENDLY READER S. D. FRANCIS MERCURIUS Van HELMONT A Philosopher by that ONE in whom are all things A Wandring HERMITE I Had at sometime concluded by reason of many wandring thoughts that it would be hardly obtained of me to Write any thing to be published for the use of my Neighbour in this present Age seeing that I have hated feigned varie-form vain and deceitful words which the Men of the World do
not be refused For in very deed and according to a just computation I stand in need of two dayes to wit that of Saturn with that of Sol whereby I may with my self begin and perfect every Enterprize or that I may dispose of all things in order which in the following day of Lune and so afterwards in the whole Week following I shall distinctly signifie Whereto the wise Men answered Oh Mercurius we are instructed with a full Command from our Lord by whose authority we condescend to thy Petition as being supported with Equity thou shalt perform all things according to thy own sentence that the wise Sirs being not learned after the common manner and moderate or courteous Men may find no fault in thee when they shall hear thee in the said day or subject thee to examination and even as thou hast bound thy self to be kept in custody for thy own and that an ample limitted term of dayes until thy promises are accomplished we will alwayes remain with thee for an enquiry into thy Conceptions the which thou shalt frame in this two precedent dayes space Thou rejoycedst in their Company for whosoever he was that beheld them gathered by their habit and gestures that they were godly for truly their Countenance did carry a divine gladness before it and thou didst say unto them Seeing that the day cometh for the winning whereof my obediences are not in the least to be contested know ye oh my wise Men that I prefixed no time for the recollecting of my Memory nor any the like thing because I have no need thereof but considering that to day is the first day of the Week but to morrow the last day the Lords day the seventh day wherein he had finished all things and wherein he had rested It hath seemed meet unto me to distribute and contain my Knowledge according to the rate of the Dayes of the week I beginning the future day of Lune one the sixth day of the week after the custom of Mortals for before God all things are eternal and present so that unto us as unto Mortals the first day may be accounted the last and I beginning from Saturns day to number backwards have need of two and forty dayes for the fulfilling of the whole week that which would stir up a weariness in many through the largeness of time In the mean time I will briefly rehearse all things I Mercurius being from my tender years brought up by my Father in the select School of Hermes and there after some sort seasoned my Spirit being unquiet was not content therewith as desiringly desiring thorowly to know the whole sacred Art or Tree of Life and to enjoy it Neither would I set my hands to Work unless I could certainly understand this from the beginning to the end Moreover I concluded in my mind that through an approvement of the truth I might be brought thither at the last without the help of outward Instruction I distributed with my self all Creatures first those External and Corporeal as I may so say and then those Internal Spiritual and Corporifying ones which Parts I did again refer or reduce towards and into one I was not able to subdivide and know those Creatures called Corporeal ones without the adjoyning of the Spiritual Corporifying ones I beheld those with an unwonted Countenance even as according to my Judgment I had consequently placed all in every one his own order as being free from the anticipated or fore-possessed false and obstinate Opinions of the Heathens who have never frequented Universities as by this my unpolished Style doth sufficiently appear Nevertheless well observe ye I utter no Saying in vain but that it doth signifie something and pertain to the whole My Spirit could perceive no delight or desire of study in Temporary and Fraile or Mortal things I did alwayes thirst and breath after Perfect and Eternal ones I was taken up into admiration within my self from momentary necessary created things and from hence on God who created Heaven and Earth at once the which the Prophane Phylosophers cannot apprehend and they who desire to come hitherto they must worship God by a firme Faith with an humble Hope and in true Love then shall they obtain a perfect Knowledge of himself and of all other Creatures before their Beginning in their Being or Essence and after their transchanging the which I will more largely and manifestly make out so far as may be done by Words for the Temporal and Eternal Health and Preservation of the Soul and Body according to the measure of every ones Capacity which all have not alike nor had they And that they might be the further holpen towards Salvation God out of his Goodness raised up Moses of the Prophets who might be useful to them in a Type which after the Dutch Language is also as much as to say Books and by his Writings to wit in his first Book of Creations which containeth all of whatsoever can be desired the which I in part as the whole had sometimes learned by heart according to Jerom's Translation the rather because it comprehends all things which man in his Own-ness Selfishness and My-ness and the like Appropriations cannot understand For whatsoever God hath created he hath created free and at liberty by One and in One and he that arrogates that thing to himself makes that very thing it self his own seperates himself from God and doth in himself enter into the way that leadeth towards utter Darkness And as God is an Incomprehensible Eternal Piercing and a Filling Fire Light and Glory wanting Beginning and Ending such is he in the Men his Saints Hy-lichten according to the Dutch is as much as to say He shineth in a co-united Love and Glory and in the Godly Sa-lichten according to the Dutch expresseth He ought to shine he will be so according to more and less or a greater and less measure but in evil Men who are Eternal in the Dark and separated he is also an Eternal burning Fire even as it is said Therefore even as God is the Eternal Good in the Dutch Idiome it expresseth God so also all whatsoever was created he created Good The first Man was constituted into Light and Good as being created of God yet not united in Eternal Rest and Glory but as being created after the Image of God in a freedom of Will the which is now becomeâ— Property in us through the seducement and transgression of the Prohibition and Admonition of God in the touching and eating of Death or of the Fruit of the forbidden Tree which Hevah or Eve the Mother of all Living touched and ate Those called the wise Men did speak unto thee Run thou not out so far before we perceive whether thou hast known thy self and that thou hast told us what thy self art Mercurius I am a Man created by the Almighty God after his own Image and Likeness possessing my Body of the Clay of the Earth which
Soul God spake unto himself as the first Chapter of Genesis witnesseth And God created Man according to his own Image which Image is God the Son After the Image of God created he him Male and Female created he them And God blessed them and said Increase and multiply Which command was enjoyned to Adam in respect of his Spirit and Humanity but not as to his Soul for this is Eternal and Immutable So also all his Parts are like unto him whereof I also possess the whole Now even as man was made of the Mud or Clay of the Ground so also it behoves him to increase as other terrestrial living Creatures by a growing and uniting and eating of living Creatures which Foods are required to die in the Stomack and to be changed from their Substance if they ought to be converted from a more vile Substance into a more excellent one or to be promoted by the Spirit of Man unto a united Life from which co-nourishing and increasing my Vessel or Body and Substance I hold as Adam did because I proceeded from him after that he was made into a living Soul as it is found in the second Chapter of Genesis but for Adam there was not found an helper like unto him Therefore the Lord God sent a deep Sleep into Adam and when he had slept he took one of his Ribs and filled up the Flesh in the room of it And the Lord God framed the Rib which he had taken from Adam into a Woman and he brought her unto Adam And Adam said This now is Bone of my Bones and Flesh of my Flesh this shall be called Virago or Wo-man because she was taken from Man Wherefore a Man shall leave his Father and his Mother and shall adhere to his Wife and they twain shall be in one Flesh Wise Men Thou hast explained unto us what thou hast been wholly in Adam according to thy Spirit and Soul and in Eve according to thy Body likewise that the Vessel hath received the Spirit and the Spirit the Soul Now we could desire to hear in what respect Eve was produced by God out of Adam and what the sleep sent by God into Adam before he framed her doth denote Mercurius Adam from the Beginning was perfect in his Essence as being the first Man created by God so his Spirit did shine thorow his Flesh and Vessel and did illustrate it even as now the Light did illuminate his Darkness and was able to subdue it so it ought to excel and overcome the Darkness because it was Internal Stable Eternal and good in its own Essence the which Spirit existing Adam could not of his own accord produce his Like without Sleep sent into him for he persisting in his Essence was without sleep and because he had divided himself from himself all his Parts had remained proper unto him and again had returned unto the whole into one assoon as he had listed because by his Spirit predominating he had divided the Body subjected unto it self which Parts were inwardly and outwardly enlightned from his own Light which gave an Essence unto all his Members But some may ask how in the next place had it gone with Adam if he had not eaten the Poyson from Eve It is answered there had alwayes been in him a combating with his Spirit or Light against his Darkness the which on the first Day God divided of which two also Man was composed even as the said Chapter sheweth which is further explained at the end of the same Chapter on the sixth Day in these Words And replenish ye the Earth and subdue it And when they had fought to the utmost they had filled the Earth and the Darkness with their Spirit or with their Light and had so subdued it that the former Darkness had been supped up and co-nourished which was his proper and one only Work alwayes to be done and perfected But some one may further query seeing in Adam the said Light being separated from the Darkness had overcome the Darkness as it was shewed to be by the very same Light whether or no according to a spiritual returned or restored United Body he had been entire and eternal in all his particular Parts and Members This being so by that reason he might have been divided into Innumerable Eternal and Infinite men without the aforesaid sleep preceding I answer it is certain that this Deified man would have been entire in all his Infinite Parts likewise that all those Parts would again as one have constituted one Entire Body He having himself in such a manner had been likewise to be one Deified Man he being reduced hitherto by his necessary strife would by Grace in his Life have enjoyed or rejoyced in the same with Christ our Saviour after his Resurrection Whereby many such men might now have been begotten or brought forth and whereby all also of them might have enjoyed that very same Grace for which Adam was procreated and whereby they might have attained it by that very same strife It pleased the Lord God to send the aforesaid sleep into Adam to shew that he soundly sleeping had not contributed any thing to the structure of Eve but she was now founded in this sleep by God Moreover the curious might busily enquire why Eve was framed of the Rib of Adam but not of his Flesh I return an answer the former Man was Adam the second Eve made for his help and conjoyned Procreation Now Propagation consisteth partly in Man as in other living Creatures by conjunction or nourishing as was said and it is further to be observed in all increase of created things in this World before they are able to grow because they consist of two things that the one ought first to die to wit the Body and Form which consist of Water and Earth and do arise from the Light of the Moon and Stars as of the Lights of the Night every thing according to their different Nature none excepted and that this might be perfected in Adam the Lord God took a Rib out of Adam which is a Bone according to its being made in Adam a Progeny of Veins the which with the Dutch sounds also a Progeny of Vipers which Bone is governed by the Moon as shall be found that when the Moon increaseth the Marrow likewise of the Bones doth increase like the Waters and together with it doth decrease It will further be found that when Flesh is burnt in the Fire it looseth that form A Bone not so yea that is so stable that the Examiners of the goodness of Coyn do make their Crucibles thereof wherein they melt and search Gold and Silver So that a Bone or Rib is and doth retain nothing besides the humane Earth as it is a second Production in Man like that of the Earth out of the Waters so far it differs from the first and one thing Wherefore Eve as she was procreated from hence she is likewise of a second and
dry Jurisdictions yet are they less durable than others which are less hot because their Light which is in them is more divided and that as well in-Bruits as in Men Men of moist Coasts or Climates are homely and big neither can they undergo so much heat as Men which live in high dry and hot Countries as also the thing it self doth moreover testifie Yea thou shalt find that even dead Carcases which are slain by a violent Death even as Histories do declare and we are able besides dayly to experience when a slaughter hath been made or shall be made of men who had gone out of cold and watery Coasts to wage War against those of the more hot Provinces that the Slain on both sides might be discerned a long time after because they of the more cold Regions did sooner putrifie these waxed dry and remained surviving these did longer endure entire in the Heat because their Balsam is more durable than that of the other even as they contain more or less of a moist Matter or do partake more or less of a Night Light and they which are the more destitute of that those do more rejoyce in a day Light Now even as the Sun is a perfect and the greater day Light so the Moon being the nearest Planet unto us is a perfect Night Light which are perpetual in their Essence and likewise do render those Bodies perpetual and durable which are born and renewed by their help Furthermore as there is one only Sun and one only Moon their created Bodies no otherwise than those like unto them may be compared thereunto they being one only and also perfect as Gold which the Phylosophers have called Sol and Silver Lune and the other five Metals likewise according to the thing brought forth after the rest of the Planets wherein they have rightly done and have delivered the Truth because those one only Bodies are perfect the Fire cannot hurt them they remain stable therein Gold lives in the Fire therefore the Phylosoyhers have marked that with the name of Salamander the which now is falsly accounted for a living Creature A temporary and fraile Fire possesseth its Fire only in part as was said but the Sun is a perpetual Fire and Life and can live only in that which is like it self the which also must needs be a stable Body And as there is a temporary body in all things except in these two aforesaid which are like them and do wholly participate of them in what respect bodies ought to be returned into their first Essence by the same reason likewise the Light ought to be returned unto its Original for a frail or mortal thing cannot reach unto a perpetual thing Furthermore the stable Darkness must needs be present before the Light wherein the Light is raised up but if this Darkness be perpetual the Light also may perpetually dwell in it first according to the Spirit and then according to the Soul which Spirit seeing it is Eternal doth illuminate Eternal Darkness and the Darkness grows together or increaseth into Light and is made Silver which is twofold constituting a Body in the Flesh and Bones of Gold which is threefold Now as the Sun is a great day Light so it overcomes the Moon and silver is altogether converted into Gold by that the other five Earthly Planets may be transchanged and brought thorow unto a perfection like unto that of them because they also are Nocturnal Lights Further we must know that there are many innumerable Minerals mutually differing like as do the Stars from each other all which do expect their Perfection and some of these can more easily and swiftly attain unto their last Perfection than others Gold and Silver how smally soever they may be divided they may be re-united without loss because all their least Parts are entire and perpetual Notwithstanding they may be rendred Mortal because they have not as yet co-met or con-joyned into one but this Death cannot begin of and from themselves neither by reason of the Gold nor of the Silver because they are stable Bodies Now some Lovers might ask after what sort or by what means that might happen I reply After the same manner or means whereby it happeneth in all created things whereby also it happened in Eve through an increasing of the Darkness which draws its Original out of the principles of their Bodies as was shewn yea the Darkness may so grow up that it may convert the whole Spirit into Darkness but it that Lune or the Spirit of Sol doth call the Soul or Heat unto its aid before it be subjected and overcome the Spirit shall be strengthened not as it was before its Corruption but by this strife and victory it shall be so strong and the Spirit thereof shall be so greatly multiplyed that it is able to render ten of the imperfect Brethren stable but this Spirit hath not by this contention attained unto a liberty even entire and an Eternal Union but it ought so often to repeat this conflict which shall always more and more increase according to the increase of the Spirit and Darkness until it shall come unto the utmost and can suffer no more and the watery Body or Darkness shall be plainly consumed and then it is a pure everlasting united and double Light which will illustrate all things without dammage and diminishment and will be able to perfect all its Brethren into the likeness of it self it s own Virtue being retained and when this thing doth happen in Sol the Light of Lune is changed and supped up into Sol so that it is equally made an Eternal United and Trine Sol that which is the last in Eternity out of Man And hence it may be demonstrated that the Evangelist John in the third Chapter of his Revelation doth use the same Similitude saying I exhort thee to buy of me Gold tried in the Fire that thou mayest be made rich and to be cloathed with white Garments and that the confusion or shame of thy nakedness may not appear and anoint thou thine eyes with a Collyrium or Eye-Salve that thou mayest see I whom I love do reprove and chastize Be ye therefore zealous and repent Behold I stand at the door and knock If any one shall hear my voice and shall open unto me the Gate I will enter in unto him and will sup with him and he with me He that shall overcome I will give unto him to sit with me in my Throne as also I have overcome and have sit with my Father in his Throne He that hath an eare let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches Wise Men We rejoyce that we understand from thee and do know the shining and quickning Light likewise the effluxing acting fermental contagious and mortal Darkness whereby we understand how Eve hath touched and eaten of the Fruits of Darkness and that she became darksom and contagious from thence through her effluxing Darkness she
a bottomless pit of darkness I was hugely agast and also I fell our of all knowledge of things and my self But returning to my self I understood by one conception that in Christ Jesus we live move and have our being That no man can call even on the name of Jesus to Salvation without the special grace of God That we must continually pray And lend us not into temptation c. Indeed understanding was given unto me that without special grace to any actions nothing but sin attends us Which being seen and savourily known I admited my former ignorances and I knew that Stoicisme did retain me an empty and swollen Bubble between the bottomless pit of Hell and the necessity of imminent death I knew I say that by this Study under the shew of moderation I was made most haughty as if trusting in the freedom of my will I did renounce divine grace and as though what we would we might effect by ourselves Let God forbid such wickedness I said Wherefore I judged that Blasphemy to be indulged by Paganisme indeed but not to become a Christian and so I judged Stoical Philosophy with this Title hateful In the mean time when I was tired and wearied with the too much reading of other things for recreation sake I rouled over Mathiolus and Diascoxides thinking with my self nothing to be equally necessary for mortal men is by admiring the grace of God in Vegetables to minister to their proper necessities and to crop the fruit of the same Straightway after I certainly found the art of Herbarisme to have nothing increased since the dayes of Diascorides but at this day the Images of Herbs being delivered with the names and shapes of Plants to be on both sides onely disputed but nothing of their properties virtues and uses to have been added to the former invention and Histories except that those who came after have mutually feigned degrees of Elementary qualities to which the temperature of the Herbe is to be attributed But when I had certainly found happily two hundred Herbes of one quality and degree to have divers properties and some of divers qualities and degrees to have a Symphony or Harmony suppose it in vulnerary or wound potions in producing of the same effect not indeed the Herbs the various Pledges of divine Love but the Herbarists themselves began to be of little esteem with me and when I wondred at the cause of the unstableness of the effects and of so great darkness in applying and healing I inquired whether there were any Book that delivered the Maxims and Rules of Medicine For I supposed Medicine might be taught and delivered by Discipline like other Arts and Sciences and so to be by tradition but not that it was a meer gift At leastwise seeing Medicine is a Science a good gift coming down from the Father of Lights I did think that it might have its Theoremes and chief Authours instructed by an infused knowledge into whom as into Bazaleel and Aholiab the spirit of the Lord had inspired the Causes and knowledge of all Diseases and also the knowledge of the properties of things Therefore I thought these enlightned men to be the Standard-defending Professors of healing I inquired I say whether there were not another who had described the Endowments Properties Applications and proportions of Vegetables from the Hyssop even to the Cedar of Libanus A certain Professor of Medicine answered me none of these things might be looked for in Galen or Avicen But since I was not apt to believe neither did I finde among Writers the certainty sought for I suspected it according to truth that the giver of Medicine would remain the continual dispenser of the same Therefore I being carefull and doubtful to what Profession I should resign my self I had regard to the manners of the People and Lawes and pleasures of Princes I saw the Law to be mens Traditions and therefore uncertain unstable and void of truth For because in humane things there is no stability and no marrow of knowledge I seemed to passe over an unprofitable life if I should convert it to the pleasures of men Lastly I knew that the government of my self was hard enough for me but the judgement concerning good men and the life of others to be dark and subject to a thousand vexatious difficulties wherefore I wholly denied the Study of the Law and government of others On the other hand the misery of humane life was urgent and the will of God whereby every one may defend himself so long as he can but I more inclined with a singular greediness unto the most pleasing knowledge of natural things and even as the Soul became Servant to its own inclinations I unsensibly slid altogether into the knowledge of natural things Therefore I read the Institutions of Fuchius and Fernelius whereby I knew that I had lookt into the whole Science of Medicine as it were by an Epitome and I smiled to my self Is the knowledge of healing thus delivered without a Theoreme and Teacher who hath drawn the gift of healing from the Adeptist Is the whole History of natural properties thus shut up in Elementary qualities Therefore I read the works of Galen twice once Hipocrates whose Aphorismes I almost learned by heart and all Avicen and as well the Greeks Arabians as Moderns happily six hundred I seriously and attentively read thorow and taking notice by common places of whatsoever might seem singular to me in them and worthy of the Quill At length reading again my collected stuffe I knew my want and it grieved me of my pains bestowed and years When as indeed I observed that all Books with institutions singing the same Song did promise nothing of soundness nothing that might promise the knowledge of truth or the truth of knowledge In the mean time even from the beginning I had gotten from a Merchant all simples that I might keep a little of my own in my possession and then from a Clark of the Shops or a Collector of simples I had all the usual Plants of our Countrey and so I learned the knowledge of many by the looks of the same And also I thorowly weighed with my self that indeed I knew the face of Simples and their names but than their properties nothing lesse Therefore I would accompany a practising Physitian straightway it repented me again and again of the insufficiency uncertainty and conjectures of healing I had known indeed problematically or by way of hard question to dispute of any Disease but I knew not how to cure the very pain of the Teeth or scabbedness radically Lastly I saw that Fevers and common Diseases were neither certainly nor knowingly nor safely cured but the more grievous ones and those which cease not of their own accord for the most part were placed into the Catalogue of incurable Diseases Then it came into my minde that the art of Medicine was found full of deceit without which the Romanes lived happily five
