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things and from the service of the acquainted Senses For it is manifest what the mind it self may be while it hath withdrawn it self from conceipts which are wont or might stain it or at leastwise hinder it from comming unto the nakednesse and purity of it self wherein it may be able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
born a vain or empty Table From thence indeed arose a sensitive Power or Faculty in Posterity or the same Faculty of a middle Life which arose in Adam the which when through a just Maturity it had waxed ripe in the Seed it was at length brought through into a true Light and vital Form by the Creator on which afterwards the Mind of Man transferred its Vicarship yet the Mind hath remained being as it were reitired into its own bottom as abhorring the Impurities of Nature nor being any longer able unless by Grace immediately to diffuse it self into the sensitive Soul God so disposing of it by reason of his good Pleasure as shall be shewn hereafter In Man therefore there is actually a certain natural and formal Act which is the Soul or Sensitive Life very much distinct from the mind For as the Seed of a Dog tends into a living Dog obscurely reasoning or discoursing so certainly the Seed of Man doth not aspire into a dead Carcass but at least into a vital Soul and indeed flows into a sensitive and discursive one after a far more perfect manner than in a Dog Fox c. And that I might the more firmly attain this real Distinction of the sensitive Soul from the Mind in us I have feigned a Young-man to be utterly lost for a Maid For this Man wisheth with a full sense and consent of his Soul that he could be freed from that disdainful Love And likewise he would not that he should Love so dearly and would not be freed from his Love Not indeed that he by turns sometimes earnestly wills one thing but sometimes another but at once and in the same Motion and violent aslault he wisheth and not wisheth to be freed from that Love therefore he declares himself to be happy and unhappy in one Love And he suffers many Contradictories of that sort at once The which seeing they are not at once entertained in the same Subject and Respect I long doubted from whence such Contradictories should happen on every side in one only Man until at length the Apostle loosed this K not for me I seeing another Law in our Members opposite to the Law of our Mind which Laws surely he understandeth to be guarded not only with an Inclination and Desire but also with Discourse and Consent Then I clearly beheld the Affections of the sensitive Soul to be one and those of the Mind to be another but these because the Operation of the Mind is well nigh obscured by the perturbations of the sensitive Soul therefore they are weak For in this sense the Apostle calls Anger Envy Grudgings Worshipping of Idols c. the works of the Flesh For although they may seem to be spiritual Conceptions yet because they are the Operations of the sensitive Soul the which it self also is seminally stirred up in Nature by the will of Flesh and Blood therefore they are the meer works of the Flesh We are therefore uncessantly affected through the importunate Allurements of the social Soul because we being forthwith after Sin become degenerate have lost Immortality Wherefore God doth now require only a few things of us that we may enter into Life To wit that he that is Baptized do believe the whole History of the Creed and that he keep the Commandements of God through the Mediation of his Grace But whosoever will aspire unto a higher Degree of Charity let him endeavour so far as according to his Talent he shall be able in all Humility and by continuing in Charity through amorous Acts to run forth unto abstracted Things believed by Faith until that through the Grace of a daily Continuance of Exercise he shall feel his Mind to be overwhelmed by a supernatural Light For the Meditation of natural Forms doth much help in the entrance for the understanding of the Thingliness of the sensitive Soul For all Forms besides the Mind seeing they are vital Lights which are to return into nothing I have certainly learned that the Mind doth by a most long interval differ from the sensitive Soul Seeing that the immortal Mind however it be retracted into it self that it may not be defiled through the Wedlock of the sensitive Soul its Companion Yet it is president in all Acts as it is near at hand and doth totally inhere in the whole sensitive Soul and so operates herewith after a deaf manner But that this order of the Almighty was on this manner forthwith after the Fall of Adam I collected first because he hath created some Men blind and likewise mad noâ— for their own or Parents Sin but according to his good Pleasure for his own Glory for he made all things as he would and most exceeding well And then because he would be worshipped in the Spirit And lastly because in his House there are many Mansions Now they should be in vain if every Man should be equal in Grace in his Soul and Life From whence I collect that there ought to be a diversity of Spirits among Men and the Worshippers of the Divinity to be diverse in the degree of Charity For truly he created the Angels that they might worship him in the Spirit of Intelligency without the Turbulencies of Bodies But Man he deminished a little less than the Angels yet he primarily chose him after the Image of his Divinity for his own Glory and Worship and for his adopted Sons yet subject to an unhappy and calamitous kinde of living because he is he who being 〈◊〉 sunk or drowned within the Body scarce understands that he doth understand having almost forgotten his Immortality as being subjected unto the tyrannical Clientships of Diseases so that the Immortal Understanding in distracted or foolish and mad People appears to be almost extinct For it was the Almighties good Pleasure that those diverse Mansions should be inhabited as it were by the Ladder of Deserts and that Men being raised up by the Character or Impression of Grace should come unto higher Dignities of understanding To wit according to that saying The Learned shall shine as the Sun The first thing therefore is in the Simplicity of an operative Faith to have lived in Abstinency from Evils and to have done good And then that they Worship God in the Spirit of naked Truth and that through an operative Faith they proceed through an attainment of a fatherly Love worthy Deeds or Deserts in Charity although we not intending it helping to be more and more illustrated in their Understanding And so at length the Mind is loosed in that dark Prison of Bloods and intellectually beholds it self and with Humility admires the not before seen Light and being led through unknown Paths doth then without difficulty proceed by steps unto the more abstracted Contemplations of a Kiss where it being as it were raised up again out of a drowâ—â—â— Sleep doth as happy adore God in Truth Righteousness and the Union of Virtues under the Light of an abstracted Spirit For neither although
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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