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
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
which b. also denies for their Bodies after the Resurrection Therefore it behoves that we are Born again of Water and of the holy Spirit For as from the Beginning man was created and had not proceeded from a being born of Flesh So whatsoever is afterwards born of the Flesh is Flesh But the Water the Blood and the Spirit are one and the same in Christ John 5. and these three do denote an indifferent and one only Baptism in valour or effect Wherefore the only new Birth unto Life Is by Water and the Spirit in the participation of the virginal Body of Christ alone For truly it is alike impossible for Flesh to enter into and see the Kingdom of God as for to ascend into Heaven by a Motion of ones own and that is granted to none but to the Son of the Virgin who for that end descended from Heaven who was in Heaven while the same Son spake these things to Nicodemus and the which a little while after ought moreover for the same Cause to be exalted in the Cross The same therefore which descended from Heaven that he might be incarnated of the Matter of the Virgin is he in whom the Water the Virginal Blood and the holy Spirit are one The Spirit therefore which maketh the Corrupted and Adamical Man to be renewed by Water doth so regenerate the inward man from a new Generation in the Spirit that it becomes a true Spirit to be glorified by rising again whose Voice the Sons of Adam shall hear yet shall they not know from whence it may come or whither it may go because the Spirit the Regenerater is the glorious God himself who breatheth where he will and thou now hearest his Voice by Faith and the Sacrament Thus every one who is born again of the holy Spirit is made Spirit and united to him who is not known from whence he may come or whither he may go I call these earthly things although they touch at a spiritual Generation and new Birth because they have some things like unto them in a sublunary Nature which things every one hath not indeed every where known and therefore neither doth he believe them For the Generations of Bruits do happen from a watery Liquor and a seminal Spirit Notwithstanding those things are not therefore plainly terrene or earthly and naturally intelligible by the Vulgar which the Lord speaks to Nicodemus because the reason of the Love of God is no more conceived in this New-Birth than of his infinite goodness To wit it remains unpassable why he would adopt Man for a Son and Co-heir of his Kingdom yea reduce him into a Spirit of a God-like Form who shall materially be born again of Water For that mystery of love exceedeth all the understanding of Angels Yea to believe and contemplate of the actual Person of Christ in an old Man a Woman a young Man a poor diseased Man a miserable and naked poor or little esteemed Man or Woman none can naturally understand it unless he being compelled by Faith hath subjected his understanding unto Faith So neither are we able to conceive what one thing all are made by that new Birth of Baptism in Christ without a difference of Sexes or Nations unless we are holpen by Faith At length it was not enough for the Love of Christ to be born in the form of a Servant and so to be exposed unto Scorn But moreover he ought to suffer a most sharp and most exceeding reproachful Death the which so cruel and disgraceful Death himself in the abounding goodness of his Love cals his Exaltation But he brings it into the similitude of the exaltation of the Serpent Nehushtan Not indeed because the Serpent did any more represent the form of the Son of Man than the Fork did the Cross but only the likeness of impure Man slidden into Death through the perswasion of the Serpent the likeness of whose Servant the Lord was to assume Therefore the Son of Man ought to be exalted not indeed as being unhurtful in the Fork or as it were an unsensible brazen Serpent and the which otherwise being a live one was perceivable enough to be most fit to hang up But the Son of Man must be exalted alive he being full of Love and also at length to die in that Cross that the deserved New-Birth or Regeneration might be made effectual by his Death For truly else without the Death and Exaltation of him Crucified a Participation of the new Birth by Water and the Spirit had not succeeded neither had Death Perished So that plainly from a deep mystery the similitude of the Fork Cross and Saviour was fetched for a similitude of an incarnated Servant and him compared with the brazen Serpent Neither also did Israel Worship God in the Serpent otherwise Moses by the Command of God had been the Author of Idolatry Neither therefore is a live Serpent bound to the Fork as neither likewise his dead Carcass but his brazen Image only as being uncapable of Life that by this mystery it might be manifest that the whole similitude in that the exaltation of the Fork or Pole and Cross did manifest and clearly hold forth unto us the Flesh of Sin which the Son of Man by way of similitude represented was plainly uncapable of Life and of the Kingdom of God no otherwise than as the brazen Serpent was Therefore it is simply and absolutely true That unless Man be born again of God and doth partake of the unspotted Virginity which the Lord Jesus drew in his most glorious Incarnation from the material substance of the Virgin his Mother the hope of Salvation is for ever cut off Wherefore also from thence it is manifest that from the intent of Creation nothing but a Virginal Generation was afterwards required And by consequence that a Seminal Impure Beast-like and Adamical Generation was by the Craft of the Devil drawn and exhausted from the Apple wherein the Fewel of Lust was Therefore unless the Adamical Flesh doth again die and an unspotted Virgin-Flesh be restored in us in its stead by the favour of the holy Spirit who saveth those that are to be saved freely it is certain that the first intent of our Creator should be frustrate whatsoever may be otherwise done or hoped for For in the Beginning it was sufficient to be born because also then they had been born of God But after the Fall it thenceforth behoveth the Adamical Flesh to die and perish and to be again renewed or re-born of Virgin-Flesh which the holy Spirit by Water stirs up in us while we wish or desire to be Members of that Head and Branches of that Vine We are therefore regenerated in the Lords Body by Grace unto the immortal Life of the Age to come and that we may be raised up again in the Participation of Virginity Death must interpose and whatsoever is Adamical in us be blotted out We all indeed shall rise but we shall not all be
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
judgments of God The which although it be plainly above nature yet in the mean time the matter thereof is not a creature lately made of nothing because it after some sort enters the borders of nature For the smiting Angel stood not on a mountain which the continual water of the air flowing over it well washeth by licking thereof Neither stood he also on an high Tower and where notwithstanding the sin of David in the lust of concupiscence had took its beginning but he stood on the hoary putrified threshing floor of Araunah So the Angels in the Revelation pour out their Vials from whence the third part of men shall at sometime perish The word yea the beck of the Lord can do all things without a floor a scabbard a sword Vials the effusion of Poyson c. But such is the bounty of his piety that he inflicts not such punishments nakedly by his word perhaps by reason of the perpetual constancy and irrevocable firmnesse of his word nor also by evil spirits doth he send a supernatural plague lest he should deliver the living into the hands of their enemies At length the plague produced by enchantments if there be any follows nature For truly the Devil is not able of himself even to make one gnat unlesse he assume the seminal Beginnings thereof even as his magicians could not make gnats the off-springs of the waters of dust wherefore also they confessing the impotency of the Devil then cryed out truly here is the singer of God! If therefore it shall at sometime be granted to the Devil to form the plague surely he drew that from the principles of nature And the diabolical plague should differ from the natural ordinary one in its application and appropriation For he should more toughly apply the actuation and impression of the poyson no otherwise than as the bellowes doth at leastwise promote and heighten the fire which it made not but he should appropriate it with a fore-going preparation by the image of terrour drawn in and borrowed from his â—ond-slaves And although such plagues should be more cruel yet they should yield unto the same natural remedies But I call them more cruel ones by reason of their swiftness to wit the image of cruel envy had from witches being over added notwithstanding such permissions should as yet be limited unto persons and number yea should be more easily expiated by prayer and alms-deeds than ordinary plagues To wit whereby God taking pity on mankind may the rather hate diabolical arts and make the Devil grieve at divâ—ne mercy soon shewn But that good spirits are the framers of the Pest surely that is from great compassion that we may not be beaten but under the command of obedience by the rod of the Lord and not of Angels For God every where keeps a Decorum He takes Sergeants and Guardians who have a native goodness who keep friendship nor can aslume a divellish disposition for which they know there is no place in Heaven But before he would deliver Sodom to the Devil he first deprived it of a few innocent persons But the plague which ariseth from a curse by reason of the extream anguish of mad poverty by reason of a teeming woman that is forsaken by reason of a wounded person c. is a plague of divine punishment which surely is scarce supported by the Beginnings of nature and is easily discerned because it invadeth onely such places and persons cursed And likewise the rich who sit in Ivory Seats who drink out of guilded plate who eat the Calf from the Herd and the fat Sheep from the Flock and do not remember their imprisoned brother Josâ—ph Because the Lord adjures or earnestly swears the destruction of these that others may as it were in a looking-glass behold what it is to have pleased and displeased God But Plagues which follow Camps and rage for the most part some moneths after a siedge are not to be ascribed to the slovenliness of the Souldiers especially if they shall begin a good while after the City is taken as for the most part it comes to pass For Camps had also in times past their own and the same impurities of Souldiers but the occasion is that of the smell of dead Carcasses putrified through continuance which is infected with a mumial ferment because that at this day the slain are not buried as in times past nor deep enough in the earth In the next place because they are hurt by an invisible bullet from far which moves a greater terrour in the Archeus than while spear to spear and sword to sword were stoutly opposed For neither was it in vain commanded in the Law That whosoever should touch a dead Carcasse should be impure and that he was to be clean washed together with his garment And that the Sun was not to go down upon the bodies of hanged persons Which things surely in a literal sence are thus prescribed by God for the good of a Common-wealth least the mumial ferment should putrifie by continuance Therefore it is the part of blindness and rashness to be bewailed for the bodies of those that are hanged to be shewn in a bravery for a spectacle until they fall off of their own accord indeed a small profit accrues from thence for so great evils and it is all one as if the Judge should say God indeed hath so appointed it but the Magistrate hath corrected for the better As if it had been unknown to God that the Spectacle of an hanged person would be more affrightful to evil persons or offenders Therefore if God hath known this and neverthelesse hath given an express command for burial it it no wonder that punishment follows transgression as a Companion But God follows the guilty eternally as a revenger behind and I wish the punishment were turned onely upon the transgressours for to bury is a work of mercy but to shew the guilty hanged in a bravery is not that work according to which it shall at sometime be pronounced Go ye Cursed or Come ye Blessed For truly to bury the dead Carcass of a condemned person is a work of no less mercy than to bury a Prince And this mercy is not so much exercised toward the dead party as toward our neighbours least the following stink should infect them For neither to be buryed doth profit him that is buryed but the living Therefore the Scope of Divine Goodness consisteth not onely in burying but in inhuming deep enough which particulars will be made more cleer by an example For a dead Falcon being cast behind the hedges and half putrified is devoured by a live one but presently he is taken with a most contagious plague of his own kind Because the poyson of terrour being received within smites on his Archeus by reason of a mumial co-resemblance infected with a putrified fermental hoariness And the Pest of the Falcon is so great that the pestilent Falcon being brought through a Street insecteth
Van Helmont's WORKS Containing his most Excellent PHILOSOPHY CHIRVRGERY PHYSICK ANATOMY WHEREIN The Philosophy of the Schools is Examined their Errors Refuted and the whole Body of Physick REFORMED and RECTIFIED Being a New rise and progresse of PHILOSOPHY and MEDICINE for the Cure of Diseases and Lengthening of Life Made English by J. C. sometime of M. H. Oxon. LONDON Printed for Lodowick Hoyd at the Castle in Cornhill 1664. ORIATRIKE OR Physick Refined The common ERRORS therein REFUTED And the whole ART Reformed Rectified BEING A New Rise and Progress of PHYLOSOPHY and MEDICINE for the Destruction of Diseases and Prolongation of Life Written By that most Learned Famous Profound and Acute Phylosopher and Chymical Physitian John Baptista Van Helmont Toparch or Governor in Morede Royenborch Oorschot Pellines c. And now faithfully rendred into English in tendency to a common good and the increase of true Science By J. C. Sometime of M. H. Oxon. Job 32. 8. There is a Spirit in Man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth Understanding Pro. 8. 12. I Wisdom dwell with Prudence and find out knowledge of witty Inventions Aeternarum rerum seria contemplatio eò usque animum nostrum subvexit ut Divina loquuti videámur de rebus Naturae subjectis quae tantò perfectiores sunt quanto propriores Aeternis c. LONDON Printed for Lodowick Loyd and are to be sold at his Shop next the Castle in Cornhill 1662. TO THE English READER AS the bare report of Solomon's Wisdom was enough to attract the Eastern Queens attention and that to travel her to the Fountain-head it self which she relished at first as pretious Wine but then as divine Nectar so doubtless the loud Fame of Learned Helmont ringing in the ears of our as well as other Nations must needs excite the attentions and level the Affections of those that can value the Wisdom found in the true knowledge of Nature and Art and so sharpen their Appetites as to induce them to find where the Fruit grows and there to feed their fill their fill of essential not formal Learning of experimental not historical Knowledge of Hermetick not Culinary Practice So that methinks 't is sufficient to tell thee that great Helmont now dictates in thine own Dialect Wouldst thou then find a clear efflux of pure not fleshy Ingenuity here it is Wouldst thou behold acute Invention in its unmixt clarity here it is Wouldst thou contemplate the depth of exact and solid Judgement here it is Wouldst thou be acquainted with Arguments Impregnable to the production of Truth and conviction of Error here they are Wouldst thou understand the vanity of evolving unweldy Volumns of Vegetables and neglecting the utility of powerful Medicines Wouldst thou discern the vast difference between the efficacious kernel and useless shell of natural Products between potential Essences and impotent Superfluities between heterogeneal Co-mixtures and artificial Separations Purifications and Exaltations In a word wouldst thou not dwell in the Circumference of Knowledge but dive into the very Center it self here then imploy thy Faculties here exercise thy Abilities here impend thy Studies Then wilt thou moreover find to omit his Humanity Magnanimity Piety and Charity wherein he much excelled his Disputes subtile grave and of great validity his Assertions soind his Demonstrations clear and his Conclusions infallible eradicating Error and implanting of Truth and that with rare Integrity and indefatigable Industry But saith Zoilus Diruit quidem non autem Aedificat A Position well becoming the owners of it granting a Verity to infer a Fallacy As how as thus That Learned Helmont hath demolished the feeble Fabrick of an erroneous Method is apparently true not onely in it self but confest even by his adversaries but that he hath not rebuilt a stronger Structure on a firmer Foundation is as false and that it is so this his unparallel'd Works do demonstrate to any intelligent Reader that is not drunk with envy or poysoned with malice or infected with prejudice His own Works indeed do best express his worth Neither can I suppose that another Pen can Preface any addition to it Canst thou Reader sum up the perfections required in a Philosopher not Traditional in a Christian not Hypocritical in a Physitian not Verbal not Superficial then art thou nearest his true Character But he that shall attempt to tell thee the Summa totalis of him or these his eminent Emanations may sooner want wind for his Words than work for his Pen and whilst he recounteth their excellencies seem to numerate the Sea's sand I therefore desist and refer to thy experience which may happily evidence thy proficiency that thy industry and both render thee gratefully joyful for so great a jewel whose due rate and proportion That thou mayst rightly apprehend Is wisht by thy well-willing Friend H. BLUNDEN Med. Lieentiat יהוה TO THE Unutterable WORD THE AUTHOR Offers up a SACRIFICE in his Mother Tongue O Omnipotent Eternal and Incomprehensible Being the Original of all Good Thou hast committed unto me a Talent the which I expose to open Usury But I acknowledge and confess my nothing impotency my vile and abusive unprofitableness Thus being overwhelmed in the Abyss of my own nothingness I pray thee O thou All-providing Good that thou wouldest clementiously accept of this Book O thou Eternal Beginning and End of all Wisdom Let thy saving Will be done O Lord in the grace of thy Love by this dry tree this meat for wormes this fewel for the flame thy unprofitable servant the son of thy hand-maid Unless at length thou perfect me and preserve all thy gifts they shall perish in me for ever This I ingeniously confess from the knowledge of my very innermost part before thee O Lord unto whom all things are thorowly known in truth and before the World unto whom most of the most excellent truths lay hid I am amazed at the largeness and greatness of thy benefits towards my nothingness So being prostrated I celebrate thy most glorious Name and that Name I invoke from above O Jebovah thou most faithful lover of Men O holy and incomprehensible Name at all times and alone to be sanctified and the onely free Sanctifier of his Saints alone Favourably behold from the Throne of thy Omnipotency the miseries of the living help the sons of men seeing it is thy delight to be present with them Remember the word of thy Promise no longer to be the God of our Fathers as in times past but now as a God declared to be our Father No longer the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Israel but as God Jesus the God of Mary our Mother and who art made our Brother in the love of thy grace All the end and scope of my desires tendeth to this that thy incomprehensible Name may be sanctified not only because thou art called the Thrice most Great and Excellent but also because thou onely art All unto whom every wish of
sanctifying Love doth properly belong seeing that thou standest in no need of us neither can we devote unto thee any thing else The Prophet did accept A A A Lord I cannot speak behold I am an Infant but I reply to this Prophet O O O Lord my thoughts fail me and do melt in a naked wish of Love of the sanctifying of thy Name For loe O Lord I am nought but nothing nor any thing besides but as it hath pleased thee that I may pertain unto thee O All of All and All my Desire I deservedly seem to offer unto thee in my Mother Tongue and also to vow the Feude or Fee-farm of my Essence and Property wherewith I being invested by thee I enjoy the use of them for the help of my Neighbour For although the first conception of the Soul consisteth out of Words and so is without a proper tongue Yet I perceive that it is as yet crude and not sequestred as long as it is not polished and not being joyned to the mind doth depart into Cogitations Words and Writing This crudity I perceive doth make an infirm and unstable object of my first Conception and soon darkens it again Therefore thy Eternal Wisdom hath granted that it should be carried further even unto my Mind T is true indeed that thou wilt be worshipped by men in the Spirit but not in such a manner that it may remain in the undistinction of the first object But moreover the Angels and pure simple Spirits although they nakedly adore thee in Cogitation as Spirits yet they are busied by a certain and unknown Song to us in sanctifying thy Sanctifying Name without intermission Wherefore also thou commandest to be loved not onely from the whole Soul and whole Spirit but also from the whole Heart and with all our Strength So that the Prayer that is Spiritually framed and naked Worship do even exclude that which is Verbal which is unexperienced of the attention of the Mind Bestow on me O most beloved Lord that I may suggest that thing to my Neighbours thy Servants by similitudes An Organist hearing a new Tune or Song doth not presently at first play it without difficulty his Soul doth in part indeed perceive the Sound but his Fingers which are as it were the Framers of Sounds even as his other Members are the Formers of Words do not so fitly follow neither is it granted unto them to attain an absolute perfection of the Song so speedily quickly and distinctly He beholding indeed the Organ Table or Book doth presently play it to wit his Capacity being wont to carry his Fingers towards it at the first sight of the Book but that Song being composed according to the Laws of Musick but not turned into a Table he as less accustomed thereunto doth the more difficulty play it seeing a Table is accustomed to be first composed out of the Musick for his Spirit before he plays But as yet with a greater difficulty and rarity the Table and Plat-form of a Lute is extemporarily expressed in the Organ or that of the Organ in the Lute There hath not seemed unto me to be an unlike reason of the first conception of the Soul as of a sound as yet crude or raw and the Mind desires to have it reduced into Words or Writings through defect whereof not a few do stick in a good object the which by reason of an undistinct Mind vanisheth without fruit But moreover I perceive that the first Idea of the Soul doth follow an accustomed instinct of the Mind whereby it being even there polished or corrected is perceived by Words or Writings but indeed whereas man being from the beginning seasoned with the property of his Mother Tongue doth obtain it as incorporated or inspired and besides is wont to communicate unto his Mind and Mother Tongue his Cogitations which depart into Meditations Languages or Writings it seems an inconvenient thing and a Wonder to the Soul to endow an object of the first conception being decyphored in the Mind by Words in the Mother Tongue besides the inbred Custom with a forreign Idiome or Dialect wherein the Understanding labouring by changing the Dialect it over-shadows weakens and wearies it self and also doth alienate the pure and plainly Spiritual Conception of the first object But in very deed the object of every first Cogitation departing into Words I have certainly found to be alwaies first had in the Mother Tongue even in a man using none but tbe Spanish Dialect who also heard a Spaniard he being mortally wounded and weak of Mind spake many things but in Italian and heing called on in Spanish scarce understood I have likewise seen a Germane that was sick sitting or lying even as they placed him like an Image who never was capable of replying unto things asked him neither did he understand what Words either his Wife or any one of his Sons did pronounce in any other than in his own proper Germane tongue when as notwithstanding within the Walls of his House he alwaies used the Italian and French Tongues Yea and which more is he being a little after freed from this waking Coma or Sleep was scarce perswaded to believe the same And so O Lord I have cast down this poor Dedication of my Book in my Mother Tongue before thy most high Throne to wit the Song of my object which dammage of my Neighbour thou hast not disdained to let down into me Unto Thee be all the Honour I now proceed to signifie to my Neighbour the wretched ignorance of the Heathens whereby thy sick People have been hitherto seduced by the Universities and so miserably slain the Precept of the Prophet uttered in thy Name nothing hindring it Thus saith the Lord do not ye teach like unto the Gentiles Wherefore O Lord grant that my Soul may retain the gifts granted unto it unto thine Honour whereby I may imprint thy Goodness a part of my Debt in this Path of Death on my Neighbour Be thou unto me every Hinge who alone art the Way the Truth and the Life This is the one onely thing which it becometh us to love Thou my Angel Defender and Intercessor who beholdest the Omnipotent Good Beg in my name that which is wanting unto me insist thou in the steps of Raphael the Divine Physitian who carried the Works of burial of the dead performed by night unto God thou diligent Curer carry thou the present Work performed in the night of my darkness unto God that man may not hereafter be thus killed nor so soon undergo Death Offer up this my Work before the holy sacred Trinity whereunto I dedicate it So act thou for the Glory of God THE Translators Premonition TO THE CANDID READER FRIEND WHoever thou art know thou that as the things contained in this Work were not at the first written by the honest conscientious most learned and judicious Author from a vain ostentation or to draw out Peoples minds after the Tree of Knowledge
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
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
hundred years I reckoned the Greeks art of healing to be false but the Remedies themselves as being some experiments no less to help without a Method than that the same Remedies with a Method did deceive most On both sides I discerning the deceit and uncertainty of the Rules of Medicine in the diversities of the founders of Complexions I said with a sorrowful heart Good God! how long wilt thou be angry with mortal men who hitherto hast not disclosed one truth in healing to thy Schooles how long wilt thou deny truth to a people confessing thee needful in these dayes more than in times past Is the Sacrifice of Moloch pleasing to thee wilt thou have the lives of the poor Widows and Fatherless Children consecrated to thy self under the most miserable torture of incurable Diseases and despair How is it therefore that thou ceasest not to destroy so many Families through the uncertainty and ignorance of Physitians I fell withall on my face and said Oh Lord pardon me if favour towards my Neighbour hath snatched me away beyond my bounds Pardon pardon Oh Lord my indiscreet Charity for thou art the radicall good of goodness it self Thou hast known my sighes and that I confess that I am know am worth am able to do and have nothing that I am poor naked empty vain give O Lord give knowledge to thy Creature that he may very affectionately know thy Creature himself first other things besides himself for thy Command of Charity all things and more than all things to be ultimately in thee Which thing when I had earnestly prayed from much tiresomness and wearisomness of minde by chance I was led into a Dream and I saw the whole universe in the sight or view of truth as it were some Chaos or confused thing without form which was almost meer nothing And thence I drew the conceiving of one word which did signifie to me what followes Behold thou and what things thou seest are nothing whatsoever thou dost urge is lesse than nothing it self in the sight of the most high He knowes all the ends or bounds of things to be done thou at leastwise mayst apply thy self to thy own safety Yea in that Conception was there an inward Precept that I should be made a Physitian and that at sometime Raphael himself should be given unto me Forthwith therefore and for thirty whole years after and their nights following in order I laboured to my cost and dammage of my life that I might obtain the Natures of Vegetables and Mineralls and the knowings of their properties The mean while I lived not without prayer reading narrow search of things sifting of my Errours and daily experiences written down together At length I knew with Salomon I had for the most part hitherto perplexed my Spirit in vain and vain to be the knowledge of all things which are under the Sun vain are the searchings out of Curiosities And whom the Lord Jesus shall call unto Wisdom He and no other shall come yea he that hath come to the top shall as yet be able to do very little unless the bountiful favour of the Lord shall shine upon him Loe thus haue I waxed ripe of age being become a man and now also an old man unprofitable and unacceptable to God to whom be all Honour CHAP. III. The hunting or searching out of Sciences 1. The minde is not rational if it be the Image of God 2. The opinion of the Schooles concerning Reason 3. A Vision in a Dream concerning Reason 4. A Dialogue or Discourse of the minde with Reason 5. The chief juggle of Reason 6. The minde hath chosen understanding 7. Reason becomes suspected by reason of her juggling deceits 8. The weariness of the minde concerning Reason 9. Reason began from sin 10. What kinde of knowledge there is of the Soul being seperated from the Body 11. The minde hath withdrawn her Garments from Reason in her flight 12. Reason enters into the counsel of the minde from an abuse 13. Reason burdens the minde 14. Reason being reflexed towards it self doth produce many Errours 15. The great Art of Lullius is sifted 16. The manner of seperating Reason from it self 17. An unutterable intellectual Light 18. A feeling of the immortality of the Soul 19. Reason is not the Lamp of which Solomon speaks 20. In what part a Syllogisme dwells 21. Reason generateth a dim knowledge 22. Knowledges of the Premises are from the light of the Candle or Lamp 23. The minde is not deceived but by its own reason 24. Reason burieth the understanding 25. Reason is known in its poorest nakedness 26. The understanding refuseth the use of reason 27. Reason and Truth are unlike in their Roots 28. Reason doth not agree with the knowledge of the conclusion 29. A definition of Reason 30. The most refined Reason is as yet deceitful 31. What Reasoning and Discourse are 32. What intellectual Truth is 33. Imagination is a crooked manner of understanding 34. Bruit Beasts are discursive 35. A rational Creature for man is disgraceful 36. A true definition for a man 37. The Schooles hearken more to Aristotle than to Paul 38. An Animall or living Creature in the definition of a man belongs to corrupted nature 39. What kinde of Skeleton or dry Carcase that of reason is 40. A progress to chase after Sciences 41. Double Images or likenesses in the Soul 42. Where the Progress of the minde is stayed 43. How a truer Progress may be made 44. New understanding or the labour of wisdom 45. The understanding doth strike in or co-agree with things understood and how that may be done 46. Why there is made a transmigration or passing over of the understanding 47. The memory and will are supped up 48. The thingliness or Essence of an intellectual thought 49. How the Image of God lightens or shines all over 50. How the minde beholds the understanding under an assumed form 51. The Errour of the Rabbins concerning this State of the Soul 52. The quality of the understanding while it stands in that light 53. Why and after what manner the understanding transformeth it self 54. After what manner the understanding beholds it self 55. What intelligibility or understandingness may be 56. How the Soul understanding it self shall understand any other things 57. Whence that difficulty of understanding is 58. Why accidents cannot be comprehended by the intellect 59. The Errours of the Schooles about the dividing of the intellect 60. In things pertaining to understanding it is more noble to suffer than to do 61. Aristotle knew not a true understanding 62. The Phantasie or Imagination doth not pierce things neither in like manner do things enter into it 63. Eight Maxims touching the understanding which Aristotle knew nor 64. A dividing of the Predicament of a substance The hunting or searching out of Sciences begins from Know thy Self REason is accounted to be the life of the Soul or the life of our life But I believe that the
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.