to us as it were a brand from a tormentor for a remembrance of Calamities and of our fall And that the knowledge of good and evil attained by eating of the Apple was Reason its very self which is so greatly adored by mortal men Afterwards therefore my minde endeavoured to depart not indeed against but from the use of Reason to wit by abstaining from all discourse in the contemplation of a thing as a thing is good true and a Being in act But that thing I could not presently obtain because Reason did continually accompany my Soul against its will as a shadow doth the body the which without bidding comes into the counsel of the minde from an antient possession and a not sufficient concealing of our councel And by this Title the conversation of Reason was afterwards as yet more burdensome sorrowful tedious and clowdy unto me For truly then I began to perceive that reason did vex the Soul with a multiplicity with a vain complacency of Sciences and did tempt with it a ridiculous enquiry after virtues promising an Ornament of life before the World which doth adore its Starry Goddess Reason Wherefore it did miserably draw the understanding and will into its pleasure and did so load the memory that even now in my man-hood my memory did fall as an Asse under his burden and got a defect My minde therefore had often banished Reason but it hath alwayes privily entred afresh against the endeavours of the minde hath discovered its learned Hypocrisie and hath placed its batteries against the most weak wall of the minde Indeed it hath alwayes promised a vulgar applause the foolish rewards of ambition boasting that it is nourished under it But then it first rose up against a strictness of life against which as against harsh Phylosophy and disswaded from that as follies and fraudulently excused many things here and there unlawful with the priviledges of youth or of Custome already in many places received and even readily serving for the flattery of the minde it by a learned Industry followed it as it were a Chamber-maid feigning Reasons at the pleasure of the minde now inclined At length my minde asked what knowledge Reason could give Whereto she presently answered she could effect by the great art of Lullius that a man may be able to discourse of every knowable thing as it were an omniscient person with the admiration of the whole World Then my minde was wroth and said to Reason Be gone wicked pratler for first of all I detest discursive matters therefore have I certainly known that Reason doth alwayes forsake the Soul with an unsweetness of dryness stumbling in the dark with disquietness uncertainty and bitterness Last of all as I knew that there was no help to me in nature nor seperation from so troublesome and tedious a guest I hid my self within the Prayer of silence so that sometimes I could altogether and now and then in part uncloath my self of Reason and all its appendices It happened therefore that without or at leastwise besides those things which may be known by reason or be any way conceived by its help I came down as it were by a Dream under an unutterable light Of which I have nothing to say further because that envious reason hath presently withdrawn me from thence For as soon as Reason being not yet putrified waxing dim under the accustomedness of the light had entred with my minde it raised up an admiration in me who I was from whence after what manner and why I had come down thither and so I fell out of the light into miserable darknesses under the day or in the day-time But in my judgement that light was delayed scarce the space wherein any one might drawingly pronounce four syllables Nevertheless from thenceforth I felt my self changed from that which I was before For I even tasted down the immortality of my Soul the foundation of Faith and Religion a knowledge that is to be preferred before all frail or mortal things I proceeded therefore with a greater study or endeavour to depart from Reason because it was that which hath never assaulted me naked but deceitfully covered with fighting and deceitful juggles but it had never truly forsaken me but with uncertainty Salomon calls the spirit of a man the Lamp or Candle of God But not that God is in darkness or that he hath need of the splendor of the spirit of a man But altogether because the hidden knowledges of things are infused by the Father of Lights into us by meanes of this Candle I apprehended more certainly daily that Reason was not that spirit of a man and therefore neither that Candle of God Yea neither the light of that Candle but that there was a far different light of that Candle by the vigour or efficacy whereof it might pierce a knowable thing granted unto it Indeed I throughly beheld that the Soul was not in need of yea nor the framer of a Syllogisme because it will not use it being once severed from the body For truly its native knowledge was far more noble and certain than any demonstration which is the top of reason Then in the next place I knew that neither did sense frame a Syllogisme but that Reason the framer of demonstrations did possess the animall understanding or Imagination which is a meane between the senses and the intellect Wilt thou ask why the light shineth why the water is moyst yieldeth to a finger that enters it c. and thou shalt finde that by how much the more clear any thing is by so much the reason thereof is the more stupid remote and dull Then therefore I clearly beheld that Reason is wallowed up and down among thick darknesses And then that wheresoever there is no discourse no premises there also no conclusion consequence or reason is found Notwithstanding a knowledge of the premises is more certain than of the conclusion because seeing it is supposed from things that are firstly or chiefly true also that knowledge is in the Soul without Reason because before a demonstration Whence I concluded with my self first that reason doth generate nothing but a dim or dark knowledge or a thinking Then next that the knowledges of the truth of things and premises do proceed not indeed from Reason but from a far different beginning to wit the intellectual light of the Lamp or Candle Wherefore I straightway observed that the discourse of Reason doth extenuate or lessen overshadow hinder and choak that noble act of understanding whereby the knowledges of the premises are implanted in us And I learned more and more that Reason was far of from and moreover also out of the light of truth because like Bats it onely cannot endure or bear the light being content with its own borrowed Glow-worm light Because it is that which is properly nothing else but a wording faculty of discoursing co-bred with us as mortalls from sin So that I say it more wearieth
forced to a mixture with the Circulate Salt of Paracelsus altogether looseth its fixedness and at length may be changed into a Liquor which also at length passeth into an un-savory water and that that water is of equall weight with its Salt from whence it sprang But the Plant fleshes bones Fishes and every such like I have known how to reduce into its meer three things whence afterwards I have made an un-savory water But that a Mettall by reason of the undissolveable co-mixture of its own seed and the Sand quellem are most hardly reduced into Salt I have learned therefore by the fire that God before there was a day created the Water and Air and of the Water an Elementary Earth which is the Sand. Quellem Because it was the future Basis or foundation of Creatures for man their Standard-defender and therefore in the very beginning it ought to be created although in its own nature it was not truly primo-genial or first-born Wherefore I finde two onely primitive Elements although there is mention made of neither in the holy Scriptures because they are comprehended under the Title of Heaven But with the two he also created the Earth Wherefore he created two great Lights that the Moon and the lesse by shining might govern the Water but that the greater should shine upon the Earth But I shall by and by teach that these first-born Elements are never changed into each other Indeed the Water putrifying by continuance in the Earth doth obtain a locall or implanted Seed And therefore it passeth either into the Liquor Leffas for every Plant or into the Minerall juyce Bur according to the particular kindes chosen by the direction of the Seedes Which Seedes are replenished by the Ferment of the Earth at first empty and void and then straightway by the blessing of the Spirit boren upon the Waters But my experience of the fire hath taught me to wit that the three first things the Salt Sulphur and Mercury of the Water do alwayes remain undivided whether in the mean time the water be lifted up in manner of a Vapour in the form of a Cloud or be made thin like unto invisible things or at length also it doth flote in its antient shape of water For that Paracelsus would have the water by evaporating to be wholly brought to nothing let that be his own Idiotisme or property of speech at leastwise not to be winked at by the ingenious Distiller Truly I have certainly found that the water being lifted up into the Atomes or Moats of Clouds yet doth alway remain the same in number and water in kinde which the Atomes of the Mercury of the water do shew to us in the likeness of a Cloud But there is never made in the water a seperation of the three former things and much lesse any essentiall transmutation or changing For truly there is a simple turning outward of the inward parts by the fire the which again return inward as oft as the Vapour is co-thickned into drops But the cause why I may think the Earth not to be reckoned among the primary Elements although it was also created in the beginning is because it may at length be turned into water by the depriving of its essence And therefore I believe the water to be the first and most simple body seeing that never returns into Earth but by the vertue of the Seeds and so the water takes the turns of a composed body before the Earth or Sand Quellem be made Which thing I shall hereafter more largely demonstrate CHAP. IX The Earth 1. That the Fire is neither an Element nor co-mingled materially with Bodies nor that it is a matter nor that it hath a matter in it 2. The Earth is not a part of the thing mixed 3. The Virgin-Earth is demonstrated by Handicraft operation 4. Grounds or Soils in the Earth are distinguished 5. The Water within the Earth doth more than a thousand times exceed the water of the Sea and Rivers 6. The true Original of Fountains 7. How Waters do of their own accord ascend 8. The continuity or holding together of a thread is proved in the Waters 9. By what chance the Earth happens to Bodies that are believed to be mixt 10. The number of Elements and their temperaments are most destructive trifles after that the same are translated into the art of healing 11. The Earth is the Wombe but not the Mother of Bodies and that is demonstrated by many Arguments 12. Water and Air do not convert any other thing into themselves 13. What kinde of thing mixture is and what the adjoyning or application of Bodies 14. Objections concerning Glasse and the Tile or Brick are resolved 15. The Operations of the Fire of Hell 16. How out of Glasse Sand may be safely separated from its Alcali or Lixiviall Salt 17. That the Center of the World is sometimes changed THerefore neither is the Fire an Element nor is it materially co-mixed in Bodies because I will shew the Fire neither to be a matter nor to have it in it self Yea the Earth doth no where offer it self to be co-mixt with any natural body besides it self which may be re-taken thence by any labour Therefore I have lamented and been angry with my self that the foundation of healing hath been stuft with trifles and that the sick should be constrained to yield obedience to so great mockeries But I name the original Earth of the Virgin-Element the constant Body of Sand it self but the rest of every kinde of Earth the fruit of the Earth from a Mineral off-spring The which by the art of the fire is sufficiently and over proved For that the Sand is the original Earth first of all its hard reducement into water proveth because the Sand out of a flint or an Adamant may be sooner reduced into water than the Sand Quellem And then that thing also the Spade proveth because in digging truly divers Soils do meet nigh the light indeed made to differ in colours and thickness and the which although by the rustical or homely Etymologie of the Schooles they are believed to be black white yellow read Earths c. yet they are fruits of the Earth and do consist of a Seed under which is a Sand also elsewhere manifold in its varieties of Soils as well in one onely as in divers places at length under those doth the Sand reside which our Countreymen call Keybergh or the flinty Mountain from whence do flow the originall of Rocks and Mountains and the chief riches of Mines At length the last of them all the white or boyling Sand Quellem doth shew it self in a living and vitall Soil which the Spade or Mattock never pierceth For how much soever Sand and Water thou shalt take away from thence so much doth there succeed in the room of that which was taken away filling up again the same place This Sand I say being unmixt is a certain Hair-cloth or sieve and
Commissioner of Thunder and Lightning yet under covenanted Conditions For his Bolts being shaken off unless his Power were bridled by Divine goodness he would shake the Earth with one onely stroak and would destroy mortall men The cracking noyse therefore or Voyce of Thunder is a spirituall Blas of the evill Spirit surely an effect of great strength But Thunder is not conjoyned with a Miracle but it contains a monstrous thing in Nature So moreover although the fire of Lightning be naturall yet the manner and mean are divelish Powers For God as a most loving Father will be loved in the first place but by himself immediately he doth not willingly cause or inforce feares because it belongs not to his goodness to be loved from the fear and fearfullness of pain or punishment Therefore the terrours of his power and angry feares of his Majesty he causeth or enforceth not but by appropriated spirituall Sergeants his Ministers that is by a terrible Spirit And that thing all Antiquity hath alwayes judged with me which hath declared Jove or Jova as much as to say with the Hebrews Jehova to be the God of Thunder Seeing the Lord and Father of things doth unfold his Thunder by the bound hand of a tormenter the evill Spirit thereupon would not indeed be contented with the Title of Prince of the World but would have the name Jehova to belong unto himself Therefore Thunder and Lightning although they may have concurting naturall Causes yet the moover of them is an incorporeall Spirit Atheists may laugh at my Philosophy who believe that there is no Power or God and no abstracted Spirit But at leastwise they cannot but admire at the effects of Thunder and accuse themselves of the ignorance of its causes One History at least I will tell among a thousand In the year 1554 in the Coast of Leydon the Tower of Curingia being taken away by Thunder no where appeared after fifteen dayes a Grave is opened in a Herbie Plot of Grasse of the Burying place wherein a Shooe-maker was buried and behold under an unmooved and green Turf first the Brass Cock with the Iron Crosse appeareth and then a Pinacle of the Tower and at length the whole Tower is digged out I have seen my self being present by one onely Thunder-clap some thousand of Oaks and Hazels to be burnt up in their first bud and leaves to wit the whole Wood being named from a place neer Vilvord where the Birch the Beech and Alder-Tree being frequently co-mixed with other Trees in a thick confusion had the mean while remained unhurt by the Thunder But elsewhere by one onely stroak he strikes many things at once that were far distant asunder For who can sufficiently unfold the thousand various crafts and wiles of the cunning Workman It sufficeth that many spirituall actions do concur being divers from the ordinary course of Nature they being also alike powerfull at a distance as nigh at hand Therefore that terrible Voice of Thunder striketh the Earth kills Silk-worms shakes Ale or Beer and constrains it to wax dead causeth the flesh of a slain Oxe hung up to be flaggie it curdles Milk by the sudden Leaven of its sourness c. But Salt applied without to the brim of the Hogs-head or Earthen-pot doth turn away such kinde of effects Surely a weak resister for such an agent if in nature the thing resisting ought to prevail over the agent But why the evill Spirit hateth Salt and therefore Salt is alwayes said to fail or be wanting in his Sabbaths of his Imps he being sufficiently expert that Salt is adjured for holy water as oft as the Baptizer useth Salt Also Salt that is not blessed may trample upon his commands If therefore the Tree is to be known by his fruits therefore the Authour by his Works and so much the rather because so weak remedies do resist so great strength Nor surely doth that make to the contrary that God appearing to Moses in the Mount in continuall Lightning and Thunder environed the Mountain before Israel Yea rather it is thereby confirmed that the cracking Thunder and Lightnings do belong to Spirits his Ministers to Spirits I say his tormenters and executioners For truly Israel was driven away from ascending the Mountain under pain of death For neither therefore were the Thunders in the top of the Mountain but beneath round about the Mountain neither also appeared the Almighty to Eliah in the Whirle-winde or in the strong Winde but in the sweet Air. As an addition I will hitherto referre the Decree of the Church which in the blessing of a Bell doth prescribe certain forms wherein it confirms the same Presidentship in Thunder which I have prescribed in this Chapter For in the words of their adjurations they have it Let all layings in wait or treacheries of the enemy be driven far away the crashing of Hails the storm of Whirle-windes the violence of Tempests let troublesome or cruel Thunders Blasts of Windes c. beallayed Let the right hand of thy power prostrate Alery powers and let them tremble and flee at this little Bell of the hearer Before the sound thereof let the fiery darts of the enemy the stroak of Lightnings the violence of Stones the hurt of Tempests c. be chased far away Whence indeed all adjurations do conspire against Tempests For Hail Winde Rains Clouds c. are Meteors of Nature but a tempestuous darting exceeding the fall of a Body in grains and the flowing of the Winde are understood to be done by malignant powers These things indeed concerning Tempests of the Air Hail and the Sea are thus confirmed but in Thunder not onely the very casting of the Thunder-bolt or Stones but moreover the cracking noyse of Thunder doth depend on the powers and enemies of the air because that no renting of the Clouds or Air can naturally utter such noyses and the effects of these unless monstrous and hostile Powers do immingle themselves and play together CHAP. XVII The trembling of the Earth or Earth-quake 1. The name of the Moving of the Earth is improper 2. The opinion of Copernicus 3. A shew of the Deed. 4. All Schooles do agree with Aristotle in Causes for 21 Ages hitherto 5. The Opinion of the Schooles is demonstrated to be unpossible from a defect of the place 6. The same thing may after a certain manner be drawn from the force of exhalations 7. Likewise by the Rules of proportion and motion 8. The rise or birth of exhalations their quantity power progress manner of being made entertainment and swiftness are all ridiculous things 9. All these are demonstrated to be impossible things 10. The cause of their Birth is wanting 11. It is proved by the Rules of falshood and absurdities 12. That those trifles being supposed according to the pleasure of the Schooles the manner is as yet impossible 13. That an exhalation being granted according to their wish yet an Earth-quake from thence is unpossible 14.
water nor yet are fixed do necessarily belch forth a wild spirit or breath Suppose thou that of 62 pounds of Oaken coal one pound of ashes is composed Therefore the 61 remaining pounds are the wild spirit which also being fired cannot depart the Vessel being shut I call this Spirit unknown hitherto by the new name of Gas which can neither be constrained by Vessels nor reduced into a visible body unless the seed being first extinguished But Bodies do contain this Spirit and do sometimes wholly depart into such a Spirit not indeed because it is actually in those very bodies for truly it could not be detained yea the whole composed body should flie away at once but it is a Spirit grown together coagulated after the manner of a body and is stirred up by an attained ferment as in Wine the juyce of unripe Grapes bread hydromel or water and Honey c. Or by a strange addition as I shall sometime shew concerning Sal Armoniack or at length by some alterative disposition such as is roasting in respect of an Apple For the Grape is kept and dried being unhurt but its skin being once burst and wounded it straightway conceiveth a ferment of boyling up and from hence the beginning of a transmutation Therefore the Wines of Grapes Apples berries Honey and likewise flowers and leaves being pounced a ferment being snatched to them they begin to boyl and be hot whence ariseth a Gas but from Raysins bruised and used for want of a ferment a Gas is not presently granted The Gas of Wines if it be constrained by much force within Hogs-heads makes Wines â—urious mute and hurtfull Wherefore also the Graâ—e being abundantly eaten hath many times brought forth a diseasie Gas For truly the spirit of the ferment is much disturbed and seeing it is disobedient to our digestion it associates it selfe to the vitall spirit by force yea if any thing be prepared to be expelled in manner of a Sweat that thing through the stubborn sharpness or soureness of the ferment waxeth clotty and brings forth notable troubles torments or wringings of the bowels Fluxes and the Bloudy-flux I being sometimes in my young beginnings deluded by the authority of ignorant writers have believed the Gas of Grapes to be the spirit of Wine in new Wine But vain tryalls have taught me that the Gas of Grapes and new Wine are in the way to Wine but not the spirit of Wine For the juyce of Grapes differs from Wine no otherwise than the pulse of water and meal do from Ale or Beer For a fermentall disposition coming between both disposeth the fore-going matter into the transmutation of it self that thereby another Being may be made For truly I will at sometims teach that every formall transmutation doth presuppose a corruptive ferment Other more refined Writers have thought that Gas is a winde or air inclosed in things which had flowen unto that generation for an Elementary co-mixture And so Paracelsus supposed that the air doth invisibly lurk under the three other Elements in every body but in time onely that the Air is visible but his own unconstancy reproveth himself because seeing that he sheweth in many places else-where that bodies are mixed of the three first things but that the Elements are not Bodies but the meer wombs ' of things But he observed not a two-fold Sulphur in Tin and therefore is it lighter than other Mettalls whereof one onely is co-agulable by reason of the strange or forreign property of its Salt whereby Jupiter or Tin maketh every Mettall frangible or capable of breaking and brickle it being but a little defiled with its odour onely but that the other Sulphur is Oily For Gun-powder doth the most neerly express the History of Gas For it consisteth of Salt-peter which they rashly think to be the Nitre of the Antients and the which is at this day plentifully brought to us being dried up from the inundation of Nilus of Sulphur and a Coal because they being joyned if they are enflamed there is not a Vessel in nature which being close shut up doth not burst by reason of the Gas For if the Coal be kindled the Vessel being shut nothing of it perisheth but Sulphur if the Glasse being shut it be sublimed wholly ascends from the bottom without the changing of its Species or kinde Salt-peter also being melted in a shut Vessel as to one part of it gives a sharp Liquor that is watery but as to the other part it is changed into a fixed Alcali Therefore fire sends forth an Air or rather a Gas out of all of them singly which else if the air were within it would â—end forth from the three things being connexed Therefore those things being applied together do mutually convert themselves into Gas through destruction But there is that un-sufferance of Sulphur and Salt-peter not indeed by the wedlock of cold with hot as of powerfull qualities as is believed but by reason of the un-cosufferable â—lowing of boyling Oil and Wine no lesse than of water or of Copper and Tin being melted with Wine For in so great heat when they co-touch each other throughout their least parts they are either turned into a Gas or do leap asunder For so Lead being roasted with Mercury and Sulphur departeth into a sudden flame a small lee or dreg being left almost of no weight yet enlarged to the extension of the Lead VVherefore if the Gas were air all the Gun-powder should be air and the Lead it self should be wholly air But it is not possible for the fire to produce out of the same Elementary fruit sometimes air sometimes water with an ultimate reducement unlesse the fire loose also its uniformity of working that was planted in it by the Creator In the next place it is already above sufficiently manifested that air and water can never be brought over into each other Therefore if Gun-powder or Salt-peter may observably be reduced into an Elementary water by fire or any other mean whatsoever a transmutation thereof into air is not possible to be But some thousands of pounds of Gun-powder being at some time enflamed at once have not yielded any thing but an inflamed Gas which hath growen together in the Clouds and at length returning into water Furthermore a Coal is reduced in some Fountains into a Rockie stone Likewise I have known the meanes whereby the whole of Salt-peter is turned into an Earth and the whole of Sulphur being once dissolved may be fixed into an Earthly Powder What if therefore these three Earths should contain three or four Elements at leastwise the Earth should occupie the greatest part nor that reducible into its former Gas neither is it consonant to Reason that a Body which wholly flies away into an aiery Gas should be converted into Air or into Earth as man listeth Next seeing the three aforesaid Powders are at length made water under the Artificer which afterwards cannot any more through humane cunning return into