latter the Odour onely of the ferment is snuffed in from the containing Vessels or from the contagion of the encompassing air which when they shall be rightly fitted together they are straightway formed into a Plant or Insect to wit the Air being stirred up by the Odour and ferment of putrefaction by continuance which afterwards is exalted into a ruling Archeus Even as concerning forms elsewhere Therefore seeds are made by the conception of the generater making his own Image through desires or from the Odour of the ferment which disposeth the matter to the Idea or first shape of a possible thing For even as the matter drawes from the Odour a disposition of transmutation so from the Image is afterwards made a disposition of the matter which procureth and promoteth a specificall ferment But in this the ferment differs from the seed that that is an Odour or quality of some putrefaction by continuance apt to dispose unto an alterity or successive alteration and corruption of the masse But the seed is a substance wherein the Archeus already is which is a spiritual Gas containing in it a ferment the Image of the thing and moreover a dispositive knowledge of things to be done Therefore whatsoever things do contract a filthiness or putrefaction by continuance from an Odour do also presently conceive Worms and therefore also Balsams know not how to putrifie or breed Worms For the Odour of the Herbe Basil being inclosed in the seed produceth that Herbe together with an Air that existeth within it which Odour if it be changed by a putrefaction through continuance it produceth true Scorpions For neither is it a fiction but in very deed the Herbe being bruised and depressed between Bricks and exposed to the Sun Aquitane after some dayes hath yielded unto us Scorpions But the more curious one will say That the Scorpion came from without to the sweet smell and food of the Herbe but that doubt is prevented For truly the two bricks being mutually beaten together did suitably touch each other so that they hindered the entrance of the Scorpion as well by their co-touching plainness as by their weight But a trench did contain the Herb in the middle The Ferment therefore in a voluntary seed doth after a neer manner reach to the Horizon or terme of life For neither is one thing changed into another without a ferment and a seed Which things as they have stood neglected hitherto all things have been ascribed to naked or bare heats and the healings of many Diseases have remained desperate For truly they have hitherto laboured onely about the correcting of the first qualities and the withdrawing of a feigned humour either alone by it selfe or together with the bloud but they have not a whit considered that every Disease is poysonous if not to the whole body yet at least as to a part of it and so although it be not contagious to every part yet it ceaseth not to imprint its fermentall odour from its self on the part whereon it setteth Therefore healing for the most part is perfected by Odours as also contagions being imprinted on the skin do forthwith depart from odours For because an odour doth contain the resembling mark of the ferment and from hence the Seminary cause of transmutation I conclude the virtues of things and their masculine strength to be from odours even as in magnum oportet in its place Yea if the thing it self be more fully looked into even inward Medicines as well solutive as corrective do work onely by way of an odour For hence it is that the smell of a Medicine being once put off the faculties or virtues of the same do perish For I have often seen the Quartane-Ague over-flowings of the wombe melancholy pains of the Colick c. to be seperated by Ointments alone But it is certain that not the Ointment it selfe but its odour onely creepes and acts inward For so one that hath the falling-sickness falleth by an odour yea the brain in the falling-evill which heareth not which perceiveth or feeleth not nor which if it hath fallen into the fire doth withdraw it self obeyeth onely Odours For so an Erisipelas or Anthonies fire is healed by the odour of a towel dipt in Hares bloud if it be bound on drie So wounds Ulcers and Impostumes or corrupt swellings do through odours applied by anointings wax milde or are exasperated or enraged Therefore if the seeds of voluntary living Creatures are to be born of odours and a putrefaction by continuance nor do differ in the particular kinde from others which are procreated by a conjoyning of the Sexes the seedes of all living Creatures also must needes have their specificall odours whereby there are made suitings or fittings of the Archeus to the matter and the more easie obedience for transchanging From whence at length are made diversities of impressions into any bowels Organs and powers and in the strength and life Surely specificall odours do affect the matter and subdue it into their own protection and an inclination and selfe-love ariseth from the specificall odour Next through custome there is an easie receiving and a more perfect fitting and at length a love snatcht into all desire of its selfe Therefore fragrant or sweet smelling things do delight Even like as the light pleaseth good natural inclinations so it displeaseth reprobate ones and that not because both do see alike well without or with light or have need of the use of a clear air or not but by reason of the abstracted and Almighty light whose Image the light of the day is For the spirits are delighted with an odour and light because light and odour do immediately touch and pierce them For the spirit of the bloud in one that fainteth ought to be more refreshed by the smell of roasted flesh than by a sweet smell unless the fragrancy should as soon as it toucheth the life prepare herein a purity and sweetness Odours therefore are seen to reach even unto the abstracted spirits even as a pestilent smell being not perceived by the nostrils shakes the Archeus with horrour For there are odours which do move and by their contagion imprint head-aches loathings of the stomach vomiting Coughs the hicket giddiness of the head falling evill Apoplexie bloudy-flux c. And therefore there are others also which in a co-like manner do cure the same or at least do mitigate them though they have taken a more fast root And there are some odours which choak without a perceivable astriction of the matter and some are also convulsive or pulling together and there are some which do likewise infatuate or befool as it very often comes to passe in affections of the womb For the Antients worshipped their perfumes even unto superstition whereby they would drive a man as it were into an extasie and they supposed that they thereby profited the awakened For they infected their Bed Garments Head and things that they used with their Odours
equall therefore also the heat should be alwayes alike but seeing the property of Light by it self is not but to enlighten but by accident by reason of its conjunction to make hot or make cold and the dayes are now and then cold and Clowdy unto us under the Summer Solstice Hence surely I ought to have borrowed other causes from the Blas of the Heaven There is a certain action indeed hitherto unknown to the Schooles which in the proper limit of government I have taught which operates on the objects subjected unto it almost like to abstracted spirits And even as the Soul moveth and altereth its own Organs or Instruments Thou mayest call it for me an influence so that a connexion of the Stars be moreover understood of stirring up the Gas beneath according to the lawes of directions given and fixed by the Almighty for otherwise seeing that a beam of Light may be hindered by a covering every Blas also of the Stars on us should cease if they should act on us onely by light and motion yea and in an over-clowdy Heaven no action on the waters or on the things sowen in the Earth should be beheld For diseased persons do perceive a proportionable resembling motion of the Moon and for this cause do they foretell Tempests to come because there are in the very seeds of things the co-bred and allied Lights of Heaven Which do suit themselves to the motion of the nearest or Neighbour-lights and so to the most universall Blas of the Stars For therefore hot-Houses being shut the same effects are felt con-centred or harmonious not indeed because they light on us from without but we carry a heaven within in our vitall beginnings and the Almighty hath sealed things soulified with that Pledge or Signet Notwithstanding that con-centring and conformity do signifie a connexion of suitableness with the more large superiour Heaven And moreover I may easily believe if Insects do utter the foreshewing signes of seasons that we also at the time of health might foreknow all things unless corruption had bespattered our whole nature in the ground and had left us naturally so much the more stupid and miserable than those small Beasts for sin hath withdrawn the Celestial familiarities of talk from us in diseased persons onely it hath left its marks of antient foretelling whereby we may know that the marks of things to come are left us from nothing but the misery of corrupted nature which else in her purity had made us true diviners of the Heaven no lesse than Adam knew the natures of living Creatures And although the Stars do foretell the effects depending on free and contingent causes yet I would not be understood that a gift is given to the Stars of bringing in the causality of future things for it is sufficient that in this thing they perform the office of a Preacher as it were meanes depending on the fore-knowledge of God for as the fore-knowledge of God doth not take away from man a liberty of willing or judging and his tie with the fore-knowledge doth not take away the infallibility of events nevertheless it least of all contains an unavoidableness much lesse doth the fore-telling of the Firmament induce any necessity of contingency or accidentall event on the wills part although it doth altogether happen in respect of events coupled to their free causes Truly I have oft admired at those that refuse a denouncing of the Stars in free causes as though they did therefore necessitate and did take away a liberty of willing when as in the mean time they do admit that divine fore-knowledge doth not cause any thing against free will but that it can denounce Seeing the reason of necessity in the fore-knowledge of mans glorification is far greater in the power of God than in the fore-shewing of the Stars it being of its own nature tyed to change by reason of the repentance and unstable or frail nature of sinners For it hath happened that sometimes the Stars have foreshewen onely threatnings whereby the antient mortalls through the terrour of punishment do return into the way as did the Ninivites In which case although the Stars do loose much of their certainty and strength yet they do not forsake a certainty of necessity as oft as the Signes do shew forth the fore-tellings of Events Wherefore I reckon with my self that the figures of things successive throughout Ages are decyphered in the Heavens as it were in Tables which figures they name the lawes of destiny and that not indeed by an Hebrew Alphabet as some of the Rabbins Dream but that Provinces Kingdoms and men have their Stars on which the Stage of things accidentally happening to their Subject appointed for every one of them in the revolutions of dayes is decyphered wherefore neither is it a wonder if evill Spirits shall know how to foretel many of these things And so much the lesse if to every one of us are designed good Spirits our keepers Even as the Mountain Garganus Kingdoms and Common-wealths have Spirits for their own Rulers and Defenders For so the fore-shewings not onely of the rising and period of Kingdoms are therein painted forth but also the races and ends of all men are historically figured out by their peculiar Star which are also typically decyphered Which knowledge indeed although it being known to Spirits naturally forbidden to man I do oftentimes read it by its true name the divining of the Heaven yet I finde it granted onely to the Servants or Prophets of God according to his good pleasure For your old men shall dream Dreams and your young men shall have Visions and shall prophesie for this which containeth all things hath the power of a voice it openeth future contingencies shewed by their Stars onely to whom and when it will On some in the mean time he bestoweth a figurative knowledge of the Stars even as to the wise men of the East but to others he giveth Dreams as to Joseph and the same wise men and that the same may be truly interpreted as to Joseph and to Daniel a man of desires Also there are some at this day as mad men and drunkards fore-telling things to come and not knowing what to whom in what manner or by what meanes or why they do presage For so according to Josephus Jesus a certain man foretold the destruction of the holy City with a continuall cry and for that cause he was beaten But the Apostles spaâ—â— from the Comforter with the Tongues of all Nations which were then under the Sun but by the Hebrews and Pagans they were accounted to be drunk with new Wine Although there was no new Wine then to be found in Palestina For they prophesying glorified the Lord Jesus for neither is it read that any was then preached unto or converted Therefore they were accounted to be drunk with new Wine but not with Wine because drunkenness by new Wine among the Gentiles did stir up those that kept
nature disorderly touch the limits of the heart we straightway feel the numbers of beatings and the defects of intermitting storms But if an ordinary framing of smoakinesses should be in the heart how should they be seperated from the vital Spirit and by what trench should they remain divided from each other How should the expulsion of smoakie vapours be possible which should not also abundantly power forth the vital Spirit most intimately co-mixed with themselves And so as the Schooles have nothing of pure Doctrine do they also suffer no unpolluted thing no undefiled thing without an excrementitious and dungie smoakiness do they think that the essential offices of life do indifferently belong as well to a smoakie vapour as to the Spirit of life And so hitherto also to be co-mixed How should the depression of the Arterie thus far tend unto a good end and that appointed by the Creator which together with the smoakiness should also puffe out the vital Spirit thorowly mingled with it And so shall it forthwith bring death and destruction How had not that Vmpire of things most highly to be honoured even from mans Creation made death by the contraction of his Pulses Last of all if a smoakie vapour should be the Musical measure of the Pulses as they will have them what should be that seperater who should compel the smoakie vapours rather to depart into the habit of the flesh from without than thorow the chief Arteries with a straight line into the head Or if a co-mingled smoakiness doth indifferently hasten with the vital Spirit into the bosoms of the Brain why do they not continually disturb the Family-government of the Senses what if the pressing together of the Arterie be dedicated to the expulsion of smoakie vapours for since the Arteries are thumped sidewayes so also thus far they do bestow Spirit and vital Powers on the places thorow which they passe therefore that way also they should mutually expell smoakinesses which surely should be more pernicious to all the Bowels than to the Arteries themselves because these are judged to be refreshed by fresh Air but not the Bowels If therefore they will have smoakie vapours expelled by the pressing of the Arteries together let them first shew us that smoakie vapours cannot be otherwise purged than by the last or utmost mouths of the Arteries and that with the continual safety of the Spirit that is thorowly mixt with the smoakinesses Truly the Schooles do support their defiled Doctrine by a smoakie vapour and by a blinde perswasion of sluggishness do subscribe their Genius unto Galen Seeing therefore they have been ignorant of the matter heat residence content and circle of the Urine but have passed by the efficient cause of Pulses but have fled back chiefly to heats and colds and have neglected their true ends the whole significative knowledge of healing hath remained polluted Therefore the Schools are prophesied of as it were from a three-legged stool as well in the knowledge of Diseases as in the progress and end of the same which thing I shall hereafter much more plentifully prove Therefore Endemical things do affect or stir all things whereby and which way they enter to wit the Head Breast and the Dependants on these And by how much they do prevail by so much do they operate and effect For some do imprint a spot or defilement on the part and afterwards depart Such as are misty or clowdy things stinking things things putrified by continuance c. But some do enter in the shape of a smoak and are breathed into Minerals which are again divers wayes coagulated within For some are spewed-forth spittings if they are not hurtfull But others do for terme of life toughly adhere on the walls of the pipes of the Lungs and do exercise their tyranny for their entertainment Of this sort is whatsoever doth fume out of the veins of Minerals wherefore also the Fume of Minerals by reason of its malignity an Arsenical poyson have become Sunonymalls or things of one name to wit the Arsenick and smoakie vapour and smoak of Metalls fall together or agree in one Whence are hoarsnesses tremblings of the heart faintings Asthmas Pleurisies Inflammations of the Lungs Coffs spittings of Bloud Consumptions Imposthumes full of matter c. In the mean time it is not manifest that Endemicks or things proper to people in the Countrey where they live are drawn by the Arteries neither that the same are immediately affected But if Mercury doth bring forth tremblings that at least is impertinent to the Arteries Neither also do they therefore tremble into whom Mercury is driven by Ointments But they are bladdered in the mouth throat the Uvula falls down and their teeth are ulcerated do shake or are loose and wax black their head swells and they spit stinking things greatly Also Guilders Diggers and Seperaters of Mercury because they do inspire a deadly poyson into the head and Sinnewy parts they do work or effect Endemicks in us as much as they can CHAP. XXVI The Spirit of Life 1. The Doctrine of the Antients concerning a threefold Spirit 2. They have stated whence we must begin 3. The spirit of wine doth contain onely two Chymical Beginnings flexible at the pleasure of the Artificer 4. Vital spirit out of spirit of wine 5. How drunkennesse comes 6. How the spirit of wine and Aqua vitae or Water of life do differ 7. Whatsoever is stilled onely by fire doth go back from the virtues of its former composed body 8. The ferment or leaven of the stomack and of bread differs 9. The Plurality of ferments 10. Gas being unknown hath brought forth many absurdities in the distinction of things 11. The soul is in the Arterial bloud and not in the venal bloud 12. The Venal blood is without a spirit of the Liver 13. Drunkennesse 14. The progresse of the vital spirit through its offices 15. The declared disposition of the spirit it self 16. What things are by sense reckoned to be one are severed or discerned in their effects 17. From whence the spirit of life is Balsamical 18. The spirit of Aqua vitae only by touching looseth its oylinesse 19. It is presently made a Salt 20. The whole venal blood is turned into a Salt 21. Of the life of the vital spirit 22. The light is now and then extinguished in the matter of the spirit 23. There are as many particular kinds of sublunary lights as there are of vital lights 24. The definition of the vital spirit 25. The heat of life is not the Constituter of its own moisture 26. That heat is an adjacent to life 27. The undistinction of the Schools of the effects of heat and of a ferment 28. Whence heat is Escharotical or the maker of an Eschar in us 29. Whether the animal Spirit be distinct from the vital I Have discoursed already before of the Archeus as it were the Vulcan in the seed and after what manner he may dispose
each to other by subscribing and I will subjoyn those things which singular experience under divine grace hath taught me Without controversie it belongs to meats and drinks together and in like manner to be dissolved into a Cream plainly transparent in the hollow of the Stomach I add that that is done by vertue of the first Ferment manifestly soure or sharp and borrowed of the Spleen for I have found as many suitable Ferments as there are in us digestions Again neither is it of lesse admiration that that Cream is spoiled wholly of all drawn sourness of the ferment as soon as it slides out of the stomach into the great Bowel or intestine than the power of that ferment in the stomach was wonderful That intestine is called the Duodenum from the measure of 12 fingers and it is immediately under the Pylorus or lower mouth of the stomach Truly Anatomy complains of trouble in this place by reason of the stretching out the offices of the kernels and Vessels to wit in so small a space for Instruments of so great uses and so that in the whole dissection nothing doth offer it self alike difficult For neither are there so many Vessels and Organs in vain although their use hath stood neglected For first of all when I learned that the ferment conceived in the Cream of the stomach was pernicious as well in the intestines themselves as in other parts by reason of many torments or wringings I not sloathfully noted that all particular parts have obtained particular ferments seeing there is an unexcusable necessity of these in transchanging And so I also from hence further concluded that all particular ferments do abhorre strange ones to be their Companions and the commands of strange patrons as if they were forreign thieves and such as thrust their Sickle into another mans Corn And that indeed through no vice of jealousie as though they did envie the activities of others But from an endeavour of executing the office which was enjoyned them by the Lord of things It is a wonder to be spoken that a sour cream in the Duodenum doth straightway attain the savour of Salt and doth so willingly exchange its own sharp Salt into a salt Salt No otherwise almost than as the Vinegar which is most sharp hath forthwith through red Lead put off its former sharpness and doth presently change into an aluminous sweetness Even as also the sharpness of Sulphur is forthwith changed in the Salt of Tartar But by a far more excellent vigour of transmutation that sour Cream is presently made Salt in us For truly that is made without any co-mixture of any Body even as when Vinegar waxing sweet it is constrained by the addition of the Lead or a sharp distillation is drunk up in an Alcali-Salt Because in very deed nothing is any where found which can fully answer to the force of a ferment seeing Ferments are the primitive causes of transmutations and that indeed from a former cause and therefore it must needs be that the similitudes of those drawn onely from a latter effect do very much halt Therefore our sour Cream is made salt only by a fermental and unchangeable disposition wherefore also the volatile sharpness of that Cream doth remain in its antient volatility while it exchangeth its own first obtained soureness with saltness For the volatile stillatitious sharpness of Vinegar doth not thus remain volatile as before while it dissolveth Litharge Minium or Ceruse because in dissolving it is coagulated and doth assume the form of a more fixed Salt now separable from the liquid distillation of the Vinegar which it had lately married but in dissolving it is coagulated and doth assume the form of a more fixed Salt because it is the action of a thing dissolving and dissolved but not of a transchanging Ferment which doth continually tend to a new Form on either side For indeed the Stomachs of some do more easily digest Potherbs Pulses or bread-Corns but those of others do more succesfully digest Fishes abhorre Cheese prefer water before Wine whereas in the mean time the stomach of others is a devourer of flesh or addicted to Apple to wit by reason of a specifical yea and also an appropriated property of that Ferment yea neither is it sufficient to have said that the sour Ferment of the first digestion and totall cause of the melting of the harder meats doth freely inhabit in the stomach unless that very thing be more plainly explained First of all the stomach hath not this Ferment in it self or from its own self For the digestion of the appetite and Family-government of the stomach do sometimes depart and return without extinguishing because they are not of the stomach it self Wherefore I have said that the membrane of the stomach hath all the efficacy of its digestion and government thereof from the Spleen For surely the Spleen together with the stomach doth therefore make in us one onely Duumvirate or Sheriffdom from whence indeed the Poets have erected the Golden and prosperous Kingdoms of Saturn and in pride the liberal Feasts of Saturn The Antients have smelled out some History of antient truth To wit that whatsoever things meats being digested are cast out by vomit are of a soure taste and smell yea although they were seasoned with much Sugar For soure belchings coming upon adust ones in Diseases are reckoned to presage good according to Hypocrates Hence indeed all saltnesses or seasonings and Sauces of meats for sharpening of the Appetite are sharp as the juyce of Citron Orange Pomegranate the unripe Olive Tartar Vinegar Berbery Vine-branch Mustard and likewise Salt of the Sea as it containeth a sharp Spirit in it in which respect also the Liquors of Sulphur Vitriol Salt Sal Niter c. are commended For I will not that the sharpness of any of those be consumed into increase of a specifical and appropriated ferment dwelling in the Spleen Far be it for ferments have nothing besides or out of themselves in nature which may worthily be assimilated to themselves seeing they are specifical gifts of a vital nature For therefore a ferment in what respect it is a ferment is a vital and free Secret yoaked to no other quality for it is sufficient for Sawces that sharp things do prepare meats for a more easie entrance of the ferment of the Spleen In the next place although the ferment of the stomach hath a specifical tartness yet that tartness is not the vital ferment it self but onely the Instrument thereof For the ferment of the stomach hath a sharpness as a singular companion unto it self it being also divided by properties by general kindes and Species but digestion in it self is the work of the life it self whereof sharpness is in this Shop the attaching or guarding Instrument But in the other Shops which are afterwards the life associates to it self a secondary quality on either side as a Minister of its intention to the fermental quality and suited
of name of the Philosopher despised the contradicters of his own and indeed false beginnings no otherwise than as Necromancers do require to be credited without demonstration Let eternal prayse and glory be to my Lord in all Benediction who hath formed us not after the Image of the most impure VVorld but after the figure of his own divine Image therefore hath he adopted us for the Sons of Election and co-heirs of his glory through grace Surely the condition of that similitude were to be grieved at and too much to be pitied which had hitherto subjected us under the Law of all calamities from our Creation even till now and that before sin we should onely be the engravement of so abjected a thing as if the VVorld had been framed for it self but not for us as the ultimate end but we for the VVorld whose Images indeed onely we should be to wit we ought to be made stony that we may represent Stones and Rocks And so we should all of right be altogether stony leprous c. For indeed seeing we are by Creation that which we are and a Stone should be made in us that we may represent Rocks Now death and a Disease were in us before that we departed out of the right way or fell Let Heresies depart For neither do we all suffer the falling evill neither do they who labour with it have it that sometimes we may represent Thunder or the Earth-quake or an unknown Lorinde of the Air its unconstancy But now if there were at least the least truth hereof verily he who suffers dammages according to Justice ought also to perceive the profits of the Microcosme even so that especially we ought to fly Seeing it is more rational for us sooner to shew our selves Birds than great Stones or storms of the Air or water Therefore let allegorical and moral senses depart out of nature Nature throughly handles Beings as they do in very deed and act subsist in a substantial entity and do flow forth from the root of a seed even unto the conclusion of the Tragedy neither doth it admit of any other interpretation than by being made and being in essence from ordained causes I observe also that Paracelsus Tartar being invented and introduced into Diseases hath not yet stood secure enough for truly he immingles Tartar also in the first Beginnings of our constitution and so neither doth he require the Seeds of things themselves out of Tartar but he will have Tartar to be radically intimately and most thorowly immirgled with the Seeds whereby he may finde out the Seminary of Hereditary Diseases Of which mixture he being at length forgetful calleth it ridiculous He saith that a VVoman having conceived by the Seed of man it doth separate snatch lay up Tartar into it self and that the Seed being as it were anatomized doth constitute it self the flattering Heir of that Tartar On the contrary that the Spirit of Wine is never so refined by possible circulations as that it doth not as yet contain its own Tartar in it As if Tartar were the chief Root of the Universe or an immediate Companion thereunto But I know if any forreign thing be materially in the Seed generation doth never follow Next that the Seed of Adam being materially prepared in Paradise had not generated a more perfect off-spring than that which afterwards after the fall was made in him Cain and Abel do especially prove that thing At length if Tartar should so intimately grow in Seeds that after many years from generation it should cause hereditary Diseases by materially separating it self from the whole surely that Tartar should not so soon be separable by the Magnet or attraction of a VVoman seeing if any thing be separated from the seed it is a Gas diametrically opposite unto Tartar For if the womb should separate any thing from the seed that should happen by drawing but such is the condition of drawing things that they draw for themselves and unto themselves and then cease but if the womb shall extract for separation sake there shall now be no fear of an hereditary evill because the womb hath a power of serving that which is hurtfull Lastly although Diseases shall come by degrees into the place of exercise yet they were never materially thorowly mixed with the Seed after the manner of Tartar that not Tartar not a gowty Chalk fore-existed in the Seed but that Diseases derived from the Parents do lay hid in manner of a Character in the middle life of the Archeus whose Seal doth at length under its own maturity of dayes break forth and frameth a Body fit for it self and so is made the Archeus of a Disease together with every requisite property of the Seeds For a Disease also is a natural constitution proceeding from the Seed consisting of an Archeus as the efficient cause It hath otherwise rustically been thought in the Schools that Diseasie Bodies do materially conflux unto the Generation of hereditary defects It also contains an Idiotism to exclude a Disease out of the number of natural Agents and corporal Beings seeing the matter also which they say is diseasifying is now and then obvious to the finger if it be thorowly viewed by the eyes If therefore a Disease be now reckoned among the Beings of Nature why should it not be established by a necessity of its own seed It is rude Phylosophy that Tartar had been from the beginning in the seed and that after thirty whole years it should begin the first principles of a Cream and should meditate of an Increase and as it were a particular Republique for it self and that wholly without the direction of the seed God made not death nor therefore hath he connexed Tartar unto seeds as the matter of Diseases For if so stupid errours should happen unto the seminal Archeus the Ruler of Nature hath already forsaken the Rains of the same and mankinde shall shortly go to ruine Also that saying of Paracelsus is absurd that not so much as the Spirit of Wine doth want its own Tartar For although it should be circulated for the space of an Age yet it shall never in very deed separate any Tartar For Paracelsus who never saw or found that Tartar of the Spirit of VVine will therefore be credited in his own good belief no otherwise than as elsewhere where he thinketh that water as oft as it hath ceased to be seen doth wholly depart into nothing and that something is created anew For it doth not follow a Salt is made out of the Spirit of vvine it receives a coagulation in the Salt of Tartar therefore the Spirit of vvine doth contain Tartar Because although every coagulated thing should be Tartar which it is not yet those Bodies do not contain those things which at length are made of them To wit Milk is made of Grasse of Milk Arterial Bloud and from hence the seed of man yet Grasse doth not contain a man in it self as neither