be expected from elsewhere For he is the Prince of life and death the Alpha and Omega of all things He giveth and taketh away Victories Wars Famine and Pestilences also second partaking causes also free mediating con-causes and occasionall ones accompanying them over all which notwithstanding God is sits as chief as the totall immediate and independent cause Therefore the Firmament is a preacher of all these Works for neither doth God more erre in these free contingent things than in animall accustomed and necessary things if the Firmament was made by God the Mover and knower of all things to foreshew The Land of Libyssa shall over-cover the dead Carcase of Hannibal as Appian relates it to have been foretold by an Oracle of the evill spirit Hannibal hoped he saith that he should therefore die in Lybia or Africa who died in Bythinia near the River Libyssus For the Devil cannot foreknow the lots or events of future Wars which are in the hand of the God of Armies and as yet in the future will or judgement of man unless he shall first read them decyphered in a fore-telling Star Which Picture of the Stars while they no where finde mentioned but cannot deny but that the Devill declares things to come they have meditated of a privy shift and do say that the knowledges of future things are nearly related to Angels and so are co-natural to them but that they differ according to the Quires or Regions from whence they were expelled so that they which fell down from the highest Hierarchy of the Angels should have a much more clear understanding of future things which understanding because it was naturall God had not took away from an evill Spirit For neither is it more naturall to the Devil to have known the enlightnings concerning future things than to have known the natures and names of living Creatures not seen before like Adam But I conceive with Dionysius that the inferior Angels are enlightned by the superior but this light continually to beam forth from the wisdom of the Father and never to have been natural to Angels but to be a free and beatifical gift Next that every good gift doth descend from the Father of Lights that the gift of the Counsels of God and of his future works is not to be searched out by Creatures by their gifts of nature else the naturall knowledge of evill spirits should be almost infinite if it should include in it self the fortunes of mortall men to come distinguished in their second causes yea if an evill spirit otherwise had had this natural participation of divine counsel he had not been ignorant of future effects which he himself as the fire-brand of all evills was to raise up and suffer and so he could scarce have sinned Therefore it is more safe to believe contingent or accidentall things to be painted out by the Stars not indeed all but perhaps those of one age and likewise the Tragedy of every man to be deciphered in his own Star the Picture whereof ceaseth with the closure of his life They will say Hannibal took poyson Satan perswading him But this he did not certainly know as neither could he foretell it if man hath free will and therefore neither did he know that Hannibal would certainly obey his perswasions neither doth Hannibal die by the foolish perswasion of Satan which could not be knit to its causes depending on the divine will For neither doth he die by the poyson but first he is a run-away from many adverse battels But the Lord the onely God of Armies hath Victories in his own hand neither is the evill spirit chief in Battels Therefore to have foreknown the issue of Wars is the same as of free contingencies For truly Victory doth for the most part arise occasionally from a contingent thing not premeditated of therefore I conclude that the infernal enemy doth read the Pictures of the Stars whereby the Firmament is said to foretel the Handy works of the Lord. But thou wilt say whence do the Heavens make Predictions which no mortall men have known and the which to be known by the evill spirit is wickedness In the first place it should be sufficient that the fore-tellings of future things do chiefly declare the glory of God and the infiniteness of his wisdom and fore-knowledge to wit that it may not remain unsignified And then The Lord hath not done a word which he doth not signifie to his servants the Prophets Lastly if the number of mortall men be scarce the hundreth of Angels that are good Spirits it sufficeth that these at least do read the foretokens of future things and therefore do they praise the Lord anew Lucifer indeed hath waxed proud by the much knowledge of things both of those that do exist and of things afterwards to be and it was naturall to him the which he breaths in without grace But it doth not therefore follow that he hath known all mortall men to come and their fortunes vices defects sins grace and whatsoever things should be hereafter like to a second cause as neither the secret mysteries of God that are revealed in succession of dayes and added to a connexion of causes But whether Plagues do arise and rage or Tyrannies Wars destructions tumults or the beginnings of arch-Hereticks the Lord permitting them at leastwise those things shall be as well connexed to their own necessary and second causes although arbitrall and occasionall ones as otherwise Meteors are to theirs For neither is the office of foreshewing the Handy works of the Lord to be restrained to the changes of the Air alone but absolutely unto all the works of the Lords hands Because if the Stars can be preachers of the threatning effects of the wrath of God which without second causes should be committed to the smiting Angel why shall they not also in like manner shew the works of the Lord deputed or reckoned to second and free causes For truly what things soever God foreknoweth he can also if he will shew them by his Instruments but those proper Instruments of God are the Firmament and the Lights thereof as the Scripture witnesseth Yea truly I have been bold to attribute more Authority to the Heaven than what hath wont to be given unto it by the holy Scriptures To wit that the Stars are to us for foreshewing Signes Seasons or changes of the Air lastly for dayes and years wherefore the Text takes away all power of causes besides in the abovesaid revolutions of seasons dayes and years Neither do they act I say but by a motive and alterative Blas But the Stars are said to act by motion and light onely but motion in the Schooles is said to act onely by reason of the divers Aspects of Light for that the motion of the Heavens even the swiftest as well as those remote from us should produce as well heat as motion is a devise or fiction For truly the daily motion of the Heavens is almost
upon a fat exhalation which is the same as to be enflamed Let two Candles be placed which have first burned a while one indeed being lower than the other by a span but let the upper be of a little crooked Scituation then let the flame of the lower Candle be blown out whose smoak as soon as it shall touch the flame of the upper Candle behold the ascending smoak is inlightned is burnt up into a smoakie or sooty Gas and the flame descendeth by the smoak even into the smoaking Candle Surely there is there a producing of a new Being to wit of fire of a flame or of a connexed light Yet there is not a procreation of some new matter or substance For the fire is a positive artificial death but not a privative one being more than an accident and lesse than a substance Which thing since the Schooles are as yet ignorant of we must more largely declare as well because it is a Paradox and hath respect unto the knowledge of forms as that because from the ignorance thereof most grievous errours have crept into Medicinall affaires Wherefore that I may perfectly teach the divers inclining nature of the fire I will suppose some positions 1. That the fire in an inflamed Body is so united to the inflamable matter that it is like an essential form to it when as notwithstanding it is the destroyer of the same 2. That the inflamed matter is converted into a smoakie Gas which is not yet water because although the fire hath consumed the seminall forces of the thing yet some first fermentall marks of the concrete Body do remain which at length being consumed and slain that Gas returns into the Element of water 3. That every essential form is as for the essence of the thing in which it by it self is And that the fire doth destroy even the fat smoak or Coal the which it inflameth and converts into a wild Gas of which in its place 4. That every essential form is so united to its own matter that it being once seperated from thence by extinguishing or withdrawing it returns no more to the same habit or formall act 5. That every form coming upon a matter is impatient of another totall form But a Metall or any other fixed Body being fired the presence of the bright burning fire being withdrawn returns alwayes into its former state 6. That every form of a substance hath a specificall matter wherein it is but the fire hath Wood Wax Pitch and as many subjects as there are particular fireable kindes 7. That every substantial form doth at length rise up in the matter disposed by a foregoing seed but the fire wants a seed yea if there are any it consumeth or wasteth them away 8. That the forms of substances have not degrees but the fire doth admit of a degree by the bellowes From which particulars I conclude that fire is not a substance not the essential form of substances but a positive death of things and their destroyer a singular creature second to no other from whence I proceed thus to demonstrate it There is no doubt but that a Coal is far more porie than Iron and that it hath lesse of soundness but yet Iron being fired doth more burn than a Coal Therefore of necessity Iron contains more of the fire in matter and form but the consequence is false Therefore fire is not a substantial composed Body consisting of the matter and form of fire because otherwise if there were any substance proper to the fire it should not pierce the dimensions of the body of the Iron The Schooles answer to this against themselves to wit that the matter is more compact in Iron than it is in a Coal and therefore it burns the more powerfully as the Iron is capable of the more fire For that thing I assumed to wit that I might draw this Argument from thence If fire were a substance consisting of a fiery matter and form after the manner of any other substance the Iron should of necessity be capable of lesse fire than the Coal for that it is weightier than a Coal and hath lesse and fewer pores wherein the fire may be entertained But if therefore the Iron be capable of lesse matter it ought to burn lesse But the consequence is false therefore also the antecedent Because two matters or Bodies as neither the essential totall or ultimate forms of these cannot suffer each other at once in the same place and subject Wherefore Iron and fire it this were a substance could not lodge together in the same subject But if the Schooles endeavour to evade and say that Iron indeed becomes on a fire yet that it is never changed into fire I answer whatsoever obtains every property of fire is fire or fire hath not proper but common passions with another Being of another particular kinde But the properties of fire are to kindle burn seperate Heterogeneal things to melt Lead Copper Wax to burn in a combustible matter and to consume But all these things Iron fired doth more powerfully perform than a Coal therefore in fired Iron there is fire and so much the more of fire by how much it doth more burn than a Coal Again if Iron fired hath not in it true fire but the properties of fire without fire those therefore shall be brought in and left in the Iron by the fire From whence it followes that the formal properties of the fire have left the proper form of fire in which they were suppose in the Coals or flame and have wandred into the substance of the Iron diverse from them For truly they will not have it called fire but as the inflamable body is kindled Add to these things that if fire be a material substance the substance of glasse which the detaining of the most subtile Chymical Spirits teacheth to have no pores and the substance of fire should pierce each other at the pleasure of the Artificer which things the Schooles themselves do utterly deny But besides the aforesaid absurdities another doth accompany to wit that heat in the fire doth onely make hot but its dryness dryeth up and nothing else So also the kindling enlightning power doth kindle and enlighten the seperating power seperates the destructive doth destroy c. All which properties should not onely be generated by the form of the fire in the strange matter of Iron but should also there subsist without the proper subject of their inherence Wherefore the fire that is infired is true fire not a substance as neither an accident but a neutral Creature having in it self divers properties after the manner of substantial Beings If the Schooles I say had known this thing they had known that light doth generate light and fire not indeed as differing in the particular kinde but onely in uniting dispersing and so to be different onely in degree Neither therefore that an accident doth produce a substance in any respect Indeed they think that
in swiftness greatness which is abusive As also that the air should keep the quality of a cooling refreshment undefiled being introduced by little and little through so many windings of the Arteries In the next place neither should the Artery draw the air that the vital spirit may take increase thereby Because with the consent of the Schools the vital spirit is not made of air but of the vapour of the venal bloud elaborated in the heart to the utmost and ennobled with a vital faculty And it is a dull affirmation which supposeth the vital spirit to be nourished by a simple Element Seeing we are nourished by the same things whereof we are generated Wherefore seeing the in-drawn aire is an elementary body it hath not the nature of a sanguine spirit as neither seeing the air can ever be made individual by a humane determination it shall not be able to nourish a composed body as I have taught in its place Moreover It alwayes keeps the properties of a universal Element but doth not attain the condition of an Archeus For the aire is neither akin to us nor is it capable of a vital light And therefore the Artery shall abhor a Forreigner neither doth it admit the air into its family before it be elaborated in due shops neither doth nature attempt any thing in vain as neither to prepare the aire that it may be made that toward which it plainly hath not a possible inclination otherwise the vital spirit should be made in vain through so many preparations of digestions long-windings and shops of the Bowels if by so light a breviary and without usury it may be ripened from without For this hath deceived the Schools that it hath hitherto been believed that fire is necessarily nourished by air Therefore also that vital spirit as the Authour of all our heat doth want for its food the Element of air But I have already cleered it up above that the fire is neither a substance nor that it is nourished by air Yea neither by a combustible matter unlesse that in hastening to the ends of its appointments it doth require an inflamable matter for its object but not for its nourishment Also for want of an object it perisheth in an instant when it hath attained the end of its appointments Because seeing it is neither a substance nor an accident it also perisheth for want of an object for that its own object is also its subject And so also that is a thing most singular to it and hitherto unknown Therefore the supposition of smoakie vapours standing the end ceaseth for which the outward Air should be drawn through the Skin into the Arteries the manner ceaseth and the possibility ceaseth Again if the Arterie sucks the Air by the Pulse it should indifferently suck and such an attraction should be promiscuously endemicall and so hurtfull which I have observed to be false by often experience Especially because that as oft as a forreign or strange Plague is contracted from without by the breathing the suiting or setling thereof is not made but nigh the stomach which thing is made manifest by the sense of the place anguishes vomiting sighs head-aches and doatages And so that part in us which feeleth and formeth the first motions of apprehensions doth also feel the first onsets of the Plague I grant indeed that the Plague is contracted by the contraction of a defiled matter and that forthwith the pain as it were of a pricking needle is felt But this doth not prove that therefore the sucking of the Air is made by the Arteries when as the poyson it self is apt to infect the skin and forthwith to burn it into an Eschar Surely it is a far different thing for the Pest to be drawn inwards by the Arteries or to be allured by sucking and another thing by force of its own contagion to creep inwards by touching as it were by the stroak of a Serpent for emplaisters Baths and Oils do alter the skin and consequently they do either proceed to alter or do draw from the Center to the skin but not because vapours fetched from thence are drawn materially inward Then at length the Pulse is not after the manner of breathing which by one sigh doth blow out whatsoever is of Air in the Breast but the motion of the Pulses is interrupted by an opposite and therefore the expiring motion is most frequent no lesse than the inspiring and those successive motions do so much hasten that if they had attracted any Air that should enter for a frustrate end seeing it would be knocked out in an instant For truly that which is nearer to the mouthes that should also first be blown out And so the Air should not have hope ever to be more thorowly admitted or that it should satisfie the cooling refreshment of the heart Lastly a generative faculty is wanting to the vital Spirit whereby it should bring the Air into Spirit by a formall transmutation Seeing that power belongs to the Ferment and Shops without which venal bloud is not made For neither can venal bloud generate venal bloud and the chyle of the stomach being granted to be in a Vein or Arterie venal bloud should not therefore ever be made thereby or arterial bloud Therefore the Air although it should be a fit Body yet it could not be made the nourishment of the vital Spirit unless it had first been elabourated in the heart being quickned and enlightned therein individually according to a humane Species all whereof do resist an Element Therefore the frivolous device is made void and the cooling refreshment of the heart by the attraction of Air inwards by the Arteries is feigned And the Load-stone of Man celebrated by Paracelsus is feigned Seeing the Arteries do not suck inwards and the Air so introduced should be for a greater load to the Arteries than the feigned smoakie vapour of the Schooles If therefore the Arteries do not draw Air certainly much lesse should flesh do that being an enemy wanting the hollowness of the Air For indeed that the Air is drawn from without unto the heart by the Arteries as well for its cooling refreshment as its nourishment and increase of the Spirit of the Archeus is nothing but a meer device So is the invention of the Schooles alike frivolous that the necessity alone of expulsing the smoakie vapour bred in the heart should depress the Arteries For truly in the foregoing Chapter I have already shewen at large that there are other aims of the Pulses For whatsoever is made in the heart is either a pure Being and a meer refined thing and vital For there is no adustion corrupt matter dryth nor efficient cause of smoakinesses For it is an unsavoury or foolish thing thus to have compared the Fabrick or frame of life to destroying fire that it must be feigned the arterial bloud there to be burnt to and to send forth smoakie Fumes For if any forreign vapours do sometimes besides
of all things as well in generation as in the transmutations of meats throughout the course of life which office doth properly respect the inbred or implanted spirit But now how and whence the spirit floating in the Arteries may be constituted by occasion of the Blas of man already described consequently I have undertaken to explain in this path their Office and Properties The Schools teach That nourishments are first changed into Chyle and then into digested juice and venal bloud and so that a certain naturall spirit is made in the Liver which afterward by a repeated digestion of the heart is changed into vital and at length is in the Brain made animal or sensitive so as that the natural spirit is ordained for nourishing of the parts but the vital for the preserving of the same and the animal for the functions of sense motion and the soul But I think it hath been far otherwise Phylosophized and farther proceeded For they had known out of Hippocrates That a certain spirit is that thing which causeth violence or maketh the assaults But it was not sufficient to know that there is a certain Spirit to have told by what instruments it should be made or what it might act unlesse they should explain also the disposition substance and properties of the same together with the manner of its making I have elsewhere delivered That of any plant and fruit a ferment being applyed Aqua vitae or a water of life may be made which thing seeing it is commonly known while out of Grains Hydromel or Water and Honey and juices it frameth a water of life The Proposition needs no demonstration But Aqua vitae is a volatile Liquor Oylie as it is wholly enflamed and wholly Salt as being sharp biting as being detained the longer in the mouth it burns the upper skin of the gums and lips and is one and the same simple thing and so it containeth two only and not the three Chymical Beginnings So indeed That according to the will of the Artificer the whole Aqua vitae may be made Salt or Oyl that is That those Beginnings are not Beginnings not constant things but changeable at the will of man But the Wine as to its Winie part contains a spirit answering to Aqua vitae For this is searched through the Arteries of the stomack unto the head without the maturities of other shops So that if more wine be in the stomack than is meet drunkennesse follows as the spirit of the wine doth flow more largely into the head than that by a fit space or interval it can be changed by an individuating humane limitation For from hence the changing and likewise the operation of the ferment is manifest Notwithstanding in Wine that spirit is milder than Aqua vitae which is drawn forth by distillation which thing appears from the like in Oyl of Olives For the Oyl which they call Oyl of Tiles or Bricks or Olem Phylosophorum being distilled doth far differ from the Oylinesse which is drawn out of simple Oyl by digestion only with the circulated Salt of Paracelsus for that circulated Salt is seperated the same in vertue and weight after it hath divided the oyl of Olives into its diversities of parts For a sweet and twofold Oyl is seperated out of oyl of Olives even as a most sweet spirit out of wine being far severed from the tartnesse of Aqua vitae Whence I have learned by consequence That whatsoever is distilled only by fire doth far recede from the vertues of the composed body But in us although meat doth putrifie after its own manner to wit if that putrefaction be a mean of transchanging a thing into a thing yet in our digestions by that putrefaction I speak of the action of the ferment of the stomack Aqua vitae is not extracted out of Potherbs Graines Apples or Pulses For truly the intention of nature is not then to procreate an Aqua vitae and there is one ferment in us whereby things are resolved into Chyle and another whereby things do send forth an Aqua vitae or a water of Life out of themselves For while herbs do putrifie in water through a ferment the stalk stumps or stocks and leaves do remain whole in their antient figure and hardness for the extraction of Aqua vitae which being eaten by us are turned into Chyle and loose their first face Wherefore I have comprehended as many varieties of putrefactions and as many dungs of one bread different in the particular kind as there are particular kinds of living creatures nourished by bread Yea further far more ferments of bread because bread doth putrifie as yet by more means as well of its own accord as from an appointment But what is spoken of bread as much is said of other meats The Schools indeed knew That nothing doth profit us which should not contain a Beginning or Essay of life in its root and so therefore they do admit of the air for the increase of spirit being deceiued by the Lessons of Poets who call them Vitall airs to wit they would have in the venal bloud a spirit of the Liver naturally actually to be and to glister like air For they thought it to be a vapour being ignorant that a vapour is never made an uncoagulable Gas an air sky or wild exhalation but that it alwayes remains water Therefore they thought a vapour exhaling from the venal bloud hunted outwards even as out of a certain luke-warm Liquor should be that spirit of the venal bloud whence vital spirit should be materially framed But surely the venal bloud as long as it flowes in the vessels of the Mesenterie and Port vein is void of spirit Wherefore it being also called out by laaxtive Medicines it is voided forth stinking without any notable token of weaknesse which comes not so to passe if it hath once well touched at the hollow vein Because then the venal bloud is Homogeneally or after one and the same kind sealed in its entrance that it may be made the bloud of the Artery and spirit and therefore it is in the Holy Scriptures indifferently with the Arterial blood called a Red spirit in which the Soul inhabits Although that be properly understood of the Arterial bloud Because the Scripture is there speaking of men stabbed or slain whose venal bloud is poured out together with their arterial bloud I shall at sometime teach concerning digestions that whatsoever is made or composed in the stomack that doth wax soure there by a ferment also Sugar it self not indeed with a sournesse or sharpness of Vinegar Oyl of unripe Olives Citron or Vitriol but by its own like ferment and with a specifical sowrenesse although it symbolizeth or coagreeth with other sowre things in that which is sowre Yet the sharpnesse is diverse from them all by an internall power And that sowreness of meats is perfectly volatile Neither doth that hinder that the Chyle in Youths doth assume the
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
selfishnesse is exhausted But seeing it doth not at all consist in our own power to be wholly freed and so that it rather puts us in mind of the grace of ravishment or violent prevalency than of the true and naked and pure operations of the mind which I intend to take a View of in this Chapter for a compleating of the Treatise of the Soul Therefore according to my poverty of judgment a man doth not in acting climbe neerer unto a super-eminent uncloathing of his mind alone and an abstracted baring of the light of understanding than by the prayer of silence in the Spirit wherein the delights of God are to be adored Because he then doth issuingly illustrate or make light cleer or famous that mind as the uncloathed image of himself being thus reflexed in the glass of his own Divinity This indeed is that which the most glorious Goodnesse wisheth for But that fruits or exercises may bewray the essence or thinglinesse of the mind I have thought that that is not more powerfully nor elswhere to be had than from spiritual exercises whereby the mind it self rids it self from the coâ—knit conceipts of created things and from the service of the acquainted Senses For it is manifest what the mind it self may be while it hath withdrawn it self from conceipts which are wont or might stain it or at leastwise hinder it from comming unto the nakednesse and purity of it self wherein it may be able to worship the aforesaid Unity or onenesse The Lord Jesus therefore is the Way the Truth and the Life the way I say unto himself the Truth and unto the life of the Father of Lights Therefore the way is directed unto the obtainment of abstracted truth whose wished desire it is that the hidden truth which he hath decyphered in the mind his own image may be certainly known by us and worshipped in the Spirit Where Himself is the Kingdome of God is present with all his free gifts and therefore the manner and mean of worshipping in spirit cannot be more nearly known or perfectly learned than by the way and truth it self and so by the prayer which he hath dictated unto us wherein are first three amorous or loving wishes or desires of love and as many Petitions For those wishes are without all selfishnesse and are naked respects toward God himself and therefore the most pure of all those which can be wished for and thought by love And the first of them is that which the Truth speaketh Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and the righteousvess thereof and other things shall be added unto you But it is not the righteousnesse of God that righteousness may be done by us for no one living shall be justified in his sight but that his Name may be sanctified which is not only due unto him so a just thing but that loving wish justifies us For it presupposeth first of all Christian faith itself and then also his infinite goodness whereby he vouchsafeth to be our Father And indeed in the word Our selfishness is put for the goodness of God the obliging of all of us which otherwise is nowhere seen in the three wishes And thirdly it sheweth forth his vast majesty to be co-measured by his dwelling place of the Heavens which is the work of his own hands And so such like things as those being premised an amorous wish or desire is kindled in us which doth not desire that his Name be only sanctified by his only begotten Son and our Mediatour where Deep calls unto Deep neither also onely that the heavenly Wights and whole Church militant may adore his unutterable Name neither also therefore is it the sense that his Name may he sanctified on earth like as it is inheaven but that it may be sanctified or hallowed in us and by us in all this notwithstanding selfishnesse and nothingnesse being renounced and that there may be a naked and most pure reflexion of the honour and delights of God in that which is to be with us and to be worshipped in the spirit of love And therefore also the other succeeding wish doth not ask the Kingdom of God for it self but the Kingdom of God which is in us that it may come neerer to us Not indeed nakedly and simply for our sakes but because it is of his goodnesse to be with the sons of men in delights Wherefore also it is wished that his own Will may be done in us upon us and by us with a full resignation of our own will Therefore the three wishes do proceed from the soul without a modal restriction or reflexion on us because they do exceed all personality of the creature that God may be worshipped for himself And therefore they do excell all force of prayer petition praising giving of thanks yea and of glorification it self For to give thanks doth denote a benefit and implyeth a receiver but glorification praising or sanctification it self as it brings down my selfishnesse before the sight of God although in the mean time it be due and obligatory it far goes back from the excellency of a most pure and amorous wish or desire wherein the sanctifying of the Name of God in us is desired in which deep calleth unto deep For who am I who may presume in respect of an infinite to sanctifie that Name who indeed am nothing but a worm and a most miserable sinner And therefore the amorous or loving desire of sanctification doth as much excell let thy name be hallowed or sanctified by me as a wretched sinner differs from the Son of the God-bearing Virgin For praises and prayers as well in the Mosaical Law as at this day were made by Hymns Psalmes and Prayers But man before the truth be perfectly learned hath never attained the vigour height and depth of a loving desire of sanctifying the incomprehensible Divinity in us wherein there is more excellency than all creatures together are able to comprehend For that sanctification is wished for not because God is most excellent most great bountiful c. For those things include a selfishnesse of the praiser not to be suffered together with the divine Name Therefore the desire and wish of an amorous soul fervently desiring the sanctifying of the Name of God nakedly and simply is not made indeed by a creature below God but by a melting of the mind desiring in the love of God for the least thing which it contains in it is to offer it self to God with a resignation of its whole and likewise to will act and suffer any thing with a total amorous offering up of the heart soul and strength into the obedience of the Divine Will In which loving or lovely offering all thoughts besides the naked desire of love are unsufferably excluded because it transcends all reflexion For because it is naked it despiseth every garment which reason might administer unto it For that so naked and excellent love ariseth in the seat of
the more hard meats is felt as it were to re-suffer and to undergo a re-acting of digestible things because also that speech of Physitians is too rustical because unlesse that which is to be digested be perfectly cocted and at a set term of time the digestion of the same is in vain expected for it tarrying longer in the stomach is corrupted and so then a new Agent ariseth neither is the former any longer digestible when it is corrupted neither also doth that new Agent re-act in manner of bright burning Iron because there are in that digestible matter parts uncapable of digestion in respect of that stomach Neither also doth the leaven or ferment of bread leaven the powder of glasse or the sand of a flint because it is a strange and uncapable object and not to be subdued by it For so the digesting ferment of the stomach doth ferment the flour of meal but not the brans In the mean time the ferment of the meal suffers nothing by the powder of glass as neither doth that powder re-act resist or truly repel For truly altering ferments do never act but on things that have a co-resemblance but they are quiet do cease and sleep if they have not an object proper for themselves Therefore the hinderances of Agents by an alterative Blas are uncapacities hardnesses impurities unequalities and the requisite movers of space Therefore the action of these is terminated on a proper object and disposeth that object unto periods or ends and manners decreed for it But interposing hinderances are not the re-actions of the patient but the incapacities of the same For neither doth silver re-act while it is solved by Aqua fortis with so great a heat although this in the mean time decayeth in acting and loseth its own force and virtue but there is an in-bred property of Spirits and a natural endowment which do operate in acting that by reaching unto their appointed mark they may perfect themselves and bring down their own objects unto bounds naturally enjoyned them which thing distilled Vinegar doth sufficiently teach while it dissolves the stone of Crabs Snails Corals c for the sharp spirit of the Vinegar doth coagulate it self in acting and that which else was volatile and liquid is not onely strained together but also changeth its savour for it collects and constrains it self in a tangible form as if it did more rejoyce to remain in the shape of a more solid body than of a liquor But that such a coagulation and change of savour doth happen by the proper motion of the spirit of Vinegar but not through a re-acting of Bodies standing in the act of dissolution is manifest because there is not made a diminishing of those Bodies even in one grain at least in weight while as in the mean time some measures of stilled Vinegar do undergo the aforesaid change and so it doth not seem consonant to reason for that thing to be done by reason of the bruising or breaking of the stones onely but by reason of a proper natural gift-like unfolding of the Spirits The same thing almost comes to pass while the Spirit of Vitriol waxeth very hot with Mercury For the Mercury remaineth being unchanged in the essence and matter of Mercury onely that it assumes the countenance of snow losing in the mean time nothing of its own substance yet the Spirit of Vitriol passeth over into a true Alume but if the Spirit of Aqua fortis which for the other half of it is also the Spirit of Vitriol be combined with the Mercury that snow of Mercury is not made as neither doth the liquor it self pass over into an Alume And so from hence it appeareth that the action is not proper to the Mercury but to the Spirit of Vitriol diversly disposing it self of its own free accord and according to an in-bred inclination unto divers objects differently changing it self Wherefore the Spirit of Vitriol which is in the Aqua fortis through a strong heat of bubbles stirred up and a tempestuous boiling up dissolveth the Mercury and far otherwise than while it is the naked and simple Spirit of Vitriol which variety indeed in acting doth manifest the various virtues of the acting Spirit rather than those of the Mercury it self because in the one action the Mercury is made invisible which in the other becomes white like snow For the Spirit of Sea-salt although it be most sharp yet it is never changed by the fellowship of Mercury as neither also doth it act into the Mercury And so the effects of actions are seen and not of re-actings So Aqua fortis acts into all metals except gold but with Sal armoniack it acts only into gold but no longer into silver And so there are particular properties of Spirits but not re-actions of a suffering body because it is that which in its own substance and weight sustaineth nothing but a meer and one onely division of it self Therefore Spirits being tossed with divers passions in acting undergo divers transformations but if they remain drowsie and sleeping and do not act on their object they also remain in their antient qualities For that thing appeared at first to happen by reason of the touching of the Mercury because it is that which is also a certain Spirit but afterwards in the silver and gold that was wholly silent But moreover I remember that the Calx or lime of Silver hath drunk into it the liquor of Sulphur which they call a distillation which presently in the Silver laid aside all harshnesse and tartnesse and it changed this liquor into a gauly bitternesse by distilling for the silver remained the same which it was before in substance weight and powder therefore that bitternesse could not be afforded from the silver and for that cause in no wise from a re-acting of the silver but of its own free accord it was made by the property of the Spirit of the Sulphur for neither is there a lesse reason why the same Spirit of Vitriol in diversly acting doth also change it self after a diverse manner than that the same silver should under the boyling up of diverse Spirits wax cruel by a various manner of re-acting on these Especially while that in a Spirit there is made a various transmutation in acting but there is no successive alteration made of the substance of the silver in suffering or diminishing of its weight which things may be far more clearly demonstrated by Adeptists unto whom to wit the one onely and same Liquour Alkahest doth perfectly reduce all tangible Bodies of the whole Universe into the first life of the same without any changing of it self and diminishing of its virtues But it is drawn under the yoak and thorowly changed by its own compeere or co-equal onely For from hence there appeareth a certain sense to be in all particular things the which mediating they do sometimes one way and sometimes another move and unfold themselves about divers objects but not
a Pose and what afterwards 37. An Argument from an impossibility against the Cause of the Cough of the Schooles 38. The orginal of matter in affects of the Lungs is demonstrated 39. The vanity of Remedies from Ignorance 40. That the drinks of China Sarsaparilla c. do not dry up Excrements as neither hinder the generations of the same 41. Some Absurdities caused from hence 42. What we must diligently heed in affects of the Lungs 43. The Doctrine concerning the motion of the Lungs is false 44. The use of the Lungs is not known in the Schooles 45. One and Twenty peremptory Reasons against the motion of the Lungs 46. The Error of the Schools concerning the use of the Diaphragma or Midriffe established eight Reasons 47. Seven conclusions issuing from thence 48. Why the Remedies of Physitians are of no worth 49. That preventions for the restraining of Catarrhes are old Wives Fictions 50. Galen in his Books of the Preserving of Health is wholly ridiculous 51. The Ignorance of the Schooles is to be pitied and bewailed 52. The dissecting of a live Dog hath deceived the Schooles 53. A new Error about Ecligmaes 54. They suppose a falshood 55. Some proofs 56. Whence the Error of Catarrhes or Rheumes was brought in 57. A refuting of a mad perswasion 58. What it may be which is felt to cause the mask of a defluxing Rheum 59. What the future and succeeding matter may be 60. The ignorance of the humour latex hath confirmed Catarrhes 61. A prevention 62. The torture of the night 63. The unconstancy of Paracelsus 64. Liquid things which are not yet vitial in us do not talk with the Stars 65. The Marrow is not among Liquors IT is now a seasonable time to shew that the great heap of Diseases which hath been dedicated to a Catarrhe or Rheume flowing down from the Head even into the very top of the Toes without let or hinderance is an old Wives Fiction not invented but by the enemy the troubler of mankind to wit lest the causes of Diseases being known the Remedies of the same should also be made known However it be at least wise from thence it is manifest that the Schools are even unto this day misled by the errors of the Heathen in the generating supposing defluxion manner way or passage matter means places instruments of a Rheume and likewise in its revulsion or pulling back and Remedies indeed it is false and absurd whatsoever thou shalt build upon one absurdity or impossibility Whence likewise the vain hope which is placed in Cauteries or searing Remedies falls to the ground even as I shall demonstrate in its own place Natures themselves are the Physitianesses of Diseases but the Physitian is their Minister or Servant according to Hippocrates But that is concerning Diseases which nature cures of her own free accord But when she hath failed so that she cannot renew her strength a Physitian chosen by the bounty of the Lord and with whom all Diseases are almost of the same esteem for such a one is he who hath obtained some universal Medicine among many of the like sort he remains no longer a Minister or Servant but a prevailing Interpreter Ruler and Master Let the Name of my Lord Jesus be exalted for ever who doth alwayes bestow his bounty on his little Ones who are base or dejected in their own humility For nature being the chief receiver of the diseasifying impressions of the sick and the sensitive Soul a mover on the opposite part likewise where entertained Diseases do prevail man dies or at least wise liveth for the future more miserably than death it self unless he be restored by the Physitian into his former state Yet it doth not happen to every Physitian to go to Corinth unless to him that is called elected exercised and commissioned or entrusted For the universal perfections of healing which contain in them the tune or harmony of nature had not yet been made known to the age of Hippocrates for they are as yet scanty and derided by the common sort of Physitians unto this day therefore Hippocrates deserves pardon if he thought that the whole businesse of a Disease was to be finished by nature as a Mistris Moreover I have said elsewhere that even forthwith from the beginning of the Young an implanted spirit doth sit president over every member as an assisting Ruler but that the other being an inflowing spirit doth issue from the heart being the awakener and comforter of the implanted one the which notwithstanding is neither limited nor individually disposed unless it be first subdued by the implanted spirit I have also taught elsewhere that every member doth grow or flourish according to the virtue of the implanted ferment and so that neither is a transmutation to be hoped for for a new generation unless by a ferment mediating Consequently it is from thence understood that all growth is made by the spirits and so that a weakened digestion of the members doth depend on the diminishing of the spirits and of the ferment of these according to that saying My spirit the sheath of the ferment shall be diminished therefore also my dayes shall be shortened So as that a member which in health doth produce even no visible excrement doth make much thereof and that without ceasing if it shall be wounded hurt diminished or hindered in the vigour of its ferment In the next place it also from hence follows that through a hurt and the variety of things hurting a disagreement and undue proportion of excrements is bred Not therefore from one Fountain to wit the Head of man whence indeed the Schools do devise all Catarrhs or Rheums to rain down but from an own proper affection or suffering or from the proper indisposition of every part brought upon it by local ferments do Diseases arise For so wounds which are cured do suffer a relapse do oft-times bring forth Ulcers and Imposthumes And the axle of the winds being turned they wax fresh and grieve again a long course of years after So indeed Coughs Pleurisies spittings of blood and Erisipelasses do return For a mountain cold exceeding a mean or any other sudden cold suddenly invading the night Air a fenny Air or Gas of Mines belched out do oftentimes by one only on-set tread the ferments of the Brain and Lungs under foot that for the whole life-time after they are made shops for divers excrements Truly after this manner excrements not indeed snivelly ones from the Brain are made in the Eyes Ears Teeth Jaws by an error of their own So Coughs and Asthmaes do at first begin and persevere by a continued ferment Not indeed through snivel flowing down from the Head but generated within the Lungs by the violated ferment of the place For the Lungs are most easily affected or disturbed by an external thing rushing on them before the other members because it is the first of the members which waxeth old and dieth As is manifest by the
is a lightsome Being it acts not but by its instrument of the vital aire or by the Archeus as a mean between the light of Life flowing from the father of lights and the body But this aire or Archeus doth not act but after the manner wherein every seminal spirit acteth on the mass subjected under it that is not but by an imprinted mark or sealie Idea which hath known what and which way it must act Therefore all and every disease hath a sealie mark and as it were a seminal act which is expert of things to be acted by it self This Declaration therefore doth far recede or differ from an elementary distemperature from humours and the disproportionable mixture of those from the fight and contrariety of the elements of our composition because every disease is nothing but a Sword to the Life wounding or totally cutting it off For as a Sword doth exhaust the Life together with the arterial blood and vital aire wherein according to the holy Scriptures the Soul it self sitteth So a disease consumeth the same air of Life on which it afresh sealeth an hostile character drawn as well from occasional Causes as gotten through the errour of its own indignation This exact account of a disease being granted lo I come unto the explaining of a disease And first I will demonstrate from the very Theoremes of the Schools that the thingliness or essence of a disease hath been hitherto unknown Whence in the next place any one shall easily judge what hath even hitherto been done in the remedies and vanquishing of diseases I have oft-times promised that I will demonstrate that the Schools have hitherto neglected that is that they have not known the essence root or nature of a disease in its own universal quiddity or thingliness And seeing I have already from the Elements prosecuted that thing even unto a conclusion thorow all their privy shifts now at length by an Anatomy of particulars I shall also stand to my promises if I shall detect the same in the general and especially if I shall shew that thing no longer by the fictions of Elements temperaments and humours but by the very words of Authors whereby they corrupt their Young beginners as it were with a mortal contagion In the premises it hath already been demonstrated by me that the Ages before me being deluded by the trifles of the Peripateticks have been ignorant of the Causes to wit the Matter and Efficient of natural things Then also that a thing it self is nothing besides a connexion of both Causes and that this same thing is in diseases especially seeing a disease although happening unto us by sin is now admitted for a prodigal Son of Nature Truly the univocal or simple homogeneity of Causes in natural Beings hath compelled me hereunto whereby the efficient Cause is denominated from effecting but not from the Effect which is after the Efficiency Therefore the Schools do first of all define a disease to be an affect or disposition which doth primarily hurt the actions of our faculties wherein they do as yet very much stumble For truly first they name this Affect a distemperature of one or two qualities of the first Elements For so they rehearse the same thing because they consess a disease to be an elementary quality it self as it exceedeth a just temperature Therefore a disease shall no longer be that disposition resulting from the first qualities which they suppose immediately to hurt the functions themselves And so they feign the whole disease hereafter to consist in nothing but in a degree or excess of an elementary quality Again now and then they call the very distemperature of qualities not indeed a Disease but well the antecedent cause of the same They will I say have those four solitary qualities to be diseases whether they shall proceed from external qualities co-like unto themselves or whether they owe their beginning in the body to be from a strange disproportion of mixture Furthermore they afterwards combine those qualities in a bride-bed from the congress whereof they then derive their off-spring a Disease to wit they believe that the Elements are so subservient to their own dreams As that also qualities being joyned at their pleasure they have commanded them to answer to as many elements So that those naked qualities being even balaced with feigned elements and dreamed humours they have feigned to be Diseases themselves For in this place I declare the unseasonable yea sporting varieties of the Schools and their poverty greatly fighting otherwise surely I have sufficiently proved elsewhere by a Demonstration chiefly true That in the nature of things there are not four elements and therefore neither are they mixed that bodies which they have called mixt may be thereby constituted and by consequence that neither can distemperatures be accused for diseases As neither that ever there were four constitutive humours of us in the nature of things whereby it is sufficiently and over-manifest that the causes of diseases yea and diseases and the predicament of diseases have been hitherto unknown in the Schools Notwithstanding I will now dissemblingly treat with them by the supposed Positions of the same Schools Therefore the Schools sometimes repenting them of their sayings will have the elementary qualities and not unfrequently the humours equal to these not indeed to be diseases but onely the containing causes of almost all diseases Otherwise again that of those qualities being more intense than is meet a third or neutral one doth arise which they have called the Diathesis or Disposition or Disease it self And so however they toss the business they have hitherto commanded a disease to inhabite among qualities but humours although intemperate ones they for the most part driven out of the rank of diseases Indeed a Cataract in the eye although as a substance it doth immediately intercept the sight yet it cannot be a disease Therefore they have feigned a certain Being of reason and an imaginary relation or obstruction which might contain every property of a disease and might be truly a disease the Cataract being rejected And so by degrees a disease comes down unto non-beings and privations And now and then they for the essence of a disease do ridiculously distinguish a simple distemperature from a conjoyned one and again both of them from a humourous one when as a humour should be a substance void of degrees Indeed they have distinguished the societies of proportionable and disproportionable mixtures of the first qualities into pedigrees and then they have thereby erected specious Schemes and at length they have filled whole Volumes with those fables But at leastwise they have never admitted an evil or vitiated humour to be bred in us which may not presuppose some elementary distemperature to be mother unto it Wherefore a distemperature in the Schools shall be onely the cause of the cause and of the thing caused but it shall not be the thing caused it self or the disease nor in