memory of the brain then a certain waking Dream with an expresse doatage from the Midriffs doth enter For neither is the doatage made with a cessation of understanding even as in the Apoplexy sleepy evil swooning c. But there is a confused uncessant propagation of Idea's formed in the Midriffs shaken like beams upward And seeing that in health conceptions are not otherwise made without Idea's in a dotage also there must needs be its own mad Idea's But altogether with this distinction That Idea's or likenesses in health are formed from a liberty of the soul but mad ones are sealmarks brought into the sensitive Soul against our will and therefore they doe also violently withdraw this out of its path So far is it that mad Idea's should be formed by the mind which knows not how to play the fool For it is manifest that Idea's doe follow the disturbances of things from whence they are made which is most clear in a mad dog and the Tarantula whose poison doth produce a proper determined and equal madness and Idea's alwayes co-like to themselves so also a strong disturbance of our imagination doth forge an image and imprint it on some filths but if not on the nourishment it self yet even on the solid and constitutive part of us whence indeed there is a continued propagation of new Idea's 〈…〉 the 〈…〉 and ampleâ—ess thereof in mad folks 〈…〉 or truly from fear contention envy ambitiâ—â— love study care shame coverousness and 〈◊〉 co-like disturbances are madnesses made And so much the more miserable are those which are stirred up without the infamy of excrements because they do either continually persevere or do return at set periods of relapses Otherwise the filthineâ—ses being consumed the blemishes sprung from thence do voluntarily cease But madnesses whether they do rage with a continuall heat or do return by intervals they at least have so defiled the spirit of the Duumvirate that they have radically imprinted the storm of furious-images received after the same manner as a blemish branded on the Young from the exorbitancy of its mother great with child is durable for term of life Indeed even as the mark of a Cherry in the Young doth every year wax green yellow and red with the fruits of the Trees So also maddish Idea's arising from disturbances have in the Spirit of the midriffs their incentive or provoking intervals of repetitions accesses of periods and imbitterings or also their uncessant fewels of continuations Which thing a Lunacisme doth cleerly expresse unto us to wit it keeping the Conjunction of that Star Neither verily is it a wonder that those madnesses have themselves in the Duumvirate in manner of a blot for the Spirit is capable of seeing in the eye not elsewhere in the whole body Therefore seeing the Duumvirate doth by a radical Ordination of the Lord continually employ it self about imaginations therefore the incidencies or chances that are brought on it ought so to vitiate the family-Government of the Imagination that it receives a re-planting of the relapses of the Idea conceived In the meane time we must take notice that a Lunatick person could not be cured but by the casting out also of the unclean spirit whether this shall be a companion of the Night-star or finally the chief effecter I likewise in all madnesse do find a great arrogancy in taking to it a certain unmortified sociall passion which doth also remain for terme of life and being transferred on modern Nephews doth shine forth Because the mad Idea hath pierced the implanted Spirit whence at length it violates the Seed being made proper or natural to it For I have the more curiously searched into many mad men and have cured not a few as well those who had become mad from great disturbances passions and other diseases as those that so becâ—me from things taken into the body and they have told me that they fell by degrees into madnesse which was wont with a foregoing sense to ascend in them from about their short â—bs or midriffs as it were an obscure Phantasie and cloudy temptation of madness wherewith it first they were pressed as it were against their will untill the Idea at length had gotten a full dominion over them But being returned to themselves they were mindfull of all things acted for they boldly or confidently complained of all things to wit that at first they were spoyled of all consequence of discourse and that they remained in the punctual plunging of one conceipt without which they thought of no other thing with grief trouble and importunity For they thought no otherwise than as if they had alwayes beheld that conceipt in a glass yet neither did they know that they did then think that or so behold it in their own conception Although they did so stedfastly think that if at length they should happen a little before the entrance and dominion of madnesse to stand they had stood for some dayes without weariness neither should they know that they did stand For it thus befell them that that Idea of foolishness which had driven away discourse by which else they had been eased from their immoderate and inordinate weighing or examining was imprinted with a dominion over the Spirit the Lieutenant to the understanding Yea that which these persons had made in themselves by a long delay continued cogitation was attained by others by a sudden and violent disturbance in a short time of delay In the mean space some complained that while it was a working they were oppressed with an unwilling and importunate Troop of thoughts as it were a Smoak being stirred up from beneath the which if they would suppresse by discourse yet a repeating of the same conceipts alike troublesome and importunate returned But others who had not power over themselves or were otherwise without comfort presently after they were diverted from a strong and fixed contemplation as oft as they would sleep or were otherwise at leisure they returned with a plausibility into their forbidden or hindred speculation yet altogether troublesome therefore rejoycing in solitarinesse they withdrew themselves from the talks of others Because conceipted Idea's as yet wanting a body have and hold themselves in respect or manner of an intellectual light and therefore they do pierce the first constitutives of us which is not likewise lawful for meats and other bodies to do Therefore they do pierce and cloath themselves with the aiery body of Spirits and by means hereof do infect the vital Forms of the parts Yet with this difference that Idea 's which were forged by the excentricity of conceits did indeed enter and more admitted more powerfully but were imprinted more slowly whereas otherwise 〈…〉 that cause madness a disease mediating â—â—d by degrees sow their own ferment on their proper objects but at length they did 〈…〉 imprint it on them as it were sealed on nature And it is a thing proper to mad folks that however naked he doth lay on
their wicked abuses who thinking that they have reached unto the bottom of Truth they boast of their most polished and sublimed wits and therefore they laugh at other good or honest persons who implore the Grace of God in Faith Hope and Charity as simple men and almost foolish and as those that roast themselves as a broiled Fish in vain And they wax daily worse and worse the Devil stirring them up Who goes about as a roaring Lyon seeking daily whom he may devour But especially the evil examples of some Preachers and Vowers of voluntary Poverty Obedience Humility and Charity do nourish Atheisms who notwithstanding are wholly without Humility Charity being altogether Ambitious Envious Couetous they over flow in Wealth they follow their own Profits that not only their Belly but they themselves wholly may be a God to themselves For truly under a Cloak of Hypoâ—â—â—ie they wrest aside the Almes appointed and to be appointed for the Poor to themselves So as their life being diverted into a Scorn of Religion hath driven for that cause even the more Judicious and also the weaker Sort into Atheism But the Holy Spirit shall at sometime Reforme this Madness of Errour on both sides who is able only to cleanse and sweep away the Intestine filth from his Church In the next place the Scripture it self entering into that evil mind it is wrested in a wrong sense and hath confirmed Atheism which otherwise ought to moue to filial obedience and due love towards God For first they argue distinctiuely and presently after they conclude copulatively for Atheism To wit they say that Bibles do profess one only and eternal Power Omnipotent and Unchangeable Therefore either the Chronicles of Bibles are the meer Fables of the Hebrewes or the God or Power which the Christians do at this day Worship or the Turks is far different from the God of the Jewes For if we know a Tree by his Fruits and a man by his Works the God also may be a doubtful God which the Christians with the Turks do adore and believe together with the Jewes as one only God remaining always Immortal he shall be to be known and believed by his own works and that such as beseeme him For as many enemies as in times past are read to have rushed on the people of Israel were overthrown by a small number and were slain through the Astonishment of their minds by Terrour or by a mutual Slaughter or killing of each other although the Camps of the same enemies were numerous like the â—o casts and the Camels of the same in numerable as the sand of the Sea shore Yet through a panick fear they run away howling from three hundred Hebrews founding Hornes and now and then they slay each other with their own Sword so as there was not one that surviued who might carry home news of all that Slaughter Yea without the help of Warriours one only Angel destroyed 180 thousand by Death and that with one only Sword For if those things are true which are them read and esteemed and the power be at this day the same which he was in times past and alike powerful he ought alike powerfully to help the Christians now his own people against their enemies by whom they are surrounded and subdued or enthralled daily For at this day publick Idolatry ceaseth which was In times past accused for the cause of overthrow and the cause of the Divine power himself is at this day managed if the Church the Spouse of the same and the Sacraments of his Body be disgracefully trampled on and the daily Sacrifice or Host be hung up and mocked with great reproach The disjunctive of both which howsoever it be taken doth at least convince that that antient Deity hath failed in manner in Being or essence and in power and that the new one or that which the Christians do now worship of which powers as well as of believers there are great discords in the whole World hostily spoiling each other is not alike powerful or alike bountiful to his faithful ones as the antient Deity was to his own Israel in times past Because at this day Angels nor Swords do no longer appear neither do huge Camps any longer kill each other with a mutual slaughter As neither being affrighted in crying out do they run away from Christians armed with Chariots on Horse-back and with fiery Engines from hence our Atheists conclude that as many as do believe an Immortal and Omnipotent Being that is a God do live deceived And from thence consequently they do further rightly inferre If any Divine power doth at length die or fail much more the mind of man which sprung from Mortal Parents For these Arguments are those which withdraw the people of Christ first unto a neglect of Divine worship and at length unto the toplof Atheism After that the Devil took notice that worshipping of Idols and a multiplicity of Starry Gods among the Judicious were despised as being loose and friuoâ—us meanes whereby he might allure people unto his own Hook he more subtilly spreads this Net of Atheism and collected a more numerous Prey which future Atheism God foretold by his Servants the Prophets The Foole hath said in his heart there is no God the Atheists are corrupted and become Abominable in Iniquities there is none that can do good God hath looked down from Heaven upon the Sons of men to see if there be one that understandeth or seeketh after Gods For the Atheist hath said in his heart if I might see God an Angel or evil Spirit Yea or the Spirit of a man I would verily believe that they were But I will not believe what I do not see or hear all things are unaccustomed unto me and therefore they seem incredible But I think with Aristotle that all knowledge and all intellective Learning is made only from a fore-existing knowledge of the Senses To whom the Devil answereth it is good for him so to remain And God faith for he that to this end desireth to see that he may believe is now guilty of sin but the spirit of Truth entereth not into a Soul guilty of sin and therefore it is not convenient that thou shouldest see those things which thou desirest to see that thou maiest believe For neither is sin a Meanes for the attaining of Faith It is a Blasphemous and wicked Judgment to have denied a God or a Devil because it was not granted to him to have seen either of the two neither whereof is to be seen unless in an assumed Form In the next place it is a rotten and childish Argument God doth not perform to Christians at this day those things which he sometimes of old performed to the Jewes therefore he is not the the same as in times past or is diminished from his antient power For truly the matter is changed not so much from the power as from the will of God But why he will not
therefore they were to perish with the Death of the fame And therefore neither are they substances although substantial or after the manner of substantial Spirits Neither therefore also of the number of Accidents even as I have elsewhere demonstrated in the Treatise of the Original of Forms Therefore the beastial Life is of a vital living Light and a neutral Creature between a Substance and an Accident which neutrality of Beings hitherto unknown to the Schools was given by the Etymology of the Father of Lights So indeed that he not only maketh the burning Light of the Sun and Splendour of the Glow-worm But also the Souls of all Soulified Creatures universally whereof himself will remain even the alone Maker and Master CHAP. XLVII The knitting or conjoyning of the Sensitive Soul and Mind 1. Alpha and Omega 2. The Body is a dead Carcass of no worth without the mind 3. The natural Phylosophy of the Author is far remote from the traditions of Aristotle 4. The understanding of Adam shews this truth 5. That by the Prayer of Abstraction the mind ought to be unfolded 6. The Author declareth his five Professions 7. From the fifth he draweth five Conclusions 8. The co-knitting of the mind as of a kernel in the Sensitive Soul as it were in a shell or husk 9. Defects are from the sensitive Soul 10. An Objection against Sin and desert 11. An answer to the aforesaid Arguments 12. By an example of the Sun 13. Corrupted nature doth alwayes want the aid of Grace 14. The mind as it is the Image of God doth endeavour as it were to create something of nothing 15. The difference of conceits to be admired in a Woman great with Child THose things which I have already above written for the immortality of the Soul being premised I forthwith for the knowledge of the Soul return to my Lord Jesus who alone is the beginning of the Fathers Wisdom the unlimiting end the Alpha and Omega or the one only Scope in whom a total clearness of all understandings is and ought to be terminated For the immortality of the mind being certainly known the Soul ought to be made known to it self as much as it can for truly seeing the Soul the governess doth continually employ it self about the Government of the Body Surely nothing can be searched out in the Body unless when by Anatomy alone I behold dead Carcasses which is worth ones labour without the knowledge of the Life or Soul yea verily I have many times been angry with my self that I would conceive of external and forreign things and in the mean time not to know who I am who dare to contemplate of forreign and sublime things But the Image being not yet understood which the mind bears before it nor who of what sort or how excellent the understanding may be And Lastly neither after what manner an intellectual act may be formed Wherefore I determined with my self that there was a far different knowledge of the Soul to be delivered to Christians than that which hath been diligently taught by the Schools of the Gentiles for look how much can be declared by words so much also the Holy Scriptures do deliver But the rest is in exercising freely obtained by Grace it self neither doth the mind admit of any other Teacher than him who hath commanded to be called the alone Father and Master Because in very deed all Learning which is drawn from a fore-existing knowledge of the Senses proceeds from the Sensitive Carnal or Earthly Soul and the which therefore the Apostle calls Divelish enlightned indeed but not by the very mind it self to wit which alone wisheth to be enlightned by its Beginning which is above nature and not from the observation of the Senses Whither the state of understanding in Adam had respect before the received learning of his Senses For he had known the essences and names of living creatures because he contemplated of these things within in his own divine image while he would and by the very aspect of viewing thereof he remembred the same But after that the sensitive Soul began to spring up whereinto the immortal mind was involved the sensitive Soul alone received the vicarship hereof but the mind being thereby laid asleep is scarce awakened at leastwise not more manifestly or lively than while it employeth it self in mental or mind-like prayer whether that comes to pass because the while it casts off from it the rains of the Sensitive Soul or next because God requiring to be worshipped only in the Spirit calls for his own delights to talk with the Sons of Men. Truly the Prayer of silence and of a profound intellectual humnity did require another manner of man than my self who am now an old man and an ignorant Physitian but seeing I have undertaken the natural explication of the mind and since the essence thingliness and natural nature of the mind is plainly Spiritual and respecting its own immediate and supernatural Beginning I ought by all means to declare and explain the Doctrine of the mind by its exercises that a man may be bewrayed by his Works Therefore I beg and deserve pardon if I shall not declare the thing according to the dignity of the matter Divine goodness shall supply my defects by some other more worthy thâ—â— my self But before that I proceed let the reader know that hitherto I have not found a writer which hath Meditated any thing concerning the more inward emptiness or voidness bottom and fabrick of the mind or of the Creation Beingness Truth or Thingliness of its Idea but they have rather cast or hung up this same Doctrine behind their Back as it were irregular unknown and desperate and through admiration only elevated into a dark Smoak neither have they looked any longer behind them as neither within them For first of all I will discover my Errors committed by thinking and will declare the Circumstances which have sometime deceived me For I knew first of all by Faith that we have an Immortal Mind therefore exceeding any the Powers of nature because it is that which was inspired into Adam immediately by God the same Mind also at this day is inspired into the young by the same Prince of Life Because it is that in which the Kingdome of God hath of its good pleasure established its seat and so that he enlightens every man that cometh into this World and he hath enriched it with his own free gifts of the God-head and by his presence hath excluded the evil spirit To wit for which mind he vouchsafed to die but not for the fallen Angell I knew in the second place from the knowledge of nature that bruit Beasts have Souls more or less prudent and quicke-sighted yet all frail ones and those which hasten into nothing and that those do perish no otherwise than as a Blast as the light of a Candle is extinguished and departs into nothing And therefore that the Souls of Beasts are
but afterwards as it were that of a burning Drop Being increased it afterwards stirs up Pains Burnings and at length oft-times Swellings For then the sharpness being conceived in the Spirit by a spiritual Fermentation to wit by an active alteration defiles the Spermatical or seedy Glew which is conjoyned between the Ligaments and the Bones I have already before demonstrated that the Character of the Gowt is of its own disposition bred to infect and to be transferred with the seed to wit even as Mercury infects the Mouth and Teeth but the Spittle of a mad Dog the brain as it were in an Inn in which it oft-times lurketh for a long Race of years Wherefore by virtue of a co-resemblance it is agreeable to truth that the Character or Impression of the Gowt doth originally respect the Seeds Notwithstanding seeing nature is wholly careful of the Sex and a diligent preserver of the particular kinds to be preserved and a saver thereof she peculiarly what she can forsees that that Character doth not infect the Species or that it do not fall on the Stones wherefore she could not at least prevent that in respect of its disposition it doth not Immediately infect the liquor next to the Seed which Paracelsus calls the Sunovie being plentifully powred forth between the chests of the Ligaments and the co-touchings of the Bones But at the very moment of Copulation the Character of the Gowt otherwise sleeping in the Spirit the Archeus being stirred up under so great a stirring of Lust is con-tempered with the Spirit together with the seed plainly after an irregular manner because nature being then unable to govern the Rains could not restrain but that the Poyson of the Character doth fermentally infect the Lustful seed Therefore seeing the Seed or Character of the Gowt doth regularly defile the Spermatical or Seedy parts therefore as speedily as may be the Sunovie which no where happens alone but where two Bones do mutually touch each other Hence is the place or Nest of the Gowt in the Joynts which things seeing they ought to succeed by causes already constituted nature being at least needy of her own preservation doth not suffer the imprinted Spirits to infect the Sunovie but in places far distant from the heart For from hence the name of Podagra or Gowt of the Feet and of Chiragra or Gowt of the Hands is borrowed But at length when as the Disease hath gotten strength in going and nature hath lost hers the Gowt molesteth more-nigh places also Therefore the sharpness of the Gowt being conceived is in the Spirit as also in the seed potentially without an actual tartness to wit even as the seed of a Pear doth not shew forth the tast of the Fruit but while the time of ripening is urgent or at hand a sharpness is actuated in the Spirit and desiles this which in a little space after defiles the Sunovie with its own Ferment no otherwise than as the smell of a soure Earthen-pot doth a little after curdle new Milk poured into it But in the mean time while these things happen within the whole Archeus of the body is altered in himself For many Gowty persons have known that they did foretel to themselves a fit at hand from the Excrement breeding between their Toes its being changed which thing surely doth not bewray so much the defluxion of a Humour as the very altering of the Sweat and Latex it self The Sunovie therefore from whence or what time it once falls down or becomes sharp cannot but provoke Paines wherefore by reason of a greater and less sharpness do the heats greatnesses or cruelties properties of the Gowt only differ But the Sunovie is a certain cleer Muscilage or slymie juyce such as drops out of the shanks of a killed Calfe when his feet are cut off but a sharpness being presently conceived the Sunovie waxeth clotty in the form of Cheese and becomes thick And so also it is thereby rendred unapt that according to a wonted Tenour of health it can wholly exhale without the residing of a dead Head And hence the degenerate diseasie Birth becomes an unhappy mother of knots for then it suffers a puffing away of the watery parts the remainders of the thick and hardened Sunovie being retained Hence are those monsters Lime and Chalke Therefore that sharpness is the cause of the pain but the pain is the cause of the flowing forth of the neighbouring venal bloud which is good and guiltless But the afluxion of bloud is not a defluxion from the Head or Liver sent thither thorow straight passages of wayes impossible to the understanding And although it may deceive the unwary senses and they may seem to feel a defluxion from aboue yet they are only the deceitful Judgments of the senses even as when the Tooth akes an increase seemeth to raine down to the payning causes on the whole side of the Head no otherwise than as at the pain of the cleaving of the Skin at the roots of the Nailes of the Fingers or a White-flaw a Kernel appears under the Arm-pit For by a local Remedy the pain of the Teeth departs or it being pulled out by the roots ceaseth and the Kernel vanisheth when as the Finger is eased of pain This is the original root of the Gowt this is the manner of its making the which surely is confirmed by things helpful and hurtful Not indeed that I do approue of that Maxime shameful in it self or that I will have curative judgments to be drawn from thence But errors being sometimes admitted do instruct Judicious erring persons who are willing to be wise in Charity as good Remedies do confirm good operators And therefore whatsoever begins a subtile sharpness in the Spirit doth ripen increase or promote the same that also Spurs on the Fits of the Gowt of which sort are white sharpish Wines containing little of Wine and much of Vinegar being the more largely drunk and likewise whatsoever things are corruptives of the liquor Later as Asparagus c. In like manner also whatsoever things do take away sharpness out of the Spirit of life and the Latex before the fit being inwardly taken or outwardly applyed do remove prevent or preserve from the fit at leastwise they do mitigate the pains and hinder the knots But in curing the Gowt the sharpness produced is not to be regarded which is instead of a fruit and of a product but we must meditate after what manner the Seminal oâ—seedy Character of the Gowt may be abolished out of the Spirit of Life The which otherwise remaining nothing is done which is worthy a choice Physitian For neither doth every Letter-Carrier come unto the Caskets of the vital Spirit but only the Embassadour who is a Friend And therefore the purging by the Coralline secret kills the Gowt in its seed But that Arcanum is not the Colour or Tincture of Coral as the rout that are ignorant of Chymical matters do
as it was naturally put into the Angelical Nature So also it is left to the Devil Indeed he hath a native Blas whereby he raiseth up Storms of the Air and ragings of the Sea as oft as God permitteth him For First of all the Divel is so evil and our Enemy that he cannot will good even in the least Wherefore neither hath he a free will of willing in evil things But in good things none but that which is against his will and constrained for a Being one true good are convertible terms Therefore in a contrary sense that which appears to be which is false evil and manifold are the properties of Satan and by consequent from his own will or beck and natural power he cannot so much as operate any thing freely and without the permission of God or without a free co-operation of the mind of Man For the Dog of Hell is bound neither can he operate on Forms the Bodies of these or their properties unless he take to him the mind of Man as a co-operatress with him under whose feet things more inferiour than it self are placed In this respect therefore he miserably circumvents his bond-slaves by deciet and binds them in a Covenant at least-wise that so they may the rather depart from God as if for a reward of the stricken covenant he were perfectly to teach them secrets whereby under certain and set Forms feigned Words wicked Invocations Execrations Conjurations and Wishes or Vows in the next place by Lines Figures Marks Seals Characters Numbers Hours Moments Vegetables yea and the most filthy things and the Striffes Consecrations Refinements Defilements of all of these and such his vain and void trifles they were to effect things incredible And indeed all evils to the despite of God and the destruction of Men. By which means after their Covenant he easily infatuates his own and befooles them through a rash belief of him Because they are those whom he fully possesseth and unto those he committeth his commands For he perswades these who have renounced divine Grace of whatsoever he will and promiseth that he will perform Mischievous or wicked Acts by strength or faculties which he feigneth to be natural or proper unto himself For he snatcheth his Imps into the detestable adoration of a Hee-goat as if the government of all things stood in his Power and that he alone could confer the gift of the working of Miracles Because from the Beginning he was alwayes a lying Impostour In the mean time that most unworthy or blamable Cerberus doth only work meer deceitful Mockeries and only empty Juggles For otherwise if those means in themselves prescribed by him should have in themselves any force of operating which he boasts of among his own from a natural necessity also alwayes every where in every ones Hand and equally they should effect the same without reflexion upon a Covenant or Contract and vain Circumstances Neither is that argument of value Satan prescribeth vain superstitious Words to his and those altogether impotent in themselves therefore the whole effect of those things which happen unto those that are Enchaunted are from Satan alone For truly although the means are in themselves vain and of no moment power or efficacy such as are unsignificative Words Figures Characters Numbers Gamahen Talismannicks Adorations with all the superstitious exercise of vain Observations yet other operative means besides do concur which are not of Satan Seeing that the Devil hath not an Ideal Semminal and Sealing power as Man hath from the dignity of the divine Image whereby the Bruits c. are put under his feet Therefore the Devil borrows these mental and operative Idea's of Witches the which he can seal in Filths and Poysons He therefore being cursed and wholly most miserable and forsaken by the Grace of God is by himself no effecter of the same Works unless he be holpen by the Soul of his bond-slave 1. Because he hath not a formative faculty of an operative Idea 2. Neither hath he an immediate touching of access and much less an entrance unto formal Lights whereon indeed nevertheless all the properties of things are inscribed by a figurative Idea that he may hereby act 3. Yea neither hath he any free power of acting and much less unto the hurts of those who do not obey him 4. For he being wholly most proud would not ask a Permission from God that he may hurt the Man that doth not obey him knowing that the infinite goodnesse will never grant this thing unto him Although he now and then may use the evil Spirit as an executioner as in the history of Job For we must note that thing seriously in this place that in Hell and among all the Damned there is no honour or sanctifying of the divine Name but a continual cursing For the Dead shall not praise thee O Lord nor all them which go down into the Pit Yet in or at the name of Jesus the knees of all the inferior Citizens are bowed To wit as oft as God makes use of the evil Spirit as an Executioner so often that is enjoyned him by a command from above of trembling at the name of Jesus and indeed that command being heard the whole infernal Pit doth unwillingly bow its knees For otherwise that which is wont to be said that the Devil by the permission of God doth hurt Man That must be understood to be granted unto him by the aforesaid command of God as to a Tormentor or by a mutual operative natural power which God hath conferred on his own Image But the Devil himsef the most miserable of Creatures can do nothing of himself but will Evil Because whatsoever departs from God that is Evil and therefore cannot but will Evil because he that by willing hath departed from God ought originally to be Evil in his will it self Therefore the Devil is by himself wholly unable for every Fabrick of interchangable courses or alterations in Nature because he is uncapable thereof And by consequence he hath need for operation to beg natural agents or means which in their property have a free power which he wisheth to apply Yea neither indeed is he therefore able absolutely and immediately to administer them but by the Souls and Hands of those that are bound unto him To wit they reaching by the gift of Creation to the Light of Forms immediately subjected unto them And therefore the first or chief operation by Witches doth tyrannize on herds and flocks of Cattle Indeed Satan making use of that free and borrowed power requires anothers co-touching that he may connex the Idea's formed and begged and borrowed of his Client in a medium or mean and so that by anothers force he may beam them forth into Formes subjected to Man And so the lying Impostor dissembles his work and for it requires adoration which work is plainly humane and that wherein the Mocker himself doth least of all operate Truly otherwise the condition of Mortals
the tune of his own Beak and every one talketh of the Faires according as he hath profited in them From what hath been before mentioned in sundry places it now plainly appeareth 1. That the Sanation or sound Healing of a secondary Disease is vainly intended unless the primary Disease which nourished it be first brushed off and trodden under foot 2. That then the Healing of a secondary Disease is conversant onely in a removal of the Product 3. That Primary Diseases do continue even after the generation of a Secondary Disease if its Idea's do issue from the implanted Spirits 4. That Primary Diseases do also voluntarily cease whose Idea's have failed in their first on-sets 5. That the Causality Succession and Propagation of a Disease being hitherto unknown the Healing of the same hath remained unknown 6. That the Schooles have esteemed Secondary Diseases yea and the Products of Diseases to be the Causes of the same and therefore they have directed the whole endeavour of Healing unto later things or to the Effects 7. And that they had more rightly proceeded by taking away of the Product than by the contrarieties of Qualities and they had sought out due Remedies which their virtue remaining safe would have been able to pierce unto the places affected 8. That whatsoever hath happily succeeded under healing that is to be ascribed to conjecture and the goodnesse of Nature alone because they being seduced by false perswasions have wandered about Distemperatures Humours Catarrhes and Tartars by Solutives not drawing forth Electively but putrifying every thing furiously 9. That they have learned some Remedies from Old Women or Countrey-Folk which besides the Maxims of the Schooles might cure diseasie Idea's by a specifical gift 10. That they have accounted as many primary Diseases as did persist by their own Ferment to be uncurable and those that did not transplant their Vigors into their Products For primary Diseases do for the most part respect the transmittings of seminal causes in Idea's and disturb the action of Government From whence not only the framing of Diseases but also the Critical or judicial freeings of the same do issue of their own accord by unwonted expulsions wandring conspiracies labours anguishes and convulsive assaults especially if they subsist in the matter by a Seed and an efficient Ferment to wit by which signs they distinguish themselves from the family of Symptoms But I have confirmed the Doctrine of primary Diseases above by hereditary ones unequal strength the torture of the Night and silent Diseases the which indeed do not only presuppose the necessities of Idea's but moreover also primary Diseases Truly Nature hath no less variously sported in defects than in integrity but also by a Systeme of the Universe she being every-where conformable to her self hath seemed to walk up and down that also in things of a different kind she may every where represent her self in a proportionable agreement I have now done as much as I promised in the beginning of the work I have demonstrated the errors of the Schools in natural things so far as they concern the faculty of Healing and that they have been more ignorant of nothing than of Principles Means and Ends to wit the Essence and Causes manner of proceeding and making the means of Preparing and Remedies Of things retained which are assumed because they are by themselves known I have said something Now I must come unto the Products of Diseases which are inbred domestical and degenerated within our Cottages For indeed our Retents do offend in abounding quality intimateness of place or in their strangeness or long continuance of delay and because they have crept into anothers harvest through a vice of the distributive Faculty therefore I call all of them things transplanted or transmitted But other Retents I call transchanged ones for their distinction sake from things assumed Truly things retained whether they are transchanged or indeed transmitted yet they are alwayes made remarkable by an intrinsecal Idea I say by a diseasie Being from whence they have received an hostility of degeneration Wherefore the root also of a primary Disease doth for the most part adhere unto them and therefore they do imitate and represent the same as they are the Products of it But because all the particular Digestions do first of all contribute their own Citizens to wit the nourishable Liquors unto home-bred Retents which were prepared in their Kitchins and those otherwise ordained for the solid substance of our Body Therefore domestical things retained have degenerated from the scopes of Nature But I do as yet divide home-bred Retents that some may be the dungs of things assumed which I call Reliques or they are things which from a good Citizen have degenerated into a Traitour From whence indeed I have drawn things transchanged and transmitted for they are those which do descend from the vice of the Digestions and Ferments to wit from a universal offence of the inflowing Spirit or a particular errour of the implanted Spirit through a voluntary defilement of a wantonizing Idea produced by humane or Archeal Passions Also the Relique of things Assumed Inspired and Suscepted not unfrequently bringing aide hereunto Therefore Reliques next after things assumed do offer themselves unto the publick view or exercise of Products For although things taken into the Body and things there left are not the Products of primary Diseases yea do often produce primary Diseases yet I have accustomed my self to reckon them among secondary Diseases and Products But not that I am ignorant that they could have no relation unto a primary Disease as a Parent but I refer them among Products by reason of their strict affinity with those where we must again seriously admonish that it is an abuse to distinguish intimate Causes from Diseases For truly the thingliness of causality is obscured if it be never so little banished from the rank of Diseases For external Causes as long as they are external are only occasions by accident but after that they are admitted and transchanged by the force of Digestions although they may seem internal Causes yet they become not Diseases but occasions by themselves which disturb the Archeus stir up an Idea and defile the material part of the Archeus with an Ideal Seal For so things assumed do wander into Reliques or things left and do lay up their troublesome remembrance into the Archeus that he may presently tumult and stir up a Disease his off-spring for they are not Products although they dissemble the marks of Products but they leap froth abroad under the name of Reliques For if by a proper vice of malignity they shall violate the right of their Inn they are for the most part cast out crude half digested and badly seasoned by Vomit Stool Urine yea and now and then do by an Imposthume pass over into things transmitted From whence are Paines Gripings of the Bowels Un-concoctions Fluxes Lienteries Sranguries and Miseries of the Parts through which they
Fall Again neither do these Words sound of a Curse that the Woman should be thenceforth obedient and subject to her Husband although therein the intent of the Creator doth clearly appear to wit that he had appointed the Woman to be the head top and ultimate Creature above the Man But now by reason of a double Sin that she ought to be subject to her Husband But that signifies rather a deserved Punishment than a Curse Even as a Superiour is not cursed who is laid aside for an Errour committed But whereas it is said In Pain shalt thou bring forth thy Sons the Text expresly confirmeth the mistery of the Paradoxal Position For from thence it manifestly appears 1. That Eve was not created nor appointed as that she had brought forth in Pain Wherefore this Message is not decleared unto her for a Curse But there is set before her eies how much Calamity she had caused unto her self that she should hereafter conceive and bring forth after the manner of Bruits in Pain For it is not to be doubted but that Bruit-beasts are not guilty of Sin yet do they bring forth in Pain Not indeed that they have sinned in Adam as their Father or that they are partakers of his Sin because they had brought forth in Pain whether Adam had sinned or not Neither also is it agreeable with divine goodness that Bruit-beasts should bear an undeserved Punishment while as they from a Faculty of Nature and from an appointment of Creation do bring forth in pain 2. If Bruits bring forth in Pain a likenesse of Conception and bringing forth in Bruits and in Woman after the Fall is denoted which Likeness seeing it was not before the Fall therefore this Text strengthens the Position 3. If Eve had not eaten the Apple and consequently from the Apple the concupiscence of the Flesh from the tickling of a corrupt Seed verily she had brought forth without Pain Where the Text promiseth a Virginity in conceiving and bringing forth and so a perpetual Virginity appointed in propagating To wit that she had conceived and brought forth her Womb being shut For what other thing is this than that which others think to be the Curse of Eve is in very deed only a commemoration of the good lost through the copulation of Man of Seed and of the concupiscence of the Flesh in the Flesh of Sin after the manner of Bruits henceforeward The hope I say was lost of conceiving by the holy Spirit after that she had conceived by the will of Man as every Mother in Sins doth For otherwise if Death had been of the punishment of a broken Law and not from the concupiscence of the Flesh there should be every day as many new Deaths as there are Transgressions or God should not make so much account of his Commands of the Decalogue as of the Admonition of the caution or avoiding from the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil For he would not have those Laws to be alike seriously observed which he would not have to be chastised with an equal Punishment Therefore it being as yet supposed that there had been a Law concerning the denyed eating of the Apple even as there is a Law of forbidden Worshipping of Idols Adultery c. But these Laws are not punished with a continued unpurgeable Impurity on Posterity in such a manner as the opposition of that eating is From hence therefore it most easily appeareth that original Sin was not so much from the force of disobeying a command as from the effect of a defiled divine Generation being changed into a beast-like one For else there is not an equality of distributive Justice nor therefore a conformity in the goodness of God whether we have respect unto the ingratitude of our first Parents or next unto the disobedience against a Law Because the first disobedience should pay a punishment derived on all even on the innocent Posterity rather than any tenths or hundreths afterwards and than innumerable and far more great or haynous Sins Indeed I think that there is the same rule of Justice with the same Lawgiver of every command preceptively and defensively given and pronounced that the breaking thereof ought alwayes to draw after it an equal Fault neither therefore to be punished in all the Posterity and those that are innocent and then that none of Mortals nor any one of them had been sufficient for the original punishments of their Ancestours and a hundred-fold of Deaths to wit if Death had taken its original effectively and immediately from the opposing of a Law or the unchangeable God had not appointed his future Commands to be alike observed as at first if Death should not have its root in Nature the application of which root had been onely from man Therefore If Death should be immediately from God alone from the curse of Sin Now God had made Death and so by Faith we should believe a Falshood In the next place if Death had proceeded from a Curse and had been from a supernatural Root So also neither should our Death find natural Causes in us or our Death should not be of the same kinde with the Death of Adam Yea which is far more absurd our Death should not proceed from the same primitive Beginning from which the Death of our first Parents began And by consequence our Death should not be the effect of original Sin And so unless Death do happen from elsewhere than from the punishment of a Law and the curse of Sin that is unless the Adamical or Beast-like Generation of the Flesh from the Concupiscence of the Flesh and its Copulation doth naturally containe Death in it like unto Beasts in very deed Innocent Children should pay an undeserved Punishment Again if Death should be immediately caused from a Curse or from Sin should not the Text unfitly say On the same Day thou shalt die the Death while as it should not say Presently in the same Moment thou shalt die For a Curse doth not want twenty four hours that it may operate as neither likewise doth Sin require an interval for the Guilt and deserved Punishment of the same which was expresly seen while an impure Man endeavouring to vindicate the reeling Cart wherein the Arke of the Covenant was carried from a fall payed the Punishment of his boldness by sudden Death But seeing Death consisted in the procreation of forbidden Seeds and of the Concupiscence of the Flesh it presupposeth the eating of the Apple and its Digestion And therefore those Words On the same Day thou shalt die the Death or shalt be made Mortal also thou shalt suffer punishment by Death doubled in thee and thy Posterity do strengthen the proposed Truth of our Position But there is no original Sin accounted of from the first afterwards or unremissibly derived on all Posterity but that which from the eating of the Apple thenceforth defiled the whole Nature because it tranferred the Propagation of mankinde on the Flesh
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
not for Man a fatherliness of his Mind but in God alone and therefore his original Generation and Propagation was reserved in the Power of God the Creator And especially while as its knowledge of it self is wanting to the Mind which is immortal and infinite in Duration whereby it may represent it self to it self to wit that it may decypher a sealed similitude of it self in the Seed Therefore indeed neither can the immortal Mind ever bring the Seed of Man unto that which it self shall never have in it self to wit out of it self to decypher the Image of God For Man is so made the Image of God that he is the cloathing of the Deity the Sheath of the Kingdom of God that is The Temple of the holy Spirit Man therefore being essentially created into the Image of God after that he rashly presumed to generate the Image of God out of himself not indeed by a certain Monster but by something which was shadowily like himself with the Whoredom or Ravishment of Eve he indeed generated not the Image of God like unto that which God would have therefore unimitable as being Divine but in the vital air of the Seed he generated Dispositions careful at some time to obtain a sensitive discursive and motive Soul from the Father of Lights the Fountain of all Paternity yet Mortal and to Perish into which nevertheless he of his own goodness inspires ordinarily the substantial Spirit of a Mind shewing forth his own Image And so that Man in this respect endeavoured to generate his own Image not but after the manner of Bruit-Beasts by the copulation of Seeds which at length should obtaine by request a soulified Light from the Creator and the which they call a sensitive Soul For from thence hath proceeded another Generation conceived after a beast-like manner mortal and uncapable of eternal Life after the manner of Beasts a bringing forth with Pains and subject to Diseases and Death and so much the more sorrowful or full of misery by how much that very Propagation in our first Parents dared to invert the intent of God Therefore the unutterable goodness forewarned them That they should not tast of that Tree And otherwise he foretold That the same Day they should die the Death and should feel all the Root of Calamities which accompanies Death Deservedly therefore hath the Lord deprived both our Parents of the benefit and seat of Immortality To wit Death succeeded from a conjugal and bruital Copulation Neither remained the Spirit of the Lord with Man after that he began to be Flesh Furthermore because that defilement of Eve shall thenceforth be continued in the propagating of Posterity even unto the end of the World From hence the Sin of the despised fatherly Admonition and natural Deviation from the right way is now among other Sins for an impurity through an inverted carnal and well nigh bruital Generation and is truly called Original Sin that is Man being sowed in the Pleasure of the Concupiscence of the Flesh shall therefore alwayes reap a necessary Death in the Flesh of Sin But The knowledge of Good and Evil which God placed in the disswaded Apple did contain the Concupiscence of the Flesh that is an occult forbidden Conjunction diametrically opposite unto the State of Innocency which State was not a State of Stupidity because he was he unto whom before the Corruption of Nature the Essences of all living Creatures whatsoever were now made known according to which they were to be named from their Property and at their first sight to be essentially distinguished And moreover S. Hildegard unto the Moguntians or those of Mentz saith Adam was formed by the Finger of God which is the holy Spirit in whose Voice every sound before he sinned was the sweetnesse of all Harmony and of the whole musical Art So that if he had remained in the State wherein he was formed the weaknesse of mortal Man could not have been able to bear the virtue and shrilness of his Voice But when the Deceiver of him had heard that Man from the inspiration of God had begun to sing so shrilly and that hereby to repeat the sweetness of the Songs of the heavenly Country he counterfeited behold how far now Man hath departed from thence with his hoarse Voice the Engines of Craft seeing his wrath against him was in vain he was so affrighted that he was not a very little tormented thereby And he alwayes afterwards busily endeavoured by the manifold Devises of his wickednesse to invent and search out that he may not only cease to interrupt or expel divine praises from the Heart of Man but also from the mouth of the Church These things she It is a devoted Opinion of mystical Men That Birds do sing Praises unto God I under a humble correction do think otherwise For if that should be true they should sing all the year neither should they cease assoon as the lust of generating is fulfilled which argument is serviceable unto our Position For truly seeing the Males only do sing but not the Females That from a common Nature Adam was the more leacherous and incontinent and from his Sex more lustful than Eve whose Chastity therefore being beloved of God seemeth proper to that Sex Man therefore through eating of the Apple attained a knowledge that he had lost his radical innocency and that instead thereof he had made an empty exchange of the sordid Concupiscence of the Flesh For neither before the eating of the Apple was he so dull or stupified that he knew not or did not perceive himself naked but with the effect of shame and brutal Concupiscence he then first declared that he was naked For the sacred Text is every where so chaste that the most High would not name the Concupiscence of the Flesh it self at least-wise by a proper name yea nor also accuse of it while he forewarned of the eating of the Apple for a necessity of Death that that brutal Concupiscence might not be made known unto Man even so much as by name And therefore neither would he have Concupiscence to be named in Genesis by reason of the prompt perfidiousness of that People but he called it innocency lost from a gotten shame the which he would afterwards have to be weighed in the Church by its own circumstances And so that therefore he presently translated Adam after his Creation from the Earth into Paradise and for that Cause also he formed the Woman in Paradise least she whom he had made and appointed to remaine a Virgin should behold the copulation of Bruit-beasts in the Earth For in the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth and every Creature contained therein But he made and formed those things materially by the passive and commanding Word Let it be done to wit he spake that Word and all things were created But in six dayes space after he made the Forms of things created and all things were orderly made into the
Woman doth seminally conceive by Man besides the first intent of Creation Wherefore if Man were created that at least-wise from a foreknowledge of the consequence he might supply the Place of the Evil Spirits in Heaven he ought either to be created in a great Number at once from the Beginning or Successively If therefore They which are to be saved cannot be born by the will of Man of Flesh or of Blood and there was one only Man created therefore all Posterity ought by a successive Continuation to be born in Paradise of Women alone to wit the Birth-place of the Woman and of necessity to be Conceived from God and to be Born of a Woman a Virgin unto whom he afterwards Gave Power to be called the Sons of God and to be made with an exclusion of the Will of Blood Flesh and Man which Chastity alwayes pleased God doth please him at this Day and will please him alwayes And whatsoever hath thus once pleased the fountain of Chastity can never again displease him And so that Onely those that are of a clean Heart shall see God and shall be called his Sons wherefore the Prophet singeth Create in me a clean Heart Oh God! such as Adam had before the Fall And renew a right Spirit of the chaste and antient Innocency by the regeneration of the Spirit and Water in my Bowels Because my Bowels being now impure have contracted a Spirit of Concupiscence of the Flesh of Sin For indeed Man as long as he was Immortal and Pure Saw thy Face oh Lord and thou talkedst with him which Face afterwards Man shall not see and live But after that Man defiled his Bowels through Concupiscence thou casteth him from thy Face out of Paradise I pray thee therefore that thou cast me not from thy Face and that thou take not thy holy Spirit of Chastity from me Restore unto me the Gladness of the Regeneration of thy Salvation and with thy principal Spirit the Comforter do thou confirm me against the inbred Impurity of the Flesh For truly I shall teach the Unrighteous thy wayes of thy Regeneration the which among the hidden things of thy Wisdom thou hast manifested unto me and the Wicked shall be converted unto thee At leastwise free me from Bloods from the Concupiscence of the Sexes Thou who art the God of Chastity the God of Salvation as of new Regeneration and my Tongue shall exalt thy Righteousness and thy just Judgment whereby thou hast condemned Man who was born of Bloods and by the will of Man in the Concupiscente and of the Flesh of Sin as he hath made himself uncapable of thine Inheritance For loe in Iniquities aforesaid I was conceived and in Sins hath my Mother conceived me although under a lawful Marriage Bed Therefore I confess that besides the primitive scope of the Creator an Adamical Generation hath arisen into natural Death and is devolved into original Sin The Woman therefore as she hath conceived after a bruital manner she also began to bring forth in Pain The Male also in the Law was only circumcised as for a mystery of the deflowring of Eve Yet both Sexes ought to expiate the Offence committed in their privy Parts to wit whereby they had offended which thing although it be chastly insinuated in the Text Yet that was covered before Israel who were otherwise most ready for all Perfidiousness to wit that Godmight not seem a contemner of Matrimony instituted after the Fall The Woman therefore was not circumcised and yet she was saved but not the Pain of Child-birth or the Obedience of her Husband had expiated Original Sin in her For both a single young Virgin dying was saved as also a barren Wife Therefore from hence is manifested the mystery to wit that Eve so much as she could resisted the Insolencies of Adam and was by force deflowred in Paradise So that also our first Parents were Murderers of all their Posterity through Concupiscenc So also the eldest Son was a Brother-Killer For the fore-skin being taken away did of necessity cause a Brawniness of the Nut of the Yard whereby indeed he might be made a Partaker of the less Pleasure Concupiscence and Tickling whosoever should desire to be ascribed or registred among the Catalogue of the beloved People of God The Rabbins also confess That Circumcision was instituted by reason of unclean Virtues walking in a circuit The which I interpret that the diabolical and primitive Enticements of Concupiscence unto Mortality were not hid to the Hebrews and that at leastwise in an obscure sense the Sin arisen from thence was insinuated Also illegitimate Persons were in times past driven from the Temple and Heaven and those who should be born of an adulterous Conception because they did wholly shew forth an Adamical Generation but those who were born of a lawfull 〈…〉 Bed were as yet Impure until that the fore-skin being taken away they might seem to renounce the Concupiscence of the Flesh And in this respect they represented in a shadow also those that were to be renewed from far by the Spirit of God and the laver of Regeneration Moreover the very Word of Truth doth profesly confirm the Position 1 John 3. Except any one be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God B. Except any one be born again of Water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God C. That which is born of the Flesh is Flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit D. The Spirit breatheth where it listeth Thou hearest the Voice thereof but knowest not from whence it may come or whither it may go E. So is every Man who is born of the Spirit F. If I shall speak unto you of Earthly Things and ye believe not how shall ye believe if I tell you of Heavenly things G. None hath ascended into Heaven but he who descended from Heaven H. And as Moyses exalted the Serpent in the Wilderness So it behoves the Son of Man to be exaltâ—d Christ Jesus descending from Heaven took not on him the Flesh of Sin by Adamical Generation or by the will of Man but he receiving the form of a Servant was made into the Likeness of the Sons of Adam being found in Habit as a Man Yet being Adamical was a true Man such as Adam was being newly created But he being made into the similitude of an Adamical Man emptied or humbled himself taking on him the form of a Servant But he was not made a Servant or Impure But in this glad tydings he denieth the Vision of God or the sight of the Kingdom of God and in b. an entrance into the Kingdom of God For not that the Glory which makes blessed may be seen without entring into Heaven or the same thing is twice spoken in vain or that a. doth require another new birth than b. but a. contains a denyal of participating of the Heavens for the Souls of the Dead before the Resurrection