especially of carminating things which doe not respect the outward bought of the Intestine And vainly do they feign that Winds are dispersed by extenuation or rarefying For to what purpose do they hope to have Winds extenuated in a matter more subtil than Wind or what shall it profit for to render the Wind more subtile than it self if it then requires a larger room and doth encrease the troubles of its extension For it is a home-bred foolish Remedy drawn from Fables Cabrollius an Anatomist of Mount-pellier tells That he cured a man of Eighty Years old who by the perswasion of Rondoletius ate nothing but salt things and least he should be overwhelmed with thirst he mixed pickels or sauces made of Vinegar and Sugar with his meats He also fomented him twice every day with a Lixivium wherein Salt Alume and Sulphur had boyled And thereupon used Cows-dung for a Cataplasm and at length he escaped and survived being a Hundred Years old For those things are not administred in vain which do consume the occasional Cause Neither therefore doth Paracelsus vainly commend dungs seeing they are the salts of putrified meats unto whom it is granted to resolve the occasional matter of a Dropsie Surely there is on both sides a wonderful action of the Archeus as well where he deteins the keys as where he unlocks the Closets and expels his Enemy But Paracelsus approves of his Praecipiolum or Mercury drawn dead out of its Mine before other Remedies But other Simples according to the degree of assinity wherein they reach unto this metallick Mercury It is a Phrase of his own liberty I reverence and admire the endowments of Simples as they arose from God but not as they are consanguineal or akin to mineral Mercury I confesse in the mean time that that Mercury hath alwayes served or answered my desires Indeed the attainment thereof is difficult but the dose of two grains is sufficient being three or four times administred But Mercurius Diaphoreticus being once obtained it is sufficient for many thousands of sick folks as well for himself being a Physitian as for his successors Finally I have seen a bastard Dropsie whereof none hath made mention that I know of before my self For I have frequently seen that from an inordinate growth of the Liver the extension of the Belly did counterfeit a Dropsical Disease Yea also in those who have died of a Tabes or Consumption of the Lungs and in those who have been exceeding sean I have seen their Liver to have increased beyond measure although wholly without Blood That Mercury therefore slayes the increasing or growing faculty even as Quicksilver being cast into a tree bored even into its pith or heart with an Auger doth kill the same Therefore it belongs to the property of Mercury to extinguish the growing faculty of the Liver But that that thing may succeed according to thy desire the Mercury ought to die without any association of external Salts or fellowship of forreign Spirits yet thus it ought to die that a vital Being may remain in the Chariot which may be able in the middle life of the Mercury to carry it unto its appointed places I am thankful in the behalf of him whom the Fire hath taught me to understand Hither do I referre the Remedy of Stibium solulutive For truly those Remedies do resolve consume and brush off every occasional Cause elsewhere lurking and detained That indeed is the cure of Arcanums which is attained by a removal of the occasional Cause and any one of those secrets doth suffice the which do resolve cleanse forth and disperse without distinction whatsoever I except the Stone is besides Nature concluded in the Body For truly although of any kind of Diseases there are two pillars whereby the disease edifice is supported to wit the occasional matter and the matter with the Archeal efficient yet either of the two pillars being with-drawn the whole building goes to ruine which was superstructed upon them Therefore the secrets of Paracelsus do take away every Disease by consequence as they mow down the occasional Cause And then there is another more hidden way of another secret to wit whereby peace rest and comfort is brought into the Archeus to wit lest he being wroth do bring forth a Disease and rather that he may abolish it being bred Yea also that he himself may meditate of putting the occasional Cause to flight For so as a Thorne being thrust into the Flesh is drawn out by the fat of an Hare a common and milde Remedy Otherwise the Archeus is presently as it were angry with the entring Thorne doth make a tumult the place swels and a various exorbitancy of Symptoms is awakened that indeed corrupt Pus being at length made and the place putrified he may exclude the Thorne the which if they had gone more mildly to work had issued or rushed out even as it happens under the perswasion of the Hares grease In like maner I say there is an Arcanum or secret in nature which cures almost every Disease as it takes away the indignation confusions of the Archeus and commands this Archeus to be peaceable Of which Arcanum I first will endeavour to open the way Therefore in the Dropsie the Archeus of the Reins looseth the passages and riseth up against the occasional Cause that is to be put to flight no otherwise than as by a stubborn fury he seeks his own distruction and so a Maxime of Hippocrates shall be verified That Natures themselves are the Physitiannesses of Diseases but the Physitian onely their Minister Therefore from the Premises I conclude that there would be as yet a far more peaceable and desirable cure from a sedative or appeasing Secret than by the Secrets of Paracelsus For they make more for the preservation of long life of which in a peculiar Book CHAP. LXIV A Childish Vindication of the Humorists 1. The End of the Race proposed or published 2. It hath happened to the Author even as he had judged 3. The Clamours of those who are beaten 4. The more secret Arcanums are not to be openly revealed 5. The Author Answers unto Letters written unto him 6. Ten Reproaches I Had now set forth some small Works which have been hitherto unheard of to wit concerning a different kind of sharpish Fountains and especially of those of the Spaw and of the Original of Fountaines Concerning Fevers concerning the Disease of the Stone concerning the miserable state of the deceived Humourists and of the Plague That mortals might return the race of all natural Philosophy and might thereby safely learn the rise manner mean and progress of healing First of all the Book of Feavers reprehendeth the ignorant Schooles of Medicine about the knowledge of an infirmity so common whereby they might repent and excuse the publishing of this Volumn But concerning the Stone a Monster accidentally bred in us and touching the Plague as it were an irregular by-work of the mind that
constancy but not a hastened Corruption And it hath compleated its circle of generation through a long favour of the Heaven and it seemeth to be that which by a particular ordination is directed by the Almighty for the help of the Miserable and Poor 2. Drif is not of those unwonted Arcanums not bestowed by God but on a very few Adeptists they only being certain of his choice Disciples For truly our Drif seemeth to be only ordained for the comfort of the Poor 3. Drif requireth that it be indeed of a Natural Body partaker of a Metallick bounty but that before it be first made obedient and openea by Death not indeed with an extinguishment of its Virtues or Faculties or like a Carcass dying of its own accord but the benefits of its natural Endowments being retained that it be unlocked by the Artificer being free from its bolts and as it were raised up again yea that it be an enriched and plainly a new Being and rising afresh from the fire 4. And therefore it ought to have risen again being as it were altogether Volatile after Death and spiritual or to be twice or thrice sublimed with other things added unto it 5. But because volatile things do soon perish are dispersed and dissolved even before they are admitted within do pierce and draw their excellencies out of their Bosome or so are able to pacifie the Archeus therefore Drif requires that after its volatility being obtained it be connexed unto a certain friendly Body whereby it may be detained and in its Bride-bed be communicable unto mans Body and grateful and familiar unto our Archeus And therefore it ought to obtain that thing as it were a middle place between a Body that is easily and not easily difflable or to be blown away And likewise it ought to be connexed unto its mean while its heat being now almost at the highest it shall be mild to wit least the volatitle Body in the co-kniting do in a great part of it fly away 6. And for this cause it ought to be plainly fermental not onely in its constancy of Body but in the extension of its virtues so that through the least participation of its Odour it may be able to extend its virtues into the Archeus and to sleepifie and asswage the same In which Six Particulars as Drif is described so in a like Number its Composition is discovered First of all In the Book of the Disease of the Stone in the dainty dish for Young Beginners I have explained a manner of Distilling whereby the Spirit of Sea-Salt is drawn or allured forth with Potters Earth being dried For the Salt of the Sea is akin unto us and desireable by us neither is it adverse unto us in any of its Tenour Therefore for Drif the residing Salt of the Sea remaining in its Dreg is required to wit it being extracted from its Dreg or Lee which is called the Caput Mortuum or Dead Head That Salt I say being now spoiled of its Spirits doth desire strange ones and doth lay them up within it self yet it doth not altogether stubbornly fix them 2. I have likewise taught That the first Being of Venus or Copper cannot be sequestred but by the Death and Separation of its Mercury from its Sulphur But moreover that neither is that Sulphur to be had but in the possession of Adeptists whose number as it is choice and most rare so also it is altogether small 3. I have taught moreover That in Vitriol however its Venus being now depraved and the more often distilled yet that the very actual Venus doth as yet remain 4. Wherefore Drif it self requires at least-wise a Sequestration of the Venus from the Feces or Dreg of the Vitriol which is not otherwise compleated than by Subliming 5. Which Sublimation is also of necessity made and perfected by a forreign fermental Being yet altogether friendly to the Archeus 6. Therefore the Sea Salt extracted out of its Dreg being poured forth before its every way co-thickening Let about a threefold quantity of the Being of Venus being raised again by Subliming and accompanied with its strange or forreign Ferment be co-mixed with it and presently let the roof be covered But when they shall become wholly cold beat them into a Powder under Marble and adjoyn thereto about a tenfold quantity of Usnea or the Moss of a Dead Man's Skul in respect of the Ens or Being of Venus Which Powder compact thou into Trochies upon a Stone with mouth or fish-glew being dissolved And thou hast a Noble Medicine CHAP. LXXX Of material things Injected or Cast into the Body 1. What material things are Cast in from without 2. Some Histories 3. The Matter of the Deed is admitted yet it is Disputed concerning the Manner of Injection 4. The penury of Judgement in a Searcher out of Magical things 5. That it doth not exceed Nature that a solid Body is derived without breaking by a Passage far more narrow than it self 6. A History rehearsed by Cornelius Gemma 7. Some Histories of the piercing of Bodies 8. The piercing of Bodies in passing thorow to a Place is proved 9 The same thing in passing thorow out of a Body 10. There hath been a familiar piercing of the Dimensions of humane Nature 11. The same Property doth sometimes persist in the Seeds of things 12 After what manner those things may naturally happen 13. By a like Example in dark Bodies which cease to be seen 14. A Reason by a Conjecture 15. There is an especial and free force concurring in Enchanting and therefore also natural unto man 16. A man as he is the Image of God doth create some Beings which are something more than Non-beings 17. In an imagined Being or a formed Idea there is a right of Entity or Beingnesse 18. After what manner an Idea may fall out from the Imagination 19. How the Soul of man doth create Images 20. An Objection is Solved 21. Some Paradoxes of the imagining Soul for the constituting of an Idea ANd then also there are things Injected or cast into the Body which do suppose a visible matter Of which sort are Darts or Arrow-heads Sharp Thornes Chaffs Haires Sawings little Stones shels of Eggs and earthen Pots Parings or Shels and Husks Insects Naperies or pieces of Linnen Cloath Needles Instruments of Artificers the which are indeed unsensibly darted into the Body and do enter altogether after an invisible manner yet are they detained and cast forth with cruel Torments And it may be are oftentimes greater than their hole whereby they are sent in For of late there was part of a Buffe or Oxe Hide Injected thorow the pores of the skin the skin remaining entire the which the Chyrugion drew out with his Tongues unto the bigness of the Palme of ones hand Yet an Aposteme was first ripened But a Witch being burnt at Bruges confessed that she had cast in that piece of Hide into the good Man So in times past we
pass But if a Vice subsisteth in the Shops of the Digestions and not sprung from things assumed Now a primary Parent of confusion is supposed which hath neglected and defiled the things assumed Oft-times also things assumed do scarce continue changed in the Reliques which is called the Coeliack or Belly-passion invading with a remaining delight of eating no less than with a dejected Appetite that we may know that in the ferment of the spleen diverse Offices and dispensations of Properties do lay hid to wit those of Digestion and Appetite Things assumed also which are less grateful or convenient if they floate about diary Fever burntish unnamed Contents likewise inordinate Appetites c. are made but if they shall the more stubbornly adhere they bring forth diverse and stubborn Disasters of one Stomack From whence are Sobbings or Hickets Swoonings Faintings Convulsions Gripings or Wringings of the Guts Dissolvings or Loosenesses of the Paunch Vomitings Atrophia's or Consumptions for lack of Nourishment c. the which do manifestly enough appear in the labour of the Duumvirate But if indeed the Ferment in the first Digestion shall be diminished through age or the promoted difficulties of Diseases Things assumed howsoever good they are are vitiated Because Ferments do no otherwise govern things assumed and left than the Digestions themselves Wherefore I refer the Lientery or Smoothness of the Bowels Fluxes Choler because they are as well the Heires of things assumed and of Reliques as of things transchanged unto the Vices of Digestions But Stranguries although they do often happen from things transmitted from the first Digestion unto the third as the native sharpnesses of things have remained stubborn in things assumed even as is especially conspicuous in the drinking of new Ale yet they happen through a defect of the Ferment of the second Digestion and therefore such a kind of Strangury is familiar unto old age Therefore I have ascribed Stranguries as well to things left as to things transchanged in the second Digestion Let it be sufficient also to have admonished by the way that I have been every where less exact about the splendour and order of division in so great Paradoxes than about the Essence of a thing For neither do things assumed only offend through a double fault to wit through the errour of Reliques and local Ferments But also the things digested themselves are after a twofold manner badly affected For the Stomack doth cook not only for the whole Body but also for it self So also concerning many Organs in the diverse Offices of whose digestions and functions their own errours do alienate their Products Yet the Stomack is manifestly subject unto a double Calamity To wit of its own Digestion and of the sixth Because every part lives by its own Kitchin which in the Stomack being subjected unto that which is assumed rushing on it is most easily disturbed even with every shaking of the mind Therefore in the first second and third Digestion obvious manifest and frequent stumblings and omissions of Digestions do happen But in the sixth although they do manifestly every where leave Products yet these the Schooles have referred unto the four feigned diversity of kinds of the venal blood Yea and far more absurdly also have they for the most part dedicated the Vices of the sixth Digestion unto the Snivel lifted up by a feigned Vapour of the Stomack and from thence distilled Wherefore they have devised that Rheumes do fall down into the Common-weal of the sixth Digestion but they unbashfully affirm that Phlegm also which they contend to be generated by a vital Beginning in the Liver together with the venal Blood is now a Relique through a casual distillation of Art But in the fourth and fifth Digestions because they are altogether vital ones with much care first refining all things from Filths their Inmates although there are not so manifest superfluities of things assumed yet it is not absurd that inbred Retents should there be procreated because the Nature of Mortals being now wholly corrupted is in no place free from all contagion or blemish Authors do rehearse that small Ulcers have been found in the bosome of the Heart and likewise that a Woman being dead of a four Months disury or Difficulty of Urin two small Stones together with some Pustules or Wheales have shewn themselves to the Dissecters c. in the substance of her Heart Although indeed these things do rather convince of the Vice of the sixth Digestion than of the fourth or fifth But dayly beatings or pantings of the Heart do accuse of Reliques or rather of things transchanged although not plainly manifest ones It is sufficient that Idea's tinged with Poyson do as much as may be and often spring into the Spirit of Life as the causes of unthought of Death For neither doth the madness of Dogs otherwise corrupt by their Tooth the Spirits which are the authors of discourses because the Tooth being vitiated in its disposition infects the cases of the Brain and Spleen which hath assumed the Nature of a poysonous Relique Simples also although they are but once only assumed do oftentimes make mad for term of Life As they do defile the Spirit of the Bowel with a slow Poyson that it self degenerates into the condition of the Poyson left And moreover also the very Itch-Gum or tenderness of tickling is folded in the naked sensitive Spirit that as oft at it being once set at liberty is by a retrograde motion carried into the Arteries it causeth that feeling in healthy folk as it being snatched out of its own Hinge doth abound with a strange and infatuating Poyson But in sick Folks the aforesaid original of tickling a manifest Poyson now sufficiently or plentifully abounding stirs up the dance of S. Vitus and the Trippings of the Tarantula by the Arteries derived into the Head The same Spirit also because it is of the race of Salts as of long Life elsewhere being degenerate in this point doth receive a Poysonsomness into it self stirs up a proper Idea in it self and therefore being chased into the Skin doth receive the blemish or contagion of itching into it self from whence Scurvinesses or Manginesses Scabbidnesses yea Erisipelasses and a various troop of Ulcers doth spring up some whereof do afterwards there sustain themselves by the proper Poyson of a Ferment and do now and then propagate Therefore the inflowing Spirit doth also suffer its own defilements by the fourth and fifth Digestion In the mean time through occasion of a wandring Spirit if that which was once dedicated to motion doth repeatingly re-pass into the Head and from thence be again dispersed into the Sinews because it is marked with a double Idea of exercising motion the which I have taught mutually to pierce and co-suffer with each other it brings forth tossings of the Members and Fools become four-fold stronger than themselves But indeed if in the first Digestion that which is assumed doth not answer unto the
because it is that which is besides and against the appointed government of its own Life Wherefore from a sufficient account or enumeration I conclude that before the Apple was eaten neither could the Mind have generated an immortal Soul neither that it intended to generate a mortal one nor indeed any seminal disposition or substance of Seed And therefore neither had there for that Cause been made any Generation by Man neither had he felt in himself any inclination to generate And in this respect the Cause of natural Death of necessity lay hid in the eating of the Apple being unfolded by carnal Generation in which Generation there is a seminal Disposition co-operating for the obtaining of a mortal Soul by request and that Generation doth prevent and pervert the intention of the Creator about the propagation of his own Image So indeed the mortal Soul hath through a brutal Concupiscence of the Flesh produced for it self a Seed dispositive unto a Soul which is to perish after the manner of Bruit-beasts To wit the which Soul hath also introduced with it a brutal condition of mortality For Death was undoubtedly co-natural unto Bruits from their Creation the which indeed have only mortal Souls But it is lawful to confirm by the rule of a supposed falshood that we are bound by Faith to believe that indeed the Mind is created immediately by God but not to be kindled by the Soul of the Parents even as Light being taken from Light For if the Soul of the Person generated be made of the Soul of the Generater this shall be either from the Soul of the Father or from the Soul of the Mother or from both but none of these is true Therefore the Soul of the Person generated is in no wise made or derived from the Spirit of the Parents It is proved as to the first For truly seeing the Speech is of the progress of Nature the which therefore ought to be ordinary And therefore also that thing should constantly happen in Bruit-beasts but this doth not happen therefore not from the progress of Nature The subsumption is proved by a Young from its Father being a Dormouse and its Mother a Coney to wit the which except that its Taile is like a Dormouse is wholly a Coney as well within as without also in its Skin and Haires But if any Faculty of its Soul should issue from the Father it should of necessity have a fatherly and not a motherly Faculty But by the Example proposed the contrary is manifest therefore not from the Father Yet neither therefore are the Souls of off-springs begged from the Mothers Soul For otherwise from that which the Soul proceedeth from the same likewise and at least the formative Faculty also should proceed And by consequence off-springs should not only alwayes be made of the femal Sex and alwayes like unto their Mother but also a Mola or Lump of Flesh should never be made where the Faculty or Virtue of the Seed of the Male flows down as barren As neither should the imagination of a Woman great with Child transchange the Young being already formed in its Mothers Womb into a monstrous strange yea and bruital Figure because the Seed now having a Soul borrowed from the Parent could not be any longer subject unto the foolish imagination of the Mother especially while as the Young is now nourished in its own Orbe and Kitchin The same Argument also prevaileth in supposing that the Soul was begotten from the Soul of both Parents for whatsoever is denyed disjunctively may truly be denyed copulatively Whither also this conclusion hath regard to wit that that being granted the Seed should now be actually soulified from its Beginning And likewise that of two Souls a certain composed and mixt soulified and Spiritual Light should be made which resisteth a formal simplicity by reason of a composed duality Therefore the single homogeniety of the Soul is averse unto duality and to a heterogeneal composition of Souls Whence I conclude That the Soul is not so much as in Bruits derived from the Parents and by so much the less in Man Wherefore all Souls are immediately created by the very Life it self and Father of Lights who will give his own honour of Creator unto no Creature Wherefore from hence it is easie to be seen that Man is not able to produce an immortal Mind nor the divine Image And so also from hence it is manifest that the first intention of the Creator was not that Man had in any respect immingled himself in generating but that the alone hand of the Creator had perfected every Young which alone createth all Souls but especially and singularly that Soul which should thenceforth be eternal the which he by an essential ordination had directed unto his own Image Lastly it must needs be that a true Image or Likenesse can never naturally be made but by a proper Engraver But he is no proper Engraver who hath not perfectly known him whose Image he intends to Engrave But Man was created after the Image and Likeness of God yet he cannot know God as neither express any Image of him in Mind or Word the which ignorance every one ought to confess Therefore he cannot be a proper Engraver of the divine Image And therefore whatsoever Image of him he should frame it should be plainly Monstrous and of a finite Duration And by consequence Man in the intention of the Creator was not made that he should generate a man In Nature indeed every Spirit of generating Seed doth comprehend because it doth contain the Idea of the thing to be generated But Man seeing he is the immediate and true Image of God cannot by any means transfuse the divine Image into his own Seed the which in himself and out of himself he is plainly ignorant of But seeing that in Nature a like thing generates its like Man may imprint on his Seed the Image of a humane Body made also after the Image of God Therefore a Man which generates may imprint on his Seed the seal or shadow of himself but not the Image of God and substance of the immortal Mind And moreover I have demonstrated elsewhere that all other Souls are only formal Lights but not substances Therefore if the Mind ought or could be able to produce the Image of God now the Mind should either dease to be the very Image of God it self or God should not be the Creator of the Mind Wherefore the pure Essence of the Image of God did by all manner of means require in its conception of creating or generating God himself the immediate Creator and one only Father of it who is in the Heavens and besides whom there is no Paternity in the Heavens Otherwise there is a carnal Paternity or Fatherliness in Man and Bruits and therefore the Text saith Honour thy Father And another Text That there is no Paternity but in the heavenly Father Therefore it is denoted that there is
not for Man a fatherliness of his Mind but in God alone and therefore his original Generation and Propagation was reserved in the Power of God the Creator And especially while as its knowledge of it self is wanting to the Mind which is immortal and infinite in Duration whereby it may represent it self to it self to wit that it may decypher a sealed similitude of it self in the Seed Therefore indeed neither can the immortal Mind ever bring the Seed of Man unto that which it self shall never have in it self to wit out of it self to decypher the Image of God For Man is so made the Image of God that he is the cloathing of the Deity the Sheath of the Kingdom of God that is The Temple of the holy Spirit Man therefore being essentially created into the Image of God after that he rashly presumed to generate the Image of God out of himself not indeed by a certain Monster but by something which was shadowily like himself with the Whoredom or Ravishment of Eve he indeed generated not the Image of God like unto that which God would have therefore unimitable as being Divine but in the vital air of the Seed he generated Dispositions careful at some time to obtain a sensitive discursive and motive Soul from the Father of Lights the Fountain of all Paternity yet Mortal and to Perish into which nevertheless he of his own goodness inspires ordinarily the substantial Spirit of a Mind shewing forth his own Image And so that Man in this respect endeavoured to generate his own Image not but after the manner of Bruit-Beasts by the copulation of Seeds which at length should obtaine by request a soulified Light from the Creator and the which they call a sensitive Soul For from thence hath proceeded another Generation conceived after a beast-like manner mortal and uncapable of eternal Life after the manner of Beasts a bringing forth with Pains and subject to Diseases and Death and so much the more sorrowful or full of misery by how much that very Propagation in our first Parents dared to invert the intent of God Therefore the unutterable goodness forewarned them That they should not tast of that Tree And otherwise he foretold That the same Day they should die the Death and should feel all the Root of Calamities which accompanies Death Deservedly therefore hath the Lord deprived both our Parents of the benefit and seat of Immortality To wit Death succeeded from a conjugal and bruital Copulation Neither remained the Spirit of the Lord with Man after that he began to be Flesh Furthermore because that defilement of Eve shall thenceforth be continued in the propagating of Posterity even unto the end of the World From hence the Sin of the despised fatherly Admonition and natural Deviation from the right way is now among other Sins for an impurity through an inverted carnal and well nigh bruital Generation and is truly called Original Sin that is Man being sowed in the Pleasure of the Concupiscence of the Flesh shall therefore alwayes reap a necessary Death in the Flesh of Sin But The knowledge of Good and Evil which God placed in the disswaded Apple did contain the Concupiscence of the Flesh that is an occult forbidden Conjunction diametrically opposite unto the State of Innocency which State was not a State of Stupidity because he was he unto whom before the Corruption of Nature the Essences of all living Creatures whatsoever were now made known according to which they were to be named from their Property and at their first sight to be essentially distinguished And moreover S. Hildegard unto the Moguntians or those of Mentz saith Adam was formed by the Finger of God which is the holy Spirit in whose Voice every sound before he sinned was the sweetnesse of all Harmony and of the whole musical Art So that if he had remained in the State wherein he was formed the weaknesse of mortal Man could not have been able to bear the virtue and shrilness of his Voice But when the Deceiver of him had heard that Man from the inspiration of God had begun to sing so shrilly and that hereby to repeat the sweetness of the Songs of the heavenly Country he counterfeited behold how far now Man hath departed from thence with his hoarse Voice the Engines of Craft seeing his wrath against him was in vain he was so affrighted that he was not a very little tormented thereby And he alwayes afterwards busily endeavoured by the manifold Devises of his wickednesse to invent and search out that he may not only cease to interrupt or expel divine praises from the Heart of Man but also from the mouth of the Church These things she It is a devoted Opinion of mystical Men That Birds do sing Praises unto God I under a humble correction do think otherwise For if that should be true they should sing all the year neither should they cease assoon as the lust of generating is fulfilled which argument is serviceable unto our Position For truly seeing the Males only do sing but not the Females That from a common Nature Adam was the more leacherous and incontinent and from his Sex more lustful than Eve whose Chastity therefore being beloved of God seemeth proper to that Sex Man therefore through eating of the Apple attained a knowledge that he had lost his radical innocency and that instead thereof he had made an empty exchange of the sordid Concupiscence of the Flesh For neither before the eating of the Apple was he so dull or stupified that he knew not or did not perceive himself naked but with the effect of shame and brutal Concupiscence he then first declared that he was naked For the sacred Text is every where so chaste that the most High would not name the Concupiscence of the Flesh it self at least-wise by a proper name yea nor also accuse of it while he forewarned of the eating of the Apple for a necessity of Death that that brutal Concupiscence might not be made known unto Man even so much as by name And therefore neither would he have Concupiscence to be named in Genesis by reason of the prompt perfidiousness of that People but he called it innocency lost from a gotten shame the which he would afterwards have to be weighed in the Church by its own circumstances And so that therefore he presently translated Adam after his Creation from the Earth into Paradise and for that Cause also he formed the Woman in Paradise least she whom he had made and appointed to remaine a Virgin should behold the copulation of Bruit-beasts in the Earth For in the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth and every Creature contained therein But he made and formed those things materially by the passive and commanding Word Let it be done to wit he spake that Word and all things were created But in six dayes space after he made the Forms of things created and all things were orderly made into the