changed for those only shall rise again changed who shall rise again glorified in the Virgin-Body of Regeneration which change the Apostle understood because that He who is not born again cannot enter into the Kingdom of God And therefore He that shall rise again being not born again by consequence also shall not be changed from his antient Being if he shall rise again from Death neither therefore also shall he have entrance unto Gods Kingdom because by the new Birth the whole Man is made Spirit And therefore he which shall rise again from the new Birth shall rise again in a spiritual Nature Otherwise He that is born of the Flesh and not born again of the Spirit shall hear indeed the Voice of him that is born of the Spirit but shall not know from whence it may come or whither it may go This indeed is the changing of Bodies into Spirit and the change of Bodies in the Resurrection or it is the Glorification of those that are to be saved after the Resurrection But other Sins were expiated indeed through Repentance with the victory and triumph of the Lamb but the loss of that Virginity and primitive Purity doth without Regeneration reserve an Eternal Spot of Impurity and Uncapacity No otherwise than as a virginal conservation and Integrity of the re-born Faithful gives unto Virgins that are born again a Golden or Laurel Crown equalized unto Martyrdom Christ therefore as he is the Father of this Virginity so also the Father of the Age to come But those that are to be saved are his own new Creature and new Regeneratition Who to wit hath given them Power to become the Sons of God unto these who believe in his Name who are born not of Bloods nor of the Will of the Flesh nor by the Will of Man but of God after a most chast manner of the holy Spirit by whom before the brutal Concupiscence of the Flesh arose it was decreed that altogether every Man ought to be born of his Mother being a Virgin Therefore Christ being the Top and Lover of Chastity doth distinguish Men as well in this Age or Life by Chastity as in Heaven and will grace them with an unimitable and eternal Priviledge For a great Company followed the Lamb whithersoever he should go and Sang the Song which no other was able to Sing But these are they who are not defiled with Women For there are Virgins of both Sexes Because there shall not be there Jew or Greek But they are all one in Christ For the Almighty hath chosen his Gelded Ones who have Gelded themselves for the Kingdom of God its sake of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven Therefore married Persons are reckoned to be defiled with Women and Mothers to have conceived their off-springs in Sin and in this thing are far inferiour to Virgins For indeed because the Gospel promiseth unto Mortals not only that the Son of God was Incarnate and suffered for their Salvation But that moreover these two Mysteries least else they should be frustrate are to be applyed unto individual Persons I indeed contemplate thus of this Application that as man through the Sin of lust brake no less the Intent of God than his Admonishment and the humane Nature was therefore afterwards radically Corrupted and that thereupon another and almost brutal Generation thereof followed Therefore the joyful Message hath included as well an Abolishment of Original Sin as of other Sins consecutively issuing from thence Who by dying destroyed our Death not his own because he had none The which is not understood of temporal Death for the righteous Man as yet to this day dyeth just even as before the Passion of the Lord but of Eternal Death Therefore seeing man since the Fall ought to be Born Increase and Multiply no longer from God but from the Bloods of the Sexes by the Will of the Flesh and of Man nor from thence could ever be able to rise again of himself and to re-assume his lost and antient purity nor cease that he might again begin to be otherwise and better therefore the joyful message hath brought an assurance unto us that Baptisme should be unto us for the remission of sins through a new birth of Water and of the holy Spirit That our mind as it were through a new Nativity of its Inne by Regeneration might be partakers of the unspotted Virginity and humanity of our Lord. Which New-birth doth indeed repose the Soul into its former state to wit by taking away the sin or debt and the stinks or noisomenesses thereof but by reason of the continuance of Adamical flesh in which the Immortal Mind liveth the antient possession or inclination unto sin is not taken away nor is there a translation of the corruption drawn from the impure original of the blood of Adam But that this is really so we are perswaded to believe For God doth manifestly daily grant a testimony of that actual Grace and attained Purity to be derived into the Body of those that are Baptized through a true and substantiall Regeneration as well in Body as in Soul For truly for this end and in this respect alone Mahometans are Baptized for a proper reproach because Baptisme from the fact or deed done however unlawfully it be administred and received takes away from them for the future the noisomness inbred in them otherwise to endure for their Life time such as in all the Hebrews or Jewes in many places up and down we do daily observe to be with loathing and weariness The true effect therefore of Regeneration and its co-promised character doth much shine in Baptisme even outwardly also in a defectuous Body And the enemies of the Christian Name do serve us for unvoluntary witnesses unto this thing Yea the perpetuity of the same Effect confirms the unobliterable Character or Impression of Baptisme and the wickedness of it being repeated But the New-birth by Baptisme doth not yet for that Cause take away a necessity of Death For Baptisme forsaketh its own with the fardle of a defiled and Adamical body begotten by the Will of Man And for that Cause also the Soul as subject unto the Vices of the corrupted Body and of a Will long agoe corrupted Wherefore by reason of the frailty of Impure Nature also an easie inclination and frequency of Sinning Baptisme hath been scarce sufficient for those of ripe years otherwise for the more younger sort it is abundantly sufficient Therefore the Sacrament of the Altar is Wine which buddeth forth Virgins Which is as much as to say the end and scope of the Lords Incarnation or of the instituted Sacrament of the Eucharist should bud forth Virgins as demonstrating that the intent of the Creator from the beginning esteemed of and reckoned upon Virginity alone and of how great abhorrency Numb 25. Luxury is in the sight of the Lord. For although Bigamy or a Plurality of Wives and likewise a dismissing of ones Wife and much loosing of
Matrimony were in times past dissembled Yet Phinehas being neither a Judge nor a Prince from his very own zeal slew the Fornicator Zimri and the Harlot Cosby and by that famous act not onely diverted the wrath of the Lord from the whole People of Israel But also although he were a Man-slayer and Man-slayers were repulsed from Sacrifices Yet by reason of that simple Death the Priesthood was given unto him persevering in his off-spring In the next place the Potters field Akeldama called Acheldamah or The field of blood as long as it retained the name of a Field confirms the Position because indeed by a supernatural Miracle it so consumeth a dead Carcass inhumed in it in one onely day that besides a Sceleton of Bones nothing remaineth surviving which effect that it was supernatural I prove For otherwise if it should naturally happen that thing without doubt should be done by a corrosive force of the Earth and the which therefore should be wholly a corrosive Salt or at least-wise a certain Mineral vein co-mixed with very much Salt 1. But first of all That corrosion of the flesh happened not onely at Jerusalem as long as it was a Field where there might be a suspition of some Mineral growing but also its Earth being brought from thence the same thing happened in the burying-place at Rome for that cause called The holy Field to wit wherein that Earth scarce equalizeth the depth of one Foot 2. But whether we may suppose a corrosive Salt or next the Earth it self to be Salt yet seeing it is the property of Salt and a thing unseparable from Salt to melt through Water being poured on it Therefore long ago before so many Ages that substance of the corrosive Salt being melted by Raines Snowes and Hailes had wandred even unto the bottom of the sand and the rather at Rome where it found not its native place Wherefore also that faculty of corroding should cease nor should it continue safe until now 3. And so much the rather because the corrosion of Salts is by little and little satisfied and desisteth in gnawing 4. Lastly Such a corrosive of Earth is not any where found in the Earth whether thou shalt respect a Vein of Arsenick Orpiment or any other For all the activity of such Corrosives presently after a good while waxeth mild and is satisfied Therefore the property of that Field remaining after so many Ages doth clearly shew withal against the will of Atheisme that the Field being purchased with the price of the Life Blood and Death of the Saviour presently consumes the flesh of Adamical generation Because that for the consuming and renewing whereof by the body of Christ which was sold for thirty silver pieces paid for the price of that field the coming of the most glorious incarnation is believed to be directed from God as its onely scope The unsufferableness therefore of that Earth with the flesh of sin continually persevering now so many Ages however the Bowels of the Atheists may burst convinceth of an honour to be due to the Saviour or Son of God for ever In the next place a humane dead Carcass was alwayes buried for honour and desert yet in the Law it caused an impurity for a time Because neither did it pollute the Soul but the Body onely for the meritorious fact And that impurity did indifferently affect any one not as the dead Carcass was deputed to the Wormes for the Wormes by their co-touching are not read to have caused an impurity but because Adamical flesh is horrid in the sight of the Lord who indeed promiseth that he will raise them up at the last day as many as shall reverently receive the Eucharist For all indeed shall rise again by the finger of God to wit by a supernatural Virtue Therefore whosoever in rising again shall be changed are reckoned onely to be raised up again by the Lord Jesus to wit in as much as in a Body which they have attained by the Wine which buds forth Virgins they shall rise again partakers of the unspotted Virginity of Jesus I will raise them up again at the last Day What other thing I pray you doth that Promise denote but that the Elect shall rise again changed and raised up by the Lord not indeed in the flesh of sin but in the flesh of the Lord which they have partaked of by Baptisme and the Eucharist Therefore the horrid and damned flesh of sin doth besprinckle its touchers with no undeserved spot of impurity There is therefore a distinct diversity of Virginal purity The First comes to hand before the Fall of Adam and the which therefore did contain a certain Immortality from the suffrage or consent of the Tree of Life But the Second is of them Who were sanctified in their Mothers Womb the which in it self is also twofold For such a sanctification although it dismissed Original Sin and did restore the integrity of withdrawn purity yet because they were conceived by the Will of Man and by Bloods or of the flesh of Sin they were also Mortal But the most holy Virgin Mother presently after the seminal mixture of her Parents was preserved from the knitting and blemish of Original Sin before hec-ceity or the coming of her Soul But Jeremy and John obtained the same but after quickening In these two indeed there was a Remission of sin admitted but in the God-bearing-Virgin there was a prevention before sin could touch her Soul and therefore she was taken up with her body into Heaven but not John or Jeremy Next a Third Purity is in being born again of Water and of the holy Spirit which also happens two manner of wayes To wit Unto Little Children and Unto those of Ripe Years For in these Regeneration doth not onely remit Original Sin but also every grievous Sin But in little ones it remitteth onely Original Sin because it as yet finds no other But on both sides it leaveâ—â— Death and Flesh hastening into a dead Carcass because stirred up by 〈…〉 copulation Fourthly The purity of those is regarded Who have made themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of God its sake and that as yet in a two-way-journey For they have either from a Child devoted their Virginity to the Lamb and have observed it and therefore also they follow the same whithersoever he may go do sing the Hymn c. but all that after Death For otherwise they are of the flesh of sin and therefore are of necessity also guilty of Death and corruption But they who have lost their Purity through a proper Error and afterwards rising up again have vowed or observed chastity These although they are chaste yet are they not to be reckoned among Virgins But moreover after that a Matrimonial generation was constituted by the Lord Regeneration by the holy Spirit and Water doth not fore-require Virginity Fifthly The top of all Purity and Chastity is the Lord Jesus himself who was not conceived by a
God will have other Recognisances or knowing Considerations from Man than from an Angel ought he therefore less to rejoyce in the Divine good Pleasure but to proceed in praising him in an humble Adoration wherein all understanding of Wisdom and clearness of all Spirits are as it were supped up in a lively Center Through this reward therefore of Degrees the unutterable God hath since the Fall Crowned Man with Glory and Honour although degenerate and hath put other things under his Feet for neither before the Fall had Man ever aspired thither Therefore Man ought neither to have the knowledge of all things which Adam knew in his Beginning nor also of his own self if it ought to be a Desert For a Crown presupposeth a striving Desert and Victory For we cannot bring back an increase of Grace for Victory but by fighting Therefore I conclude that as we are constituted in the middle and sensitive Life we know have are or are able to do nothing but only by Grace Desert co-operating and the which Merit that God might confirm the Moments of Degrees in the adoring Understanding were to be presupposed Therefore he that is of innocent Hands and of a clean Heart worshippeth God in the Truth of Spirit and the State of that mortal Man is far more happy than was that of Adam being Immortal For that poverty of Spirit doth in truth know Wisely knowes Knowingly believes Confidently perceives or feeles Truly and confesseth Humbly that he is a meer subject of all Defects that is an unprofitable and evil Servant In this Journey the unutterable Kingdom of God meets Man the Ocean of Light which gives an un-asked-for cleaâ—ness of Understanding and much more royal things than the Desires of the Angels do wish for These things exceed the Phylosophy of the Heathens and of Modern Atheists So it is Understanding and Truth hath it self in this manner wherein our Phylosophy doth place its Alpha or Beginning The which if it shall not do long Life is unprofitable being unknown to so many Ages being neglected by so many Wits and even unto the end of the World known unto none but Adeptists alone CHAP. CII The Image of God THe Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom But the Fear of the Lord begins from the Meditation of Death and Life eternal But many with the Stoicks suppose the end of Wisdom to be the knowledge of ones self But I call the ultimate End of Wisdom and the reward of the whole course of our Life Charity or dear Love the which alone will accompany us when as other things have forsaken us And although the knowledge of ones self according to me be only a Mean unto the Fear of the Lord yet from this is the Treatise of long Life to be begun Because the knowledge of Life doth presuppose a knowledge of the Soul Seeing the Life and Soul as I have the second time said are Synonymals It is of Faith that Man was created of nothing after the Image of God into a living Creature and that his Mind is never to perish Whereas in the mean time the Souls of Bruit-beasts do perish into nothing when they cease to live The weights of which difference I have taught concerning the birth or rise of Forms But hitherto it is not sufficiently manifest wherein that Similitude with God our Arch-type or first Example is placed For most do place this lofty Image in the Soul alone I will speake what I judge yet under a humble Protestation and Subjection to the Censure of the Church It is thus The original of Forms being already after some sort known it is meet also exactly to enquire into the Mind of Man But surely there is no Knowledge more burdensome than that whereby the Soul comprehends it self yea and scarce is there any a more profitable one because the Faith doth stablish its Foundation upon the unperishable and un-obliterable Substance of the Soul I have found indeed many Demonstrations divulged in the Books about this Truth But none of them at all for what in respect of Atheists who deny the one only and constant Power or Deity from everlasting Plato indeed makes three sorts of Atheists The first indeed which believeth no Gods A second Sort also which indeed admitteth of Gods yet such as are un-careful of us and ignorant Contemners of small Matters Lastly a third Sort which although they believe that there are Gods and those expert of the smallest Matters yet they think them to be flexible through the least Dead or cold Prayer This sort is most frequent among Christians at this day even those who profess themselves to be the most Perfect and therefore they dare do any thing and believe Religion to be only for restraining People through the Fear of Laws the Obligation of Faith and Pain of infernal Punishment For these impose grievous Burdens on the Shoulders of others which they touch not so much as with their Finger they wipe the Purses of their own People they prostitute Heaven to sale to dying Men they every where offer themselves to be employed in Secular Affairs as if they would declare that Religion doth not subsist without the State It should be my greatest wish that they might taste at least but for one only Moment what it is intellectually to understand that they may feel the immortality of the Mind as it were by touching Truly I have not invented Rules or a Manner whereby I might be able to illustrate the understanding of another Therefore I deservedly testifie that they who alwayes study as enquiring after the Truth do notwithstanding never attain unto the knowledge thereof because they being blown up with the Letter have no Charity and do cherish hidden Atheism But this one thing I have learned That the mind doth now understand nothing by imagination neither by figures and likenesses unless the wretched and miserable Discourse of Reason shall have access to it But when as the Soul comprehends it self Reason and its own Image faileth it whereby it may represent it self to it self Therefore the Soul it never able to apprehend it self through the discourse of Reason as neither by Likenesses For after I had known that the Truth of Essence and the truth of Uderstanding are one and the same thing I knew the Understanding to be a certain immortal thing far separated from frail or mortal things The Soul indeed is not felt yet we believe it to be within not to be idle not to be tired nor to be disturbed by Diseases Therefore Sleep Fury and Drunkenness are not the Symptoms of the Immortal Mind being hurt but only the Pages of Life and Passions of the sensitive Soul Seeing that Bruits also undergo such Passions For neither is it a meet thing for an immortal thing to suffer by mortal Ones For as the Mind is in us and yet is not felt or perceived by us So neither are the continual and unshaken Operations thereof to be
speak with a consideration concerning the power of Willing for after this Life a substantial Will ariseth and manifesteth it self which hath a distinct essence from the power of that accidental freedom of Willing For as the imaginative faculty dies with the Life so also that free power of Willing ceaseth Therefore I have believed that the very spiritual substance of the Soul doth shew forth the Image of God but not in its Powers Namely herein most nearly God is an un-created Being one incomprehensible eternal infinite omnipotent Good a super-substantial Light and Spirit But the Soul is a creature being one undivided dependent immortal simple and thenceforth an eternal spiritual lightsome Substance In the next place in God there are no accidents but every one of his Attributes are the very undistinct most simple Essence it self of the Divine Spirit which thing also Plato his Parmenides even after some sort understood So the Soul if it shews forth the Image of God it shall admit of no accident in it self but the whole substance thereof shall be a simple Light and Understanding it self For just even as Smoak being kindled by the Flame is the same in figure and matter with the Flame so likewise the Soul also is a naked pure and simple Understanding the Light and Image of an uncreated Light So that as the eye beholds nothing more truly or nearly than the Sun but all other things by reason of the Sun it self So a blessed Soul doth not understand any thing more nearly than the Light it self from whence it totally and immediately dependeth And as our eye doth not bear the sight of the Sun so the Soul cannot understand God and much less as long as it makes use of the Medium's of Powers as being bound thereunto Otherwise the Understanding being free doth by understanding attain the Figure of the thing understood by a commigration or passing over it transforms it self unto Unity as I have taught concerning Reason And so indeed the Soul by Understanding doth principally and primarily contemplate of God and is formed into the true Image of God Yet there are others also who conceive of the Image of God in the Soul after this manner That seeing the Law is the Image of God but the Law is engraven on our Souls by Reason from hence they will have it That the Soul is the Image of God as it is Rational But that is plainly improper yea and impertinent For so the Soul containing the Law should indeed contain the Image of God but the very substance thereof it self should not therefore be framed into the very Image of God Indeed no more than the Law and the Soul it self do differ in essence and supposionality Surely I have hated Metaphorical Speeches in serious matters As that God created Man into his own Image should denote that God had given Man the use of Reason and that him that is born mad and deformed he therefore had not made into his own Image And moreover there was not as yet a Law while the Soul was created Furthermore to attribute the Image of God to Reason is to be injurious to God and blasphemous even as I have elsewhere taught concerning Reason For there is no likenesse or suitableness of Reason with God of a frail and uncertain Faculty with an eternal Substance The Opinions therefore of others being left I will speak my own The Understanding hath a Will coequal to it self not indeed that which is a power or an accident but an intellectual light it self a spiritual substance a simple and undivided essence being separated from the Understanding onely by a supposionality of its Being but never in its Essence I find also besides a third thing in the Soul the which for want of an Etymology I name a Love or Desire not indeed of having possessing or enjoying but of well-pleasing it being equal to the other two and equally simple in the Unity of Substance and they are three Suppositions under one onely and that an undividable Substance of the Soul But that Love is not any act of the Will but it proceeds from the substantial Understanding and Will as a distinct act For it happens also in this Life that we love those things which we understand are not to be loved and those things which we would not love We love also those things which exceed or overcome the Understanding and Will For in an Extasie the Understanding and Will perish and are laid asleep so long as they deliver up their Kingdom unto Love For neither is that Love a Passion but a ruling Essence and a glorifying act Therefore Will and Love in this place exceed the circuit of Powers neither have they any thing common with the Will of the Flesh or of Man but they are essential Titles whereby under a want of Names the Mind represents the Image of God because the Understanding doth then understand God is intent on him and loves him altogether with all the Mind by one onely and undivided act of Love by reason of the every way simplicity of its Substance But as long as we live in the Flesh we scarce make use of a substantial and purely intellectual Understanding but rather of an imaginative Power to wit of that quality its Vicaress For in an Extasie Understanding Will and Memory do oftentimes sleep the act of Love onely surviving but so distinct from those three that notwithstanding it stands not without the substantial Understanding and Will and those equally suited unto it self For truly seeing the Soul is wholly homogeneal in its substance it should plainly loose that simplicity if one of the three should be without or besides the other two Love therefore the other two being asleep is then as it were in the Superficies or rather the other two are imbibed and supped up in the Love In this World Love is before Desire because it is a Passion of the amative or loving Faculty which proceeds from that supposionality of the Soul which is truly true Love and representeth the Image of a corporeal Faculty in this Life no otherwise than as Understanding and Memory now as long as there is a wedlock of the Body whereinto the immortal Mind is sunk constitutes a certain third thing But after Death Love makes not a priority as neither a distinction from Desire neither hath it the nature of a Power nor is it an habit or act of Willing nor doth it subsist out of the Understanding neither doth Memory survive in a distinct habit from the Understanding Therefore the Intellect is a formal Light and substance of the Soul which doth beholdingly Know Discern Will and Desire in the Unity of it self whatsoever it comprehendeth in it self and in willing judgeth For it then remembers no longer by a repetition of the Species or particular kinds of a thing once known neither is it any longer induced to know by circumstances But then there is one onely knowledge of all things understood and
Spirit of the Salt of Urin not so From hence at leastwise it is manifest that there is a Salt and volatile Spirit in the venal Blood But after what manner the whole venal Blood may be homogeneally transchanged by the Ferment of the Heart cannot be explained by Words because Natures themselves are not demonstrable from a former Cause For the Operations of Ferments for the transmutation of things are essential but not the accidentary Propagations of Accidents for the causing of Dipositions only The vital Spirit therefore is plainly Salt therefore Balsamical and a Preserver from Corruption That although the Aqua Vitae doth easily pass into vital Spirit yet this Spirit is not Oylie or combustile like the Aqua Vitae but the Spirit of Wine only through a touching of the Ferment is easily wholly changed into a salt Spirit and forthwith looseth its inflamable Disposition Even as I have taught in the Book of the Stone in Man after what manner Aqua Vitae may by the Spirit of Urin be in one only instant coagulated into a subtile Gobbet or Lump The which concerning the volatile Salt of the arterial Blood may through the effective Ferment of the Heart be much more evidently proved Wherefore they who for some good while do undergo the beating of the Heart although they shall then drink abundantly and that much of the more pure Wine yet they are not easily made Drunk Because that by reason of an urgent necessity the Spirit of the Wine is most speedily attracted into the Heart and Arteries which are scanty in spirits and is suddenly formed into vital Spirit It restoreth I say the Strength or Faculties neither yet doth it then make drunk because it is no longer a stranger but being drawn into the Heart it easily becomes domestical and then is on every side dispensed through the Arteries For it doth not argue to the contrary that the Spirit of Salt-peter is sharp and that therefore the vital Spirit ought to be sharp For neither was the Spirit from whence Salt-peter was made in the Earth then sharp And therefore the vital Spirit is Salt and nearer to the Spirit of Urin than of Salt-peter the which by reason of Adustion and Extraction is alwayes a new Creature of its composed Body That Foundation therefore which is laid by the Ferment of the Gaul in volatilizing and making Salt this afterwards is perfected in the Shop of the Heart For the foregoing Digestions are as so many Dispositions unto vital Functions and Necessities for a Member being once stupified if Sense or Feeling shall return that surely is made with sensible Spurs and Prickings which are the tokens of true saltness But that the whole venal Blood is a meer Salt may not from elsewhere be more clearly deducted than that because in the Dropsy Ascites and in Ulcers it is homogeneally through a most easie Degeneration changed into a salt Liquor But a salt sharp Quality and subtile Matter was suitable to the vital Spirit if it ought to be sufficient for preserving of the Members The redness also of the venal Blood assumeth a yellowness while it is made arterial Blood because that which is Red through the tartness of Salt waxeth Yellow in its dissolving Neither yet hath the arterial Blood lost all its redness for truly a Part thereof ought to remain for the Nourishment of the solid Members It is a dead or invalid thing whatsoever I have hitherto said that the Spirit of Life is a salt sharp Vapour and made of the arterial Blood by the vital Members their own Ferments I will therefore Speak of the Life of the Spirit For seeing it ought to do its Duty with the Offices of Life it was not required that it should be in the shew of a salt Liquor or arterial Blood or that it should befool us under the likeness of a salt Exhalation but because it ought primarily to live and receive the Life it was meet for it to be enlightned not indeed with a burning enflaming or fiery Light but with a simple vital Light of the Nature of soulified Formes of the sensitive Life and Soul and that indeed of a humane Species For for the Understanding thereof suppose thou that Wormâ— named Glow-wormes have by Night a Light in their Belly which not only shines like the Eyes of a Cat but also pouers forth a thin Light round about that Light is extinguished with the Life of the Glow-worme A like Light suppose thou to be which enlightneth the vital Spirit as long as it liveth it shineth and is propagated into Spirit newly made being duly elabourated And by how much the more impure and the less elabourated it shall be by so much shall that Light be the Darker But that Light is extinguished in us the Matter of the Spirit remaining in the Plague Poysons c. even as by Swooning and Beating of the Heart the Light is extinguished and the Spirit vanisheth away In time of Death also the Membrane of the Eye is destitute of a manifest Light plainly to be seen Yet the Essence of that Light in Glow-worms is not so alike to that which is in us to wit as they differ from us only in Degree But there are as many Species of these Lights as there are of vital Creatures That is unto us a token of divine Bounty that there are so many Species and vital Differences of Lights which by us are comprehended under one only Notion because that those Lights are the very Lives and Forms themselves of vital Creatures So that the thrice most glorious Father of Lights doth recreate himself in the abundance of the kinds of Lights with no less a Lavishment than as in one only humane Countenance he hath fashioned almost as many Varieties as Men because there is in his Power a certain Common-wealth of vital Lights and Band of innumerable Citizens a certain Similitude whereof he expresseth in vital soulified Creatures by a Life a Form that is by a vital Light The vital Spirit therefore Is Arterial Blood resolved by the force of the Ferment and Motion of the Heart into a salt Air being vitally enlightned which Light in us is hot but in the Fish it is so actually cold that it is never able to aspire unto a Power of Heat as long as it liveth and subsisteth Our Heat therefore is not a consumer of the Original Moisture as neither therefore through want of Heat do Fishes hitherto escape Death although their Moisture be not lifted up into an Exhalation and least of all in the frozen Sea For neither shall the Capuchin our Country-man who is cold for the greatest part of the year from his Feet even unto his Belly nor feeling himself to have Feet therefore not undergo a dayly transpiration of the nourishable Moisture or doth he refuse the Refreshment of Nourishments or is the Capuchin changed in those parts into a Fish the which otherwise should be necessary for him to be if Heat should
cannot cause the Plague 119. Why the blood of a Bull is mortally venemous 120. Why the fat of a Bull is in the Sympathetical Unguent to wit that it may be made an Oyntment of Weapons 121. Why Satan cannot concurre unto the Unguent 122. The Basis or Foundation of Magick 123. From whence Vanities are accounted for Magick 124. A good Magick in the holy Scriptures 125. What may be called true Magick 126. The cause of the Idolatry of Witches 127. The Sirrers up of Magick 128. Satan excites it imperfectly 129. From whence beasts also are Magical 130. The Kingdom of Spirits nourisheth strife and love 131. Why man is a Microcosm or little World 132. The mind generates real Entities 133. That Entity or Beingness is of a middle nature between a Body and a Spirit 134. The descending of the Soul begets a conformed will 135. The cause of the fruitfulness of Seeds 136. Why Lust doth as it were estrange us from our Mind 137. A Father by the Spirit of his Seed generates out of himself in an Object presently absenting it self 138. What Spirit may be the Patron of Magnetism 139. The Will sends a Spirit unto the Object Unless the Will did produce some real thing the Devil could not know of or acknowledge it and unless it did dismiss it out of it self the Devil being absent could not be provoked thereby Where therefore the Treasure is thither doth the Magical spirit of man tend 140. Magnetism is made by sensation 141. That there are many perceivances in one onely subject 142. From the superiour Phantasie commanding it 143. Why Glasse-makers use the Load-stone 144. The Phantasie of attracting things is changed 145. Inanimate things have their Phantasie 146. Why some things by eating of them induce madness 147. Why a mad Dog by biting of a Man introduceth madness 148. The Tarantula by his stroke or sting causeth a madness 149. Why other bruit beasts do not defend themselves against a mad Dog 150. The Sympathy betwixt Objects at a distance is made by means of a certain Spirit of the world which Spirit also governing the Sun and the Sunny Stars is of a potent sense or feeling 151. The Imagination in Creatures endowed with choice is various at pleasure but in others it is alwayes of a limited identity 152. The first degree of power dwelleth Magically in the forms of the three Principles 153. The second degree is by the phantasies of the Forms of the mixt Body the which to wit being destroyed the Principles do as yet remain 154. The Third degree ariseth from the Phantasie or Imagination of the Soul 155. What Bruits are Magical and do act out of themselves by beck alone 156. The fourth degree of Magical Power is from the Understanding of Men being stirred up 157. The word Magick is a proportionable answering of many things unto some one third thing 158. Every Magical power or faculty rejoyceth in a stirring up 159. What may be called a subject capable of Magnetism 160. How Magnetism differs from other formal Properties 161. Humours and Filths or Exâ—rements have their Phantasie 162. Why the Scripture attributes Life to the Blood rather than to any other juyces of the Body 163. The seed possesseth the Phantasie of the Father by traduction or derivation from whence nobility ariseth 164. The skins of the Wolf and Sheep have retained through impression an hostile Imagination of their former Life 165. What the Phantasie of the Blood being freshly brought into the Unguent can effect The manner of the Magnetism or attraction in the Ointment 166. The difference between a Magnetical Cure which is done by the Unguent and that which is done by a rotten Egg. 167. The notable Mystery of humane imagination is the foundation of natural Magick 168. The Understanding imprinteth the Beingnesse which was procreated or produced on the outward object and there it really continues 169. How efficacious Seals or Impressions may be made 170. The Imagination holds fast the Spirit of a Witch by a nail as it were a Medium 171. If Satan doth naturally move a Body without a corporeal touch or extreamity why not also the more inward Man and why not rather also the Spirit of the Witch 172. The virtue of the Oyntment is not from the Imagination of the compounder but from the Simples co-united into one 173. The Author makes a profession of his Faith IN the eighth year of this Age there was brought unto me an Oration Declamatory made at Marpurg of the Catti wherein Rodolph Goclenius to whom the profession of Phylosophy was lately comitted paying his first-fruits endeavours to shew That the curing of Wounds by the Sympathetical and Armary or Weapon Unguent invented by Paracelsus is meerly natural Which Oration I wholly read and I sighed within my self that the Histories of natural things had lighted into the hands of so weak a Patron The Author nevertheless highly pleased himself with that Argument of Writing and with a continued barrenness of proof in the year 1613. published the same work with some enlargement There was very lately brought me a succinct Anatomy of the aforesaid Book composed by a certain Divine rather in the form of a fine or jocond censure than of a disputation my judgement therefore however it should be was desired at least-wise in that respect that the thing found out by Paracelsus concerned himself and me his follower I shall therefore declare what I think of the Physitian Goclenius and what of the Divine the Censurer First of all the Physitian proposeth and boasts that he will prove the magnetick or attractive cure of Wounds to be natural But I found the Promiser to be unfit for so great a business Because that he no where or at least but slenderly makes good his Title or Promises He collecting many patcheries here and there whereby he thinks he hath sufficiently proved that there are certain formal virtues in the nature of Things which they call Sympathy and Antipathy and that from the granting of those the Magnetical Cure is natural Many things I say out of the Aegyptians Chaldeans Persians Conjurers and Jugling Impostors he gathers into one whereby he might prove or evince the Magnetism which himself was ignorant of Partly that by delighting mindes that are greedy of novelties of things he may seduce them from the mark and partly that they may admire the Author that he had rub'd over not onely trivial Writers but also any other the more rare ones Wherefore the Physitian doth rashly confound Sympathy which he after divers manners and fabulously often alledgeth with Magnetism and from that concludes this to be natural For I have seen also that Vulnerary Oyntment to cure not onely Men but also Horses between whom and us certainly there is not so great affinity unless we are Asses that therefore the Sympathetical Unguent should deserve to be called common to Us and Horses In like manner the Physitian badly confounds Sympathy or Co-suffering with Witchcraft
in his Body yet was visibly present at the funeral solemnities of Saint Martin Yet was he Spiritually present at those solemnities in the visible Spirit of the external man and no otherwise for inasmuch as in that Exstacy which is of the more internal man many of the Saints have seen many and absent things this is done without time and place through the superiour Powers of the Soul being collected in Unity and by an intellectual vision but not by a visible presence Otherwise the Soul is not seperated from the Body but in good earnest or for altogether neither is it re-connexed thereunto which re-connexion notwithstanding is otherwise natural or familiar to the Spirit of the more outward man It is not sufficient in so great a Paradox to have once or by one single reason toucht at the matter It is to be further propagated and we must explain how a Magnetical attraction happens also between inanimate things by a certain perceivance or feeling not indeed animal or sensitive but natural Which thing that it may be the more seriously done it behoves us first to shew what Satan can of his own power contribute to and after what manner he can co-operate in the meerly wicked and impious actions of Witches for from thence it will appear unto what cause every effect may come to be attributed In the next place what that Spiritual power may be which tends to a far remote Object or what may be the action passion and skirmishing between natural Spirits or what may be the superiority of man as to other inferiour creatures and by consequence why indeed our Unguent being compounded of humane Mummies do thorowly cure Horses also We will explain the matter by an Example Let a Witch therefore be granted who can strongly torment an absent Man by an Image of wax by imprecation or cursing by enchantment or also by a fore-going touch alone for here we speak nothing of Sorceries because they are those which kill onely by Poyson inasmuch as every common Apothecary can imitate these things that this act is Diabolical no man doubts However it is profitable to discern how much Satan and how much the Witch can contribute hereunto The First Supposition First oâ—â—â—l Thou shalt take notice that Satan is the sworn and irreconcilable Enemy of Men and to be so accounted by all unless any one had rather have him to be his friend and therefore he most readily procures whatsoever mischief he is able to cause or wish unto us and that without doubt and neglect The Second Supposition And then Although he be an Enemy to Witches themselves forasmuch as he is also a most malitious Enemy to all Mankind in general yet in regard they are his bond-slaves and those of his Kingdom he never unless against his will betrays them or discovers them to Judges and exposeth them to scorn to other men and that for three Reasons First Seeing he is the parent of Pride he is not ignorant that hereby it much detracts from his Reputation Authority and Dominion Secondly Seeing he is the unsatiable Persecuter of Souls he hath known that through certain punishments and flames of Justice such as were otherwise ready and willing to slide into his Protection are affrighted and plainly diverted Thirdly Because he hath many times seen a Witch which this Tormenter could by wresting round of her neck or stopping of her breath wish to destroy sometimes repenting even before the Flames and so to be snatcht out of his clutches From the former Supposition I conclude That if Satan were able of himself to kill a Man who is guilty of deadly sin he would never delay it But he doth not kill him therefore he cannot Notwithstanding the Witch doth oftentimes kill hence also she can kill the same Man No otherwise than as a privy Murtherer at the Liberty of his own Will slays any one with a Sword There is therefore a certain power of the Witch in this action which belongs not to Satan and consequently Satan is not the principal efficient and executer of that Murther For otherwise if he were the executioner thereof he would in no wise stand in need of the Witch as his assistant but he alone had soon taken the greatest part of men out of the way Surely most miserable were the condition of Mortals which should be subject to such a Tyrant and stand lyable to his command we have too faithful a God than that he should subject the work of his own hands to the arbitrary dominion of Satan Therefore in this act there is a certain power plainly proper and natural to the Witch which belongs not to Satan Moreover of what nature extent and quality that power may be we must more exactly fift out In the first place it is manifest that it is no corporeal strength of the Male Sex for neither doth there concurre any strong touching of the extream parts of the Body and Witches are for the most part feeble impotent and malitious Old Women Therefore there must needs be some other power far superiour to a corporeal attempt yet natural to Man This power therefore was to be seated in that part wherein we most nearly resemble the Image of God And although all things do also after some sort represent that venerable Image Yet because Man doth most elegantly properly and nearly do that therefore the Image of God in Man doth far outshine bear rule over and command the Images of God in all other Creatures For peradventure by this Prerogative All things are put under his feet Wherefore if God act per nutum or by a beck namely by his Word so ought Man to act some things only by his beck or Will if he ought to be called his true Image For neither is that new is that troublesome is that proper to God alone For Satan the most vile abject of Creatures doth also locally move Bodies per nutum or by his beck alone seeing he hath not extreamities or corporeal Organs whereby to touch move or also to snatch a new Body to himself That priviledge therefore ought no less to belong to the inward Man as he is a Spirit if he ought to represent the Image of God and that indeed not an idle one if we call this faculty Magical and thou being badly instructed art terrified at this Word thou mayst for me call it a spiritual strength or efficacy For truly we are nothing solicitous about Names I alwayes as immediately as I can cast an eye upon the thing it self That Magical power therefore is in the inward man whether thou by this Etymology or true Word understandest the Soul or the vital Spirit thereof it is now indifferent to us since there is a certain proportion of the internal Man towards the external in all things glowing or growing after its own manner which is an appropriated disposition and proportioned property Wherefore this power or faculty must needs be dispersed throughout the whole Man
but it puts it not on but by the Will except in Women with Child Whether therefore we call Sin a nothing or a something at least-wise there is never made a Consent to Evil without a real Procreation of this certain kind of Entity and the assuming and putting on thereof This hath been the Cause of the Fruitfulness of Seeds for the Phantasie or Imagination being much moved by Lust produceth a slender Entity the which if the Soul puts on through the Will as the action of the Mind being imprisoned in the Body doth alwayes tend downwards and outwards it disperseth this same Entity into the Liquor of the Seed which otherwise would not be but barren Which Action is made as it were by an estranging of the Mind to wit the Will through the true Magick of the more outward Man departing into a certain Ecstasie in which there is made a communicating of a certain Light of the Mind upon the Entity descending into the Body of the Seed As oft soever therefore as the Cogitation or Thought drawes the Sense and Will into a consent so often a filthy Skin is bred and put on being a bastardly Ideal Entity by which birth the Will is said to be confirmed Also that Ideal Entity whithersoever it is directed by the Will thither it goes by this meanes the Will moves sometimes the Arm sometimes the Foot c. Furthermore when the said Entity is spread upon the vital Spirit for to love help or hurt any thing it wants only a light Excitement whether made from the asistance of God of the Cabalistick Art or of Satan that indeed the small Portion of the Spirit which hath now put on that Entity departs far off and perform its Office enjoyned it by the Will So the Male layes aside his Seed out of himself which through the Entity which it hath drawn is very fruitful and performes its Office without the Trunck of its own Body Truly Bodies scarce make up a moyity or halfe part of the World But Spirits even by themselves have or possess their moyity and indeed the whole World Therefore in this whole Context or Composure of our Discourse I call Spirits the Patrons of Magnetism not those which are sent down from Heaven and much less is our Speech of infernal ones but of those which are made in Man himself for as Fire is struck out of a Flint so from the Will of Man some small Portion of the inflowing vital Spirit is extracted and that very thing or portion assumes an Ideal Entity as it were its Form and Compleating Which Perfection being obtained the Spirit which before was purer than the Aetheâ—eal Air is subâ—ilized or rarified like Light and assumes a middle Condition between Bodies and not Bodies But it is sent thither whither the Will directs it or at least whither the inbred infallible Knowledge of the Spirits sends the same according to the scopes of things to be done The Ideal Entity therefore being now readily prepared for its journey becomes after some sort a Light and as if it were no longer a Body is tied up to no commands of Places Times or Dimensions neither is that Entity a Devil nor any Effect thereof nor any Conspiracy of his but it is a certain spiritual Action thereof plainly natural and proper unto us He who well receiveth this Wisdom shall easily understand that the Material World is on all sides governed and restrained by the Immaterial and Invisible But that all other created Corporeal Beings are put under the Feet of Men for indeed this is the Cause why also the Mummy Fat Mosse and Blood of Man to wit the Phantasie existing in them in the Unguent overswayes the Blood of a Dog of a Horse c. being conveighed by a Stick into the Box of the Unguent There hath not been yet said enough concerning the Magnetism of the Unguent I will therefore resume what I spake of before namely that the Magnetisms of the Load-stone and of inanimate things are made by a natural Sensation or Feeling which is the Author of all Sympathy is a certain Truth For if the Load-stone directs it self to the Pole it ought of necessity to have known the fame if it be not to commit an Errour in its Direction And how I pray shall it have that Knowledge if it be not sensible where it is Likewise if it self to Iron placed aloof off the Pole being neglected it must needs have first been sensible of the Iron Therefore one single Load-stone hath diverse Senses and Images Neither also-shall it be sufficient that it hath Sense unless we add the Spurs of Friendship and Self-love and so that it is endowed with a certain natural Phantasie and by reason of the Impression whereof all Magnetisms are forged For it is directed by another manner of Phantasie toward the Iron than toward the Polo â—or then its Virtue is dispersed only through a neighbouring Space It s Phantasie is changed when it restraines the abortive Young Catarrhs or Rheumes or the Bowel in a Rupture Also by another Phantasie doth the Load-stone draw any thing out of Glasse throughly boyled or melted by Fire for a very small Fragmen thereof being cast into a Mass or good quantity of Glaâ—s while it is in boyling of Green or Yellow makes it White For although the Load-stone it self be filled with a red Colour and be consumed by the Fire that dissolves the Glass Yet in the mean timâ— while it hath Life it aâ—â—racteth and consumeth the tinged Liquor out of the Fiery Glass and so its attraction is not only to Iron but moreover unto that aiery Part which would with difficulty depart out of the Glass and for this Cause it is of common use with Glass-makeâ—s The Phantasie of Amber drawes Chaffs and Moates by an attraction indeed slow enough but yet with a sufficient perfect Signature of attraction for it being married to our Mummy is also stronger than our attractive Faculty drawes in opposition thereunto and becomes a Zenexton or preservatory Amulâ—t against pestilential Contagions But Amber being mixed with Gumms its imagination being now transplanted draws the Poyson and Bullet out of a Wound indeed its pleasure and desire of drawing being on both sides varied But what Wonder shall it be unless with those who being ignorant of all things do also admire all things that inanimate things are strong in Phantasie When as he who is wholly the Life creates all things and hath therefore promised that nothing is to be expected as dead out of his Hand Also no one thing at all shall come to our view wherein himself also may not clarely appear as present The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole Globe of the Earth Yea this Expression That he containeth or comprehendeth all things carries the force of the World Do we not believe that there was much Knowledge in the Apple and that through the eating thereof our first Parents both are it up and together
by heat alone becomes a stone as they will themselves For because a stone melts not by fire even as otherwise mettals do therefore they conjecturing of Nature from a Negative have supposed they have untyed every knot And this grosse wit ought to have been suspected by every one long since if they all did not sleep a diseased drowsie sleep For what will they say of Sulphur which flowes or melts with the fire Hath frozen water or earth given a beginning to Sulphur because it melts Or what will they say of the condensing or co-thickning of Glass which is again dissolved by the same heat whereby it is made And what lastly concerning Salt which by one degree of heat is coagulated and waxeth dry and by another degree thereof is melted and a gain is dissolved by moist things Surely it is a shame to stay any longer in Aristotelical trifles and the Fables of Elementary qualities while we must diligently search into the causes and original of things Wherefore Paracelsus first taught our Ancestors that all Minerals which he believed to be materially made of the conjunction of the four Elements and elsewhere onely of the three Beginnings consisted chiefly of water and so that they are the fruits of the Element of water no otherwise than as Vegetables are the fruits of the earth But it hath not been alway unknown to me that all Bodies which are believed to be mixt are materially onely of water none excepted But that their Body is constrained or coagulated by the necessity of a certain proper and specifical seed for Ends known onely to the Creator from their cause which proposition I have proved to the full in the beginning of Natural Philosophy It hath also been hitherto neglected after what manner these seeds of things may come to light may cover themselves with the wrapperies of Bodies and dispose the same and how those very seeds may at length of necessity hearken to the importunities of Bodies Wherefore neither shall it be unacceptable in this place briefly to repeat the progress and flux of Seeds to their form and their maturities in Minerals out of the Doctrine by me elsewhere more largely delivered For indeed if a Stone be not made of a Stone it must needs be that stonifying includes the Generation of some certain new Being but every Generation presupposeth some kind of seed which may dispose the matter to a Being in potentia or possibility seeing nothing which is not vital is able to promote it self to perfection And therefore it would be a foolish and accidental perfection which should proceed from a Body without an internal Guide and an end appointed unto it Therefore if a Body be dispositively distinguished from the internal Efficient and doth issue in its production unto ends proposed unto it in Nature then also the Etymologie of a seed doth of right belong unto it because it proceedeth wholly from an incorporeal Beginning But this Beginning shall easily be granted by me to issue forth in vital things from the Image or according to the Idea framed by the Conception or cogitation of the Generater which therefore is called the imaginative power or faculty But that inanimate things have seminal Gifts implanted in their first Beings which after the manner of the Receiver do also proportionably after some sort answer to the Imagination the Sympathy and Antipathy of inanimate things do teach For a non-sensitive Body namely the Loadstone must needs after some sort feel the Scituation of the Pole or North star if it direct it self of its own accord unto it but is not drawn by the Pole even as in the Book of the Plague I teach by manifest Arguments Likewise that it feels or perceives Iron if neglecting the Pole it by a Choice inclines it self to the Iron which particulars least they should be here after a tedious manner repeated by me it is sufficient thus to have supposed them by the way Moreover This very Idea and perfect act of a new Being to wit the seminal efficient cause doth even in unsensitive things perform its office no otherwise than if it were strong in Life and Sense which Idea or imaginous likenesse cloathes it selfe with the Ayr of its own Archeus and by meanes thereof doth afterwards perfect the dispositions and Organs of the Body and at length compleateth those things which in the delineation of its own seminal Image are designed it for Ends known to God alone And in this respect also every Creature depends originally on God For this God hath freely put into living Creatures and plants a seminal faculty of framing such an Idea that is a fruitfulnesse of multiplying and raising up Of-spring by vertue of the Word Encrease and multiply to endure for Ages The which under the correction of the Church I thus borrow from the Scriptures In the Beginning the Earth was empty and voyd For surely it was beset with a double emptinesse or vacuity The which notwithstanding is not so said of the Element of water For the earth had not as yet minerals in its Bosom if it were void Indeed the earth was a meer and pure Sand not yet distinguished by a numerous variety and ranks of minerals But the Spirit of the Lord was carried upon the Great Deep of the Waters Not indeed that that carrying was not an empty idleness wanting a mysterie or a voluptuous ease of swimming but it contained the mysterie of a Blessing whereby the water might replenish the vacuity of the earth in one of its emptinesses with Fruits But on the other hand might satisfie the vacuity of the earth and fill up its emptinesse by Vegetables and living Creatures Therefore before the Light sprang up all mettals and minerals began at once in the floating of the divine Spirit Of which thing first of all the hidden lights of mettals imitating the Stars and the foregoing Testimonies which are wont to shine by Night in Mine-making Mountains do perswade me At leastwise the Spirit of the Lord which filled the whole earth being now earnestly desirous of Creating sealed by its Word the fruitfull Idea of its desire in the Spondill or Marrow of the Abysse of the Waters which in an instant brought forth the whole wealthy diversity of Stones Minerals and Mettals whereby it replenished the emptinesse of the earth with much usury which vaculty indeed living Creatures and plants were not able sufficiently as neither suitable to fulfill But the Pavement or Pantafle of the earth which this most rich of-Spring of waters was entrusted with for the filling up of its vacuity is called by Paracelsus the Trival-line the Womb that was great with Child with the seeds of minerals wherein the Lord implanted Reasons or Respects Endowments and seeds that were to be sufficient for Ages For so indeed the wealthy seed of Rocky stones and minerals is implanted in the Water that it may receive its determination and Ferment in the womb of the Earth But what the Virgin