Woman doth seminally conceive by Man besides the first intent of Creation Wherefore if Man were created that at least-wise from a foreknowledge of the consequence he might supply the Place of the Evil Spirits in Heaven he ought either to be created in a great Number at once from the Beginning or Successively If therefore They which are to be saved cannot be born by the will of Man of Flesh or of Blood and there was one only Man created therefore all Posterity ought by a successive Continuation to be born in Paradise of Women alone to wit the Birth-place of the Woman and of necessity to be Conceived from God and to be Born of a Woman a Virgin unto whom he afterwards Gave Power to be called the Sons of God and to be made with an exclusion of the Will of Blood Flesh and Man which Chastity alwayes pleased God doth please him at this Day and will please him alwayes And whatsoever hath thus once pleased the fountain of Chastity can never again displease him And so that Onely those that are of a clean Heart shall see God and shall be called his Sons wherefore the Prophet singeth Create in me a clean Heart Oh God! such as Adam had before the Fall And renew a right Spirit of the chaste and antient Innocency by the regeneration of the Spirit and Water in my Bowels Because my Bowels being now impure have contracted a Spirit of Concupiscence of the Flesh of Sin For indeed Man as long as he was Immortal and Pure Saw thy Face oh Lord and thou talkedst with him which Face afterwards Man shall not see and live But after that Man defiled his Bowels through Concupiscence thou casteth him from thy Face out of Paradise I pray thee therefore that thou cast me not from thy Face and that thou take not thy holy Spirit of Chastity from me Restore unto me the Gladness of the Regeneration of thy Salvation and with thy principal Spirit the Comforter do thou confirm me against the inbred Impurity of the Flesh For truly I shall teach the Unrighteous thy wayes of thy Regeneration the which among the hidden things of thy Wisdom thou hast manifested unto me and the Wicked shall be converted unto thee At leastwise free me from Bloods from the Concupiscence of the Sexes Thou who art the God of Chastity the God of Salvation as of new Regeneration and my Tongue shall exalt thy Righteousness and thy just Judgment whereby thou hast condemned Man who was born of Bloods and by the will of Man in the Concupiscente and of the Flesh of Sin as he hath made himself uncapable of thine Inheritance For loe in Iniquities aforesaid I was conceived and in Sins hath my Mother conceived me although under a lawful Marriage Bed Therefore I confess that besides the primitive scope of the Creator an Adamical Generation hath arisen into natural Death and is devolved into original Sin The Woman therefore as she hath conceived after a bruital manner she also began to bring forth in Pain The Male also in the Law was only circumcised as for a mystery of the deflowring of Eve Yet both Sexes ought to expiate the Offence committed in their privy Parts to wit whereby they had offended which thing although it be chastly insinuated in the Text Yet that was covered before Israel who were otherwise most ready for all Perfidiousness to wit that Godmight not seem a contemner of Matrimony instituted after the Fall The Woman therefore was not circumcised and yet she was saved but not the Pain of Child-birth or the Obedience of her Husband had expiated Original Sin in her For both a single young Virgin dying was saved as also a barren Wife Therefore from hence is manifested the mystery to wit that Eve so much as she could resisted the Insolencies of Adam and was by force deflowred in Paradise So that also our first Parents were Murderers of all their Posterity through Concupiscenc So also the eldest Son was a Brother-Killer For the fore-skin being taken away did of necessity cause a Brawniness of the Nut of the Yard whereby indeed he might be made a Partaker of the less Pleasure Concupiscence and Tickling whosoever should desire to be ascribed or registred among the Catalogue of the beloved People of God The Rabbins also confess That Circumcision was instituted by reason of unclean Virtues walking in a circuit The which I interpret that the diabolical and primitive Enticements of Concupiscence unto Mortality were not hid to the Hebrews and that at leastwise in an obscure sense the Sin arisen from thence was insinuated Also illegitimate Persons were in times past driven from the Temple and Heaven and those who should be born of an adulterous Conception because they did wholly shew forth an Adamical Generation but those who were born of a lawfull 〈…〉 Bed were as yet Impure until that the fore-skin being taken away they might seem to renounce the Concupiscence of the Flesh And in this respect they represented in a shadow also those that were to be renewed from far by the Spirit of God and the laver of Regeneration Moreover the very Word of Truth doth profesly confirm the Position 1 John 3. Except any one be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God B. Except any one be born again of Water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God C. That which is born of the Flesh is Flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit D. The Spirit breatheth where it listeth Thou hearest the Voice thereof but knowest not from whence it may come or whither it may go E. So is every Man who is born of the Spirit F. If I shall speak unto you of Earthly Things and ye believe not how shall ye believe if I tell you of Heavenly things G. None hath ascended into Heaven but he who descended from Heaven H. And as Moyses exalted the Serpent in the Wilderness So it behoves the Son of Man to be exaltâ—d Christ Jesus descending from Heaven took not on him the Flesh of Sin by Adamical Generation or by the will of Man but he receiving the form of a Servant was made into the Likeness of the Sons of Adam being found in Habit as a Man Yet being Adamical was a true Man such as Adam was being newly created But he being made into the similitude of an Adamical Man emptied or humbled himself taking on him the form of a Servant But he was not made a Servant or Impure But in this glad tydings he denieth the Vision of God or the sight of the Kingdom of God and in b. an entrance into the Kingdom of God For not that the Glory which makes blessed may be seen without entring into Heaven or the same thing is twice spoken in vain or that a. doth require another new birth than b. but a. contains a denyal of participating of the Heavens for the Souls of the Dead before the Resurrection
from it Self I could scarce discern by reason of the superlative lustre or brightness of the Christaline Spirit contained within it Yet that I observe that the Mark of the Sexes was not but in the Husk but not in the Chrystal The Seal whereof was an unuttered Light so reflexed in the Chrystal that the Chrystal it self was made incomprehensible and that not indeed by a Negation or Privation because they are those things which are in respect of our Weakness so called but it represented a famous being which cannot be expressed by Word And it was said unto me This is that which thou once sawest thorow the Chink But I intellectually saw those things in the Soul which if the Eye should see it should afterwards cease to see The Dream therefore shewed unto me that the Beauty of the Soul of Man doth exceed all Conception At least-wise I comprehended the Vanity of my long desire therefore I desisted from the wish of seeing my soul For however beautiful that spiritual Chrystal was yet my soul retained no perfection unto it self from that Vision even as otherwise after an intellectual Vision the Mind is adorned with much Perfection of Knowledge I knew therefore that my Mind in that Dreaming Vision had acted the Person of a third and so that it was not worth the labour of so great a Wish But as to what hath regard unto the Image of God in the Mind I according to my slenderness confess that I could never conceive any thing whether it were a Spirit or a Body or in the Understanding or in the next place in the Imagination or in a meer intellectual Vision which through the same endeavour may not represent some Figure of it self under which it might stand in the considerer Because surely whether I conceive a thing by its Image or Likeness or whether the Understanding transchangeth it self into the Thing understood At least-wise I cannot consider this thing to be done unless it should wander from it self into the thing understood with an interchangable course of it self the which seeing it hath a certain actual Being it hath alwayes stood with me under a certain Figure or Shape For indeed although I conceived the Mind to be an incorporeal and immortal Substance Yet I could not assoon as I thought of its individual Existence consider of the same as deprived of all Figure Yea nor indeed but that it would answer unto the Figure of a Man For as oft as the Soul that is separated seeth another Soul Angel or evil Spirit that must needs know that these things are present with it that it may distinguish the Soul from the Angel and likewise the Soul of Peter from the Soul of Judus Which Distinction cannot be made by Tasting Smelling Hearing and touching but only by a proper Vision of the Soul Which Vision or Sight doth of necessity include an interchangeable course of Figure For seeing an Angel is so in a Place that he is not at once in another Place Therein also is of necessity included a certain figural Circumscription no less than a local one And then I have considered the mind of Man to be figured after this manner For the Body of man as such cannot give unto it self an humane Shape For therefore it had need of an external Engrave which should be enclosed within the Matter of the Seed and which had descended into it from elsewhere Yet for as much as that Engraver was of a material Condition he was not able to draw a Virtue as neither an Image of figuring either out of himself nor from the Masse of the Body it behoves therefore that something doth precede which was plainly immaterial yet a real and effective Beginning whereunto a Power should be due of figuring by a sealing impression on the Archeus of the Seed The Soul of the Begetter therefore while it slides downwards and through natural Lust doth lighten the Body of the Seed it delineates the Figure of its Seal and the Seal of its Figure there which is the one only Cause of the Fruitfulness of Seeds from whence therefore ariseth so lofty a Stature of a Young For if the Soul it self were in it self not figured but that the Figure of the Body should arise as it were of its own accord a Trunk in any Member could not but generate a Trunk Because the Body of the Generater not being entire doth at least-wise faile in the implanted Spirit of that Member If therefore a Figure be implanted in the Seed certainly it shall receive that Image from a more vital and former Beginning But if the Soul doth imprint a certain Figure on the Seed it shall not counterfeit a forreign or strange Face but shall decypher its own Likeness For so also the Souls of Bruit-beasts do And although our Soul by reason of its Original be above the Laws of Nature Yet by what foot it hath once entered the threshold of Nature and is incorporated therein it is afterwards also constrained to stand to its own Laws because there is a univocal or simple Progress and end of vital Generations For neither otherwise doth it want Absurdities that an Operation of so great a Moment as is the Generation of Man should happen without the consent and co-operation of the Mind which if it be so it must needs be also that fruitfulness is given to the Seed by the Soul by a Participation of its Figure and other vital Limitations Indeed every Soul doth to this end Seal the Image of it self in the Spirit of the Seed that the matter being reduced unto a requisite Maturity shewing a delineated Beauty and also the similitude of the Begetter may be able to beg a formal Light from the Creator or a Soul of that Species whose similitude is expressed in the Figure For we believe by Faith that our mind is a true Substance which is not to die but that the new Creation of a Substance out of nothing doth belong to God alone From whence there is not many but one only spiritual Father of all Spirits who is in the Heavens who if it hath well pleased him to have adopted the mind only into his own Image it seemeth also to follow that the vast and unutterable God is also of a humane Shape and that from an Argument from the Effect Seeing that the Body is like wax on which the Seal of the Image of the Mind is imprinted but the mind hath its Image and essential Perfection from him whose Image it beareth before it But because the Body is now and then defectuous and like unto a Monster Most have thought that the glorious Image of God doth wholly consist in the rational Power or Power of Reason They not considering that the Image of God doth in the nearest and more perfect manner consist in the Soul and from thence also in the Body being formed after the exemplary Character of the Soul In Operation of the Figuring if there be an Errour that
Spirit of the Salt of Urin not so From hence at leastwise it is manifest that there is a Salt and volatile Spirit in the venal Blood But after what manner the whole venal Blood may be homogeneally transchanged by the Ferment of the Heart cannot be explained by Words because Natures themselves are not demonstrable from a former Cause For the Operations of Ferments for the transmutation of things are essential but not the accidentary Propagations of Accidents for the causing of Dipositions only The vital Spirit therefore is plainly Salt therefore Balsamical and a Preserver from Corruption That although the Aqua Vitae doth easily pass into vital Spirit yet this Spirit is not Oylie or combustile like the Aqua Vitae but the Spirit of Wine only through a touching of the Ferment is easily wholly changed into a salt Spirit and forthwith looseth its inflamable Disposition Even as I have taught in the Book of the Stone in Man after what manner Aqua Vitae may by the Spirit of Urin be in one only instant coagulated into a subtile Gobbet or Lump The which concerning the volatile Salt of the arterial Blood may through the effective Ferment of the Heart be much more evidently proved Wherefore they who for some good while do undergo the beating of the Heart although they shall then drink abundantly and that much of the more pure Wine yet they are not easily made Drunk Because that by reason of an urgent necessity the Spirit of the Wine is most speedily attracted into the Heart and Arteries which are scanty in spirits and is suddenly formed into vital Spirit It restoreth I say the Strength or Faculties neither yet doth it then make drunk because it is no longer a stranger but being drawn into the Heart it easily becomes domestical and then is on every side dispensed through the Arteries For it doth not argue to the contrary that the Spirit of Salt-peter is sharp and that therefore the vital Spirit ought to be sharp For neither was the Spirit from whence Salt-peter was made in the Earth then sharp And therefore the vital Spirit is Salt and nearer to the Spirit of Urin than of Salt-peter the which by reason of Adustion and Extraction is alwayes a new Creature of its composed Body That Foundation therefore which is laid by the Ferment of the Gaul in volatilizing and making Salt this afterwards is perfected in the Shop of the Heart For the foregoing Digestions are as so many Dispositions unto vital Functions and Necessities for a Member being once stupified if Sense or Feeling shall return that surely is made with sensible Spurs and Prickings which are the tokens of true saltness But that the whole venal Blood is a meer Salt may not from elsewhere be more clearly deducted than that because in the Dropsy Ascites and in Ulcers it is homogeneally through a most easie Degeneration changed into a salt Liquor But a salt sharp Quality and subtile Matter was suitable to the vital Spirit if it ought to be sufficient for preserving of the Members The redness also of the venal Blood assumeth a yellowness while it is made arterial Blood because that which is Red through the tartness of Salt waxeth Yellow in its dissolving Neither yet hath the arterial Blood lost all its redness for truly a Part thereof ought to remain for the Nourishment of the solid Members It is a dead or invalid thing whatsoever I have hitherto said that the Spirit of Life is a salt sharp Vapour and made of the arterial Blood by the vital Members their own Ferments I will therefore Speak of the Life of the Spirit For seeing it ought to do its Duty with the Offices of Life it was not required that it should be in the shew of a salt Liquor or arterial Blood or that it should befool us under the likeness of a salt Exhalation but because it ought primarily to live and receive the Life it was meet for it to be enlightned not indeed with a burning enflaming or fiery Light but with a simple vital Light of the Nature of soulified Formes of the sensitive Life and Soul and that indeed of a humane Species For for the Understanding thereof suppose thou that Wormâ— named Glow-wormes have by Night a Light in their Belly which not only shines like the Eyes of a Cat but also pouers forth a thin Light round about that Light is extinguished with the Life of the Glow-worme A like Light suppose thou to be which enlightneth the vital Spirit as long as it liveth it shineth and is propagated into Spirit newly made being duly elabourated And by how much the more impure and the less elabourated it shall be by so much shall that Light be the Darker But that Light is extinguished in us the Matter of the Spirit remaining in the Plague Poysons c. even as by Swooning and Beating of the Heart the Light is extinguished and the Spirit vanisheth away In time of Death also the Membrane of the Eye is destitute of a manifest Light plainly to be seen Yet the Essence of that Light in Glow-worms is not so alike to that which is in us to wit as they differ from us only in Degree But there are as many Species of these Lights as there are of vital Creatures That is unto us a token of divine Bounty that there are so many Species and vital Differences of Lights which by us are comprehended under one only Notion because that those Lights are the very Lives and Forms themselves of vital Creatures So that the thrice most glorious Father of Lights doth recreate himself in the abundance of the kinds of Lights with no less a Lavishment than as in one only humane Countenance he hath fashioned almost as many Varieties as Men because there is in his Power a certain Common-wealth of vital Lights and Band of innumerable Citizens a certain Similitude whereof he expresseth in vital soulified Creatures by a Life a Form that is by a vital Light The vital Spirit therefore Is Arterial Blood resolved by the force of the Ferment and Motion of the Heart into a salt Air being vitally enlightned which Light in us is hot but in the Fish it is so actually cold that it is never able to aspire unto a Power of Heat as long as it liveth and subsisteth Our Heat therefore is not a consumer of the Original Moisture as neither therefore through want of Heat do Fishes hitherto escape Death although their Moisture be not lifted up into an Exhalation and least of all in the frozen Sea For neither shall the Capuchin our Country-man who is cold for the greatest part of the year from his Feet even unto his Belly nor feeling himself to have Feet therefore not undergo a dayly transpiration of the nourishable Moisture or doth he refuse the Refreshment of Nourishments or is the Capuchin changed in those parts into a Fish the which otherwise should be necessary for him to be if Heat should
cannot cause the Plague 119. Why the blood of a Bull is mortally venemous 120. Why the fat of a Bull is in the Sympathetical Unguent to wit that it may be made an Oyntment of Weapons 121. Why Satan cannot concurre unto the Unguent 122. The Basis or Foundation of Magick 123. From whence Vanities are accounted for Magick 124. A good Magick in the holy Scriptures 125. What may be called true Magick 126. The cause of the Idolatry of Witches 127. The Sirrers up of Magick 128. Satan excites it imperfectly 129. From whence beasts also are Magical 130. The Kingdom of Spirits nourisheth strife and love 131. Why man is a Microcosm or little World 132. The mind generates real Entities 133. That Entity or Beingness is of a middle nature between a Body and a Spirit 134. The descending of the Soul begets a conformed will 135. The cause of the fruitfulness of Seeds 136. Why Lust doth as it were estrange us from our Mind 137. A Father by the Spirit of his Seed generates out of himself in an Object presently absenting it self 138. What Spirit may be the Patron of Magnetism 139. The Will sends a Spirit unto the Object Unless the Will did produce some real thing the Devil could not know of or acknowledge it and unless it did dismiss it out of it self the Devil being absent could not be provoked thereby Where therefore the Treasure is thither doth the Magical spirit of man tend 140. Magnetism is made by sensation 141. That there are many perceivances in one onely subject 142. From the superiour Phantasie commanding it 143. Why Glasse-makers use the Load-stone 144. The Phantasie of attracting things is changed 145. Inanimate things have their Phantasie 146. Why some things by eating of them induce madness 147. Why a mad Dog by biting of a Man introduceth madness 148. The Tarantula by his stroke or sting causeth a madness 149. Why other bruit beasts do not defend themselves against a mad Dog 150. The Sympathy betwixt Objects at a distance is made by means of a certain Spirit of the world which Spirit also governing the Sun and the Sunny Stars is of a potent sense or feeling 151. The Imagination in Creatures endowed with choice is various at pleasure but in others it is alwayes of a limited identity 152. The first degree of power dwelleth Magically in the forms of the three Principles 153. The second degree is by the phantasies of the Forms of the mixt Body the which to wit being destroyed the Principles do as yet remain 154. The Third degree ariseth from the Phantasie or Imagination of the Soul 155. What Bruits are Magical and do act out of themselves by beck alone 156. The fourth degree of Magical Power is from the Understanding of Men being stirred up 157. The word Magick is a proportionable answering of many things unto some one third thing 158. Every Magical power or faculty rejoyceth in a stirring up 159. What may be called a subject capable of Magnetism 160. How Magnetism differs from other formal Properties 161. Humours and Filths or Exâ—rements have their Phantasie 162. Why the Scripture attributes Life to the Blood rather than to any other juyces of the Body 163. The seed possesseth the Phantasie of the Father by traduction or derivation from whence nobility ariseth 164. The skins of the Wolf and Sheep have retained through impression an hostile Imagination of their former Life 165. What the Phantasie of the Blood being freshly brought into the Unguent can effect The manner of the Magnetism or attraction in the Ointment 166. The difference between a Magnetical Cure which is done by the Unguent and that which is done by a rotten Egg. 167. The notable Mystery of humane imagination is the foundation of natural Magick 168. The Understanding imprinteth the Beingnesse which was procreated or produced on the outward object and there it really continues 169. How efficacious Seals or Impressions may be made 170. The Imagination holds fast the Spirit of a Witch by a nail as it were a Medium 171. If Satan doth naturally move a Body without a corporeal touch or extreamity why not also the more inward Man and why not rather also the Spirit of the Witch 172. The virtue of the Oyntment is not from the Imagination of the compounder but from the Simples co-united into one 173. The Author makes a profession of his Faith IN the eighth year of this Age there was brought unto me an Oration Declamatory made at Marpurg of the Catti wherein Rodolph Goclenius to whom the profession of Phylosophy was lately comitted paying his first-fruits endeavours to shew That the curing of Wounds by the Sympathetical and Armary or Weapon Unguent invented by Paracelsus is meerly natural Which Oration I wholly read and I sighed within my self that the Histories of natural things had lighted into the hands of so weak a Patron The Author nevertheless highly pleased himself with that Argument of Writing and with a continued barrenness of proof in the year 1613. published the same work with some enlargement There was very lately brought me a succinct Anatomy of the aforesaid Book composed by a certain Divine rather in the form of a fine or jocond censure than of a disputation my judgement therefore however it should be was desired at least-wise in that respect that the thing found out by Paracelsus concerned himself and me his follower I shall therefore declare what I think of the Physitian Goclenius and what of the Divine the Censurer First of all the Physitian proposeth and boasts that he will prove the magnetick or attractive cure of Wounds to be natural But I found the Promiser to be unfit for so great a business Because that he no where or at least but slenderly makes good his Title or Promises He collecting many patcheries here and there whereby he thinks he hath sufficiently proved that there are certain formal virtues in the nature of Things which they call Sympathy and Antipathy and that from the granting of those the Magnetical Cure is natural Many things I say out of the Aegyptians Chaldeans Persians Conjurers and Jugling Impostors he gathers into one whereby he might prove or evince the Magnetism which himself was ignorant of Partly that by delighting mindes that are greedy of novelties of things he may seduce them from the mark and partly that they may admire the Author that he had rub'd over not onely trivial Writers but also any other the more rare ones Wherefore the Physitian doth rashly confound Sympathy which he after divers manners and fabulously often alledgeth with Magnetism and from that concludes this to be natural For I have seen also that Vulnerary Oyntment to cure not onely Men but also Horses between whom and us certainly there is not so great affinity unless we are Asses that therefore the Sympathetical Unguent should deserve to be called common to Us and Horses In like manner the Physitian badly confounds Sympathy or Co-suffering with Witchcraft