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
having Remedies besides the Diminishers of the body and strength all which I will peculiarly touch at For indeed according to the consent of Galen in every Fever a Hectick one excepted cutting of a vein is required Therefore for the Schooles and custome of this destructive Age I state this Syllogisme Phlebotomy or Bloud-letting is unprofitable wherefoever it is not shewn to be necessary or where a proper Indication is wanting unto it But in Fevers it is not signified to be necessary Therefore Bloud letting in Fevers is unprofitable The Major proposition is proved because the end is the chief Directress of Causes and the Disposer of the meanes unto it Wheresoever therefore the end sheweth not a necessity of the meanes things not requisite are in vain provided for that end especially where from a contrary betokening it is manifest that the bloud is not let out without a losse of the strength such meanes therefore are rashly instituted which the end shews to be vain unprofitable and to be done with a diminishment of the strength But the Minor proposition Horatius Augenius de monte Sancto profesly proveth in three Books Teaching with the consent of the Vniversities That a Plethora or a too much fullnesse of the veines alone that is the too much abounding of Bloud is the betokener of Phlebotomy nor that indeed directly for the curing of Fevers but for the Evacuation of a fullnesse But a Plethora never subsisteth in Fevers therefore Bloud-letting is never betokened in Fevers and by consequence this is altogether unprofitable The Conclusion is indeed new and Paradoxal yet true Which thing therefore for that cause shall be therefore to be proved by many Arguments Galen himself proves the Subsumption Teaching That at every fit of Fevers more Choler is pufft away than is generated in two dayes In the mean time the other members do not cease to be nourished with accustomed bloud That is besides the consuming Caused by the Fever they also consume their own allotted quantity of wonted Bloud The which in the foregoing Chapter from the humour cast up by vomit I have reduced into a Computation But now that very thing is to be pressed with a greater connivance Wherefore if in him that is in good health eight ounces of bloud are daily made it must needs be that as many also are daily spent for nourishment or otherwise that a man should soon swell up into an huge heap What if therefore eight ounces of bloud do daily depart from him that is in good health certainly the Fever shall consume no less Therefore seeing there is none or but a little appetite and digestion of meats and sanguification of necessity also too much abundance of blood if there were any at the beginning shall fail presently after two dayes and the betokening thereof shall cease for the letting forth of bloud in him that hath a Fever But that presently in Fevers there is no longer a Plethora as many do see this as do undergo ulcers by a Cautery To wit the which presently after Fevers are dryed up nor do they afford their wonted pus But first of all we must take notice that the Strength or Faculties can never offend through abundance not so much as in Mathuselah so neither doth good bloud offend through a too much abounding because the vital Faculties and Bloud are Correlatives Because according to the Scripture the Soul or vital Spirit is in the blood By Consequence therefore there can never be a Plethora in good blood But on the other extream I have demonstrated in a foregoing Chapter That corrupt blood is never conteined in the veines therefore if there be ever any possible plethora of the veines that ought to consist in a middle state of the bloud between a corrupted and very healthy one whether we consider the same state of decay and neutrality or next as it is mixed of both at leastwise the Galenists may remember that good proceeds from an entire cause but evil from every defect And so that this state of the blood is not called a Plethorical or abounding one but a Cacochymical one or state of a bad juyce Nor that it desires the cutting of a vein but rather a Purgation which may selectively draw forth the bad but leave the good And so that by their Positions it is not yet proved That the cutting of a vein is in any wise betokened For according to the truth of the matter I have already shewn before That a state of ill juyce doth not consist in the veins the which indeed is onely a disturbing of the Bloud for the easing whereof an exhausting of the troubled bloud is not so much signified as a taking away of the affect of the Disturber Especially because it is the more pure bloud which passing through the Center of the heart hath obtained its own refinement and therefore that which is drawn out of the Elbow and is first brought forth shall be the more pure but the more impure bloud shal be left within Furthermore since it is now manifest that a Plethora is wanting in Fevers which may a require a letting out of blood and that thing the Schools have after some sort smelt out they have instead of an indication or betokening sign substituted some co-indications or mutual betokenings as if they were of an equal weight with a sutable indication in nature and out-weighing a contrary indication the which after another manner surely seeing it is drawn from a conserving of the strength ought wholly to obtain the Chief-dome altogether by that Title that every Fever is quickly safely and perfectly curable without cutting of a vein For indeed for all so divers putrefactions of retaining Humours and Fevers issuing from thence they presently make use of the one only succour of cutting of a vein because it abundantly as they say succours and is stopped at pleasure By which distinction at least they after some sort defame their own laxative medicines For they say although the cutting of a vein by a natural and one only indication of it self seems to be required by reason of a Plethora yea nor that it doth properly take away putrified humours yet it cooleth it unloads the Fardle of the veins reneweth or refresheth the strength takes away part of the bad Humour together with the good and by derivation and revulsion stops pacifies and calls away the flux of humours made unto the nest of putrefaction wherefore nature feeling refreshment is the more prosperously and easily busied about the rest They are good words saith the Sow while she eats up the penitential Psalms but they do not profit a hunger-starved swine Such indeed are co-indications whereby they perswade the destruction of Mortals to be continued and whereunto I will give satisfaction in order But before all I will have it to be fore-admonished that although in a more strong and full body there is not a notable hurt by letting out the blood yea although the sick may
able to proceed and whether they hope that bloud being at sometime after what manner soever once putrified in the veines there is aforded in Nature a going back or return To wit from such a privation For let them shew that it is not a contradiction that it is proper to a Fever to defile the bloud it self and for this property to be taken away by the effect to wit by a removal of that which is putrified For if the more impure bloud be at first drawn out of the vein and they repeatingly open a vein in the mean time they prostrate and disturb the Faculties hence also they take away the hope of a Crisis what if then the more red bloud shall flow forth Surely they cry out as if the whole Troop of the Malady were taken away at the first turn and as if the Seat of Fevers had been extended onely from the Heart unto the Elbow but that the good bloud resided about the Liver But I have alwayes discerned evacuations of the last excrements to be fearfull in the Dropsie and therefore much more in a naked snatching away of the bloud which withdrawes in a direct passage the vital spirits from the Heart through the Wound whether that bloud be accounted bad or good or neutral First of all I have proved that as well those things offend in begging of the principle which are supposed concerning a putrified continual and burning Fever as those which are supposed concerning the emissions of putrified bloud Wherefore in speaking according to Numbers I have alwayes found Succours that are made for the snatching away of the strength to be full of deceit as that for a very little ease the Faculties the Porters of Diseases are weakened For even so as drink at the beginning of Fevers seemeth to comfort Thirst for a little space but who is so mad that he would then drink if he knew that the drink would filch away his necessary powers Therefore the ayd of cooling by cutting of a vein is unfaithfull deceitfull and momentany At length concerning neutral bloud which in respect of cutting of a vein is neither good nor evil it is not worth ones labour to speak any thing seeing that which is denyed under a disjoyning may also be denyed copulatively For whether that be neutral bloud which consisteth of a co-mixture of the good with that which is depraved by supposing that to be depraved which is not or that wherein a neutral alteration is introduced for both events the particulars aforesaid do satisfie Lastly That I may cut off the hope that is in Revulsion and so equally take away all co-indications as the wretched privy shifts of obstinacy It is a mad ayd to have cut a vein for this end they for the most part require a plenteous one whether in Fevers or next in the Menstrues for Revulsion because a Feverish matter swims not in the bloud or floats in the veins as a Fish doth in the water but it adheres or sticks fast within to the vessel even as in its own place concerning the occasionall matter I will declare But for the Menstrues in like manner because a separation thereof is made from the whole and that not but by a separating hand of the Archeus But Bloud-letting separates nothing of the separable things because it acts without a foreknowledge of the end and so without choyce But presently after the vessel is opened the more nigh and harmless bloud alway flowes forth the which because other afterwards followes by a continual thred for fear of a vacuum therefore the Menstrues otherwise by the endeavour of Nature collected about the Womb are by cutting of a vein drawn away from thence and go back into the whole Body But if Phlebotomy shall sometimes well succeed in a Woman that is plethorick and full of juyce yet surely in many others it hath given a miserable overthrow For if the Menstrues should offend onely in its quantity while as it is now collected and separated in the veins about the Womb I shall willingly admit of an individual betokening of Phlebotomy and onely in the Case supposed But the Menstrues if it shall flow in a well-constituted Womb it abundantly satisfies its own ends and in this respect Revulsion is in vain although the Supposition supposeth it to be even an impossible thing For Bloud-letting is nothing but a meer and undistinct emptying out of the bloud But the veins being emptyed they out of hand recall unto themselves any kind of bloud whatsoever from on every side Because as they are the greedy sheaths of bloud so also are they impatient of Vacuity or emptiness And therefore the veins that are emptyed do allure the Menstrues designed for utterance That is being in this respect once enrouled by Nature in the Catalogue of Excrements But Derivation because it is a sparing effusion of bloud so it be made out of veines convenient it hath often profited in many locall Diseases and so in Fevers it is impertinent But they urge that the cutting of a vein is so necessary in a Pleurisie that it is enjoyned under a Capital punishment For truly they say that unlesse the bloud flowing together unto the Ribs be pulleâ— back by the effusion of much bloud there is danger least the Pleurisie do soon kill the man by choaking of him Surely I let out the bloud of no person that hath a Pleurisie and such a cure is safe certain profitable and sound None of them perisheth whereas in the mean time under Phlebotomy many do at length perish with a long or lingring Consumption and experience a Relapse every Year For according to Galen Whosoever they be that are not perfectly cured on the fortieth day become Consumptious But I perfectly cure them within few dayes neither do they feel a Relapse Neither indeed have I alone my secrets for this purpose But moreover I have seen a Country man curing all Pleuritical persons at the third draught For he used the dung of an Horse for a man and of a Nag for a woman which he dissolved in Ale and gave the expressed strayning to drink Such indeed is the ignorance of Physitians and so great the obstinacy of the Schooles That God gives knowledge to Rusticks and Little ones which he denyes to those that are blown up with Heathenish Learning We must now see if there be any use of Revulsion in Fevers For indeed since the work of Revulsion is not primarily any other thing than the cutting of a vein whereunto the succeeding bloud is by accident hoped to come and that by the benefit of that thing it should not flow unto the place affected Upon this Position it followes That by such an Euacuation the offensive Feverish bloud so I connivingly speak shall be drawn as dispersed into the veines which otherwise lurking in its own Nest far from the Heart could not so cruelly communicate the Ferment of its own hurt unto the Heart which is to say that it should
it self since it shall not produce any good to it self thereby For that Chyle or juyce being attracted doth as yet want foregoing means whereby it can ever be brought unto the perfection of arterial blood Otherwise the Arteries had drawn unto themselves more vexation but by a little sucking of a forreign liquor than they are able to wear out by long pains for the future I grant indeed that the Arteries do ordinarily and immediately attract a be-drunkening spirit of the stomack which is bred almost in every vegetable which is disobliged from the composed body through art only by vertue of a serment and at length is drawn out by the fire For example If the berries of Juniper are boyled in water under an Alembick an essential oyl and water do presently after rise up and are collected At length if those berries are then in the next place steeped by a ferment the distillation being afterwards repeated a water most gently burning or an Aquavitae is extracted yet less than if from the same berries an oyl were not first withdrawn Thirdly at last if the remaining berries being strained thorow a searse are boyled into an Electuary thou hast now obtained solutive Medicine excelling all the compositions of the shops An Artery therefore willingly snatcheth to it self the burning spirit of life a guest of the vegetable nature out of the stomack which the Grecism of the Schools never saw or knew the which otherwise nature by her first instruction prepares out of the digested Chyle surely she rejoyceth that she hath found a liquor with much brevity from whence she may make vital spirit for her self For in this respect Wines are regularly pleasing to Mortals they exhilarate the heart and do make drunk if they are drunk down in more than a just quantity For the spirit of Wine is not yet our vital spirit because it is as yet wanting of an individual limitation that the vital inflowing Archeus the Executer of our functions may from thence be framed Wherefore since neither the Mesentery nor Liver are ordained for the framing of vital spirit the heart rejoyceth immediately and readily to suck to it that spirit being already before prepared through the arteries out of the stomack Whence it follows If the arteries attract unto themselves the Spirit of Wine like unto vapours they shall also draw the odours of Essences For from hence are faintings yea and on the other hand restaurations But the arteries draw not Oils although essential and grateful ones because they suck not the substance of liquor and much less oils Therefore that a Medicine may be received by the heart and by this heart attracted inwards it ought to be that which yields a good smell and to be unseparably married to the spirit of wine Wherefore Wines that are odoriferous do more readily bedrunken than others because the odours which are married to the spirit of wine are most easily admitted unto the heart head womb c. But oylie odours being abstracted from their Concrete bodies do rather affect by defiling than materially enter into the Arteries For therefore through the immoderateness of Wine and the errours of life not only a meer spirit of Wine is allured into the arteries but also something of juyces together with it Whence at length difficult heart-beatings grow up in the gluttons of Wine and the meer or pure spirit of Wine by an importunate daily continuance strikes the reed of the artery within disturbs the local and proper digestions thereof wherefore also a part of the arterial nourishment degenerating stirs up divers miseries even durable for life For it happens in the Artery of the stomack that the spirit of wine joyning it self by its own importunity to the spermatick nourishment of the artery in the course of dayes stirs up un-obliterable Vertigo's or giddinesses of the head continual head-aches the Falling-sickness I say Swoonings Drowsie Evils Apoplexies c. For in the family-administration of this member as it were that of the heart it obtains its own animosities durable for life which are not to be extirpated but by the greater Secrets The same way also sudden or unexpected death hath oft-times made an entrance for it self because such a vitiated matter is never of its own free accord drawn out from thence For although the Archeus be apt at length to consume his own nourishment yet he doth not obtain this authority over excrements degenerated by a forreign coagulation and so for that cause not hearkening to the vital power or vertue For therefore that part hath assumed the title of the heart stirs up swoonings from an easie occasion Falling-sicknesses also after the twenty fourth year and likewise such affects as are attributed to the heart are accounted uncurable by those who have not much laboured in extracting the more potent faculties of medicine Hippocrates by leave of so great a man and of such an age I speak it was ignorant of this seat of the falling evil because he was he who being constituted in the entrance of Medicine faithfully delivered unto posterity at least his own observations and Medicinal administrations sprung from these For he said If Melancholy passeth into the body it breeds the Falling Sickness But foolish madness if it peirce the soul If therefore black Choler passing over into the body and soul causeth the Falling-sickness and Madness Whither therefore shall it proceed that it may generate a Quartane Ague The Schools especially rejoyce in so great an Author for their humour of black Choler But they are forgetful of a Quartane which far departs from the Falling-sickness and Madness For after whatsoever manner they shall regard it a Quartane shall either not be made from black Choler or this shall not be in the body nor in the soul while it makes a Quartane But as to what pertains to Madness and the Falling-sickness as if they were separated only in the diversity of passages or that the same humours did sometimes evaporate or were materially entertained in the Inns of the principal faculties Surely it is a ridiculous although a dull and plausible devise to have found out the cause of all diseases in so narrow a quaternary of humours For first of all The Falling Evil doth much more strictly bedrowsie and alienate the powers of the soul although Madnesses do that far more stubbornly or constantly Wherefore the aforesaid diseases are far otherwise distinguished let the Genius's of Hippocrates spare me than in the changing of their wayes and bounds And which more is the general kind of foolish Madness shall differ by its species in its proper matter and proper efficient as is to be seen in madness from the biting of a mad dog or stroak or sting of the Tarantula For the cause of things had not as yet been made known in the age of Hippocrates the knowledge whereof the Prattle of the Greeks hath hitherto suppressed Neither also are wrothful doatages made from yellow Choler bruitish ones from
to the bottome which is a demonstration of the deed First therefore the pearles of the shops are not true ones but a certain abortion of those sowed within through the middle substance of the Pearle Secondly the powder of Pearles or Corrals dissolved although it may delude the eyes yet it is not truly solved it remayning the powder which it was before Thirdly instead of comforting remedies they substitute nothing but the acide salt of the things dissolving Fourthly that powder being thus solved cannot be made bloud and therefore neither can it enter into the veines Fifthly what if it had entred unto the Liver hollow veine and so by the power of digestion that sharp salt adhering thereunto had at length been wasted into a transmutation What other thing should such Comfortatives performe besides to besmeare the veines within with a forreign powder And at length to load an un-obliterable malady with aâ— forreign guest This is the harvest that is to be exspected from Gems It is an alike doating monstrous thing which they promise concerning the broath of an old Cock being joyned with herbs For first of all there is more of life and strength in the more young birds than in decrepite ones Let the judgment be brought unto Hens And also medicinal broaths are ungratefull and troublesome to the stomack and so they are easily dismissed unto excrements Therefore after this manner under a changed maske they again dissemble their Apozemes under the broath of an old Cock Last of all there is the Antidote Alkermes which although as it consisteth of the Syrupe of the grain that dieth Scarlet I wish it were not adulterated by roses it be laudable neverthelesse inasmuch as it being scorched and roasted is impregnated with the more crude silk untill that it can be powdered the whole power of the dying grain is vitiated which silk being thus roasted is nothing else but the wool of silke wormes depraved or vitiated by burning For the invention of some covetous old man brought up that thing as thinking that nature is exhilarated or rejoyced with things that delight the eyes Far be it for neither Gold gems not pretious stones as such shall refresh the vital spirits and much lesse crude silk roasted and that if it were tinged with a Purple Colour unlesse the vitall spirits shall well perceive restaurations to themselves by the additions of strength But moreover vaine are comforting and cordiall things which are wished for the fewel of Fevers remayning and the blood and strength being diminished For if a Fever prostrateth a strong person and one that is in good health how shall it suffer him to be strengthened being now dejected Especially by things which are forreigners in the whole general kinde nor agreeing with the spirits in the union of co-resemblance How shall a Citizen fortifie himself who hath received an houshold enemy stronger than himself into his possession The wan therefore and vain promises of Physitians concerning fortifiers and strengtheners are full of deceite For he that exhausteth the strength or faculties together with the blood and withdrawes them by evacuating medicines but forbids wine and things that do immediately restore the strength also who continually prosecures after cooling things as enemies to the vitall heat how shall he procure strength by such electuaries CHAP. IX The true cause of Rigour or the shaking fit in Fevers 1. Rigour or extreame cold and trembling is from the spirit making the assault but not efficiently from the diseasifying cause 2. Why he intends Rigours 3. Why he stirs up cold and heat 4. Why he begins with cold 5. The Authour runs not back unto the lawes of the microcosme 6. There are intermittences almost in all agents 7. The manner of making cold 8. The manner and cause of rigour 9. A marke of ignorance in Galen concerning the tossing of a member 10. The burning cause of a Fever 11. That every motion as well an healthy as a sick one is made efficiently by the Archeus 12. How the Authour learned that thing 13. The turbulency of the Archeus disturbs the urine 14. The ordinary office of the Gaule is troubled and makes the Chyle bitter 15. VVherefore also the bitter vomitings thereof diminisheth nothing of a Fever 16. VVhence is burning heat and sweat in a Fever 17. VVhat sweat may betoken 18. Sharpnesse increaseth cold the which an Erisipelas proveth 19. A Gangrene how it may undoubtedly be stopped 20. VVhy the beginning of a continval Fever is from horrour 21. Paracelsus is noted 22. The errours of Galen especially concerning the putrefaction of the blood and spirit 23. The true seat of a diary and hectick Fever 24. The fabulous similitude of Galen for the parching heat of an hectick Fever 25. VVhy lime is enflamed by water 26. A mechanical proof 27. The blockish cause of gaping 28. The true cause and the organ of the same 29. Sleep the drowsie evil giddinesse of the head Apoplexy c. are from the mouth of the stomach 30. Gaping is not in the muscles of the cheekes or jaw HIppocrates first put a name on the Spirit of life to wit that it is that which maketh the assault and the guider of all things which happen in us which prerogative surely none hath at length called into question In the mean time the Schooles that succeeded being as it were giddy with the vice of whirling about have wrested aside the causes of trembling into old wives fictions The Spirit therefore being the Prince of the world in us hath alone obtained a motive beginning in us as well local as alterative to wit conteyning the cause of Rigour or extremity of cold as well in respect of locall motion as of the alterations of cold and succeeding heat For the Archeus intends by trembling rigours to shake of the excrement adhering to the similar part Even so as a spider also shakes her cobwebs and joggs them with rigour that she may shake of a forreigne thing which lighteth into them But the Aroheus taking notice that he can little profit by rigours or shaking extremityes stirs up an alterative Blas All which I have elsewhere taught to consist naturally in Winter and Summer cold I say and heat To wit through the successive interchange whereof all sublunary things do decay in the coursary number of dayes From Winter therefore in the very universe it self the beginning of the year proceedeth through a spring and Summer into Autumne wherein the fruites are at length ripened For whatsoever things are made by nature undergo this beginning increase state and declining So the Archeus himself as all seeds and vital things do imitate the nature of general ones stirs up feverish rigours colds and heats But not the offensive matter of the Fever even as hath already been sufficiently and over-proved at the beginning For so also in disjoynting of the bones the teeth presently shake and rigours spring up And likewise while a woman with child untimely expels the not
inherency is the very same power nor the exciter or spur of its own self or that that power subsisteth alone without a root which stirred it up But every power hath a nourishing causing and directing Being of it self far more spiritual and abstracted than is the Case of its inhesion More abstracted I say than is the mean it self whereinto the motive power is received yea more formal than the very quality of the power it self is Truly there is a master-work man-like image of evil or good the Effecters of effects as well in diseases as in other seminal Beings But that image takes its Original beginning from the cogitation of man or from the conception of the Archeal spirit surrogated in its absence I now speak of Diseases For the Sensitive Soul is in the spirit or Archeal air after the manner of the Receiver And although the Archeus be not vexed after the usual and humane manner of the soul yet the Inn of the sensitive soul which is the Archeus himself arising enjoyes the Idea's as well from his own conceptions as from the exorbitances of his conceptions after the manner proper to his receiving For neither doth the Archeus alwayes fish those passions out of his own conception but also from things undigested badly digested and transchanged Even so also from excrements not being rightly subdued or separated And so also not only from our faculties being estranged or erting but besides from the in-bred endowment of things Even as in the spittle of a mad dog there is a poysonous Ideal property which alienates the imaginations of the sensitive soul in us at its own pleasure There is therefore in things a certain accidental power which if it can perfect its own contagion and propagation it wants a formal and seminal power which may be the Governess of the action For seeds as they utter the figure and similitude of themselves in their products of necessity they have this Image engraven on them if they ought to act out of themselves or to erect another thing like to themselves in the thing produced seeing such a likeness presupposeth a forming Idea In the next place the occasional matter of Fevers if it were of the essence of Fevers or if it should not precede at leastwise it should alwayes accompany the proper effect to it self Wherefore since a quaternary of Humours and the existence of these are feigned things it must needs be that the feigned humoural cause doth neither fore-exist nor follow the Essence of a Fever neither that there is any respect of Humours unto a Fever nor likewise of a Fever unto feigned Humours Again neither can the blood the treasure of life after any manner be the constitutive cause of Fevers yea nor indeed the occasional cause thereof except it be hunted out of the veins and first corrupted that is unless it first cease to be blood For truly there is no other reflexion of the out-chased blood than that it is a dead Carcase in a living sheath that in the mean time it undergoes divers transmutations according to the variety of the Idea of the Archeus governour of the stern of the family-administration in the nearest kitchins For this vitiated blood is now a cadaverous excrement and an occasional cause whereby the Archeus being excited frames an Idea of fury Lastly any other excrement whatsoever being defiled by a succeeding digestion transfers the right of an occasional cause it self and occasionally brings forth a Fever no otherwise than as I have already said concerning the blood And such an excrement is heaped up by a vice digestively and distributively or by degrees or at length is produced by a Fever or by forreign things breathed into the body However it shall be at leastwise in respect of Fevers it alwayes remains external neither doth it ever enter into the Essence hereof They are indeed only accidental considerations which do most nearly respect the degree of Fevers for if the action of diseases proceedeth immediately into the life and takes its beginning from the life verily it is necessary that the essence of diseases do also wholly pierce the very essential marrow of life But other external things of what sort and how great soever do only regard whether the occasional matter be greater or less in quantity Whether the efficient cause in a young man be stronger than in an old man in the beginning of the disease than in the end thereof in a malignant Fever than in a more mild one c. But such degrees of powers are only the Correlatives of the efficient being compared unto the strength And they teach indeed how much it is to be feared from an accident occasionally rushing on the sick But I here have regard unto the formal essence of a Fever Therefore the essential power of the internal efficient or of the life it self is alway present and remaineth and the denomination thereof drawn from a term of Relation although it may change the hope of the Physitian may vary the superiority of life and the proportion of the Agent yet the life it self is alwayes the intimate principal formal and essential efficient of Fevers and the occasional matter every where remains without the true and internal material cause For a Fever is oft-times taken away or ceaseth a remnant of its occasional matter and efficient as yet remaining For a Quartane oftentimes ceaseth of its own accord and perhaps returns again a month after and so it keeps its occasional matter in the mean time untouched and without action as it were sleeping And the same occasional Being is elsewhere of its own accord wholly consumed the storme of the Archeus being first appeased Oft-times also Fevers leave weaknesses and local diminishments of the faculties behind them being durable for life as the life of the implanted Archeus was curtailed and suffered his own too many tribulations CHAP. XVII A narrow search into the Essential thinglinesse of a Fever 1. An erroneous speculation of the Schooles 2. The Authour differs from the Schooles 3. The manner of making a Fever is enlarged for betokenings 4. The center of a Fever 5. An examination of thirst and cold 6. The Doctrine of its center is confirmed 7. Why a Fever is sometimes terminated by the appetite of unwonted things 8. The family government of a Fever in the Pylorus 9. The Quartane ague is an outlaw and the unheard of seat of strange Fevers 10. Why vomiting looseth not these strange Fevers 11. The definition of a Fever is rent 12. An examination of remedies 13. The vanity of hope from whence it is introduced HItherto as well the modern as more antient Physitians have considered the nature and essential thinglinesse of Fevers from the speculation of heat as well internal as that of the encompassing heat of Summer And also they have measured that essence by the sharpnesse cruelty multiplicity of the occasional matter or from the malignity of one or more of the four feigned
me sleeping for the most High created the Physitian as also medicine out of the earth I have therefore deemed the truth of medicine and knowledge of a Physitian to have hid it self in the stable Foundation of Nature and the more hidden Sepulchre from the unworthy and defiled beholding of Mortals and to have forsaken our commerces and to have overwhelmed it self in many labyrinths and perplexities so that by reason of the smallness of light which is social unto us by nature truth remains covered over with darkness and hedged about with difficulties And the worst thing which here at length offers it self is that this Grave of Truth is kept not by a good Genius or Spirit but by the unhappy Birds of the Night therefore the spirits of darkness are to be supplanted But whosoever he be who strives the less to applaud those keepers he presently experienceth the violent power or tyrannical rule of those who under the shew of piety and quietness keep these Kingdomes of Pluto as their own But seeing they themselves come not into the light of truth they also suffer not others to enter unless they prostrate themselves as humble unto them For any other person is straightway encompassed by the powers of darkness the Enemies of the first Truth who under the pretence of godliness challenge the Legacies of their own Sepulchres to themselves because they boast that the Kingdome of Truth is in their possession And therefore that the command of Learning Sciences and the powers of great men are assigned to them For these being neither Birds nor Mice have obtained a middle and hermaphroditical kind and they go as it is in the 20th of Luke They pierce the houses and possessions of Widows they lead away after them poor silly women laden with sins c. Surely every such business walketh in darkness and all their endeavour is with a Noon-day Devil Truly I saw not a means of opening the Sepulchre of Truth but with long leisure but this thing hateful spirits even since the daies of Arias Montanus have not permitted to good men Wherefore that I might seasonably and with the profit of my Neighbour put that in frequent practise I decreed to withdraw my self from the vulgar sort and under the light throughly to knock the Vaults of Nature full of holes And least I should labour in vain I disposed of my glassen basins under the light that by a dumb sound I might discern the Vault of Nature underneath I endeavoured by the unwearied pains and charges of forty years to break the rocky stones asunder with the Axe Crook Fire and sharp liquor that light may flow in from heaven and that the Night-birds which presume to keep the Keys of Sciences and the narrow passage of Truth may vanish away or betake themselves unto a corner out of a Court-like conversation and the pursuances of courtesies or at least that they may no longer hereafter hinder mortals who are diligent searchers after truth For this mixt kind of Monster noyseth abroad that it is more excellent than all Birds because they begin not from an Egge after the custom of other Birds but do nurse up their Young with a longer sucking at the Breast and do cast those out of the Nest which they think are not sufficiently profitable unto them They boast I say that they are therefore the most quick-sighted of Birds in this respect because they also see most clearly under darkness Alas thus is our Age deceived by darkness But they feign and perswade the vulgar that Truth is in the shade within their own vaults who in the mean time being alwayes learning do never come unto the knowledge of Charity because they endure not the light that is perfectly learned by alone and naked Charity and therefore they alwayes weave to themselves the Wiles and webs of darkness Truly it was necessary for me to rent the bowels of the Earth and to break its Crown For truly Galen hath seemed to me to have entred into the Vaults with a slender Lamp who being presently affrighted stumbled in the entry and at first almost fell over the Threshold Therefore his Oyl being lavishly spent he returned to his own and told many things confusedly concerning the Sepulchres which he had not perceived nor known nor believed although he had seen them All from thenceforth boast rashly among their own people that they know many things who saluted not so much as the Threshold of Nature except at a far distance from the relation of Galen In the next place Avicen with his company although he became more cautious by the viewing of Galen yet he entred not much deeper but looking behind about and above him and being taken with giddiness his foot being dashed against a stone fell headlong down but returning he boasts in a Forraign Dialect that he had seen far more than his Predecessors The which when his followers understood and stuck to they chose a certain one of them for a Standard-Defender they all of them had rather fight for the glory of their sworn Prince than that they would themselves enter the passages as if the mind of man that is free being readily inclined like unto Clients had forsworn liberty Therefore none having afterwards endeavoured to enter and being content with the first Boasters they prefixed on their Centuries that themselves were to fight for the glory and Trophy of a matter not yet known but as many as came unto the entry being as it were factiously addicted unto the first Patron and insisting in the steps of Predecessors presently fell down together They dreamed that they were entred at leastwise they were deprived of light and help for removing the darkness of so great an heap Others also afterwards hastened toward the Vaults but they brought not the light with them they perceived their Oyl to be extinguished and snatcht away by the Enemies of the first Truth and humane health and Inhabitants of darkness At length Paracelsus having entred with a great Torch fastened a small cord to the wall about his first paces which he might follow as a Companion and Reducer of the wayes he aspiring to pierce whither the footsteps of mortals had not yet taken their journey The rout of Birds is presently amazed at so great a sight it thinks that Prometheus had entred it dares not nor was able to extinguish the Torch yet it secretly attempts to do it This man seeth very many Monuments he is long and freely enlarged he fills the entries with smoak and while he is intentive as a greedy devourer of truth his strength fails his Torch falls his light is extinguished in the middle of his course and he is as it were choaked with fumes I a poor miserable man have at length entred with the least light of a Lanthorn and that nothing might hinder and that nothing might detain my hand from the work I indeed refused a Rope and hung my Lanthorn at my girdle but
a Crook followed at my back making a path the rule of my return Therefore I insisting only in my own footsteps I there saw far other things than the foregoing company of Ancestors had described But because I was alone strength was wanting for so difficult weights and I having endeavoured many things the rout of Bats being against me at length after the manner of the former I departed without fruit yea far worse because through long delay the light was darkned unto me and my eyes afterwards refused to bear any further light for why because they had now too much accustomed themselves to darkness Even so that unless I had wholly abstained from my stubborn intent the heavenly light of the day had profited me nothing at leastwise this one only and most true thing I had learned that we all having trusted only unto humane aids did walk in thick darkness through unknown ways most difficult windings and paths of the night imitating the industry of a few and those badly to be trusted in neither that at length we did bring any fruits from thence except the light badly consumed be-darkned eyes cheeks looking pale with greyness confusions of mind presumptions of vanity and the image of the night at hand full of terrour and despair Moreover I discerned that all sorts of Knaves and Harlots Deceivers Jews and Tormenters when as they had once intruded themselves by their own rashness they were soon by boldness raised to a degree For I have not found in any a greater liberty more ample rashness more cruel credulities more thick darknesses and more frequent confusions than in the most noble of gifts wherein it is free for any one to kill if the murder be involved in the Cloak of a succour and the party slain be covered with earth Therefore I begged of God that he would vouchsafe to set a bound in so wicked naughtinesses which they committed against the Divine Image of his Majesty But soon after I discerned the vanity of my desire For truly as long as mens own profit holds the superiority and medicine is exercised as a Plow they contend in vain who endeavour to compose my Christ the Father of the poor with Mammon I praised those Cities in times past wherein it was not lawful for an undiscreet Colledge of Physitians to rage in a drunken manner on the health of their Neighbour But afterwards I laughed at my own blockishness because they were excepted who cured freely Whence I learned that the gain of Physitians had provided that Law for themselves and that mans own gain would every where vitiate the Laws of Charity that none would from a certain hope be found for the future unto whom that exception might square I saw therefore that in the custome of Laws defects grew over and that Laws were rendred barren of juice or virtue and surely my stupidity was by so much the greater in this because more gross errours in curing are no where committed than those which even Chair-Physitians do through a punishable ignorance commit even as in my whole work I have endeavoured and been ready to shew mechannically by the fire practically and by all kind of demonstrations And indeed but a few ages ago arrogancy sloath and the extinguishment of Charity sequestred a Chyrurgion from a Physitian wherefore afterwards servants handled manual instruments and operations as if it unbeseemed a Christian to help his Neighbour with his hands In the mean time some Noble Matrons healed many defects with their own hands that were despaired of by Physitians Truly after that the Studies of ambition and gain were practised Charity grew cold Mercy was extinguished Art perished and the Giver of lights withdrew his gifts the number of our calamities increased and Physitians were made the Fable of the vulgar Truth remained buried in the grave of Science and instead thereof a confused kind of brawlings arose being discursive which was accounted for doctrine For Physitians described and drew to themselves the whole Army of Diseases almost grieving that the Catalogue of them was as yet so small For they being allured with the facility of the Art of Galen promised to measure all diseases by the Geometrical demonstrations of degrees of heat and cold and to heal them all thereby Chyrurgions also as well the Modern as Antient from an imitation and emulation of these largely and widely treated promiscuously of all diseases snatching the cures of them all under themselves in the sight and despight of their former Masters Because at first and from the root of Medicinal Ordination all things belonged to be cured only and alone by Physitians but unto Chyrurgions afterwards only by permission and from favor Both of them have remained under a confused strife the which I cannot nor do I intend to put an end unto as being assured That a Physitian chosen by God his own signs shall follow and wonders for the Schools For he shall prepare to the honour of God his free gifts to the comfort of his Neighbour and therefore compassion shall be his Leader For he shall possess truth in his heart and knowledge in his understanding Charity shall be his Sister and the mercy of the Lord shall enlighten his ways For he shall employ or bestow the grace or favour of the Lord and the hope of gain shall not be in his thoughts for the Lord is rich and liberal and will give him an hundred-fold in an heaped up measure He will fructifie his works and anoint his hands with blessing He will fill his mouth with consolations and with the Trumpet his word from which diseases shall flee He will fill his life with length of daies his house with riches and his Children with the fear of the Lord His footsteps shall bring felicity and diseases shall be in his sight as Snow in the Noon day of Summer in an open Valley Curse and punishment shall flee away and health shall follow him behind These are the promises of the Lord unto Physitians whom he hath chosen These are the blessings of those who walk in the path of mercy Because the Lord loveth those that work mercy and therefore will he enlighten them by his Spirit the Comforter For who is liberal as the Lord who gives many things freely and for some small matter bestoweth all things Blessed is the Lord who saves only the merciful man and who saves him that is to be saved freely But consolation shall meet the merciful man in the way of hope because he hath chosen a faithful Master But indeed the Greeks and soon after the Arabians instituted the cures of infirmities without the distinction of the person of a Chyrurgion from a Physitian And those Heathens rising again from the dead shall at some time confound Christian Physitians for their sloath covetousness and pride For God reserveth the choice of a Physitian to himself But the Schools being willing to ease God of this work have taken on themselves to instruct
ibid How the Antients remedies may profit though not cure the stone 708 Why an expulsion of the stone is not to be intended 709 The quality of a remedy resolving the stone 710 56 Why stones are sometimes white 248 28 Whence a three-fold stone is made 249 3 Of the Stone 828 The flux of seeds for a stone 829 706 20 After what manner a man is made a stone 833 Of the Coagulum and Runnet of the stone by handicraft operation 840 Salt profitable in the stone 843 Of the occasion of the stone 857 Of the womb of the stone 866 Its Scituation 867 The pain of the stone from a contracture 86 Of the intention to cure the stone 701 15 874 Its cure 878 879 With testimonies thereof ibid. Of the manner of ministring a remedy for the stone 883 Of the stone that maketh gold its projection 674 58 751 807 The stone that maketh gold hath not the blessings of the tree of life 807 Sulphur only resists a fermental poyson 1158 In Sulphur is the life and death of bodies 66 14 Sulphur boiled in Linseed oyl 427 70 In oyl of Turpentine 515 The whole band of diseases hearken to some Sulphurs 577 260 39 The Sulphur of Copper hot stupefactive yet sweeter then honey 304 39 How floures of Sulphur profit those that have a Cough 309 94 Sulphur commended against the Plague 1154 Of the Gas of Sulphur 1155 The Sun scorcheth without pain 72 14 Is hot 74 23 139 41 794 The gifts of the Almighty are placed in the Sun 796 Sugar hurtful in most diseases 462 30 Loaf-Sugar not so good as the common 467 57 Swooning from the Stomack 302 303 27 What that Sweat is that accompanies death and Swoonings 42 What the Synovia is 842 389 20 Of Sympathetical Mediums 616 The cause of Sympathy 775 68 Of the Sympathy and Antipathy of things 1114 T. TAst in the midriff 909 Tartar its distillation 412 68 427 68 183 39 Why salt of Tartar dissolves crude Tartar 234 19 How Tartar is made 233 No disease ariseth from Tartar 235 1 Tartar not in foods 241 8 Tartar afâ—â—â— digestion in the stomach ceaseth to be a Tartar 242 243 Tartar not in drinks 250 7 Of the Tartar of the blood 1103 Of the original of the Tarantual 1509 The poyson of the Tarantula 787 148 What thirst is and whence 471 8 Thorn in the flesh how cured 521 Of thunder 90 17 A preservation against its effects on Beer c. 91 21 The seat of the Timpany and by what it is made 520 Why Tin is lighter than other Metals 107 20 The Toad commended against the Plague 1149 How prepared for that use 1150 How it kils the Ferment of the Plague 1151 How quickly he dies with fear Ibid. The Toad given by God as a Remedy for the poor against the Plague 1152 The bone of a Toad cures the tooth ach Tooth-ach whence caused 438. 30 247 Of the original of the tooth-stone 246 Of the flourishing and decaying of teeth 247 25 How the Transmutation of bodies is effected 115. 23 The tree of good and evil why forbidden 656 664 665 666 680 Of the tree of life 745 753 754 755 Tree of life what qualities it ought to have 808 The Cedar tree doth signifie the tree of life in this world 810 Of the preparation of the Cedar tree 811 V. VAlerian good against Inchantments 605 All Vegetables not woody contain a winie spirit 413. 73 Their Archeus hath no anatomical affinity with man 458 5 Their whole property from their seed and not from the heaven Ibid. 7 Their degrees whence different 146 88 Why vegetables unprofitable to the sick 578 Vervain commended 605 Venal blood wholly turned into nourishment 257 13 Venal blood never putrifies in its place 941 The natural endowment of the veins 942 An example Ibid. Vesicatories more hurtful then Phlebotomy 968 Vital spirit is salt 195. 19 733 734 Made of Arterial blood 196 24 732 By the ferment of the heart 733 Actuated by a vital light 734 The virgin earth 689 The Author instructed by visions 22 42 His vision of the soul 726 A vision of a Layick concerning the Lues venerea 1904 The spirit of vitriol reduced into an Alum by its dissolution of Mercury 473. 21 The dignity of the sulphur of venus and the nativity of vitriol 889 The best vitriol where to be had 891. 695 15 How vitriol may be made Ibid. The preparation of the Sulphur of vitriol 339. 9 Unguents how applicable 47 58 Ulcers their principal vice where seated 〈◊〉 18 21 23 Of the Difference of Ulcers 321. 29 The cure of Ulcers 322. 31 323 35 Volatile things fixed by fixed things  Volatiolation caused by ferments 117. 33 To provoke Urine in lingring fevers 465. 46 VVhat true provokers are 473. 19 476 31 Urinary salt made by the kidnyes 473. 19 Observations on distilled urine 847 Of the various actions of the spirit of urine 864 Urine-vessels not enlarged by drink but by the stone 708. 41 42 Urine not an excrement of the Kidneys 257 11 Of the division of vrines 1051. 1 Of the errours in the circle of urine 1052. 4 What the circle in the urine is demonstrated 1052. 5 What the yellownesse in urine may signifie 1053. 9 Watery urines after yellow ones signifie dotages 1054 VVhat a troubled urine signifies 1056. 26 VVhat the litle cloud in the urine may signifie 1054. 20 Of the several sediments of urine 1056 Examinations of urine by weight Ibid W. WArts how cured 141 55 154 VVater the material cause of things 32. 31 105 3. Proved so by an experiment 48. 11 109 30 Likened to the internal Mercury of Metals 65. 8 Never radically conjoyned with the earth 10 c. The parts of the water 71 8 410 54 What its unrestable appointment is 74. 28 Easily putrefiable under the Equinoctial 116 30 All bodies thereinto reducible 116. 33 The great use of that which comes from the Quellem 117 33 Water doth not always fal in a circular Figure 684. 50 When waters loose their life 689. 9 Waters the womb of seeds 693. 1 Why some waters hurt those that have the stone 251 Wheat changed into mice c. 113. 9 Winds whence generated 730 18 80 14 771 59 What the wind is 78 4 The vanity of the Schools defining it 85. 23 Violent ones how allayed 79. 13 Remedies for windinesse 4â—0 28 What causeth it 422. 41 Only in defective persons 424. 54 Some wind in the Ilcon c. Natural and necessary c. 428. 76 Spirit of Wine how reducible into water 69 27 105 9 106 11 VVines hurt by keeping in their Gas 107. 16 Wines profitable to our natures 966 Spirit of wine passeth into the Arteries without digestion 194. 12 731 Cold preserveth wines 232 VVhy wines wax soure 234 15 21 How wines become troubled 773 62 The labor of wisdome 184. 45 Of witches and witchcraft 568 The Devil how concerned therein 569. 1
Of the power of witches 779. 86 Of the nature and extent thereof 780 How a witch may be bound up in the heart of a horse 782 109 110 Witchcraft Simpathy and Magnetism do differ 759. 1 VVomen why monthly purged 405 24 VVomen are subject to double disieases 609 358. 17 VVomen consume not so much Blood as men 740 Yet they make more Ibid. VVhy they have so many conceits when with child 306 50 VVomb its overslowings cured by odorus ointments 114. 17 Remedy for a woman in travel 306. 46 VVomb a peculiar monarchy 575 A Twofold monarchy of a woman 609. 15 VVomb governs its self Ibid. 334. 43 VVomb brings forth an alterative Blas Ibid. Disseases of the womb differ from products 610. 19 The progresse of the wombs defects 612. 358 Its cure 612. 325 48 Sugar stirs up the sleeping fury of the womb 612 Wherein the fruitfulness of the womb consists 630 Where the womb of the urine beginneth 209 23 Womb warreth under its own banners 306. 52 Of the force of Imagination in women with Child 1117. 1118 The monarchy of the womb distingisheth a woman from a man 335. 48 In words herbs and stones there is great vertue 575 Silk-worms figure out a shadow of the Resurrection 684. 94 VVounds asswaged by odours c. 114 17 Hurt by the Moon-beams 141. 55 Z. ZEnexton against the plague 1144 Of the uselessness of some Zenextons 1145 Pretious stones not true Zenextons 1146 Amber a Zenexton and how so made Ibid. The qualities a Zenexton ought to have 1148 1149. Toad a Zenexton Ibid How the Toad is prepared for a Zenexton 1150 VVhy he is a true Zenexton 1152 A Poetical Soliloquie of the Translatour Harmonizing and Sympathizing with the Author's Genius WHen first my Friend did ask me to translate Van Helmonts Works wrapt up in hidden state Of Roman dialect that 't was a Book Of Med'cine and Phylosophy I took It in good part enough and did not doubt But to perform what I should set about By Gods asistance for I willing stood Much pains to take about a publick good I forth with entred on it and did see More than my friend thereof could tel to me For why since something was begot within My inward parts which loved truth but sin And selfish errour hated I began To feel and love the spirit of the man Whom I perceived like a gratious Son To build his knowledg on the Corner Stone And out of self to sink in humble wise As his Confession in me testifies The light of understanding was his guide From heath'nish Books and Authors he did slide And cast them of that so he might be free Singly to stand O Lord and wait on thee And in the pray'r of silence on thee call Because he knew thee to be All in All. And thou didst teach him that which will conduce To th' profit of his Neighbour be of use Both unto soul and body as inclin'd To read with lowly and impartial mind But as for lofty and and self-seeking ones Thou scatter wilt their wisdom wealth and bones Because thou art not honour'd in a lye Whether of Nature or Divinity But in the truth of knowledge of thy Life And of thy wondrous works which men of strife And alienated can no whit attain Till from the fall they do return again Helmont that thou returned'st I believe Thy testimony of it thou dost give When by the light thou saist entring thy dore Thou changed wast from what thou wert before And cause thou suffredst by a wicked sort For being good and once wast poyson'd for 't That 't was unjustly I am doubting past ' Cause th' Enemies conscience prickt him at the last And truely'n many places of thy Ream Words slow forth from thee like a silver stream And so that I at sundry times have found Sweet op'nings from the un'ty in the ground But did thy life in words alone consist Or art thou to be enrowl'd among the list Of Stoical Notionists which only spend Their time in contemplation and so end Their days or were good actions wrought by thee Which as the fruits discover do the tree Did shew that healing virtue forth did start From thy fire-furnace as love from thy hart If not how is it that thou dost us tel Thou ceased'st not Annually to heal Some Myriades or ten thousands yed Thy medicines were not diminished Or that thou wert so tender of the poor What if I say that bagd from door to door That thou retiredly didst live at home And cure them out of Charity not roâ—â— And gape for gain for visits as do most Physitians who unto rich houses post Floating about even as in a floud Of poysoned purged filths and venal blood And so the peoples wealth health life do soaâ— Through the sâ—ay viâ—ard of a Doctors cloak But Helmonts hand-pen asit plain appears Their false-paint coverings a funder tears In room whereof such Practicâ— Theory It doth insert that they as standers by Like Bibels Merchants will ven weâ—p and waâ—â— When they shall see their trade begin to fail And upright Artists held up by the â—an Of him who owns the good Samaritan Yet such School-Doctors shall not thus relent Whom Grace and goodnesse shall move to repent This is not utter'd out of spleen but pity Unto the sick in Country and in City No just cause given by these words to hate But to be owned by the Magistrate And I my self in former silly times Through School-tradition and Galenick lines Have wrong'd my body weaken'd my nature Clipping my vitals in their strength and Stature And though through Grace to soul and body to T' was turned to good yet that 's no thank to you Help Chymists help to pul their Babel down Builtby the pride of Academicks Gown Let Theophrastus Azoth Helmonts Lore Erect an Engine such as ne're before Hark Chymists hark attend Baptista's law He speaks to h's Sons as th' Lyon by the Paw And why as th' eye is opened to look May y' not discern Hercules by his foot Be it sufficient that he gives a tast Least pretious peat is he unto swine should east Be 't no dishonour to the Ghymick School That some mistakes thereof he doth controâ—â— Rather a praise unto the Masters eye Houshold disorders for to rectifie Strike Chymists strike strike fire out of your 〈◊〉 And force the fire unto the highest stint Of a Reverb'ratory such a heat As Galen back out of the field may beat And fetch th' Archeal Crasis Seminum To keep the field gainst a Rololleum Srrive not not by reason if you 'd win the day Pâ—ice your Athanar as he another way Aime not at lucre in what ye undertake Your motive love the spirit your guider make That day to day in you the Word may preach And night to night unto you knowledge teach That so Elias th' Artist if he come Ye as prepar'd may bid him welcome home And all well-wishers unto Science true Unto