and Ligation or Binding up and both with Magnetism To wit he as in anguish undistinctly alledgeth any the more abstruse or hidden effects whatsoever whereby he being destitute of reasons might make good his own Magâ—etism I will by an Example distinguish Witchery from Sympathy and both from Magnetism A Dog hath an Antipathy for Sympathy and Antipathy are daughters of the same stock with a Hen for he preys upon this Hen and this Hen flees from the Dog but when she hath newly hatched her Chickens this Hen chaseth the Dog although a couragious one to wit the soul of the Hen by Fascination or Witchery tying up the Soul of the Dog the former Antipathy unequal defence of Weapons and unequality of Strength nothing hindring it Yet in these things Magnetism is no where seen Moreover what Examples the Physitian brings concerning Seals or Impresses Characters Gamahen or magical Images Ceremonies and for the most part vain Observances are altogether impertinent to this purpose and do rather destroy Magnetism as rendring it suspitious than build it up my Genius or Wit carries me not to determine any thing of these things And then Goclenius Errs and that indeed rashly like as also ignorantly dreaming from the Prescription of Paracelsus that the Weapon which wounded if it be involved in the Weapon Salve doth cure the Wound For the Weapon or Point of the Sword shall be in vain anointed with the Unguent by him prescribed unless it be made Bloody and the same Blood shall be first dried on the said Sword For with Paracelsus the Sympathetical Ungent is one thing in respect of the Blood fetch'd out of the Wound and the Ungent wherewith the Weapons that were tinged with no Blood ought to be Emplaistred certainly another and therefore he calls the former the Magnetick and Sympathetick Ungent but the latter the Magnetick Armary or Weapon-Ungent the which therefore receives nor that indeed in Vain Honey and Bulls Fat over and above into its Composition Last of all Goclenius that he might satisfie his own Genius hath altered the Description of Paracelsus affirming that the Usnea or Moss is to be chosen only from the Skuls of hanged Persons of which his own and false Invention he enquiring the Cause blusheth not to dream that in Strangling the vital Spirits entred into the Skull and there remain so long as until that six years from that time being accomplished the Moss shall under the open Air grow up thereon Paracelsus hath taught the express contrary and by practical Experiences it is confirmed that the Moss of the Skuls of those that have been slain or broken on a Wheel is no less commendable than that of those who were strangled with an Halter For truly the Quintessence is not extracted out of living Creatures because the principal Essence perisheth together with the inflowing Spirit and Life but only the Mumial Virtue that is the implanted and co-fermented Spirit which surviveth in Bodies slain by violence What things Goclenius hath delivered concerning Remedies for repairing of the Memory as we acknowledge them no way agreeable to the end intended so also we not any thing doubt to prove them to be impertinent flourishes There is no Question between our Divine and Physitian about the truth of the Fact for both of them grant that a cure happens to the wounded Person the controversie layes only in that that the Physitian affirms such a Cure to be natural but the Divine will have it to Satanical and that from a compact of the first Inventer of which Censure he brings not any positive reason in his Anatomy as thinking it satisfactory if he in his own judgment shall abolish it although he shall openly produce no grounds of that abolishment to wit he acquiescing in this that he hath removed the feeble Reasons of the Affirmer the which to do is a matter of no labour of no skill nor also is it a matter of any authority For to what end tends it to give judgment on the thing it self from the foolishness of the Reasons of some unskilful Brain and to declare it to be wicked if he hath not so much as dreamed of one petty Reason of his Sentence What if I who am a Laick should commend Presbitery with untrimmed Reasons and some one should reject them as unworthy ones shall the Priesthood it self therefore be to be rejected What I pray you doth the Unskilfulness or Rashness of any one touch at things themselves Surely Phylosophy submits not it self to censures unless a Considerable gravity of the Censurers well confirmed by reasons doth concur I therefore who have undertaken to prove against the Divine that this Magnetick cure is even natural First of all have supposed Goclenius worthy of excuse if he hath laboured in vain in the finding out of the immediate Cause of this unwonted effect What wonder is it when as the Divine consesseth that he is ignorant of the same and therefore conjectures Satan to be the Author thereof for such is our Infirmity that we are destitute of the knowledge of the most and most excellent things For therefore we unwillingly wrest very many things aside unto the sacred Anchour of Ignorance and refer them to the Catalogue of occult or hidden Causes For who among Divines ever knew how to demonstrate to the full the Cause of risibility or capacity of laughter or of any other formal Property to wit of heat in the Fire Is not the Fallacy of Begging of the Principle committed if thou shall say The highest degree of Heat belongs to the Fire because it is of the Nature thereof Truly the Essences of Forms because they are unknown to us from their Cause therefore also the race of formal Properties is wholly scanty and unknown and where we observe any formal Passion to lay under the Mind as if it were tired in vain presently ceaseth from a diligent search thereof and reposeth it self being contented with the name of occult Properties Go to I pray you hath the Anatomist the Censurer haply known the Cause why a Dog that rejoyceth swings his Tail But a Lyon in like manner when he is Angry A Cat also making merry in token of Favour lifts up the same What therefore if himself hath not known so much as the reason of the moving of a Tail will he wonder that Goclenius hath given an unsolid Reason of Magnetism and from the refuting of that presume that he hath more than sufficiently demonstrated the dure which belongs to Magnetisme to be Satanical Far be so great a rashness of Judgment from him Come on then why dost thou call that Cure diabolical Truly it had behoved thee to have added a reason of thy Censure unless thou expectest to have it denyed by others with the same Facility wherewith thou declarest it to be of the Devil Lawyers require only the affirmative Part to be confirmed but Phylosophers both parts least either the Ignorance or also the malepartness of the
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
long since blinde ignorance of my presumption cast away Books and bestowed perhaps two hundred Crownes in Books as a Gift upon studious persons I wish I had burned them being altogether resolved with my self to forsake a Profession that was so ignorant if not also full of deceit At length in a certain night being awaked out of my sleep I meditated that no Schollat was above his Master yet I resolved in my mind that many of my School-fellowes had exceeded their Teachers but the truth of that Text was brought unto me namely That a man did watch and build in vain unlesse the Lord did co-operate I knew therefore likewise that we do teach any one in vain unlesse the Master of all Truth shall also teach us within whom none of his Disciples hath ever surpassed Therefore I long and seriously searched after what manner I might attain the knowledge of the Stone from this Master For truly I most perfectly knew that Authors had not so much as the least light and that therefore neither could they give me that Knowledge But I confessed my self to be a great Sea of ignorance and an Abysse of manifold darknesses and to want all light unless it were one onely Spark that so piercing my self I might acknowledge that nothing was left unto me And so although I frequently prayed yet presently after I despaired in my mind At length making a thorow search of my own self I found that I was my self free from the stone For I had never felt any pain of my Reines or had taken notice of one onely sand therein Yet I had now and then beheld that sand adhering in the Urinal yet without any sliminess or disturbance of heat or local pain For I wondered that having powred out my urine a sand should stick to the sides of the Urinal and be so fastened thereto at so great a distance of equality that it denyed all fore-existence of matter falling down It once happened that I was conversant with some noble Women the Wives of Noblemen and so also with the Queen her self from the third hour after noon even to the third hour after midnight at London in the Court of Whitehall For they were the Holy-day-Evens of Feastings in the Twelfdayes But I made water when those Women first drew me along with them to the Kings Palace wherefore for civility sake I with-held my urine for at least 12 houres space And then having returned home I could not even by the most exact viewing find so much as the least mote of sand in my urine For I feared least my urine having been long detained and cocted beyond measure would now be of a sandy grain Wherefore I made water the more curiously through a Napkin but my urine was free from all sand Therefore the next day after in the morning I pissed new urine through a Towel and detained it in a Glass-Vrinal as many houres to wit twelve And at length I manifestly saw the adhering sand to be equally dispersed round about where the urine had stood lastly pouring forth the urine I touched that sand with my finger And being perfectly instructed by my owne experience I concluded with my self That forasmuch as the urine was by me the pisser detained for 12 houres space and yet it contained no sand neither that I had cast it forth and that otherwise in the lesser space of a day sand had been condensed in my urine and fastened to the Glazen-shell in the encompassing ayr of the Month called J January I knew more certainly than certainty it self that a sliminess of matter was no way required for that sand and that the heat of the member did in no wise effect the coagulation of the Stone I thereupon taking my progress home cast from me the Doctrine of the Schooles and presently the Truth took hold of me For I being confirmed and no longer staggering by reason of doubt believed as being certainly confirmed that the internal and seminal cause of the stones in men was unknown to Mortals With a great courage therefore I again disdaining all the Books of Writers cast them away and expelled them far from me Neither determined I to expect the ayd of my Calling from any other way than from the Father of Lights the one onely Master of Truth And presently I gave a divorce to all accidental occasions and mockeries of Tartar and also to any whatsoever Artifices more than those which more shew forth the course of Nature Because I knew that Nature doth no where primarily work out seminal transmutations by heat or cold as such although she be oft-times constrained to make use of those for the excitements or impediments of inward Agents I knew therefore that vain were the devices of Paracelsus concerning Tartar to this end at least invented by him that he as the first might be reckoned to have thrust in the Generation of the Stone into the universal nature of Bodies and Diseases by the history of stones feigned from the Similitude of the Tartar of Wine For although he perfectly cured Duelech as his Epitaph doth premonish yet he obtained not the speculative knowledge thereof in the like measure as he did the most powerfull use of an Arcanum For so very many experiments wander about amongst Idiots the causes whereof they notwithstanding know not Therefore the help of Books forsook me and the voyce of the living forsook me which might teach me while present yet I knew that wo was to the man that trusted in man Good God the Comforter of the poor in spirit who art nearer to none than to him who with a full freedome resignes up himself and his Endowments into thy most pleasing Will and seeing thou enlightnest none more bountifully Oh Father of Lights than him who acknowledging the lowliness of his owne nothingness puts confidence onely in the good pleasure of thy Clemency Grant thou Oh thou profound Master of Sciences that I may rather be poor in spirit than great with Child or swollen through knowledge Grant me freely an understanding that may purely seek thee and a will that may purely adhere unto thee Enlighten thou my nothing-darknesses as much as thou wilt and no more than that I may suffer my self to be directed according to length breadth and Depth unto the Reward of the Race proposed be thee unto me nor that I may ever in any thing decline from thee to my self Because I am in very deed evil Neither of my self have I am I can I be know I or am I able to do any thing else Unto thee be the glory which hath taught me to acknowledge my owne nothingness CHAP. III. The Con-tent of Urine 1. The Art of the Fire is commended 2. An Analysis or resolution of the Vrine 3. The Author disappointed of his hope 4. A second handicraft Operation 5. A third which hath taught the coagulum or Runnet of the Stone and some other remarkable things 6. Some wayes or manners of
condensing 7. In the lime of rocky stones there are two divers salts for neither could it otherwise ever become a stone 8. The errour of Galen concerning Ashes 9. The Author when he had learned nothing from coagulated Bodies at length examined divers spirits 10. The errour of Paracelsus concerning Tartar 11. An examination of salts 12. The highest vertue of Vegetables 13. From whence a salt ariseth in urine 14. Duelech doth not stonifie after the manner of lime 15. What the Sunovia is 16. An examination of fermental savours 17. Paracelsus is taken notice of concerning Mercuries 18. An abuse in forbidding the use of salt 19. The handicraft Operation of the salt of urine 20. The vanity of Turnheisser his signifyng by the urine 21. Two the more fixed salts in urine 22. The differences of both those salts 23. The difference of the Volatile from the fixed salt of the urine 24. The ferment of the stomach is not any kind of sharpnesse whatsoever 25. Burnt vrine yielded not an Alcali to the Author 26 The Vulnerary drink of a certain Country man 27. That an Alcali doth not fore-exist but is made in burning 28. A digression Unto some ranks of Simples 29. The calcining of Harts-horn is a thing of notable blockishnesse 30. Sea-salt whether it hurt those that labour with the stone 31. That salt is not to be forbidden for its owne sake as neither for its spirit-sake 32. The fittest salt for eating 33. A wonderfull handicraft Operation in the distillation of urine 34. The judiciary part in Vrines why hitherto false 35. What the stone being distilled may teach 36. Earth together with the spirit of Vrine never makes Duelech 37. The constituting principles of Duelech 38. How sands are made in the Vrinal or Chamberpot 39. The Confirmation of the stone is fabulous 40. A stone of a wonderful bignesse 41. Paracelsus is ridiculous in the stone of a Thunderbolt 42. Duelech is made of meer volatile things 43. Three spirits concurre in the Vrine for the nativity of Duelech 44. Volatile Bodies are oft-times through their concourse presently fixed together at once WEE read in our Furnaces that there is not a more certain kind of Science in Nature for the knowing of things by their radical and constitutive causes than while it is known what and how much is contained in any thing So indeed that the knowledge and connexion of causes are not more clearly manifest than when thou shalt so disclose things themselves that they bewray themselves in thy presence and do as it were talk with thee For truly real Beings standing onely in their owne Original and succeeding principles of seeds and so in a true substantial entity do afford the Knowledge and produce the cause of knowing the nature of Bodies their middle parts and extremities or utmost parts Because they are the cause of the Generation existence and thorow changing of them according to their Root Because as Raymund testifies However a Logitian may have a profound wit discourseable or natural concerning things without Yet he shall never by any reason which comes unto sense be able directly to know nor judge with what kind of nature or vertue through a fortitude or strength within the multiplication of grain possesseth it self so as to grow or increase upon the earth unless by reason of a similitudinary example drawn from observation Neither shall he ever know after what manner a seed buds growes and collects fruits in the earth unless he shall with an experimental Doctrine first enter into our natural Philosophy and not that Sophistical discursive one which is bred in Logitians by divers phantastical presumptions who with the Prognostications of Sequels contrary to the power of Nature make many stubbornly to erre in the sophistication of their mind Because by our handicraft knowledge the understanding is rectified by the force of experience in respect of the sight and of a true mental Knowledge Yea our experiences stand over the head of the phantestical or imaginative proofs of Conclusions and therefore neither do they endure them But they shew that all other Sciences do livelily enter into the understanding From whence we afterwards understand that thing within what it is and of what sort it is Because by such knowledge the Intellect stands uncloathed of superfluities and errours which do ordinarily remove it from the Truth by reason of presumptions and prejudiced or fore-judged things believed in the conclusions For from hence it is that our Philosophers or followers have directed themselves to enter through any kind of Science into all experience by Art according to the course of Nature in its Univocal or single Principles For Alchymie alone is the Glass of true understanding and shews how to touch and see the truths of those things in the clear Light Neither doth it bring Logical arguments because they are too remote and far off from the clear Light And therefore the Smaragdine Table hath it By this kind of demonstration all obscurity will free from thee and all the strong fortitude of strength which vanquisheth subtile things and pierceth all solid things will be attained by thee Wherefore I am called Hermes Trimegistus as having the three that is all the parts of Philosophy and the perfection of the whole world Thus he Between praying therefore and knocking a mean in naturals namely of seeking by the fire is supposed I indeed hoped by searching into the Contents of urine visibly to know it no otherwise surely than by a true solving or resolution of urine Therefore first of all I distilled my own urine being first kept in a wooden Vessel untill that at length it voluntarily conceived a ferment and boyled up no otherwise than as Wines do so that my ear could perceive the boyling About the end whereof there was a little burning water distilled from thence But of the remainder I collected a most white salt of a sharp and uriny stinking odour But I know not whether there be any thing more subtile in the whole nature of things It being a noble Remedy against the Jaundise and other Diseases I endeavoured by this Salt to dissolve Duelech in a Glass But the event answered not my attempt Again my own urine was putrified anew in Horse-dung That the unlike part thereof might incline to a separation of its last life Then I distilled it by cohobating it four times according to the prescription of Paracellus and I found frequent Crystals therein being yellow and of a sharp top The which although they might be of conducement against the old obstructions of Excrements yet of none against the affect of the Stone Thirdly I mixed the spirit of my Urine with Aqua vitae dephlegmed or refined and in a moment both of them were coagulated together into a white lump or gobbet yet wondrous swift or volatile and subtile My Eye in the first place there taught me That the spirit of Urine was an unparallel'd and great Runnet because it was
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
its drying something that is not fixed doth of necessity puff out Moreover let the Retorts be senced with a crust or parger which may neither cleave asunder nor contract chaps or fall down of its own accord or be too much glassified Let also the neck of the Retort which hangs out be most exactly connexed unto the large receiving vessel that not so much as the least thing may expire But let the Receiver be placed in moist sand likewise let the boughty part thereof be covered in a Sack being filled half full with moist sand Which Sack let it be divers times renewed being tinged in the coldest water But let half of the Retort be filled with poudered Vitriol But distill it by degrees and at length let it be urged with coal as much as is possible for the furnace of wind which is blown by its own iron grate But when the furnace of wind shall cease to dismiss the spirit into the receiving vessel let the porch be opened on the side by which way the Reverbery of the flame of the wood may pierce under the Retort and let it so continue for five or six nights with the highest fire possible to nature The Retort perhaps in so great a storm of the fire will seem to thee to melt but nevertheless it will endure constant throughout because the outward coat of male or fence of earth with-holds and sucks the glass and so it is englassened as much as shall be sufficient for the work At length remember thou to sequester the receiving vessel from the neck of the Retort the fire being as yet most ardent otherwise thou shalt see in a more cold station the spirits to return into the Lee or Dreg which spewed them our Then lastly take the Colcotar or Lee remaining of the distillation which thou hast reserved from true Cyprus Hungarian or at leastwise Goslarian Vitriol Let that residing dreg being co-mixed with Sulphur be again burnt unto the every way confuming of the Sulphur But afterwards thou shalt bedew and moisten this feces with the aforesaid spirit For that spirit as it is presently imbibed in the glassen dish or gourd so being fetcht again from thence it returns nothing but a watery and unprofitable phlegm the spirit having remained imbibed in the Colcotar And repeatingly renew thou that operation six or seven times until at length the spirit that is poured thereon wax red which will swim upon the Colcotar which is a sign that we must cease from the plenteousness of imbibing And so let this rich Colcotar being well dryed be put into a Retort and let this rich Colcotar be distilled even unto its utmost spirits now waxing yellow and casting the smelling odour of grateful honey Yet remember thou to draw away the receiving vessel from the Retort being as yet of a bright burning heat and that this spirit must be kept by the mouth of a more strong bottle being close stopped with wax Whereinto lastly if thou shalt cast water the vessel it self presently breaks asunder Therefore by the only spirit of the former distillation this second spirit is bridled or restrained whereof scarce one pound is poured over from bottle into bottle but there is made a loss of one ounce at least And likewise unless the Receiver be seasonably taken away from the Retort as I have said thou shalt see the Furnance being cooled that most potent spirit to have returned into Colcotas from whence it was struck out by fire Moreover the Lee of Colcotar which is left of the second distillation is as yet wholly Coppery and waxeth green after many fashions From whence 1. That is manifest which I taught before Namely that the fire of Venus is not to be drawn out and had but by an every way destruction and separation of the mettal 2. That this therefore must be done by a far more hidden way 3. That the Vitriol which is rich in Copper is less fit for distillation than otherwise the common Vitriol is 4. That the Vitriol of Copper poures forth the spirit of the Vinegar of a mineral salt but not the volatile Liquor of Copper 5. And therefore that the sulphur of Copper is rightly called the sulphur of the Philosophers being fit for long life Being sweet I say in tast but not tart or sharp 6. That the spirit of Vitriol which is above perfectly taught cures some Chronical Diseases 7. And that therefore the spirits of Vitriol hitherto sold and in use are nothing but a mineral Vinegar being also adulterated in it self 8. That the residing Colcotar is most rich in a Medicinal Virtue 9. That the preparation of Vitriol prescribed by Isaac Holland and other Moderns hath not sent the Arrows unto the true mark 10. That our spirit above described and thus rectified as it is volatile and salt proceedes even into the fourth Digestion and reolves diseasie Excrements that are met withall in its journey And by consequence also takes away the occasional cause of many Chronical or lingring Diseases I have therefore already delivered the like Form or manner of distilling the spirit of Sea-salt of Salt-peter and the like Yet thou shalt remember that Vitriol hath in it self the earth of Colcotar wherefore the other salts do desire dryed Potters earth and that being exactly admixed with them But besides I have already delivered the manner of preserving from the Disease of the Stone by Aroph and likewise by Ale boyled with the seed of Daucus or the yellow wild Carrot I might therefore desist and repose my Quill and leave the matter to others more successefull than my self by wishing that every one may henceforward add what things he shall find out to be farre better For since Duelech besiegeth onely mankind and is produced from Excrements themselves after an irregular manner but doth not arise after the manner accustomed to other infirmities Therefore it seems to be singularly bred for a revenge of sin even before other Diseases and to be permitted by God in Children being as yet Innocent for the averting of a greater evil For although some Bruits do generate small stones in themselves yet those stones are not bred in them from the Causes of Duelech nor appointed for a punishment or tribulations unto them but rather produced for the profit of man But if therefore Duelech doth relate to the fault of sin but since sin hath drawn its rise from a Wood or Tree it hath seemed also to me that preservation of health in the disease of the stone is not onely to be expected from the seed of Daucus and some such like Herb but from some certain Wood Wherefore it is indeed true that a Wood against the stone of the Kidneys hath been of late brought unto us out of the Indies but I have not ever therefore perswaded my self that divine Goodnesse had so long denyed unto the Europeans that it might succour even the poor man that had the stone untill that through many expences a Remedy
its coming not to come and that a strange-born creature and monster is substituted in its place Of the contingencies whereof daily and unvoluntary experiences are full which power is granted to be given to a woman great with child yet not that therefore in other women the images of conceipts are not likewise brought unto the womb wherein an embryo doth not inhabite For I have taught in a particular treatise that the disturbances of men are framed in the midriffs about the mouth of the stomach to wit that in men they from thence ascend unto the heart but in a woman that they are more readily sent unto the womb because a woman doth naturally appoint vital inspirations for her Young And so every commotion of the midriffs in a woman hath continually respect unto the womb whether a Young be present or not Whosoever therefore much disturbs a woman with grief c. from a deliberate minde he willingly sends into her a disease And he that molests a woman great with young let him know that he hurts the mother and off-spring Hence maides about the years of maturity if they are vexed with the conceipts of difficulties they are wont continually to decypher the sides of their womb with the vain Idea's of conceptions and for the most part they are made unto themselves the Aâ—â—horesses of various sumptoms for inordinate lusting Because the womb doth not suffer its tranquility to be taken away by forreign images without punishment But a man formes his images in his midâ—iffs as well those of the desirable as of the wrothful faculty so that madnesse is therefore not undeservedly called hypochondrial and that thing happens no otherwise than as in a woman but he transmitts the Idea's of conceipts more freely unto the heart and brain For a certain man exspecting that on the morrow morning a Major would be sent for his houshold goods sitting sorrowful all the night with his head leaned on the palm of his hand in the morning had that side of his head grey in what part his temples had touched his hand And so the hand of a woman with child translates her own exorbitances unto her womb and the hand of a man his feares even into the skin of his head At leastwise from hence it is manifest that there is a true growth and nourishment of the haires and not a vain signature of colours but that they are not in-bred by an application expelling from behind and then that the perturbation in men is much akâ—â— to that of a woman although far more infirme I have taught also elsewhere that the efficacy of disturbances consisteth in the spleen Wherefore antiquity hath accounted Saturn the principle and parent of the starry gods also the highest of the wandring stars to wit the which should cast his influence downwards on the rest but that the rest should in no wise reflect upwards because the stars are believed to conspire for the commodities of sublunary things but not upwards Therefore they called Saturn the origina of life and the beginning of conceptions or generations yea and they named him the devourer of a young child poynting out hereby that the images framed by the desirable faculty do make seeds fruitful and also the Inns of digestions in us even as when they are exorbitant they consume the new or tender blood and enforce very many diseases on us Therefore the imagination of the spleen hath the first violent assaults which are gâ—aâ—tted not to be in our power Saturn therefore was feigned to be as it were without a beginning but Jupiter the chief off-spring thereof casting down his father from his seat signified the brightnesse of reason subduing the first assault of imagination But an image formed by imagination is presently in the spleen cloathed with the vital spirit and assumeth it whence an Idea is fortified for the execution of works for what person is he who hath not sometimes felt disturbances anguishes and the occasions of sighing about the orifice of his stomach in which part the spleen is most sensitive even as also the touching in the fingers ends Is not the appetite taken away from an hungry man by a sorrowful message Be it observeable in this place that although the essential disposition of things aprehended in time of the perturbation be plainly unknown unto the woman with child yet she wholly formeth and figureth the same in her young while as without the trunk of the trees she frameth a cherry in the flesh in an instant conteining the internal essence and the knowledges of a seminal cherry It s no wonder therefore if that a terrour from the plague frameth an Idea of the plague from whence the plague it self doth presently bud although the sensitive soul of man be ignorant of the essence of the plague Heer an open field is made manifest to prove that the knowledges or Idea's of all things are formed in us by the power of the sensitive soul yet that they lay obscured in the immortal mind which we believe to have been present with Adam while as he put right names on the bruit beasts For if the conceipt of a woman being allured by the overflowing of some certain perturbation can decypher the inward dispositions of plants or animals yea sometimes with a total transmutation of her young it must needs be that in the mind it self as in the essential engravement of the divine image an essential notion at least of sublunary things doth inhabite only being depressed and deformed in the impurity of nature and spot of original sin otherwise the sensitive soul cannot do strange things which it knows not and hath not and so there is need for the immortal mind to have a conflux hereunto it being stirred up by perturbations It is a very obscure and difficult way whereby Adeptists by no help of books do strive by seeking to obtain some former light of sciences And therefore also they call it the labour of wisdom and Paracelsus esteems it to be ten-fold easier than to have learned Grammer Yet Picus is of opinion that unlesse the operater makes use of a mean he will soon die of a Binsica or drynesse of the brain That the spirit of life will be diminished by reason of a daily continuance of speculations Whatsoever that may be at leastwise the ignorance of causes hath neglected most things and the helpings of the sick have been exspected in vain But I have discussed in this place of images or likenesses bred in the imagination whereby it may be manifest after what manner every corporeal body proceeds from an invisible and incorporeal Beginning the which they of old affirmed to be fetcht from the intelligible world by the imagination of the foregoing parent in imitating after a certain similitude the creation of the world being from the command of the incomprehensible word Fiat once made of the infinitenesse of a nothing The which afterwards obtained its continuation from the gift of the
Of the power of witches 779. 86 Of the nature and extent thereof 780 How a witch may be bound up in the heart of a horse 782 109 110 Witchcraft Simpathy and Magnetism do differ 759. 1 VVomen why monthly purged 405 24 VVomen are subject to double disieases 609 358. 17 VVomen consume not so much Blood as men 740 Yet they make more Ibid. VVhy they have so many conceits when with child 306 50 VVomb its overslowings cured by odorus ointments 114. 17 Remedy for a woman in travel 306. 46 VVomb a peculiar monarchy 575 A Twofold monarchy of a woman 609. 15 VVomb governs its self Ibid. 334. 43 VVomb brings forth an alterative Blas Ibid. Disseases of the womb differ from products 610. 19 The progresse of the wombs defects 612. 358 Its cure 612. 325 48 Sugar stirs up the sleeping fury of the womb 612 Wherein the fruitfulness of the womb consists 630 Where the womb of the urine beginneth 209 23 Womb warreth under its own banners 306. 52 Of the force of Imagination in women with Child 1117. 1118 The monarchy of the womb distingisheth a woman from a man 335. 48 In words herbs and stones there is great vertue 575 Silk-worms figure out a shadow of the Resurrection 684. 94 VVounds asswaged by odours c. 114 17 Hurt by the Moon-beams 141. 55 Z. ZEnexton against the plague 1144 Of the uselessness of some Zenextons 1145 Pretious stones not true Zenextons 1146 Amber a Zenexton and how so made Ibid. The qualities a Zenexton ought to have 1148 1149. Toad a Zenexton Ibid How the Toad is prepared for a Zenexton 1150 VVhy he is a true Zenexton 1152 A Poetical Soliloquie of the Translatour Harmonizing and Sympathizing with the Author's Genius WHen first my Friend did ask me to translate Van Helmonts Works wrapt up in hidden state Of Roman dialect that 't was a Book Of Med'cine and Phylosophy I took It in good part enough and did not doubt But to perform what I should set about By Gods asistance for I willing stood Much pains to take about a publick good I forth with entred on it and did see More than my friend thereof could tel to me For why since something was begot within My inward parts which loved truth but sin And selfish errour hated I began To feel and love the spirit of the man Whom I perceived like a gratious Son To build his knowledg on the Corner Stone And out of self to sink in humble wise As his Confession in me testifies The light of understanding was his guide From heath'nish Books and Authors he did slide And cast them of that so he might be free Singly to stand O Lord and wait on thee And in the pray'r of silence on thee call Because he knew thee to be All in All. And thou didst teach him that which will conduce To th' profit of his Neighbour be of use Both unto soul and body as inclin'd To read with lowly and impartial mind But as for lofty and and self-seeking ones Thou scatter wilt their wisdom wealth and bones Because thou art not honour'd in a lye Whether of Nature or Divinity But in the truth of knowledge of thy Life And of thy wondrous works which men of strife And alienated can no whit attain Till from the fall they do return again Helmont that thou returned'st I believe Thy testimony of it thou dost give When by the light thou saist entring thy dore Thou changed wast from what thou wert before And cause thou suffredst by a wicked sort For being good and once wast poyson'd for 't That 't was unjustly I am doubting past ' Cause th' Enemies conscience prickt him at the last And truely'n many places of thy Ream Words slow forth from thee like a silver stream And so that I at sundry times have found Sweet op'nings from the un'ty in the ground But did thy life in words alone consist Or art thou to be enrowl'd among the list Of Stoical Notionists which only spend Their time in contemplation and so end Their days or were good actions wrought by thee Which as the fruits discover do the tree Did shew that healing virtue forth did start From thy fire-furnace as love from thy hart If not how is it that thou dost us tel Thou ceased'st not Annually to heal Some Myriades or ten thousands yed Thy medicines were not diminished Or that thou wert so tender of the poor What if I say that bagd from door to door That thou retiredly didst live at home And cure them out of Charity not roâ—â— And gape for gain for visits as do most Physitians who unto rich houses post Floating about even as in a floud Of poysoned purged filths and venal blood And so the peoples wealth health life do soaâ— Through the sâ—ay viâ—ard of a Doctors cloak But Helmonts hand-pen asit plain appears Their false-paint coverings a funder tears In room whereof such Practicâ— Theory It doth insert that they as standers by Like Bibels Merchants will ven weâ—p and waâ—â— When they shall see their trade begin to fail And upright Artists held up by the â—an Of him who owns the good Samaritan Yet such School-Doctors shall not thus relent Whom Grace and goodnesse shall move to repent This is not utter'd out of spleen but pity Unto the sick in Country and in City No just cause given by these words to hate But to be owned by the Magistrate And I my self in former silly times Through School-tradition and Galenick lines Have wrong'd my body weaken'd my nature Clipping my vitals in their strength and Stature And though through Grace to soul and body to T' was turned to good yet that 's no thank to you Help Chymists help to pul their Babel down Builtby the pride of Academicks Gown Let Theophrastus Azoth Helmonts Lore Erect an Engine such as ne're before Hark Chymists hark attend Baptista's law He speaks to h's Sons as th' Lyon by the Paw And why as th' eye is opened to look May y' not discern Hercules by his foot Be it sufficient that he gives a tast Least pretious peat is he unto swine should east Be 't no dishonour to the Ghymick School That some mistakes thereof he doth controâ—â— Rather a praise unto the Masters eye Houshold disorders for to rectifie Strike Chymists strike strike fire out of your 〈◊〉 And force the fire unto the highest stint Of a Reverb'ratory such a heat As Galen back out of the field may beat And fetch th' Archeal Crasis Seminum To keep the field gainst a Rololleum Srrive not not by reason if you 'd win the day Pâ—ice your Athanar as he another way Aime not at lucre in what ye undertake Your motive love the spirit your guider make That day to day in you the Word may preach And night to night unto you knowledge teach That so Elias th' Artist if he come Ye as prepar'd may bid him welcome home And all well-wishers unto Science true Unto
off the adhering sand not indeed through the water washing it off but from a conspired convulsion and frizling of the parts For they perswade by the Marsh-mallow Mallow Oyl of Almonds and the like to asswage paines to moisten enlarge and besmear the passages and so in this as also in all other things every where the Schooles are either intent onely on the effect or propose that which is ridiculous while as they ought by a cleansing faculty to brush off the sands and lump from the whole Womb they totally employ themselves in loosening the passages and in moistening the membranes which are alwayes most moist in themselves For truly although the sand be expelled yet the womb thereof is not therefore safe but at leastwise the sides of the veines remain defiled with the Bolus or lump for a future punishment of the stone whither the Schooles hitherto have had no regard For I sometimes wondred that he that a good while before had the stone in his Reines after he hath dismissed that stone into his bladder doth the more seldom stir up new stones in his Kidney as long as the other molests his Bladder yet that he that hath the stone in his Reines if together also therewith he be gouty doth notwithstanding admit of the Gout as a Companion with the fit of the Nephritical affect or stone in the Reines For from thence I have learned that as pain in a Wound stirs up a sandy or gleary water so also that it can change the urine it self which may hinder stoniâ—ying in the antient womb of the Loynes Wherefore also there is a troubled urine and that without sand seen in persons that have the stone For the pain is the Trumpet which occasionally cals to it the Latex from on every side which inflames yea and disturbs the urine with a strange Guest being admixed with it But in so great a confusion of Offices nothing is thought of the confusion itself For the pain hath oftentimes set before mine eyes the Image of feruent heat For water after the boyling up of heat is for the most part troubled and confused For so because there is a Bolus made of the volatile earth of the urine that is not yet sufficiently seasoned with a salt by reason of the want of an Urinary Ferment stablish'd in the Reines therefore also that Bolus or lump melts with the fiery heat neither is it constrained into the more hard and great sands as long as it doth not experience the force of the Ferment of the Kidneys But the Bolus is sufficiently tinged not indeed from the dross the more lately coming thereon which tingeth the Sands for that red lump is beyond the yellownesse of the dross but from the washy venal blood which is erroneously translated in the veines the womb of the Bolus for uses being the ends of Turbulency And for this cause in the signification of urine the Bolus testifies of the Liver and venal Blood but the sand nothing of these It is manifest therefore that the urine is by it self salt although a man be not fed with salt and thou shalt find the cause thereof concerning Digestions A certain Curate in our City being beside himself passed over 17 whole dayes without any meat and drink before his death but he never wholly wanted a daily urine although a more sparing one and by degrees a more red one departed from him From whence I conjecture that there is in the Kidney an exchangeative faculty of the blood into urine and the which faculty I elswhere in the Treatise of the Dropsie do studiously prosecute no otherwise than as a Wound doth of the blood prepate a speedy and plentifull Sunovie or gleary water Therefore the urine for the last limitation of it self requires and borrowes a virtue from the Ferment which the Kidneys do inspire into the womb of the urine No otherwise than as the Liver inspires the faculty of blood-making into the veines of the Porta and knittings of the Mesentery Wherefore the whole Chyle of the stomach doth in the same place presently dissemble blood in its colour But the plainly Lord-like power of the Kidneys over the veines I elsewhere prosecute concerning the Dropsie But although the Ferment of the Kidney serving for the ministery of the whole entire urine be as it were the digestion of a certain Bowel yet it is not reckoned amongst the number of digestions because it concerns the concoction of a superfluity but not of a nourishment For since every transmutation which proceedeth by digestions hath its own Medium's or proper Ferments which are fit for a new Generation also the Kidney begins to imprint its own Ferment on the Creame presently assoon as it is stayed at the ports of the Liver Through the vigour of which Ferment the urine sequesters it self from the venal blood in its native properties And although that blood be not yet coagulable yet the liquid from the liquid do there separate themselves The Mysterie of Sanguification or Blood-making is indeed homogeneal simple and altogether single and so included in Sanguisication alone yet a separable unlikeness ought to be bred in the Cream presently in its entrance of the Port-veine For else the blood while it attained a vital condition in the Liver would undecently be defiled with the blast of the Ferment of the Kidneys But that the urine is naturally salt and from whence that saltnesse is unto it thou shalt find elsewhere concerning Digestions But here let it be sufficient to have given notice that as much of an acide salt as is bred in the Chyle under the first digestion so much passeth over into a salt salt by a substantial Transmutation in the second I have now pointed out the womb of the Urine and Stone beginning I have also declared the wonderfull property of the Spirit of Urine in coagulating and stonifying From thence also it now is sufficiently manifest that if the spirit of urine happens to flow by a Retrograde motion through the Liver into the Port-veine and from thence to be expelled as an unaccustomed stranger through the Mesentery into the Bowels that it shall there also easily coagulate unwonted stones and the which Paracelsus calls congeoled but not coagulated ones because they ascend not unto the hardnesse of the Duelech of Urines the which are confirmed from their mother-matter a muscilage But if indeed the spirit of urine be carried upwards or downwards through the hollow veine it by a faculty proper unto it self estrangeth the spermatick and muscilaginous nourishment of the similar parts into a more hard compaction from whence at length Scirrhus's quartane Agues and also divers obstructions do arise the which surely they do vainly endeavour to brush away by Jeleps or Apozemes Lastly the Gaul is nourished by the venal blood its Neighbour whereinto if the spirit of urine shall wander out of its own womb stones are presently bred also in the Gaul For whatsoever enters into anothers harvest becomes
forreign and hostile and so extraordinary affects do arise from co-like Causes For neither have I unfitly taught that that wheyish matter which is carried as being throughly mixed with the blood and is by sweat or otherwise unsensibly dispersed is not urine as neither that it hath the properties of the same nor that it is a whey the imitater of Milk and much lesse that it is Gaul or yellow Choler but a part of the Liquor Latex of which in its own Treatise CHAP. VII Duelech Dissolved 1. The inconsiderate rashnesse of the Schooles is accused 2. An account or reckoning up of Knaves over whom the Magistrate ought to be intentive 3. The Author excuseth himself 4. Every Disease in its own kind is curable 5. How much is to be hoped for from the Shops 6. Or what may there be found for the Disease of the Stone 7. A double Indication or betokening 8. A somewhat deaf intention of the Schooles 9. The vanity of this kind of intention 10. Why the Marsh-mallow Mallow juyce of Citron c. may profit 11. A frivolous objection against Vrine-provoking Remedies 12. The imposibilities of the Schooles 13. The Reasons of the Schooles for an impossible Remedy 14. The Reasons of the Alchymists 15. The testimony of Cardanus 16. The writ or Charter of the Prince of Saltzburge 17. The delusion of the Schooles from a ridiculous enquiring into Remedies 18. Ridiculous privy shifts 19. That the Stone is not confirmed 20. The stones of Animals and Vegetables after what sort they may be profitable unto us 21. The manner of preparing them 22. From whence Ludus took its Name and the preparation thereof 23. Ludus where it is to be found 24. A blockish beasting 25. An errour of Paracelsus 26. The rashnesse of the Schooles 27. Paracelsus prattles no lesse unsavourily concerning the matter of the Stone than the Humourists 28. A declaratory confession of things un-soulified and of the Balsame of Salt 29. The manner of administring a Remedy 30. The Bladder of the Bul-Calâ— being an Embryo 31. Observations about the stone of Crabs 32. An Errour of Paracelsus 33. A wondrous Antipathy 34. A new Catheter I Have spoken of the Womb of the Affect or Disease of the Stone But now I must seriously consider of its Remedies For indeed the common people laugh at the Schooles who are become a Reproach because there hath not been any thing hitherto diligently searched into concerning the true Causes or Curing thereof I have indeed elsewhere rehearsed that the power of the mind being as it were barren or feeble hath acted the original of Medicine that Medicine being also in its ripe Yeares even unto this very day brought into a Circle without any progress because they have been willing rather to abide in forreign Grecian Barbarous and Heathenish Inventions and have held it an Honour to have polished other mens Principles While as in the mean time new Diseases arise also those that were once spent or grown stale do rise again masked and therefore do they appear illegitimate nor any longer answering to the descriptions of the first For indeed Medicine stands without any progress while as our health stands in the greatest need of the increase of healing As a slow and ungenerous kind of Physitians hinders the same because they would be wise only by anothers commentary and deny Art to increase above what they have known And therefore also whatsoever they are ignorant of they by a certain despair drive away into the Catalogue of uncurable Diseases As if the invention of Ancestours had stopt up the way of our industry had shut up the treasures of wisdom and as if all the modern force of the mind were barren and the power of divine wisdome exhausted that there were nothing any longer which may demonstrate unto us a further truth Truly the cup of sloath hath even from the very beginning befooled the world with a Lethargy for therefore every one had rather to assent than diligently to search For so great is the sweetness of gain that every one doth with love admire his own societies or confusions and Miscellanies of Medicines they call them received Magistrals and those Medicines which being in times past the more secret ones have rendred Physitians that were Lovers of labour famous old women by reason of the drowsiness of Physitians have at this day spread abroad into the hands of Apothecraies From whence every Barber Bather Nun Tormenter or Bawd that was chased out of the Stewes of harlots boasts of medicine the number whereof I will here describe For those first come to hand who will heal being indeed not instructed for this purpose but being prompt by nature and daring to do any thing hand forth those things to the sick which they have heard to have profited others without the knowledge and difference of causes and so they drive them head-long into danger For from thence almost all the experiments of the Schools have issued The which also Galen after the example of his Master Quintius hath confirmed For the Schools making experiments by the deaths of men presently call their Graduates most expert Physicians Others being vulgar ones had rather heal only the vulgar and unto these they give their Counsels Some also from favour alone and being entreated Many also by reason of the ambition of honour and that they may seem as wise men have this kind of vice bred in them for such kind of Deceivers will seem to be rich and therefore they perform all services for death or a chanced health freely Of this sort are those first of all who at Rome thrust a Triacle on the Cardinals and Peers as composed of better Simples than God hath created in nature For so we have deceived the people in the City and have seemed to be holy Apothecaries There succeed these such as require rewards indeed but in no wise money lest they should be known to have put off the condition of Noble persons and likewise their promised poverty And therefore they are those who say they earn or merit nothing for themselves but only for a poor Community There are Apostates like to these who confess indeed that they are not Physitians but that they have their secrets from a Queen or an Emperor For these are wont to interpose as middle persons which extol the price of their medicine And then there follow these who wear garments and a purse bored full of holes like a sieve neither in the mean time are they slow to exercise of their own imposture As that they were sometimes very rich but now impoverished in a hogs-head of wine by the Art of Chymistry by Wars and by the constancy of Religion There are also those who at sometime were valiant in a troop of Souldiers but in War for the conflicting for moneys they bestowed all their wealth they shew their scars in a bravery perhaps being received as a due reward Some also have left wives and